Bell Curve Losses
The people have spoken, and our latest Patreon Poll has come to a close. We asked all our Quest Givers to choose one unlucky hero to get their ass kicked by a low-CR monster. Kobold won the monster vote, while Fighter “won” the hero vote. (Better luck next time Vegepygmy / Ratfolk / Goblin!) Of course, this isn’t the first time Fighter has found himself on the wrong end of a kobold beatdown. It should be noted, however, that Baby Blue has considerably worse stats than Pugilist.
Much to my chagrin, I empathize with Fighter in today’s comic. That’s because of something that I term “fighting the bell curve.” Let me explain.
Imagine an infinite number of average CR encounters. Now imagine their relative difficulty plotted out all nice and neat. I’m not talking about how hard the fight ought to be on paper, but how difficult it actually is for the party to overcome. Most of the time those average encounters will deplete the expected amount of party resources (HP, spells, daily powers, etc.), and will therefore skew towards the middle of our graph. Sometimes the dice will go against the party. Other times the dice will go against the monsters. And every once in a while the dice will go crazy. Voila: we’ve got our normal distribution.
This may seem like it’s all very common sense, but you’d be amazed how often I hear new GMs making wild claims about the relative power of their party.
“Yeah man. They absolutely blew through an encounter that was, like, 5 CR higher than it should have been. I thought they were going to get TPK’d, but they wound up walking all over my beautiful mini-boss! My group is crazy OP. I think I’m going adjust encounter difficulty so they don’t just roflstomp my campaign.”
Now let me be clear: depending on the circumstances, that may not be a bad call. However, if you’re making that decision based off of a single encounter, then I’d encourage you to think again.
The bell curve skews towards the middle, but statistical anomalies happen all the time. That’s why Fighter is down to his last hit point in today’s comic. That’s why my group still talks about the “invincible goblin” in our megadungeon campaign. They’d killed off the rest of that particular greenskin ambush, but there was still one little skirmisher left to mop up.
“Can we just say we kill him and move on?”
“Naw man. He’s got one hp left. He can do this!” We all laughed. None of us could have known how right I was.
They must have chased that little bastard around for three rounds, swinging and missing while he dodged and parkoured like he was Yoda’s stunt double. He couldn’t miss his attacks. The party couldn’t hit theirs. They were actually considering retreating by the time someone finally managed to roll in the double digits and plunk the “invincible goblin” with a crossbow bolt. To this day, they still get haunted looks whenever I admit a monster ‘only has one hit point left.’
Does any of that mean that I should have scaled down future encounters? Maybe. But the very next combat for that group was against a “deadly” mini-boss. If memory serves it was some kind of a giant black monster vulture. What I do remember clearly is the outcome. My very-dangerous monster didn’t make it to its first turn before it was dead.
So before you decide that your party is overpowered or underpowered or anything of the sort, I would encourage you to wait another couple of sessions and see if things even out. You might have an overtuned party, but chances are that you’re just “fighting the bell curve.”
That of course brings us to our question of the day! Tell us all about the biggest upset you’ve seen in one of your games. When did a weak monster give you more trouble than it should have? Share your stories of scrappy kobolds and invincible goblins down in the comments!
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Pugilist-sensei has taught him well.
Heh. She bought the storefront next to Barbarian’s salon for her judo gym. The two of them go for lunch together at the food court.
At some point, the shopping centre hosting them rebrands all their marketing “the least likely place to get robbed in the trikingdom area!”
I think I mentioned it in another comic about the gremlins in my first campaign. True, we were only level one but it took forever to kill the dang things because no one had a cold iron weapon. (That was the day I vowed to always have a cold iron weapon. Even my two natural attack characters have cold iron arrows for their backup bow.)
In my following group, when we were about level 14, the GM would say that we would either curbstomp encounters or slog through it. No inbetween. One time, there were these slug things that just wouldn’t die and they were really wearing us down. A few of us were knocked out but luckily no one died.
/* Challenge Rating may vary by party. If the combat lasts four or more hours, seek DM help immediately.
One word: Phandelver. It has quite a few goblins in it, so running into the one hit point goblin was inevitable. I had read the internet stories, and when that time came, I knew to be afraid; my companions, less well-versed in ancient lore, was not aware of the threat they faced. Fortunately, when the goblin went down to one hit point, it didn’t suddenly start rolling like a deity of luck. No, it had been rolling 20’s all session. And its companions.
When we played Phandelver, our DM, usually a lucky guy, must have sacrificed Will Wheaton to the dice gods before starting the campaign, because roughly one in every four attacks was a crit. Roughly two out of three attacks were hitting. I was an unoptimised cleric, and, later, a healer bard, and it was a nightmare trying to keep party hit points above zero. We almost died in the first encounter… and the one after that… and the one after that… and the one after that… not one encounter we had where we didn’t fear our imminent deaths.
I should maybe modify my advice to “wait one or two levels” instead of “one or two encounters.” The low levels are so tough because you are low on options and resources.
I talked about Phandelver just above, but that was the DM’s amazing luck throughout the entire campaign. In this comment, I’m talking about one specific battle that just did not go our way. We had survived the goblin encounter (though just barely; two characters died, and were resurrected by an angel/the DM, since we died so early on, and the final character won with just 1 hp left, and even then only due to the DM fudging one attack roll), and made our way to town. We hear about some bandits in town, and that they are gathered in an inn. Myself and the dragonborn have AoE effects; therefore, I propose that we make a flash assault and take them all out. We approached the inn, but before we could reach it were confronted by four bandits. We fight, and I initially want to save the big spells (this was session two, so I hadn’t yet learnt what was about to happen). The bandits beat us to within an inch of our lives, but we take out three of them. On the fourth, with it at full health and us low, I finally bring out the AoE, and do almost max damage. While this should be a cause for celebration, it just caused the other players to look at me and say, “…you saved the area spell for the last guy!?!”.
We rested up, and emboldened by my amazing damage from AoE, we went and kicked in the door to the bandit’s hideout. We threw in our big spells, and, well, they really weren’t that big. Our dragonborn rolled a 3 on 2d6, my two burning hands rolled a 4 and 5 on 3d6 each. It was one of the only times in the entire adventure that the DM rolled average, but with our own luck, our fiery explosions were more akin to flickering embers.
I was true same in Pathfinder. My skinny little wizard ran right up to the orcs to cas burning hands. Four damage, unconscious Wizard the next round.
I’m not certain if this applies since I don’t think that particular character was supposed to be a pushover, but that’s the first thing that came to my mind. this was during the Shadowrun campaign I’ve mentioned previously. We’ve been on a trail of a series of kidnappings, and after raiding and slaughtering (apparently the GM expected is to be sneaky about it. I don’t think ramming the door and gunning everyone down with a heavy machine gun qualifies) the hideout of people responsible for capturing “the goods” we became proud owners of three still living captives. Which was convenient, because all we knew at that point was that we were in way over our heads. As the face of the group it came to me to “convince” them to open up. The grunts bent easily but they didn’t know anything. The officer was another story entirely. After something like 15 minutes. a healing spell and a fake execution of the grunts I still couldn’t get so much as a shiver or of him. Eventually we’ve concluded that we won’t be able to get anything out of him so it’s time to cut or losses. I figured, clearly the GM didn’t intend us to learn anything new here. Afterwards it turned out I was wrong – the guy was just rolling so well that the GM eventually stopped bothering with the rerolls.
Anyway, the grunts got their freedom (as was promised), the officer got a bullet (as was also promised) and the allied NPC that owned the hideout got a stained carpet (he seemed upset). And by the end of the session we still had no idea what was going on.
Office Clurull, of the Three Clurulls, at your service.
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule
This is why it is very important as a GM to watch your fights for statistical anomalies during play. Did a player roll a Greataxe Crit? Throw that fight out when you consider difficulty. Did you critical the party Cleric when he rushed from cover to help his friend after you so carefully described the Hobgoblin’s readied action? Well, perhaps planning lessons are in order, but it doesn’t mean your CR 1 Hobgoblin was too powerful. Did the Paladin Nat 1 his Will Save that he couldn’t possibly fail versus Domination? Well…that’s probably going to be a whole mess of trouble. Always remember that the dice hate you and will betray you at the first sign they can get away with it. That goes for everyone, player and GM alike.
In Anima, I had an entire encounter just go completely sideways. A PC had built a martial artist who wanted to do the traveling kung-fu thing, so I was catering to that by having another custom built martial artist show up and challenge him to a friendly duel. So I had read up on my styles and Kempo + Capoeria had resulted in a really dangerous build. I watched a few scenes from movies that used those styles to get stunt fuel and went to my session. First attack roll for the enemy; fumble. First dodge roll for enemy; fumble. Second Attack roll; fumble. Second dodge roll; Fumble.
The guy stood up from falling on his rear a third time and said that the gods had declared the player the better martial artist. Then they went and had a few beers. Keep in mind that fumbles only happen on a percentile roll of 1-3. 3% of the time. x.x.
Lol. Did you manage to save that guy from being a buffoon type character? It’s hard to recover from that kind of introduction.
Nope. He continued to roll insanely low and be buffoonish. Even while other characters who were supposed to be joke easy fights gave such good performances they got an encore by rolling no less than 70 on every dodge check. Zoot Gach, the fat bandit from Vandal-Hearts, was not supposed to dodge every attack from the Prince of Persia.
You remember Da Samurai episode of Samurai Jack? I’m pretty sure that’s your capoeria guy.
Or maybe the Fighter has a Kobold fear penalty.
If not, he probably will have it after this traumatic encounter.
We’ve had quite a bit of Fighter getting his comeuppance lately. I’m thinking we need to do a few more “Fighter is a jerk” gags before the next one….
We’ve just finished the first dungeon in our Mummy’s Mask game. We’d cleared out basically the whole thing, killed the boss creatures and got a boat load of treasure.
There was one door left unopened though, so we decided to have a quick look. Two giant camel spiders and nothing else in there. It was supposed to be an easy fight that might soften us up a bit if we found it earlier. A couple of rounds later half the party were unconscious, leaving the other two members to work out how to get our bodies and all the loot back out of the tomb and to safety before nightfall.
Of course, we were level 1, and (to continue your metaphor) the standard deviation of encounter difficulty is much higher at lower levels where the d20 makes up at lot more of your attack roll than your attack bonus does. For this reason I guess it’s also a lot higher in 5e than Pathfinder, due to lower attack bonuses there.
Huh. Interesting corollary to the flattened 5e math. I haven’t heard many stories about encounters being more swingy, but it makes sense to me.
Why do kobolds have to be evil? Pretty much every drawimg of them I’ve seen they are God damn adorable and I would die for them.
That stat block told me they’re evil. The stat block wouldn’t lie!
Search your feelings, you know it be true.
I’ve always ben confused about that, to. Most of the time, when they’re working for a villain, they’ve been forced into it through threats of strength, so one could argue that they’re the victims in such a scenario. Their main power comes from trap building, but triggering traps requires the adventurers to be attacking, so in that case, it could be reasonably stated that the adventurers are the villains. Heck, it’s even stated that kobolds are very cooperative with one another, and even a cowardly kobold will sacrifice themselves to protect the tribe.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen somewhere that they actively seak to serve a dragon.
Depending on individual game lore and tribes, this. Kobolds often serve evil dragons in particular, so much of their evil is “inherited” from their boss. The 4E D&D starter quest actively had you facing a tribe of kobolds serving a White Dragon which lead to them being raiders.
It was an ordinary hobgoblin (AC18, HP10), the final mook in a long dungeon. The boss was already dead, and we had him completely surrounded, just beating down on him.
He tanked it all for 5 turns. Nobody rolled higher than 17. He kept succeeding his Dex saves when I tried Sacred Flame. The Bard tried to talk him down, but Hobgoblin honor, I guess.
Red Klingons, man….
Tomb of Annihilation features several of the weird creatures from space that were introduced in Expedition to the Barrier Peaks because apparently the designers really want me to wish it was set in Greyhawk rather than the Realms. Froghemoths and Flail Snails are always fun and weird, but the weird thing we’re here for today is Vegiepygmies.
Due to scheduling difficulties only one other player could show up. It was my Mountain Dwarf DevoPal and his Lizardfolk Gloomstalker Ranger. We were off to rescue the favorite son of the Grung chief so we could form an alliance. We arrive to see the Grung we were sent to rescue and two of his attendants strapped to a branch being carried by Vegiepygmies that are to be dumped into a lava pit. After some attempts to talk them down we fight.
So the funny thing aboot Vegiepygmies is that while they’re only CR 1/4, with their chiefs being CR 2 they have “regenerates at the start of its’ turn unless they take fire or cold damage. This creature only dies if it starts its’ turn at 0 hp and doesn’t regenerate.” Due to the quirks of initiative it would be difficult for me and my teammate to burn them before they regenerated on their turn, especially since neither of us carried torches. (Dwarves and Gloomstalkers both have darkvision. I had used all my torches to burn down plants, expecting to have someone with access to fire magics in combat)
As a result the solution was obvious: Shove them into the lava. Shoving and grappling in 5E is relatively simple: Make a Strength (Athletics) check. Your target makes their choice of a Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check. If you exceed their total they are shoved prone/shoved back 5′, or grappled.
I had +6 Athletics, they had +2 Dex with no proficiencies in Athletics or Acrobatics. Should be easy since my bonus was 4 higher than theirs.
They out-rolled me and my ally for several rounds while attacking us with their claws with +4 to hit and 1d6+2 damage.
That was the most grueling fight of the whole adventure.
Sorcerer would be disappointed in you:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/fire-guy
Being too low level to cast fireball is no excuse for not having fireball! 😛
We were level 7-8. (Can’t recall exactly) Level wasn’t the issue, class was.
Also Fireball would kill the hostages we were there to save.
We made up for it later with two simultaneous Fireballs against a guy who was aboot to attack us.
I’m a new DM and I’m learning (much to my party’s misfortune) that if you want a hard fight, put more, lower CR creatures. Last dungeon I kinds overdid it at the final boss, but in my defense they did let for necromancer adepts escapd them on the first floor, who then regrouped with the other 4 and the boss on the roof.
Action economy. You’re talking about action economy.
https://www.dungeonsolvers.com/2018/06/01/understanding-the-action-economy-in-dd-5e/
That’s why I always thought legendary actions in 5e were such a good idea. It doesn’t solve the problem 100%, but it does help you to get that solo boss fight feel without the “five turns to your one” problem of older editions.
Limbo, https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Limbo , is a warframe of, well, Warframe. He is infamous for its complexity, i got it a week ago and i am still trying to learn to use it. Lots of people love it, lots of people hate it. Why? It’s not for its complexity, but that still doesn’t help, is for how much disruptive and infuriating it can be. Limbo works around the mechanic of the Rift Plane, alternate dimension that only Limbo can access. He can go there and back as much as he likes, but he can also send both allies and enemies there. That means that with his basic ability you can make an allies incapable of killing enemies since standard attacks don’t cross planes. Limbo too can send enemies there preventing allies from killing them. So while not exactly immortal enemies Limbo can make an scenario like this at-will, and while warframes abilities do cross planes and allies can get out of the rift plane at will, they might not know this an get stuck in a problem. In the wrong hands Limbo can make invencible enemies and ineffective allies, and that in the hands of an inexperience player, in the hands of learned player with bad intentions… 🙂
Limbo wouldn’t be so bad if enemies and you had a better indicator for when you are in the Rift. That little black and white flare can be easy to miss when you are dashing around swinging a two handed sword made from the bones of a dead AI god. I don’t mind a new Limbo, and I’m in the minority of actually appreciating a good Limbo, but he has needed some minor modification for a long time.
I made the quest two week ago, i got Limbo just Friday. Prior to that i have got Chroma Prime. I was thinking: “Limbo, please don’t be better than Chroma, i want to use my dragon”. Then i played Limbo and got a terrible relieve. Chroma in better, Chroma can adapt offensive and defensibly and it got awesome abilities. Limbo is more than anything a good solo Warfame. You need to know it very well to know how to use it, and you can only know Limbo if you use it. Which means that Limbo is even more difficult to use in teamwork. Better effects would be a good way to improve it. While i was waiting for some of the parts to finish i got an invitation to a mission by other player who was using Limbo. I tried to kill enemies in the rift plane a lot before realizing they were outside my reach. Limbo is a too complex puzzle for some players and i dare to say even for a game where running and firing everything you have is a good strategy. I will get my Limbo to level 30, maybe use him in some mission, but primarily leaving him in the orbiter while i use Chroma to get his Chassis in the L5. So far the best cooperative use i have seen of Limbo is to replace the Snow Globe of a Frost 🙁
Also why would you use War with Limbo? The Dark Sword is better 🙂
Why does anyone use War? Bragging rights. Not everyone can say their sword was forged from the bones of a dead AI god, after all.
Yeah, I used Limbo enough to understand how to play with him, but I never got the proper mods to master him. The Orokin Derelict does not like me. He can replace Snow Globe, but he also has a build that maximizes Range at the cost of Duration to pop containers for Syndicate hunts that is supposed to be really useful. And the Rift makes him pretty awesome at Spy missions, cause Riftwalking doesn’t trigger laser grids. I used him to grind Ivara.
I have mixed feelings on Chroma. I didn’t enjoy him very much. He felt slow and boring. Now, to be fair, my favorite frames are Nyx, Mirage and Nova, so I like flashy. I understand he has some sort of uber damage trick with his Vex Armor, but I’ve not put the research in on it. Still use Rhino for my Terry Hunts.
Chroma is quite adaptable. You can change the kind of damage he does, Elemental Ward can have different effects, Vex Armor is great for survival and Effigy is something i just left to guard a position while i am away.
Nyx, Mirage and Nova are not bad choices. Once in a defense mission on earth one Mirage just keep nuking the enemies that much that the rest of us didn’t got enough reactants.
The Warframes i want to get are: Ash prime, preferably, but the systems blueprint elude me, Limbo prime, just to get a version worth to give forma, Loki, Nidus and Revenant. I go more for a little stealth, Ash, Limbo, Loki, but preferably i want firepower and durability, Nidus and Revenant, Chrom prime too, but i already got that one. To use the [Spoiler] mode to do missions could be funny too 🙂
Naw man. Limbo is a puzzle-platform video game developed by independent studio Playdead. Not sure what you’re on about. 😛
That Limbo? How much old are you to have played that such relic ancient and arcane game? 🙁
Just kidding 😛
I like it, it has been a while since i have hear of that game. Very good, very entertaining and interesting. Good game that one 🙂
Daw, I wanted to see Ratfolk defeat Antipaladin. Or ratfolk babies. Or more Ratfolk in general. Their main export is cute and wholesome, after all. More power to the pipsqueaks!
The only solution is to make multiple Patreon accounts, sign them all up as Quest Givers, and go brigade the vote. I officially condone this strategy. >_>
Our most humbling battle came early from a goblin in Return of the Runelords (minor spoilers ahead). The little bastard goblinette was an archer ranger, one we’d probably finish off in a few rounds… However, she (ab)used cover, the fact half the party had to crawl through a small and narrow cave to reach her (my wizard was short and could move normally), as well as canine pets, to give our low-level party a ‘Tucker’s Kobolds’ situation by shooting us repeatedly whilst we were bogged down. One PC almost died, having to be pulled behind cover. My wizards spells that would have won the battle by taking her out of the fight were all saved against or did diddly squat, and she regularly hit anyone in her sight with her multiple arrow shots. The battle only turned when we dropped a smokestick to stop her shooting and killed her goblin dogs. And in the end, she managed to escape to fight another day by the skin of her teeth rather than fighting on when we had her corner, even with my wizard trying to blast her with spells and triggering several AOOs. We HATED that goblin.
It was immensely satisfying when our next encounter with her in similar conditions resulted in her getting brutally murdered with next to no difficulties. My wizard still has her eyeball he yanked out of her skull gleefully (he has weird habits).
It may have been immensely satisfying, but “brutally murdered with next to no difficulties” makes the narrative guy in me recoil. Villain fights are supposed to come in threes! You get your butt kicked; you fight them to a standstill while villainy goes on in the background; then you brutally murder them. What ever happened to step two!?
It’s almost as if we’re talking about a game rather than a narrative or something….
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/best-laid-plans
It’s the statistical anomalies, on either end of the scale, which make for the most fun stories.
That’s why all the good ones begin with those classic fairy tale words, “So no shit there we were.”
If Kobold Mom is close enough to count as adjacent to Fighter, then that baby is getting advantage so that does help explain what’s happening…. a bit.
Also explains what’s happening: Karma.
I don’t have any stories about “invincible” monsters, but I do have two mentions of the dice just being against players.
I run two different D&D 5e games. In both of them there is a player who by all means should be good at hitting things and if we’re being generous we’ll say they maybe hit 30% of the time. In one case, the player specifically rolls a total of 6 or the actual dice result 6 alarmingly frequently. It got so bad one time I actually told him to “just cheat already”. =P
“Just play a caster already.” That the advice I give my luck gradient players, poor bastards.
I should note that in that particular game the player is playing two characters. The other one is not similarly cursed.
Clearly it’s actually me who has the curse of “one of your players chosen at random will have terrible rolls”. =P
A long time ago, in a dungeon far, far away, I attacked my players with a horde of zombies. The wizard calmly blasted the horde with a fireball, effectively killing them all. This was 5th edition DND, so the zombies all got a saving throw to revive. They all failed except for one; the invincible Jugger-Zombie.
Jugger-Zombie rose from his grave to continue his advance towards the party. Another player shot him, knocking him back down. Jugger-Zombie made his save and continued his assault. Another player struck him with an axe. Jugger-Zombie made his save and continued his assault. Finally, one player decided that enough was enough, and unloaded all of his bonuses and 1/day abilities in a single devastating attack, dealing over a hundred damage in a single strike.
Jugger-Zombie rolled a nat 20 and continued his assault.
Jugger-Zombie survived ten rounds of the parties assault, giving back as good as he got. He finally went down after single handedly bloodying the entire party. To this day, no villain in my game has ever been as feared as the mighty Jugger-Zombie.
I feel like he and “the invincible goblin” should team up to fight Horsepower.
Even after all these years, from atop his demi-deific throne, I suspect that my old PC Arinen Blayke still twitches uncomfortably whenever anyone mentions “gibberling horde” or the immortal line “Don’t worry comrades, I still have an Ice Storm ready”.
I’m just going to say this. We beat the Green Dragon as well of almost all of thundertree, but we quit literally could not land a hit on Yeemik through the 2 separate encounters we had with him. Managed to finish him just shy of going into TPK territory.
Goblins are intelligent. If the last of them has 1 HP left, he will not keep hitting the party until the lady luck turn away from him. He’ll leg it as soon as he sees the opening.
On the other note, did no one in your party have magic missile? Or any spell that deals half damage on successful save?