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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6595596" data-attributes="member: 6787650">There's two things going on here:* Some people (KarinsDad apparently) assume that fighting 23 gnolls means you're basically in an arena with 23 gnolls at the same time. They do the simple math and discover that the gnolls should inflict roughly 40 HP per round (50 HP in melee) even against AC 18, which means means that if you have a party of four they're degrading roughly 25% of your combat power per turn, while you degrade only 10% of their combat power even if you inflict 40 HP of damage and kill two gnolls every turn (unlikely at level 3). Since you didn't explicitly say "we defeated them in detail", these people think it was one big melee. They would probably describe defeating someone in detail as multiple separate encounters of 8 gnolls here, 12 gnolls there, etc., instead of saying "23 gnolls". So partly it's miscommunication.BTW, your math is a tiny bit off due to neglecting crits: if everyone fired at the warlock he'd be taking 6/20 * 2.5 * 23 + 23/20 * 3.5 = 21 points of damage per round, not 18. (If they shoot the monk or a backline squishy instead, it's 44-ish points of damage per round after the monk deflects one missile.) Which brings us to the second factor:* Armchair quarterbacks are speculating to themselves about how they could defeat your party using 23 gnolls, and are baffled that the gnolls didn't play the way they would have. Part of your strategy was to disrupt and surprise the gnolls, use morale against them, have a hidden advantage (heavy armor mastery) which the gnolls can't avoid because they don't know about it, etc., etc. From a pure numbers perspective, there is an optimum strategy (focus fire, warlock last, killing one to two PCs per round[1]), but from a RP perspective there is no reason the gnolls would know to use that optimum strategy. I salute your DM for playing the gnolls as gnolls and not as miniature tactical computers. In my opinion, that's what makes D&D fun.So, there you go: miscommunication and a different playstyle. Some of us got it right off the bat though--I said in post #829:I know this because that's exactly how my PCs win similar fights. It turns out that you did defeat them in detail, and leveraged range/mobility and cover, and you also degraded morale by attacking the leaders. Good job. That's what makes this game fun.-Max[1] Actually, the goblin conga line is even more optimal and would do 32 points of damage per round even to your warlock, or 56 to any other AC 18 character--but you've stated that your group views it as unaesthetic so I'm excluding it from analysis.</blockquote>

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