Dungeons & Delvers 2nd Edition: Level 5 No-Cleric Combat Playtest

The combat stress test continues. The party was the same as last time, just four levels higher:

• Human fighter w/ spear and shield
• Dwarf fighter with a long axe
• Human rogue
• Human wizard

Being 5th-level both fighters got an extra attack, the rogue got another Sneak Attack die, and the wizard had a bunch of new spells and a considerable pool of Willpower to draw from. (though Melissa only needed to use Scorching Ray a few times).

Everyone except the wizard was packing a Masterwork +1 weapon, because the only weapon a wizard would reliably use is his magic staff. Both of the fighters also had mail, giving them a base DR of 6, and collectively they had 10 standard mending potions (1d4 WP, 1 WP per round).

This time they were squaring off against:

• 1 cinderbone skeleton (5 HD)
• 6 ghouls (3 HD)
• 1 owlbear (6 HD)
• 1 shambling mound (8 HD)

Mind you this isn't anything resembling an actual adventure, just a string of combat encounters to see how well the party fares so we can determine if a cleric is more or less necessary, as well as which numbers, if any, need tweaking (spoiler alert: there needs to be some tweaking).

The cinderbone skeleton went worse than even I'd anticipated. There is nothing resembling Challenge Rating in Dungeons & Delvers, because it is a flawed mechanic and leads to players whining about encounter "balance", but over the years I've grown accustomed to the party tackling foes several levels higher than they are, especially when it's only one monster.

However, 1st Edition used a bog-standard Armor Class system that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, plus monsters could use Strength for accuracy (which also doesn't make a lot of sense). This means that something like an ogre, which is something you'd typically describe as sluggish and clumsy, is surprisingly accurate. 

In 2nd Edition, you have a scaling Defense and Dexterity is used to resolve all weapon attacks (though Dexterity never applies to damage), meaning that an ogre wouldn't be very accurate at all, probably having something like only a +4 to hit. The cinderbone skeleton is neither sluggish nor clumsy, possessing what I believed was a respectable +7 to hit.

The problem is that the spear fighter's Defense was 19.

This means that the skeleton only has a 45% chance of landing a blow, and even then 6 points will get shaved off due to armor. It only inflicts 1d6+2 points of damage, so there's a decent chance that nothing will get through. Its only saving grace is that it gets to make two attacks per round, plus an automatic armor-ignoring 1d6 fire damage against everything that gets too close.

Of course, when you have four characters all ganging up on it at once that doesn't amount to much: it went down during round two, having only nearly depleted the spear fighters Vitality Points in the process, which was almost completely undone one Short Rest later.

As bad as that was the ghouls fared even worse. Granted they only have 3 Hit Dice each, but I figured, hey, strength in numbers, yeah? Whelp, that doesn't mean much when the fighters have a DR of 6 and the ghouls only dish out 1d4+3 damage per claw attack. Worse, the ghouls only had a +5 to hit. Versus the spear fighter that meant that they had a baseline 35% chance to hit, and with his AC of 28 they had no way of overcoming his DR.

I think they collectively inflicted like 3 points of damage in total.

Now I had high hopes for the owlbear, and he mostly didn't disappoint. Even at +6 to hit chances were he wasn't going to hit the fighter, but if he did his 1d8+8 (AP 1) damage claw was going to hurt. As luck would have it he did manage to smack the spear fighter around a few times (never accurate enough to bypass his DR), but failed on the bite, and was subsequently taken out in a single round.

I should note that this was partially due to the fact that, given that Constitution only adds to your total WP and not WP gained every level/Hit Die, the owlbear only had 30 hit points. Other contributing factors were a lucky critical hit that inflicted something like 19 damage, and however much damage the wizard's 3d6 fire damage Scorching Ray ended up inflicting.

Last on the chopping block was the shambling mound, and even though it had 8 Hit Dice given what we'd seen so far I was expecting it to deal a bit of damage and then topple over by the end of round 2. 

Not only did they take it out in one round, they did so while both fighters were grappled and suffering a -2 to hit.

So, what did we learn?

Well, this certainly didn't do anything to convince Melissa that clerics were necessary for healing purposes. Hell, she only used up two mending potions the entire time.

Defense might be too high. While Defense never scales at a rate of 1 per level, for fighters it does start out at 12. This is because "rogue" types get a base of 11, and wizards 10. I could knock everyone down a point, meaning wizards only get a 9, which would be unusual for a D&Dish game but still make sense. Or keep the base value the same, but have remain the same at 2nd-level before improving (this would result in a net loss of 1).

I considered having it progress at a slower rate, but it's already fairly slow and doesn't keep pace with Attack Bonuses: at 3rd-level even for a fighter it results in a 50:50 miss chance (assuming no modifiers to either Defense or Attack Bonus), and begins to lag behind at 5th-level. But if you have a Dexterity bonus and/or a shield, you can offset this for some time (and drastically hedge the odds in your favor at lower levels).

The Armor Class granted by armor could instead be reduced. Currently, it's so granular that you can choose to have a gambeson with or without sleeves: the former is +7 AC, while the latter is only +5, the idea being that more body coverage results in a bigger bonus. Mail is in a similar boat, though there is also a greater difference in weight and cost.

You can even layer armor together (though this only increases DR, not AC), and gain an AC bump if you're wearing vambraces and a helmet, since there is more coverage.

If we just assume that armor comes with some form of arm protection and cap it at AC +5, that would have reduced the spear fighter's AC to 24. Still quite high, but now the ghouls could have overcome his armor on a 19, and the cinderbone skeleton on a 17+.

We considered changing shields so that they only apply to one attacker per round. Despite attacks being resolved in an organized manner, in-game the ghouls aren't just standing there, patiently waiting their turn: they are swarming the fighter all at once, and it doesn't make sense for him to be able to bring his shield to bear against all of them.

But then it's a game and if shields are so limited it might make it a clearly suboptimal choice compared to just using a two-handed weapon. We could do this anyway and keep Defender as a +1 passive bonus when using a shield. I think that's still quite good and reflects a warrior better able to use his shield, but we could also just change it so that you can Hinder an attack as a Reaction. That would drop a shield fighter's Defense and AC down by another point, but still make the shield a very powerful option.

Daggers have a Close Quarters trait, which is a bonus added to attack rolls when grappling or climbing on an opponent. This could be granted to some natural weapons as well, so if dire rats are crawling all over you they're more likely to find a weak spot. This would add to factors the GM needs to keep in mind, but avoids characters standing there while covered in dire rats and not giving a shit.

There was talk of increasing the Ganging Up bonus from +1 to +2 each time. Would give it a bigger impact given the scaling Defense that everything has, but if Defense and/or AC gets reduced this might not be necessary. We'll start with reduced AC, see how that goes, and then try some other options. Got to make sure this just wasn't a fluke.