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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6654895" data-attributes="member: 6787650">This bold part exactly--I ran not-quite-that-but-a-very-similar encounter last night (i.e. zombies and vampire spawns around a building, minus the vampire because a master vampire doesn't fit with the story where the PCs are right now). And I didn't compute the encounter XP at all until just now, because you asked.The players got 6400 XP out of it (divided among a 7th level PC, 8th level PC, 8th level NPC, 4th level NPC, and 2nd level NPC), but as I compute the numbers now it was technically 25,600 XP, or 3.87 times the Deadly threshold. In fact, that one encounter (fourth one of the day) was 1.32 times what the DMG says their daily encounter budget should be, all in one fight. These PCs are not particularly optimized; they don't have a ton of magic items (a Wand of Web is all) but they do have some bio-modifications from a xixchil device (the cleric got trollish regeneration at the cost of -2 Int and -2 Cha, green skin, and a bad temper; on the other hand he only has 13 Wis, so clearly he's still not overpowered for a cleric). They were already low on resources and the fight was quite tough for them, but the players enjoyed it all the more for that fact. They killed the zombies relatively quickly with the cleric's Turn Undead (he took some hits while waiting for them all to group up around him), while the longbow-wielding, chain mail-wearing vampire hobgoblins sniped him (with Martial Advantage for being hobgoblins) from the windows of the house. The paladin dragged one of the vampires out into the sunlight (no regen + disadvantage to break free of grapple + auto 20 damage per round), while the vampires tried at various times to grapple/bite the cleric and the paladin and drag them up onto the ceiling using Spider Climb (so they'd fall for damage if they escaped) and the ranger NPC sniped the vampires using Sharpshooter + Colossus Slayer from a safe distance. The cleric went down twice but came back up (prone) thanks to regen, but he lost about 30 semi-permanent HP due to life drain (can get them back on a long rest by spending 100 XP per HP) so he lost some net XP there and has a definite reason not to charge into a house with several vampires in it next time, despite feeling invincible with his trollish regeneration. It was a complicated, interesting, fun fight for everyone involved[1] despite or maybe because of being officially way, way too deadly.That is why I feel totally comfortable ignoring DMG encounter balance guidelines.[1] I'm really glad I offloaded action declaration tracking and HP tracking during that fight to one of the players though. That decreased my stress level enormously and let me focus more on playing the monsters, increasing my fun.</blockquote>

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