CR 0 and LoTR

[Long John]

Assuming the Goblin mooks that were in the Mines of Moria were all CR 0, what level would the main party (Boromir, Gimli, Legolas, Aragorn) have to have been to survive all of that, with the goblins still being a legitimate threat to run away from?

I didn't include Gandalf because he 1v1'd a Balor.

[master_marshmallow]

Honestly, HP counts are so low that the level doesn't really matter. They just needed to make sure they land a hit.

No more than lvl 5.

[Mudfoot]

If the goblins had had shortbows, it would purely depend on AC, and AC depends on level. Assuming that AC = level+14 in on average (or +17 for Frodo, Gimli and Boromir) and the goblins get +6 to hit, we can calculate the average damage done to a level N PC per goblin per round. The first arrow hits on N+8 (and crits on 18), the second on N+13 and the last on N+18.

So the probability of hitting and critting is (13-N)/20 and (3-N)/20 (or 1/20 or 0/20), (8-N)/20 and 1/20 (or 0/20), and 3-N/20 and 1/20 (or 0/20).

If a goblin does 1d6 deadly on a hit, that's 3.5, plus 3.5+5.5=9 on a crit. So the first arrow averages
3.5*(13-N)/20 + 9*(3-N)/20
and the second
3.5*(8-N)/20 + 9*1/20
and the third
3.5*(3-N)/20 + 9*1/20

This all gets nonlinear because 20=crit unless it would miss. So wheel out the spreadsheet.

A typical Nth level PC has something like 8+10N hp. There were 9 PCs. So the goblins need to wade through 90N+72 hp.

It's gone 2am so I'll leave this for someone else to work out.

[Ring_of_Gyges]

Suppose a horde of 100 goblins charge the Fellowship, instead of running the Fellowship decide "Nah, we'll just stand our ground and kill them", at what level is that a viable plan?

Gandalf, Aragorn, Boromir, Gimli, and Legolas have 15 actions between them, and the hobbits cower. Let's assume they're at least level 6 or so and can hit and kill a goblin 95% of the time so maybe 13 dead goblins a round.

If the goblins are fanatically motivated and will never run, they'll all be dead in about 8 rounds. In round one they'll get around 87 turns, then 74, 61, 48, 35, 22, 9, and then 0 for a total of 336. If you're generous with the shortbow targeting that is about 1,000 attacks, about 5% of which hit, the Fellowship is looking at getting hit around 50 times, for about 625 damage (50 x 2d6+1d10).

Spread evenly among the five front liners they need to be high enough level to each soak about 125 damage. If Boromir is a human fighter with a a 16 Con, he'll have 125 hp at level 9.

So, maybe level 9 or 10 is around the point a party can take on more goblins than you possibly want to roll for.

One note is that the Fellowship don't have any actions that kill lots of goblins, even if Aragorn kills with every blow, he's only killing three per round. If Ezren is level 5 he can toss a fireball which kills 50 goblins. An actual Pathfinder party with area of effect attacks (fireballs, negative channeling, healing to mitigate their own damage, etc...) will be able to handle vast hordes of weenies at a much lower level.

The above also assumes the horde can draw line of sight and get hundreds of bow shots a round, if the Fellowship can get into a choke point with limited sight lines they take a lot less damage. If a front line of goblins moves round a corner, makes two attacks, and dies while the great mass churn in the background waiting their turn to die, the Fellowship isn't going to take much damage at all. With good positioning, a 5th level party should be able to handle 100 goblins.

[Long John]

@Ring_of_Gyges

Thank you for that. I'm not sure how much time that math took, but it 100% still helps prove to me that you can drown PCs in level 0s :D