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WotC's Mearls Presents A New XP System For 5E In August's Unearthed Arcana
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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7722849" data-attributes="member: 6787650"><p><span style="color: #2F4F4F"></span></p><p><span style="color: #2F4F4F"></span></p><p><span style="color: #2F4F4F">That's an interesting way to think about it. I'm not sure you can really divide them cleanly though based on XP, because the whole point of attrition is to make <em>subsequent</em> attritional combats more likely to be lethal, no?</span></p><p><span style="color: #2F4F4F"></span></p><p><span style="color: #2F4F4F"></span></p><p><span style="color: #2F4F4F"></span></p><p><span style="color: #2F4F4F">I'm not persuaded that formulae are really the right way to go here. It's the Internet age, and prioritizing simplicity of calculation over accuracy isn't necessarily the right tradeoff to make any more. If I go to kobold.com and plug in "four level 9 PCs vs. a Mind Flayer and four Intellect Devourers", and I get back a result of Hard, do I care more that the calculation it performed was <em>simple</em> than I do that it's accurate? If I'm trying to choose the right number of intellect devourers to make the fight <em>definitely</em> not a TPK, why should I prefer a result derived from a flawed formula over a result derived from a simulation? The simulation results will still be flawed, but they'll probably be better. In this specific case the sim might tell me, "there's a 25% chance that the whole party is going to get their brains eaten, and the four Intellect Devourers will get a bunch of new host bodies," which is not what I'm aiming for in my Hard encounter. The sim will probably be wrong about the exact percentage (maybe the true percentage is only 13% due to differences between my players' builds and tactics and the ones assumed by the simulation) but at least it's aware of the synergies between Mind Flayers and Intellect Devourers, and it's making a better prediction than the DMG formula does (Hard = 0% chance of TPK, which is clearly wrong in this case).</span></p><p><span style="color: #2F4F4F"></span></p><p><span style="color: #2F4F4F">I think what is needed here is an app. I've been working on one off and on in my spare time for the past year or more--it's not anywhere close to ready, so I'm not telling anyone to use my app so much as I am pointing to it as evidence of sincerity. And I think that app needs to take actual monster stats into account, not just CRs, because CR doesn't contain nearly enough information to make good predictions. You're better off relying on your DM intuition than on CR and formulas.</span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 7722849, member: 6787650"] [COLOR=#2F4F4F] That's an interesting way to think about it. I'm not sure you can really divide them cleanly though based on XP, because the whole point of attrition is to make [I]subsequent[/I] attritional combats more likely to be lethal, no? I'm not persuaded that formulae are really the right way to go here. It's the Internet age, and prioritizing simplicity of calculation over accuracy isn't necessarily the right tradeoff to make any more. If I go to kobold.com and plug in "four level 9 PCs vs. a Mind Flayer and four Intellect Devourers", and I get back a result of Hard, do I care more that the calculation it performed was [I]simple[/I] than I do that it's accurate? If I'm trying to choose the right number of intellect devourers to make the fight [I]definitely[/I] not a TPK, why should I prefer a result derived from a flawed formula over a result derived from a simulation? The simulation results will still be flawed, but they'll probably be better. In this specific case the sim might tell me, "there's a 25% chance that the whole party is going to get their brains eaten, and the four Intellect Devourers will get a bunch of new host bodies," which is not what I'm aiming for in my Hard encounter. The sim will probably be wrong about the exact percentage (maybe the true percentage is only 13% due to differences between my players' builds and tactics and the ones assumed by the simulation) but at least it's aware of the synergies between Mind Flayers and Intellect Devourers, and it's making a better prediction than the DMG formula does (Hard = 0% chance of TPK, which is clearly wrong in this case). I think what is needed here is an app. I've been working on one off and on in my spare time for the past year or more--it's not anywhere close to ready, so I'm not telling anyone to use my app so much as I am pointing to it as evidence of sincerity. And I think that app needs to take actual monster stats into account, not just CRs, because CR doesn't contain nearly enough information to make good predictions. You're better off relying on your DM intuition than on CR and formulas.[/color] [/QUOTE]
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WotC's Mearls Presents A New XP System For 5E In August's Unearthed Arcana
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