Level Up (A5E) Removing Pointless Death (+)

[FrogReaver]

Yup. I can't see another explanation. The whole thing seems self-inflicted at least to some degree.

Yea but even with best play I don’t think it’d have mattered.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yea but even with best play I don’t think it’d have mattered.

Best play would have avoided a single PC not designed for solo melee hurtling into combat alone, which would have probably prevented the other characters from getting themselves killed too, so I'm going to have to disagree.

 

[FrogReaver]

Best play would have avoided a single PC not designed for solo melee hurtling into combat alone, which would have probably prevented the other characters from getting themselves killed too, so I'm going to have to disagree.

For this encounter I think you could have set the characters in an arena with the wererats, rolled initiative and the characters would have still all died.

The tactics didn’t help, but I don’t think anything realistically would have.

 

[Tessarael]

One thing that would be helpful for something like this is to have an automated encounter build that not just estimates combined CR, but actually allows you to run combat simulations with the party assuming for example that they stand there with poor tactics and just spam their basic attacks or cantrips.

For DMs struggling with encounter building, there should be a way to easily identify that there will be a problem with a given encounter, and that for characters to win they will need to be careful tactically, use limited powers to nova to maximize damage, and so forth. And if your players are not good at that sort of thing, then you need to tone down the difficulty of the encounter.

 

[Selganor]

Now that could be a use for AI in RPGs, but it would also assume that the AI actually understands what those numbers mean and can use them.

 

[FrogReaver]

One thing that would be helpful for something like this is to have an automated encounter build that not just estimates combined CR, but actually allows you to run combat simulations with the party assuming for example that they stand there with poor tactics and just spam their basic attacks or cantrips.

For DMs struggling with encounter building, there should be a way to easily identify that there will be a problem with a given encounter, and that for characters to win they will need to be careful tactically, use limited powers to nova to maximize damage, and so forth. And if your players are not good at that sort of thing, then you need to tone down the difficulty of the encounter.

There was one for 5e, but I think the guy running it closed it down due to expense. He posted some threads on it here.