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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cheiromancer" data-source="post: 1648476" data-attributes="member: 141">Thank-you Fermat! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />The issue of simulataneous vs successive encounters is a tricky one.  If a fighter were going to fight 3 hill giants, it is usually better for him to fight them one at a time, rather than have them all gang up on him.  If it takes him 5 rounds to kill each giant, then he has a total of 15 rounds of attacks on him if he fights them one at a time.  If they all gang up on him, that number of attacks will be made on him while he is killing the first giant.  And so a simultaneous encounter is much harder in these circumstances.However if instead of hill giants the fighter were to face goblins, he might enjoy the chance to use his cleave and great cleave skills.  And a wizard might prefer to have the giants or goblins all in fireball range (and cone of cold, and horrid wilting, and...) at the same time, and a cleric might prefer to have all hostiles dealt with within the duration of one casting of his buff spells.  Sometimes opponents are easier to deal with simultaneously than successively.  And sometimes it is the party's choice of battlefield and tactics that determines what kind of encounter it will be.There is also a kind of synergy between attackers- think of an iron golem controlled by a Red Dragon.  The dragon's fire breath heals the golem, so together they are more challenging (and should be worth more) than they are separately.  On the other hand, it is presumed that the reason that monsters who fight together work well together, and there is some synergy; that is certainly true of a successful adventuring party.  So arguably you could dock xp for an encounter where the monsters don't synergize well.If you have a way of gauging how much of a party's resources has been used up in an encounter, you can assign xp on that basis.  If it used up 1/4 of their resources, it was a moderate encounter.  The problem with this approach is that it encourages poor play and the squandering of resources: a clever party who overcomes an obstacle with nary a skirmish would get no xp, while a blundering party whose poor tactics almost causes a TPK gets xp as if it were an overwhelming encounter.Discussing with the players what was learned from the encounter, or what the group could have been done better, is a way of deciding how to adjudicate the quality of their play.  This is a good way of handling xp, but formulas and tables can't capture it.BTW, what was it that you said that scared Wulf?</blockquote>

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