Hey all, I would just like some input on a session I just had.

>>49034240

What I put in KFC was a quick mock-up of what I thought the equivalents would be. I was being very lenient.

>>49034240

Either your DM is just making shit up or you are. It sounds like neither of you have read the books, either.

>>49034240
Your dm is an asshole who hasn't read the books fully. Depending on how many magical items your party has effects your CR capabilities.
With that said that a pretty fucking deadly encounter.

>>49034240
>6 assassins (all ranged and on a raised platform)
Okay, that should be about enough damage to knock 2/3rds of the party out if they get the surprise round alone.

>>49034240
CR 12 means that the monster is alone a threat to a party of 4 lvl 12 PCs. Not a fatal threat but still.
So yeah, the setup you describe is a slaughterhouse

>>49037503

Could you explain your point a bit?

>>49037951

We have a few magic items, but we had expended spell slots in a previous fight. This fight directly countered most of our abilities/items.

>>49038016
>>49038462

It was a brutal fight. We're in the process of fleeing now, but if they catch up to us, we're dead.

The worst part is, I told me GM that this encounter was really high level, and he just completely dismissed it. He said he's been doing it like this for years. I feel like because he's such a seasoned DM, he won't be open to criticism.

>>49040237
Link him the KFC image you posted here? Theorycraft it out and send it to him? Tell him that he's been a great DM but this was a minor hiccup with no bearing on his ability to DM? Don't make it feel like you're putting him on the spot, I wouldn't appreciate it as a DM either, but there's the numbers on the other end and they don't lie.

>>49040421

I think I will do that. The thing is, he's pretty proud when it comes to things like this. I think no matter what I do, it will be construed as an attack, even if I'm gentle about it. But, there's worse things that can happen.

I will try!

I'm just glad to know I'm not crazy in thinking this fight was really brutal.

>>49040237
>Could you explain your point a bit?

Sure. Generally you decide you want a deadly encounter and start with an XP budget for that level and add creatures/NPCs to the encounter until you hit that point, subject to a multiplier effect as the number of creatures increases because they get more total actions and are more resistant to single-target damage.

At your level, a "deadly" challenge, meaning that not only will it probably strip out most if not all your resources but you might well have a PC death if not TPK, is about 13,500 XP.

If you did nothing more than add up all the badguys you inputted, that would come out to 36,275, or about 2.7 deadly encounters at the same time. Once you take into account all of them at the same time, though, the "adjusted XP" jumps to 108,825 or 8 deadly encounters at the same time.

To put that in perspective, If you had gone up against the CR24 Ancient Red Dragon, the second biggest monster in the book. it would have only been an adjusted XP of 62,000. Meaning this fight was about as difficult as fighting an Ancient Red Dragon, beating it, and then fighting 3/4 of another one.

Or, to put it from the other side the Tarrasque, the only CR30 in the base game, the biggest monster not a guest-star, is only about 155,000 XP, making the fight you posted roughly 70% of the closest thing D&D has to an "end boss."

Or, to put it a 3rd way, if you wanted to make that a fair encounter, meaning that it came out to deadly exactly without going over, you couldn't do it by leveling up because 3 lvl 20s would have a deadly budget of 38,100. You effectively couldn't do it by adding people because KFC only goes up to 12 players and 12 lvl 12s only have a budget of 54,000. You would need either 8-9 lvl 20 characters or 12 lvl 17-18 characters to make it "deadly.

If you maxed it completely out, with 12 lvl 20 players, it would still be the entire 'hard' budget for that level. (cont)

>>49040237

(cont)

So when you tell me that this fight was set up for 3 lvl 12 characters, was intended to be winnable, and that you did not die that informs me of 1 inescapable fact:

You were in no way playing by the book. Period. The DM had to ass-pull the entire fight because that fight was completely unwinnable. and he just had to be making it up as he went along.

So either this didn't actually happen, or your DM is just playing magical storytime and ignoring the actual rules completely. Hate to be harsh. Hate to be blunt but you only faced 100,000 worth of XP to *be* a lvl 12 and this one fight had a difficulty of 108,825, meaning this fight was supposed to be as rough as literally everything you'd faced before put together (although thankfully not at the same time.)

If this happened, you got screwed. He put you in an unwinnable fight, dicked around, and then just declared you survived for no reason.

>>49041406
>>49041499

That makes a lot of sense. I'm definitely going to bring this up to him.

Thanks for the write up.