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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6704331" data-attributes="member: 6787650">In my experience, the point of actual 50%-chance-of-death-in-the-absence-of-really-smart-tactical-play comes when there are an equal number of N level PCs and CR N monsters, which works out at approximately 4x the official Deadly threshold. That's just at the raw mechanical level and there are a number of factors that can tilt the balance toward either side to make Deadly come sooner (e.g. exploit 120' drow darkvision and poison against a melee-centric party) or to make 10x Deadly encounters survivable (Necromancer undead skeleton archers), but as a general guideline I find that Quadruple-Deadly fights make you have to think hard about how you'll survive while anything less is a straightforward "kill the enemy and take their stuff."My data comes from party sizes of two to four PCs, and occasional NPCs, rarely exceeding six total (N)PCs on a side because managing a bunch of NPCs on both sides of the combat is way too much hassle for my brain--but I have played with Necromancers a fair bit (both as DM and as a player) and of course they blow the lid off this calculation. (With Necromancers the main constraint is RP: "how big of an army do I feel like I need right now?" Necromancers IME tend to self-limit their total number of skeletons to only a fraction of what they're capable of.) When I say "CR = level" is a good guideline, that comes from experience with bardlocks, necrolocks who are leaving their skeletons home, tanky paladin/sorcerers, shadow monks, moon druids, barbarians, and sharpshooter fighters--these are the main classes which have seen play at my table.I use spell points and AD&D-style initiative (Speed Factor without the speed factors), with the additional rule that smarter creatures think faster and have smaller OODA loops, so actions must be declared in order of intelligence from lowest to highest, which means in practice that anyone with a high intelligence can always ask a lower intelligence (N)PC/monster what its action is. "Oh, you're Dodging? I ignore you and attack the wizard then." This makes Intelligence quite valuable for warriors.I do roleplay monsters, including morale, but morale shouldn't affect the "what is Deadly?" calculation because any monsters who have reason to initiate a conflict also won't flee until the battle has turned against them. However, the fact that I roleplay instead of metagaming monsters does mean that you can assume that monsters aren't being played in tactically optimal ways (goblin conga line, ignoring the tank, etc.) unless they are military veterans (hobgoblins, drow) or individual highly-intelligent monsters (like beholders--who are played optimally as individuals, but coordinate poorly with other beholders unless a hive mother or overlord is in charge).This means that if you stick a tank out there in front of the party and have three ranged PCs providing covering fire from 50' to 150' back, the monsters are quite likely to attack the tank, especially if the tank is in a chokepoint which they would have to Overrun with Athletics/Evade with Acrobatics in order to get through. (One reason Necromancers are valuable is that they can provide a backup line of meat shields with a dozen opportunity attacks which makes it unattractive to ignore the tank. With only four PCs and no skeletons, ignoring the tank and going after the squishies is quite an attractive option to optimally-played melee monsters.)Cover is a thing in my games but when it exists it usually works to the PCs' advantage, because Sharpshooter and Spell Sniper are common. Exploiting range and mobility is also common, but since killing things to death is at long range is boring I typically skip over fights where there isn't at least some risk of death ("okay, you kill the Slaad"), so while pure kiting strategies exist, they don't see a lot of play time at my table--most combats will feature a tank in melee with the monsters so that at least the monsters can do something on their turns.Because I use morale rules, withdrawing is also a thing. E.g. if your four 8th level PCs are facing four Banshees, who wailed and took down two PCs but you revived both PCs and killed one Banshee while reducing another to half HP... the three surviving Banshees are not-unlikely to withdraw through the wall/ceiling/floor. That doesn't mean you've won, in fact it means that you probably can't rest lest they surprise you with a renewed attack (only an Alert character can rest while still expecting a threat, so a round-zero attack during a rest = surprise as long as the Banshees make their Stealth rolls, even if you knew the Banshees were out there) and you also have to worry about them joining in to attack from an unexpected angle when you're busy fighting something else.Summoning spells are kind of a thing at my table too, though not always. The players (well, PCs) have survived several deadly combats gone wrong by pulling out Chogorath (their Horn of Valhalla), dousing it in blood from their own wounds (required to activate it), and then blowing it to summon a riptide of berserkers. In the other party, the lore bardlock will conjure animals under roughly the same conditions that a necromancer would deploy skeletons: e.g. when the (level 11) bardlock and the shadow monk are scouting ahead alone (under Pass Without Trace) and spot three frost giants, they are comfortable taking on the giants without the rest of the party around even though that is a quadruple-Deadly threat, but the bardlock will definitely Conjure Animals (aiming for king cobras/Giant Poisonous Snakes) while the Shadow Monk drops Darkness, and then the bardlock will support with Eldritch Blast from behind cover while the monk and cobras take the fight to the giants. (Then once the giants are down, they will bandage their wounds/stabilize them and generally be way too merciful.)So anyway, my experience with double-Deadly fights is that, with most monsters, you can deal with them straightforwardly even at low levels by simply having the tank go defensive (still threatening opportunity attacks but not necessarily attacking, often Dodging) while everybody else fills the monsters with arrows. Once fights get up to the Quadruple-Deadly level, things get dicier and you start doing things like manipulating lighting and laying caltrops to survive. Also, at first level you are very fragile so you're likely to approach every single fight like it's Quadruple-Deadly, and manipulate the environment for all you've got. Winning a 10x Deadly fight typically requires you to seek even larger advantages like recruiting members of the town guard to act as your backup, or dropping rocks from a spelljamming ship very high up, or exploiting Conjure Animals and Animate Dead for all they're worth.</blockquote>

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