EL of mixed encounters at high vs. low levels?

[Tav_Behemoth]

I've been playing around with Andargor's latest version of the Encounter Level and XP Calculator v1.6, which has a Chi/Rho system credited to Jim Stenberg aka “Cheiromancer”; Craig Cochrane, CR Greathouse, and Benjamin Durbin.

One of the things I noticed is that, at higher levels, an encounter with multiple creatures of lower CRs is rated as much more deadly (using the chi/rho system) than its EL would indicate. For example, a group of four creatures with CRs 13, 11, 10 and 7 is, by the normal rules, an EL 15 encounter - one that would consume 20% of the resources of a 15th level party. According to the chi/rho analysis, though, this would consume 49% of this party's resources, and have a 24% chance of killing them!

At low CRs, the opposite is true. An encounter with four creatures of CR 3, 2, 2, and 1 has an official EL of 6. The chi/rho analysis, however, says this is going to consume only 12% percent of a sixth level party's resources.

Without getting into the details of the chi/rho system, does this match people's experience with mixed encounters? When playing at higher levels, for example, do you create mixed encounters with a lower EL than standard because you know that the piling up of hit dice at higher CRs makes a group of creatures tougher than EL would indicate?

 

[Nail]

Your title should be: "EL of of combined encounters at higher levels?"

Anyway....



An EL 15 encounter is supposed to consume 20% of the party's resources, no? (DMG, p49)

 

[Nail]

When playing at higher levels, for example, do you create mixed encounters with a lower EL than standard because you know that the piling up of hit dice at higher CRs makes a group of creatures tougher than EL would indicate?

Interesting.....I wish I could get into Andragor's site (it's down right now...I think).

I'm currently DMing two games (and, as background, I tend to play monsters very tactically and tough). One group is 6- 14th level PCs, one is 6- 9th level PCs.

The APL 14 group is currently fighting lots of demons. If we assume the CRs of the demons are correct, then I'd give a qualified "yes" to your question; more lower CR demons makes the combat tougher than the EL system suggests, when the CRs are above 10 or so. But there's a big caveat: I'm not sure the CRs of the monsters are correct. (The Nalfeshnee, for example, is probably weaker that CR 14.)

Another thing that throws a wrench in the works: both my groups have more than 4 PCs.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

Yes, EL and 20% is correct; edited my post, and fixed the link (it's Andargor, not Andragor).
A link specifically to the CR calculator at his site is http://www.andargor.com/files/EL-XP-Calculator-35-v1.6.zip.

One of the things the chi/rho system is designed to do as well is to handle more than 4 PCs, so you might want to look into it for your party.

Intuitively, I think I agree that multiple high-CR monsters are tougher in a way the standard EL formula doesn't account for. For example, it's easy to see that a party of 4 5th level characters will wipe out a party of 4 1st level characters without too much difficulty, as the EL formula would predict. I'm not convinced that it will be as easy for four 20th level characters to take out four 15th level characters.

The next question is: if you bought a book that included a table of mixed encounters to challenge a wide range of party levels*, would you rather have the encounters be book-accurate (adding up to the proper EL according to the rules), or play-accurate (likely to be an appropriately difficult encounter even if it means a lower EL than standard)?

* for example, a Masters and Minions book - the remorhaz table I'm working on right now goes up to EL 16, so the discrepancy really becomes significant.

 

[andargor]

Interestingly enough, Chi/Rho broke down for us last night. A sub group of our party, two 24th levels characters, encountered 100 CR 5's.

Supposedly, the Party Level equivalent is 22, and the encounter level was 18.29 according to the core rules. However, Chi/Rho indicated a 217% resource expenditure and a -9% success/survival rate...

This was of course a walk in the park for the two characters, the whole thing over in less than two rounds.

So there are extreme cases where the the core EL system works, and where Chi/Rho breaks down.

Andargor

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

We find that if the players are tactically skilled 8 PCs can easily handle approximately triple the usual number of monsters (compared to 4 PCs).

As the numbers go up, the vulnerable PCs can more easily stay out of melee or pull safely out of melee for a round or two if badly wounded. FREX, it makes one round spells much safer to cast.

Unless you play in big battles in wide spaces regularly, this effect is probably not significant beyond 8.

 

[moritheil]

We find that if the players are tactically skilled 8 PCs can easily handle approximately triple the usual number of monsters (compared to 4 PCs).

As the numbers go up, the vulnerable PCs can more easily stay out of melee or pull safely out of melee for a round or two if badly wounded. FREX, it makes one round spells much safer to cast.

Unless you play in big battles in wide spaces regularly, this effect is probably not significant beyond 8.

Hmm . . . I have 12 characters in my campaign, and I find that the overall effect is that fatalities are more common, or easier to come by. There is therefore more danger of there being a death rather than less. (I do not know if the odds of death for an individual character are higher or lower.)

Extrapolating, I would estimate that a group of size 16 or so would either require the DM to baby them for a while via careful picking of encounters, or would regularly lose the bulk of its members, at least until the survivors got a couple of levels.

This assumes that the DM tends towards single monsters that take up the CR, or at most a pair of monsters. A small army of level 1s can still probably mow through a small force of goblins without too much trouble (with the fatalities coming when all the goblins target a single player with their spear/javelin fire.)

 

[dcollins]

I've been playing around with Andargor's latest version of the Encounter Level and XP Calculator v1.6, which has a Chi/Rho system credited to Jim Stenberg aka “Cheiromancer”; Craig Cochrane, CR Greathouse, and Benjamin Durbin.

One of the things I noticed is that, at higher levels, an encounter with multiple creatures of lower CRs is rated as much more deadly (using the chi/rho system) than its EL would indicate...

Without getting into the details of the chi/rho system, does this match people's experience with mixed encounters? When playing at higher levels, for example, do you create mixed encounters with a lower EL than standard because you know that the piling up of hit dice at higher CRs makes a group of creatures tougher than EL would indicate?

Let me say this. It's easy to be skeptical about the existing EL system. The x2 numbers = +2 EL seems too simple to be accurate. And that creates a lot of motivation for folks to come up with "alternative" EL systems.

At a point when I was similarly skeptical, I wrote a C++ combat simulator and ran a bunch of simulated fights between NPC fighters and creatures of the same or lesser CRs. To my great surprise, the x2/+2 EL rule worked almost perfectly in predicting how many lesser creatures it would take to challenge a given NPC fighter to an even fight. Fighter goes up by +2 levels, you need x2 as many of the same creature to give him the same 50/50 fight. Really not what I expected, but it indicates that the existing by-the-book EL system is actually pretty solid (assuming CRs were set right to begin with).

Obvious weakness of my simulator: it can only account for brutes using standard melee or ranged attacks. No spells, special abilities, spell-casting magic items, etc. Maybe possibly certain special ability showdowns cause EL to move in different ways. But as far as I've been able to simulate it, it does in fact take lots and lots of low-level creatures to challenge a higher-level creature, and the +2/x2 EL rule is surprisingly spot-on. In my experience, I'd recommend sticking to that instead of alternative systems.

 

[jgbrowning]

The next question is: if you bought a book that included a table of mixed encounters to challenge a wide range of party levels*, would you rather have the encounters be book-accurate (adding up to the proper EL according to the rules), or play-accurate (likely to be an appropriately difficult encounter even if it means a lower EL than standard)?

* for example, a Masters and Minions book - the remorhaz table I'm working on right now goes up to EL 16, so the discrepancy really becomes significant.

From a publishing perspective you should use the most common method, ie. the "proper" EL. The majority of your readers will think you made a mistake if you use any but the "official" version. This is not what you want your readers to think.

If you do use a different version, be sure to include the standard version as well. People like that.

joe b.