Why does D&D need CR? Why not use ECL all the time?

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mean_liar
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Post by mean_liar »

Chamomile wrote:...This brings the average resource depletion to 1.88X, which is still lower than the average of one fighter vs. one orc of 2X. So basically your thought experiment has succeeded in making the table longer and not much else.
Remember that the average resource depletion per Fighter? That was 1.5... which is less than 1.88.

Math isn't that hard.

I don't particularly think the model is that useful anyhow, but at the least 1.88 > 1.5.
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Post by John Magnum »

It was 1.5 when you said that a Fighter takes 1 or 2 rounds. Then you changed it so maybe a Fighter takes 3 rounds. That doesn't just change the figures for the 2 Fighter 2 Monster battle, it also changes them for 1 Fighter 1 Monster. 1.88 < 2.
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mean_liar
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Post by mean_liar »

That's a defect in the model - which is Frank's model, not mine. An expected outcome of 1.5 rounds should assume a limit function such that P(kill orc)=1.5 as the number of rounds goes to infinity. Typically you'd cut it off at some amount where the probability of reaching round N is vanishingly small, but assuming that a combatant eliminates his opponent on round 1 or round 2 and the combat never goes past that, ever, is more simple a model than is useful... especially in the context of standard deviation effects on the combat's progress, and how "failure" is being defined where death is a-okay.

It's actually a complicated series of probabilities, where, say our PC kills Enemy on rd1 50% of the time, rd2 40% of the time, rd3 8% of the time, and rds4+ 2% of the time... that gives an expected number of rounds of (.5)(1)+(.4)(2)+(.08)(3)+(.02)(4) = 1.64 rounds of expended resources per PC.

Then for the two-PC/two-Enemy problem you'd have a matrix of each interlocking probability, such that the combat ending on rd1 is (.25)(2), rd1.5 with one dead orc in rd1 as (.2)(3)*2, rd2 as (.16)(4), rd2 and rd3 as (.032)(5)*2, rd1 and rd3 as (.04)(4)*2, rd3+ as (.0064)(6), with an expected outcome of... 3.0184 rounds of expended resources, or 1.5092 resources expended per PC.

Huh.

:P

So that's pretty much showing that per-group is better than per-PC for encounter generation, at least as a first step.

I'd still like to see that with the option for there to be PC death, though, and the orcs manage to focus fire on a lone PC.

...

That does still leave the standard deviation issue outstanding - in a game where death isn't a minor speedbump, accumulation of those lost resources into a single character is going to have an increased marginal effect on lost resources.

If, for example, we take the two-PC/two-Enemy problem, if there's a 10% of PC death (just to pick a number), if resurrection costs are, say, 10 units of in-battle resources, then those marginal cases are going to heavily adjust the expected resource consumption overall. Median cases won't be affected, but it'll throw off the mean.
Last edited by mean_liar on Mon Oct 20, 2014 6:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by name_here »

If the orcs can focus fire on the PCs, the PCs can focus fire on the orcs. Since we're working without wound penalties, firepower only decreases on deaths. Orcs will die sooner than PCs, so their firepower decreases faster and slows PC losses.
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Post by mean_liar »

Thinking about this further, this is interesting stuff. The gap between the resource/success numbers per-PC increases by some amount, but that gap isn't a full opponent; going from 1 PC/1 Enemy to 2 PCs/2.1 Enemies isn't a real solution because 2.1 Enemies isn't a thing. That's likely an upgrade to one of the enemies, some small bonus to push them to close that gap, or you give one of the Enemies a slightly feral cat that attacks once and runs away; between the two, the upgrade feels better.

For design reasons I'd rather stay in the per-PC camp, but ultimately that's either baselining from 1 PC upward and tracking that difficulty gap and accounting for it ("for every extra PC, the average encounter should include an upgrade to one enemy; for every two PCs, the encounter should upgrade an enemy to a lieutenant; for every three PCs upgrade an lieutenant to a boss... see the reference chart below"), or baselining against a group and offering adjustments up and down the party size ("for one less PC, remove X Enemies and downgrade one enemy; for one more PC, upgrade one Enemy").

Based on that, it still looks to me that the GM's direction ought to be per-PC rather than per-group, simply because it offers an easier in-game implementation. I imagine it also makes playtesting a little easier.

Let's think about this:

How do you propose to baseline things?
That's pretty clear and unfortunate that you'd have to run a bunch of combats with different types of PCs (and numbers) against different types of enemies. You'd be looking for: the gaps that develop in failure rates/resource consumption as PC numbers increase, and of course a baseline difficulty per-PC or per-expected-group.

From there, how do you manage the non-linearity of encounter difficulty and party size in a manner that a GM can engage with?
Much like DnD3e's XP table for differently level'd PCs within a party, I imagine... but this is tricky, right? You'd have to show adjustments for party size, for (average) party level, and for encounter difficulty (though for this last one, maybe not; maybe this one is optional and GMs should be expected/directed to shift the nominal party level up/down for harder/easier encounters. A table with three axes isn't going to happen so perhaps from a design perspective your encounter targets ought to account for encounter difficulties that scale by adjusting nominal party level, just to make things easier on the GM.
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Post by fectin »

You're still stuck using a linear resource model against what is essentially a parametricly defined resource pool.
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mean_liar
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Post by mean_liar »

How so?
For design reasons I'd rather stay in the per-PC camp, but ultimately that's either baselining from 1 PC upward and tracking that difficulty gap and accounting for it ("for every extra PC, the average encounter should include an upgrade to one enemy; for every two PCs, the encounter should upgrade an enemy to a lieutenant; for every three PCs upgrade an lieutenant to a boss... see the reference chart below"), or baselining against a group and offering adjustments up and down the party size ("for one less PC, remove X Enemies and downgrade one enemy; for one more PC, upgrade one Enemy").
That entire paragraph discussing upgrade frequency and magnitude explicitly addresses it. No matter how you figure it, you'll have to adjust for different group sizes.

Or do you really think that a three-dimensional encounter difficulty matrix is good design?
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Post by animea90 »

FrankTrollman wrote:
Lago PARANOIA wrote:
mean_liar wrote: Frank extends it to a group encounter that I'd prefer backed into a per-PC measure, but there isn't much disagreement there, as the "average encounter" assumes some number of PCs which may not fit every table...
Fixing the monster budget to a per-PC ratio instead of group size will almost certainly make the game easier than you intended to. PC Party size is one of those rare instances where, in terms of asskicking, the marginal utility of each additional PC is greater the more PCs you add. 6 orcs is harder for a three-PC party than 12 orcs are for a six-PC party IOW.
This is importantly true. An "appropriate encounter" is one where the PCs are expected to win, albeit spend some resources in the process. If you just multiply the number of characters and monsters by the same number, the raw lead of the player characters is likewise multiplied. If One PC versus 3 Orcs is a good encounter, six PCs versus 18 Orcs is going to be a yawn fest. Team Player enjoyed a narrow lead in One PC vs. 3 Orcs, in the 6 PCs versus 18 Orcs you have six times a narrow lead, which is a boring stomping.

4e's attempt to linearly scale things up is one of the major reasons the game was so laughably easy at almost all levels of play.

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Well this isn't entirely true. If it takes 3 orcs 5 rounds to kill 1 player than 18 orcs can do it in 1(assuming they use range). On the flip side AoE is a lot strongner against 18 orcs vs 3.

This is actually a big issue in 5e. The power of enemies scales extremely well with numbers.
Last edited by animea90 on Fri Oct 24, 2014 1:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by name_here »

On the other hand, if it takes 1 player 5 rounds to kill 3 orcs, 6 PCs will kill 3.6 orcs in the first round of combat, again assuming they can all focus fire.
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