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<blockquote data-quote="slobo777" data-source="post: 5998100" data-attributes="member: 6694877">Having just been at a workshop for the language I code in at work, I thought I'd look at adding some monte-carlo stats based on this. It's a different angle on the encounter balance issue, inspired by the OP.Just for a sneak peak / starter, I considered what an &quot;adventuring day&quot; might look like for the Dwarf first-level character in the OP, if the whole adventure is basically running the gauntlet of a series of encounters with 1 Zombie per battle. Pretty boring adventure, right, but the design goal for the DM is to pick a number of Zombies that gives a fair daily challenge . . .So the first check is to run as many encounters as the Dwarf can handle before he ends up on 9 or less hit points, and with no Hit Dice left. I ran this 1000 times to get an average.Answer: typically 124 zombies . . . . whew!It varies a lot, and the numbers are typically high - I think this is a consequence of the bad initiative rolls of the Zombies. They don't really make a good one-on-one challenge for individual combat encounters.The second check is to run the 124 zombie gauntlet (possibly the dullest adventure ever!) with 1000 dwarves and count the survivors.Answer: 731 out of 1000 dwarves survived the gauntlet.This is bad. Put it down to swinginess of the one-on-one with zombies though. With that many encounters, and only exceptional bad luck where the dwarf is taking damage. Whatever the cause, this would be a very swingy adventuring day, and probably not the sort of thing to really plan.More to come on another thread . . .</blockquote>

[QUOTE="slobo777, post: 5998100, member: 6694877"] Having just been at a workshop for the language I code in at work, I thought I'd look at adding some monte-carlo stats based on this. It's a different angle on the encounter balance issue, inspired by the OP. Just for a sneak peak / starter, I considered what an "adventuring day" might look like for the Dwarf first-level character in the OP, if the whole adventure is basically running the gauntlet of a series of encounters with 1 Zombie per battle. Pretty boring adventure, right, but the design goal for the DM is to pick a number of Zombies that gives a fair daily challenge . . . So the first check is to run as many encounters as the Dwarf can handle before he ends up on 9 or less hit points, and with no Hit Dice left. I ran this 1000 times to get an average. Answer: typically 124 zombies . . . . whew! It varies a lot, and the numbers are typically high - I think this is a consequence of the bad initiative rolls of the Zombies. They don't really make a good one-on-one challenge for individual combat encounters. The second check is to run the 124 zombie gauntlet (possibly the dullest adventure ever!) with 1000 dwarves and count the survivors. Answer: 731 out of 1000 dwarves survived the gauntlet. This is bad. Put it down to swinginess of the one-on-one with zombies though. With that many encounters, and only exceptional bad luck where the dwarf is taking damage. Whatever the cause, this would be a very swingy adventuring day, and probably not the sort of thing to really plan. More to come on another thread . . . [/QUOTE]

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