Taking Down a 20th Level Fighter with Goons

[Mad Zagyg]

I'm trying to work out a rather odd encounter and I'm looking for some opinions.

How many CR1 monsters would it take to bring down a 20th level fighter? Say the fighter is trapped in area that they can't escape from (or is too stupid to try) and wave after wave of lets say, the Spy NPC from the back of the Monster Manual is attacking in swarms. How many do you think it would take before the 20th level fighter drops?

Play-test results are welcome!

 

[ehenning]

According to Kobold Fight Club (http://Kobold.club), 15 spies would be a deadly encounter, although that is really relative depending on a lot of factors.

For a fighter, it depends on if they are an Eldritch Knight or similar with some spell powers. If the Fighter has AoE attacks, it makes it much harder.

At 20th level, a character has so many options, especially as a spell caster, that can take our very large groups of baddies. While not the OP, a wizard could fireball or cloud kill a bunch of spies and eliminate 15 attackers easily.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Just by the numbers BA means that anyone can die the death of a thousand cuts from a large enough mass of otherwise contemptible foes.

More like 100 cuts, really, IIRC, numbers were run within days of the core books dropping, and 100 nobody archers could bring down Smaug, etc...

 

[Caliban]

It really depends on how the fighter is built and equipped, and whether the tactics of the CR1 opponents will take into account the fighter's abilities.

 

[aco175]

I play using the flanking rules and once the fighter became surrounded they now have advantage to hit. This means that the +4 to to-hit becomes so much better and he hits the fighter maybe every other round instead of every 3-4 rounds. This times 8 attackers means that the fighter is taking 15-20 points damage each round or more since some will crit. Granted the fighter can kill one per round if the CR1 monster has HP worthy of 2 hits (In my game the fighter hits for around 20points, but I see a lot of talk about 50 or more damage). I can see the argument of 15 bad guys being a good tough fight.

 

[Satyrn]

If the fighter was trapped on the ground while being pelted by bolts from an army of spies standing on the balconies, and . . .

. . . If the fighter had no ranged attack . . .

. . . you'd only need 1 spy.

 

[Greg Benage]

Granted the fighter can kill one per round if the CR1 monster has HP worthy of 2 hits (In my game the fighter hits for around 20points, but I see a lot of talk about 50 or more damage). I can see the argument of 15 bad guys being a good tough fight.

I mean, he's going to attack 16 times in the first two rounds. He can dump superiority dice if he's a battlemaster. He only misses on a 1. He'll mop the floor with 15 spies.

 

[Satyrn]

But seriously, My first guess would work on the assumption that the fighter takes out 2 spies each turn, and each spy deals an average of 1 point of damage each turn it remains in the fight.

I'd need to know how many hp the fighter has (including damage mitigation and healing) and I'd use those three variables to figure out how many spies it would take, working in reverse from the round the fighter croaks. In the last round, he suffers 1 damage from the last remaining spy.

In R-1 (1 round before the last) there are still 3 spies standing, so he suffers 3 damage.
R-2 sees him taking 5 damage
R-3 is 7 damage, etc.

I'd keep tallying that until the collective damage equals the fighter's hp. If he simply has 15 hp for 1st level and 11 hp per level (20 Con, average hit die) and no healing or damage mitigation, that'd be 224.

And that'd work out to 29 spies.

That's my first guess. It's gonna be wrong.

 

[Yardiff]

20th lv Champion with Defense and Dueling styles. Plate and Shield. 18th lv ability regain 5+con at the beginning of each round when at less then half hp.

 

[Satyrn]

20th lv Champion with Defense and Dueling styles. Plate and Shield. 18th lv ability regain 5+con at the beginning of each round when at less then half hp.

I'm changing my guess to ∞ spies.