D&D 5E It's Official! Most of my encounters are "Deadly" (now updated with info through the end of 2022!)

[el-remmen]

If you're curious how that final encounter played out, the party wandered into a large armory after fighting a bunch of sahuagin (encounters 71 and 72, the latter arriving as reinforcements and getting torn up pretty fast). Encounter 71 took place on either side of a portcullis with the party taking control of it to limit how many could get at them, and some sahuagin spending actions to raise the portcullis by brute force to allow others to shimmy under and when they were killed or pushed back, having to try again. The barbarian/fighter suffered some heavy damage blows (I roll, never use average) including a couple of crits that by fight's end had him at like 8 of 80-something hit points, requiring some healing be spread around just to get him back to about 40-something hps.
Anyway, the party started burning the sahuagin weapons in the armory, and the smoke drew the attention of the force massed in the neighboring barracks. Once a sahuagin came through the adjoining door and saw what was happening it raised the alarm. The party hurried over there, killed that one sahuagin, but quickly saw this new area was clogged with sahuagin and leader types. They decided to try to slowly draw them through the door only taking on a couple at a time. When they were gathered outside the door the ranger/sorcerer cast darkness in the doorway, creating confusion and blockade. As sahuagin stumbled out of the darkness into the scrum they'd get chopped down. But once a Champion and Coral Smasher pushed their way through and used grapple/push to make some room, more sahuagin started to make their way in, since they'd stumble out of the darkness without necessarily immediately having to defend themselves. Meanwhile, streams of sahuagin and other champions and smashers started coming round the long way (which took 2 to 3 rounds depending on the specific route). Oh and somewhere in there a Champion did a disarm maneuver and the barbarian lost his magic great axe as it was flung into the darkness.

When the party realized that more were streaming into the armory behind them, the party decided to withdraw to a small room off the armory with only one way in or out, since now they'd be fighting on two fronts.

Important note: The druid's player could not make the session, so we decided he was wildshaped into a rat and sleeping off a hangover in the gnome's hood (which is in character, and would allow him to "recover" and join the fight as soon as the player returned next session). At this point, the ranger/sorcerer and the gnome bard/wizard were at about 24 of 45 hps.

The session ended with the party bottled into the small room and me deciding the druid woke up to cast Spike Growth outside the little room to slow the waves of sahuagin and cause them damage if they tried to move away.

After that it was a waiting game, as the PCs decided that the sahuagin could afford to wait for more reinforcements and wait out the spell.

Eventually, they were able to push their way out - in part because of the efforts of the gnome who used a potion of spider-climbing to get out into the armory again and rain spells down from above on the trapped sahuagin. A few of them tried to withdraw to a better position and were killed or heavily damaged by the spike growth. At the same time the Saltmarsh militia arrived at the front gate, drawing off reinforcements and the stragglers of those at came around. the barbarian spent three round fumbling in the darkness for his magic axe when the ranger/sorcerer refused to dismiss it.

It was then that the blademaster joined the fight, carrying the barbarian's axe: "You want this back?" It said in broken common. "You'll have to kill me for it!"

And so on. . . By battle's end, the barbarian was unconscious, the party druid was down to 12 (of 60) hps, the ranger/sorcerer was around 7 hps, and the gnome was still hovering in the 20s. The gnome's heat metal made a big difference in the fight against the platemail wearing blademaster.

Fun was had by all, but it was dicey for a while. The fighting between rooms, the withdrawing sahuagin and their coming around different ways, the use of grapple/push to force the PCs back, etc.

 

[Stalker0]

Fun was had by all, but it was dicey for a while. The fighting between rooms, the withdrawing sahuagin and their coming around different ways, the use of grapple/push to force the PCs back, etc.

So you basically had a 2x to 3x deadly encounter (depending on how much you award the base sahuagin considering the choke point terrain) after the party was already beat up from 2 previous encounters and were mostly down a man....and they still made it through without losing anyone!

 

[Flamestrike]

A standard CR 1/2 Sahuagin has 22 hitpoints, so unless your 7th level barb is way stronger than I am used to (2d6 + 5 str + 3 rage + 1 magic = 16 damage, so 2 hits to take out)....they are killing 1 per round (you will get a crit or 2 but also a few misses which should roughly balance out), so 12 rounds to take out a dozen. A fighter could take out 2 in a round with action surge, then its back to 1 per round.

Im assuming GWM, and likely a +1 Greatsword at 7th level.

Str 18, Prof +3, +1 Magic, Reckless attack (why not, they're likely hitting with advantage anyway) -5 for GWM = +3 at advantage vs AC 12.

84 percent chance of a hit, average damage = 24 or so damage when raging (22 when not raging). More with Great weapon style if he took it from Fighter.

If he kills one, he gets to attack another one thanks to GWM.

Assuming 4 rounds, Extra attack, and Action surge (and losing a bonus action from Rage) he kills 84 percent of (13 attacks) or around 10 on average, not including AoO's.

Now if you want to say a fireball softens them up so that the fighter only needs 1 hit to kill, I could see that, but expecting a fireball to hit all 12 is of course a major question mark, depends on how they are split up and scattered.

Fireball likely kills them outright. They're saving at +0 with 22 HP vs 28 average damage vs a DC of likely 16 or so.

Even if it doesnt kill them outright, it softens them up for the Barbarian

I can respect the notion that like a handful of CR 1/2s isn't going to move the needle much.... but 30!!!!??? That's no longer a minor little threat, that's a pretty big resource drain if the party doesn't get a chance to area bomb them to death.

30 of them add 3,000XP to the budget without multipliers. With the multiplier already in existence thanks to the CR 6, 3's and 2's (and that stays regardless), that 3,000 is already multiplied by 2.5 (to 7,500 XP) or roughly a single CR 11.

Even without multiplication on account of those 30 critters, you're still adding their XP in, and applying the multiplier to that tally (you're just not increasing the multiplier on account of their existence).

Factoring them in at Step 4, brings the total multiplier from 2.5 to 4. It's still a Deadly encounter if you factor them in or you don't, so the whole argument is moot anyway.

 

[Stalker0]

Im assuming GWM, and likely a +1 Greatsword at 7th level.

Str 18, Prof +3, +1 Magic, Reckless attack (why not, they're likely hitting with advantage anyway) -5 for GWM = +3 at advantage vs AC 12.

84 percent chance of a hit, average damage = 24 or so damage when raging (22 when not raging). More with Great weapon style if he took it from Fighter.

If he kills one, he gets to attack another one thanks to GWM.

Assuming 4 rounds, Extra attack, and Action surge (and losing a bonus action from Rage) he kills 84 percent of (13 attacks) or around 10 on average, not including AoO's.

So its a biiiit more complicated than that, since we are at the point where the damage rolls really matter. A low roll is the difference between a creature living and dying.

So I made a quick little simulator to model it. I took a barbarian with the numbers you mentioned. I assumed he used GWM when the creature was at full, and no GWM when the creature was already wounded. I gave him a 3rd attack for GWM as long as one creature was killed, except on the first round (as the barbarian has to spend his bonus action to rage). I assumed there was never a lack of enemies close by, which is reasonable for such a large number.

In 6 rounds the barb kills ~12.5 creatures. In 4 rounds he kills ~8.1. To kill 30 by himself would take ~14 rounds.

 

[Flamestrike]

So its a biiiit more complicated than that, since we are at the point where the damage rolls really matter. A low roll is the difference between a creature living and dying.

So I made a quick little simulator to model it. I took a barbarian with the numbers you mentioned. I assumed he used GWM when the creature was at full, and no GWM when the creature was already wounded. I gave him a 3rd attack for GWM as long as one creature was killed, except on the first round (as the barbarian has to spend his bonus action to rage). I assumed there was never a lack of enemies close by, which is reasonable for such a large number.

In 6 rounds the barb kills ~12.5 creatures. In 4 rounds he kills ~8.1. To kill 30 by himself would take ~14 rounds.

Our barbarian has Action surge (he's also a 2nd level Fighter).

So he has +2 extra attacks on round 1, likely adding an extra 1.7 dead to those numbers above.

In 4 rounds he could kill roughly 10.

With an AC of likely around 16-17, and his opponents getting Advantage on him (at +3) from Reckless attack they hit with roughly 50 percent of their attacks. Damage is halved thanks to Rage.

Damage is 1d4+1 and 1d8+1 or averaged to 7. Rage brings it down to 3. It's likely that no more than 8 can attack him each round, dealing 24 damage a round on average.

You'd anticipate 80 HP or so. So he would be dead in 4 rounds if 30 of them swarmed him, with 10 of them dead in return.

Dealing with just 10 Sahaugin is a different matter though. After his first action (rage, action surge, 4 attacks) likely only 7 remain (21 damage). Next round he likely kills 2 more (then takes 15 damage). Round after 2 more die (takes 9 damage) and the next round kills the remainder (and uses his Second wind to heal 1d10+2).

 

[el-remmen]

Just bumping this to link to "Length of Combat & Time Taken per Round (collecting data from my games," which is my follow-up to this thread, collecting data from two current campaigns about time spent per round (and in some cases per turn).

 

[Starfox]

The adventure above (A Wizards Fate) an old DnD adventure has literally this hook:

• Zotzpox (the Imp) is now waiting for agents from hell to come and pick up the treasure in the vault of the wizard's dungeon.
• Zotzpox has Erilyn in captivity and will hand her over to the devils as well, for purposes of corruption and evil-doing.
• A sage hires the heroes to obtain some of the treasure in that vault.

You can't see the OBVIOUS doom clock there?

The PCs are hired by the Sage to get the treasure/ rescue the NPC before the Imp hands it over to the other Devils (in 2 days time on the Winter solstice or whatever).

How is that altering the adventure?

The problem with old scenarios with doom clocks is that they often don't tell the players there is a doom clock. This is a big problem, especially if the players are unused to doom clocks.

Picture is just a somewhat on-concept joke, not to be taken seriously.

 

[MarkB]

The problem with old scenarios with doom clocks is that they often don't tell the players there is a doom clock. This is a big problem, especially if the players are unused to doom clocks.

On the other hand, plot-driven doom can feel terribly immersion-breaking. Like, in Rime of the Frostmaiden as written, no matter how long it takes the PCs to reach Sunblight, they will arrive there precisely in time to see the Chardalyn Dragon unleashed to rain terror upon the Ten Towns.

And that event actually does start a doom clock whose precise period the players don't know, and leaves them with a choice between delaying their response to that clock or immediately turning back from the place they just spent days trying to get to, with minimal information to inform that decision.