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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Saeviomagy" data-source="post: 1765780" data-attributes="member: 5890">Pick out some monsters to inhabit your area of the stonelands.Choose a point in time to have an encounter.Work out how many men encounter the critter.Work out the CR of that many men.Use the calculations on average resources and the like to work out how many men die fighting the creature.Report the losses.At a guess, you've got 100 goons. Roughly: 60 are 1st level warriors, 29 are 2nd, 14 are 3rd and 7 are 4th.So, in a squad of 20 men, you've got 12 1st level warriors, 5 second level warriors, 2 3rd level warriors and a single 4th.At a rough estimate, I'd say that's about a cr 8 encounter. That's being a little generous.Against, say, 4 owlbears (equal CR), you'd expect this group to lose 1/4 of their daily resources - in this case hitpoints. If we're nice, then everyone in the group loses 1/4 of their hitpoints. Against monsters which can smoosh a 1st level warrior in a single hit, I think we're being overly nice.We've got 32 hit dice to play with. 1/4 of those hit dice will be lost - or 8 hit dice worth. If we assume that those 8 hit dice are evenly distributed, you lose 4 hit dice of 1st level warriors, 2 hit dice of 2nd level warriors, 1 hit dice of 4th level warriors and no hit dice from the 4th level warrior.Which means you've probably got 4 guys downed during the fight (those poor 4 hit dice of 1st level warriors). 1 of those 4 probably dies - the rest get stabilised and taken care of.Things to note: The CR of creatures with any form of area-effect attack will go up significantly, because you're relying on multiple low-level creatures for your CR. For example, I'd expect a young red dragon (CR 7) to wipe out all 12 1st level warriors in the above squad in it's first action and kill most of the second level warriors, then finish off those left with it's next breath attack. I very much doubt that there will be a man left standing after the combat, or that the squad will have done any appreciable damage to the monster.That said - the mercenaries should probably make reports to that effect - "Today we had a battle with a small group of owlbears. One man was lost. Our scouts have found what appears to be the lair of a small dragon - I seriously doubt that I can take it on without committing most of the force for the day, and even then I expect losses to be heavy. Do you still wish me to proceed?"Of course if the players answer 'yes' to a question such as this, the ensuing death and destruction should probably result in a great many desertions...</blockquote>

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