D&D 5E FeeFiFoFum *splat* goes the giants

[dave2008]

It is defined that way, if you can do 2-3 "deadly" encounters in a day, that means that each will take 33-50% of your daily resources. After that, the adversaries and situations are so varied that it's impossible to predict whether it will be consumed in HP, HD, spells, etc.

I agree, but it would be good on them to say it more clearly. A new DM shouldn't, IMO, have to figure it out, just tell them.

 

[Ancalagon]

Only one fight in a day and allowing the adventurers to go nova (burning all their high level spells) ? Not to mention stronger characters than what the standard rules allow.

That being said, my apologies for the word "twisted", I was in a hurry and did not find the right word. And I still can't, but you are clearly using a tool beyond the boundaries of its intended design.

What makes you think that was the only fight of the day? That all resources were spent? You're making assumptions here.

 

[Stalker0]

Even more importantly, it does not take into account things which are more important than the CR, and which every edition has failed to take into account - although it's not a criticism because it's impossible to do in a formal system:

• Synergies (or lack of them) between members of a side of the fight (e.g. a tank clearly protecting a melee damage dealer)
• Synergies (or lack of them) between members of opposite sides (e.g. a sorcerer specialised in fire against devils)
• Synergies (or lack of them) between combattants and the environment (e.g. devils in an area where lava spouts and burns everyone constantly)
• Circumstances of the fight, like preparation, surprise, etc.

And I'm sure I'm forgetting many others, but with the above, you can turn almost any fight into a massacre for one side if it has all positive conditions and the other only has negative.

So effectively you are agreeing with the OP that the encounter guidelines do not work very well.

You have a different reason to believe that, aka the notion that such a design is "impossible", but you seem to fully agree that the numbers presented are very little help to a DM.... experience is the "real tool" to guage encounter criteria.

I guess the question then is, if the game is so swingy that encounter designations have no real consistency, would it have been better to not have a system at all? Maybe one for low levels to ensure you don't curb stomp your group right out of the box....but beyond that just go "let it ride, we can't tell you what your party can deal with, so just go for it!"

 

[Stalker0]

What makes you think that was the only fight of the day? That all resources were spent? You're making assumptions here.

From what we heard of the OP they basically used 2 fireballs. That's only a 1/4 of their total spell slots (if I total spell slot x spell level as a "measure of power".... its 6 spell levels / 23 spell levels in total). And of course that's not any metamagic or any abilities from the other players.

 

[Lyxen]

What makes you think that was the only fight of the day? That all resources were spent? You're making assumptions here.

Look, 7th level characters are pretty empty if they toss a few fireballs, especially if he's only level 5 in his caster class...

 

[Lyxen]

So effectively you are agreeing with the OP that the encounter guidelines do not work very well.

No, I'm not. I'm mostly saying that if you don't read them properly, and then try to apply them without taking into account all the changes that make your game non-standard, you should not be surprised if they give results that are less than accurate.

You have a different reason to believe that, aka the notion that such a design is "impossible", but you seem to fully agree that the numbers presented are very little help to a DM.... experience is the "real tool" to guage encounter criteria.

And then again, no. What is sure is that the it's just ballpark and that it will not replace experience, but it will help. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing.

I guess the question then is, if the game is so swingy that encounter designations have no real consistency, would it have been better to not have a system at all? Maybe one for low levels to ensure you don't curb stomp your group right out of the box....but beyond that just go "let it ride, we can't tell you what your party can deal with, so just go for it!"

Again, it's still better than nothing, and it works at higher level if you - through experience - adjust the variables.

But I don't know if you've tried technical game systems where there is absolutely no way to judge encounter difficulty (like Runequest for example, I love the game, but building encounters is really complex especially in a deadly game), it's better to have a tool, however imprecise than having nothing.

 

[Lyxen]

From what we heard of the OP they basically used 2 fireballs. That's only a 1/4 of their total spell slots (if I total spell slot x spell level as a "measure of power".... its 6 spell levels / 23 spell levels in total). And of course that's not any metamagic or any abilities from the other players.

First, the sorcerer is 5, so that is not 23 spell slots levels, it's at best 16 (and after that sorcery point conversion is not efficient). Second, it was not 2 fireballs, it was "a few", which usually means more than 2, it' So for me, that is a significant chunk of power (about all the highest level spells plus all the sorcery points) gone, assuming that no other spells were cast.

 

[Quickleaf]

Good to see you on here @Ancalagon!

Yeah, the guidelines are more like training wheels – most useful at lower levels to avoid inadvertently throwing encounters that are too difficult at the players*. But kinda borked for many other situations.

Your encounter is a good example of one of the many "weak points" in the DMG's section on encounter building: PCs with area effect magic at range against melee brutes.

If I were in your DM's shoes and trying to gauge the anticipated challenge the 3 hill giant combat would present to you guys, my thought process would be:

• Kobold Fight Club says this encounter is 10,800 adjusted XP, out of their budget of 15,000 adjusted XP. That's using about 70% of their daily budget in a single encounter, which is probably about as high as I want to push it for 7th level PCs (barring other mitigating factors - like highly skilled clever players ).
• However, the PCs have a clear tactical advantage – area effect magic at range against dim-witted melee brutes. So, mentally I would be downgrading the anticipated challenge by about half... so that's 5,400 adjusted XP (which is the same as the ACTUAL XP of the 3 hill giants). The DMG uses language along the lines of (paraphrasing) "if the PCs have a benefit over the monsters, decrease the challenge one step, e.g. from Deadly to Hard", or some such -- since I don't really bother with Easy/Medium/Hard/Deadly designations**, this XP adjustment is my approach applying similar thinking.
• From that frame of reference, I'd gauge the combat as being more like 35% of their daily budget. Which means I would expect that each PC would be depleted by about 1/3 of their hit points and spells (or other limited resources) in order to beat the encounter. To make that concrete, I'd anticipate the sorcerer casting 3 fireballs and the PCs taking around 15 damage each.

* unless your DM inadvertently picks a banshee, bodak, intellect devourer, sea hag, shadow, or other monster circumventing hit points.

** IME, the Easy/Medium/Hard/Deadly designations are (a) less accurate than actually thinking through the encounter like I did above, (b) the definitions in the DMG for "Deadly" and so on don't match up with what I consider to be "Deadly", and (c) I'm acutely aware that perceived difficulty is probably more important than any label I would attach to an encounter in my white room theorizing, and so I prefer a more numbers oriented approach, leaving the subjective "how hard was it?" as something for the players to answer after the combat.

 

[John R Davis]

Yeah maybe the wording should reflect the resource use. So "draining, taxing, etc" rather than deadly etc

 

[Stalker0]

Honestly, although it's not exactly what you are mentioning, have you read the section called "modifying encounter difficulty" ? "Increase the difficulty of the encounter by one step (from easy to medium, for example) if the characters have a drawback that their enemies don’t. Reduce the difficulty by one step if the characters have a benefit that their enemies don’t. Any additional benefit or drawback pushes the encounter one step in the appropriate direction. If the characters have both a benefit and a drawback, the two cancel each other out."

So one issue with the difficulties area, is what happens with 2x, 3x, 4x type deadly.

Does a 2x deadly drop to "just deadly" with a situational benefit, or does it drop all the way to hard?
Such a rule would not be necessary if 2x or 3x deadlies were so hard it would be "ludicrous" for a DM to use them.... but frankly I throw 2x and 3x encounters at my parties all the time, and even 4x and 5x on occasion

And yes that section can be useful but it doesn't even cover all standard options that are common for players to deal with. People mentioned having ranged characters against melee, is that worth a difficulty drop? Magic Items of course are a big one, while they are "optional" you certainly see them a lot in the various modules....so at least some token lip service to them would be expected (aka players have +1 weapons and maybe armor, what does that do....a least the basics). Or feats, if I allow feats should I just automatically assume 1 difficulty drop, or is it a half one, or does it not change the difficulty?

I respect that a simple system based on CR is not going to be perfect, a simple model will high variance, and a rigorous one would create far more complexity than most are comfortable with. But I can also say having run games for a long time under 3.0,3.5,4e, and now 5e.... that 5e's encounter difficulty estimate is the "worst by far". When I ran deadly encounters in 3.5....my players were sweating. In 5e if I'm not at 2x/3x deadly, its barely a real encounter.

One reason is bounded accuracy prevents monsters from scaling quickly, and so it takes quite a lot of extra oomph to challenge a party. The other is the death save system pads monster offense. Doubling a monster's attack damage on an attack for example will surely blow through your hp quicker but rarely is it enough damage to trigger instant death (past 5th level or so). Therefore when it comes to "finishing off a PC", a monster doing 20 damage is the same as one doing 10. This gives a very large cushion for players and tends to dramatically reduce the potency of greater offense. That is not inherently bad, in fact the "death cushion" is a very nice feature for many players (it also helps reduce the chance that a DM just mows through their party with an oops)....but it does mean the depth of encounters a party can handle is often much higher than the rules suggest.

Aka I wish they had just widened the range, increased them by 1.5x or so, maybe even 2x.