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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6654433" data-attributes="member: 6787650">I think you're misstating the logic behind multipliers. Fundamentally they exist because of the artillery equation: two hobgoblins will inflict three times as much damage as a single hobgoblin before dying, and the multiplier reflects this. Multipliers break down in the presence of heterogenous CRs, but that's an implementation flaw, not their reason for existing.IMO it's best to mostly just ignore encounter guidelines, because they straitjacket the play experience and give bad estimates anyway. I drew a little map today of three vampire spawn and twenty zombies scattered around a building and one vampire inside--then realized that I have no idea how you'd compute the XP for it, because it all depends how many encounters you divide it into. I'd just call it one encounter since they're all within one or two moves of each other (the building is 150' long, it's actually my apartment building), which makes it worth about 90K XP IIRC kobold.com's figures. But as a player I'd attempt to divide and conquer the small groups, making it worth only about 20K total. Which is it? I don't have to care! But I think someone designing by DMG guidelines would have co-located all the monsters automatically, out of habit, instead of putting five zombies around a corpse here and two around the corner and a vampire in a tree, etc., in order to avoid the question.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 6654433, member: 6787650"] I think you're misstating the logic behind multipliers. Fundamentally they exist because of the artillery equation: two hobgoblins will inflict three times as much damage as a single hobgoblin before dying, and the multiplier reflects this. Multipliers break down in the presence of heterogenous CRs, but that's an implementation flaw, not their reason for existing. IMO it's best to mostly just ignore encounter guidelines, because they straitjacket the play experience and give bad estimates anyway. I drew a little map today of three vampire spawn and twenty zombies scattered around a building and one vampire inside--then realized that I have no idea how you'd compute the XP for it, because it all depends how many encounters you divide it into. I'd just call it one encounter since they're all within one or two moves of each other (the building is 150' long, it's actually my apartment building), which makes it worth about 90K XP IIRC kobold.com's figures. But as a player I'd attempt to divide and conquer the small groups, making it worth only about 20K total. Which is it? I don't have to care! But I think someone designing by DMG guidelines would have co-located all the monsters automatically, out of habit, instead of putting five zombies around a corpse here and two around the corner and a vampire in a tree, etc., in order to avoid the question. [/QUOTE]

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