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FeeFiFoFum *splat* goes the giants
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<blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 8421266" data-attributes="member: 20323"><p>Good to see you on here [USER=23]@Ancalagon[/USER]!</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>If I were in your DM's shoes and trying to gauge the anticipated challenge the 3 <strong>hill giant </strong>combat would present to you guys, my thought process would be:</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="https://koboldplus.club/#/encounter-builder" target="_blank">Kobold Fight Club</a> 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 <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> ).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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 <em>fireballs</em> and the PCs taking around 15 damage each.</li> </ul><p><span style="font-size: 12px">* unless your DM inadvertently picks a banshee, bodak, intellect devourer, sea hag, shadow, or other monster circumventing hit points.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px">** 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 <em>perceived difficulty</em> 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.</span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Quickleaf, post: 8421266, member: 20323"] Good to see you on here [USER=23]@Ancalagon[/USER]! 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 [B]hill giant [/B]combat would present to you guys, my thought process would be: [LIST] [*][URL='https://koboldplus.club/#/encounter-builder']Kobold Fight Club[/URL] 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 [I]fireballs[/I] and the PCs taking around 15 damage each. [/LIST] [SIZE=3]* 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 [I]perceived difficulty[/I] 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.[/SIZE] [/QUOTE]
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