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[My Name is Immaterial]

I'm cool with character death, but I'm not the one dying. I also didn't read the relevant post before saying this, so I feel a bit dickish.

[Tawa]

Now that you mention it, I think you totally screwed up the challenge rating. Assuming you're using the vanilla CR 5 Troll from the monster manual, that means that you gave us an encounter for a party several levels higher.

And I am not really cool with dying before my first levelup. I want to take this character places, dammit.

EDIT: I checked my DMG. This is suitable for a 9th level party.

[Nerjin]

Huh... Whoops. I dunno. The CR thing is still a bit iffy for me. I've given 'difficult' encounters that turned out to be a cinch [See: Borus and Paul]. In fact, all of my encounters seem to go really well for the party.

[Tawa]

Well, in that case, there was a combination of good die rolls and the fact that you had Tier 5 NPCs up against a Tier 3 PC.

Now we're fighting four guys resistant to normal damage and who probably have more Hit Dice between them than us.

Example comparisons:
-Fighting the Elite 4 in a Pokémon game around getting the 4th badge
-Fighting, say, Magus in Chrono Trigger with a party from around the time you get to the future
-Battling Kary in Final Fantasy 1 with the party you fought Astos with

[Nerjin]

I see...

[My Name is Immaterial]

I have no idea what you are talking about, and neither does Nerjin.

[Tawa]

I have no idea what you are talking about, and neither does Nerjin.

The Elite 4 have Pokémon that are generally around level 45-50-ish, out of 100. The player gets their fourth gym badge (i.e. 4th of 8 macguffins) when their Pokémon are around the 25 mark.

Magus is a midgame boss in Chrono Trigger. The player ends up in the year 2300 AD (time travel shenanigans), that is, the future, about a quarter of the way into the game.

In Final Fantasy 1, "Kary" (a marilith ripoff, because the guys at Square who designed it were AD&D addicts or something) is the second of the Four Fiends (the line of macguffin bosses) and fought roughly halfway in. Astos is a semi-early boss meant to emphasize a difficulty spike, who is also fought roughly a quarter into the game.

tl;dr is that I provided the first three comparisons I could think of for a 5th-level party in a CR 9 encounter.

Just throwing in some attempts at perspective :V

[My Name is Immaterial]

Ah, I see. Thank you.

[Rolepgeek]

Actually, for perspective, we also have a bunch of NPCs with us.

So yeah, this is going to be FUCKING DIFFICULT, especially as we have precisely one person with Acid/Fire, but it's not impossible by any stretch, and there's more than four of us anyway. The DMG assumes four characters. We have, what, six, plus NPC support?

[Nerjin]

Flabort, this thread exists for OOC questions. Please do not break that rule. It eventually docks XP. Anyways, since I forgot to roll for it you can use it next round.

[flabort]

http://www.d20srd.org/extras/d20encountercalculator/
Input:
4 monsters at CR 5
6 party members at lvl 5
2 party members at 2
1 party member at 3
Output:
Party level is considered 6.7
Encounter level 9
Very Difficult

Yeah.... we're gonna have some trouble with it.

As for OOC, sorry I thought since it was a half-an-action, basically, I could put it there; should have put it in this post.

[Rolepgeek]

You know what my duel was?

1 Monster at CR 6
1 Monster at CR 5
1 Party member at level 5
1 Party member at level 1
Output:
Party level is considered 1.7
Encounter level 8
Overpowering

And you saw what I did. Don't just mindlessly use calculators/statistics. There's reasoning behind them that works for situations they aren't designed for. Try reversing the input for monsters versus PCs, see what you get.

[TealNinja]

The dying part is mostly my own fault.  Combination of not reading squares correctly (trying to facilitate the fight) and forgetting that ranged attacks provoke attacks of opportunity.  I honestly thought I was 15 feet away, but obviously that's not what happened.

Also, as far as the CR is concerned; we're undergeared as well as underleveled.  I don't have the +1 or +2 armor the game expects right now, nor do I have a magic weapon.

Rolep, your duel is technically over CR'd, even against mundanes.  You fought effectively 6th level PC and 5th level PC, while we're now fighting effectively 11th level NPCs (assuming Warrior, which is only somewhat inferior to Fighter.  If they were Fighters, then they'd have Power Attack, Weapon Focus (Claw) and probably Toughness and Improved Toughness; so +1-3 damage per round, no difference to hit, and +9 health, with optionally taking much bigger penalties to hit for bigger damage increase.)  Following general NPC - PC thoughts, they're effectively 10th level PCs.  They also have 3 attacks, versus the 1 attack your duel opponents had.  So each one of these Trolls is triple to quadruple the threat value of the Knights you fought against.  You're also not quantifying CR correctly; a PC is supposed to be able to deal with an equal CR opponent once per day (taking 80+% of resources).  A Sorcerer or Wizard would probably have been able to deal with a Troll by themselves, but short of encounter-ending spells, nothing else should be able to deal with a Troll in a 1v1 fight at level 6.  The DMG contradicts itself repeatedly throughout the book, but Leadership treats PC class followers as 1 level lower than NPC, and for Mundane PC classes, that's pretty fair.  I would assume that the DMG tries to CR a PC class as if it had PC gear, rather than NPC gear that they should have.

The whole nonlethal damage thing isn't actually that big of a concern unless the fight lasts more than an hour.  We can just treat them as if they had Fast Healing 5.  After they're downed, a Coup de Grace kills them.

Edit: Omitted an acronym accidentally.

[Tawa]

So each one of these Trolls is triple to quadruple the threat value of the Knights you fought against.

We're screwed.

We're completely, utterly screwed.

Can I seduce the trolls?

[Rolepgeek]

Man you guys are pessimists.

So think outside the box. Use tactics, focus fire.