What CR would that be?

[mewnknight1]

What would the CR be for a party of five 5th level characters with almost no magic items to support them:

6 Gnoll Archers with strengthbows
1 Gnoll Beastmaster
1 Gnoll Champion
4 Ogres
1 Ogre Mage
8 Hyenas

I ask because this is what my party just experienced, and I thought it was a little much. The party is
Witch
Monk
Rogue
Swashbuckler
Cleric

Thoughts?

[Java Man]

I am going to paraphrase your question, if I'm getting this wrong my apologies.

"I think my GM is doing it wrong and I want people on this forum to say so. Then I can go tell them that the internet said they are wrong."

This path will not end well. You need to either discuss this with your GM yourself (with or without the other players), let it go, or leave the game.

[mewnknight1]

Java Man wrote:

I am going to paraphrase your question, if I'm getting this wrong my apologies.

"I think my GM is doing it wrong and I want people on this forum to say so. Then I can go tell them that the internet said they are wrong."

This path will not end well. You need to either discuss this with your GM yourself (with or without the other players), let it go, or leave the game.

I understabd your response, but I think you may be mistaking my intent. It was not to argue the point, but to understand if this was something the party could expect as a norm. I ran games for decades in earlier game versions (1st ed Dnd through 3.5) and am inquiring from that perspective.

[AwesomenessDog]

Also doesn't read like someone who understands what the definition of CR means. Level 5 you have 10,500gp which isn't enough gp for a lot of magic items, and given the sloppy and uninformative phrasing of the OP's question, I wouldn't be surprised if he thought +2 armor, 2 +1 weapons, and whatever else fills out the rogue's remaining ~2,750gp is "almost no magic items".

Maybe these enemies were all given to the players to fight at once, maybe this is his tally over an entire session or adventure, maybe the player is too headstrong to realize he was supposed to run away, maybe the gm really has no idea what they're doing.

You want to make a point, you gotta try harder than that.

[Java Man]

Well, if I were trying to respond to this, I could not. There is no "gnoll champion" or "beastmaster" in the bestiary. Are these from a module? Did the GM stat them out personally? At a spitball that seems like it would be a rough encounter if it was all at once, but so much context is lacking. Did the PCs have warning that this was coming? Did they fail at infiltrating an enemy stronghold and encounter -everyone- inside? Was this the group that ambushed the party's camp? Or.....?

[Taja the Barbarian]

mewnknight1 wrote:

What would the CR be for a party of five 5th level characters with almost no magic items to support them:

6 Gnoll Archers with strengthbows
1 Gnoll Beastmaster
1 Gnoll Champion
4 Ogres
1 Ogre Mage
8 Hyenas

I ask because this is what my party just experienced, and I thought it was a little much. The party is
Witch
Monk
Rogue
Swashbuckler
Cleric

Thoughts?

There are a huge number of unknowns here (none of your gnoll types are 'official') but the presence of a CR8 Ogre Mage seems pretty rough for your level: Assuming you faced the 'standard issue' version, its 4,800xp is the entire budget for an 'Epic' APL+3 encounter for your party.

With plenty of additional foes and what appears to be a general lack of AoE powers in your party (dealing with 'cannon fodder' is much harder when you don't actually have a cannon), this does sound like a nasty fight (particularly if your party is weak in ranged fights and/or the terrain favors your foes).

Building an Adventure / Designing Encounters

[TxSam88]

So that's well over CR 11 if encountered all at once. (not to mention some of the bad guys listed aren't "official")

so the APL of your party is 6, so your encounter is at APL+5 (assuming all the bad guys at once). However there are some unknows that come into play. How did you generate stats? if you are anything above 20 point buy, then you can add 1 or more to your APL, If the party is highly experienced players you can add another +1, if they are wealth above level you can add another +1 or more, if they are optimized, you could potentially add another +1

so it is possible (but unlikely) that your party is effectively APL 10, which would make a CR 11+ encounter a challenge, but not impossible. However, for many, many gamers out there, this would be a huge challenge - near impossible (APL +5).

[mewnknight1]

Thank you for the constructive feedback. These boards are always very helpful for education and perspective. Much appreciated.

[Taja the Barbarian]

TxSam88 wrote:

So that's well over CR 11 if encountered all at once. (not to mention some of the bad guys listed aren't "official")

so the APL of your party is 6, so your encounter is at APL+5 (assuming all the bad guys at once). However there are some unknows that come into play. How did you generate stats? if you are anything above 20 point buy, then you can add 1 or more to your APL, If the party is highly experienced players you can add another +1, if they are wealth above level you can add another +1 or more, if they are optimized, you could potentially add another +1

so it is possible (but unlikely) that your party is effectively APL 10, which would make a CR 11+ encounter a challenge, but not impossible. However, for many, many gamers out there, this would be a huge challenge - near impossible (APL +5).

Minor correction: The baseline party APL is actually only 5 (the +1 size modifier only kicks in with 6 or more PCs).

Building an Adventure / Designing Encounters wrote:

Source PRPG Core Rulebook pg. 397

...
Step 1—Determine APL: Determine the average level of your player characters—this is their Average Party Level (APL for short). You should round this value to the nearest whole number (this is one of the few exceptions to the round down rule). Note that these encounter creation guidelines assume a group of four or five PCs. If your group contains six or more players, add one to their average level. If your group contains three or fewer players, subtract one from their average level. For example, if your group consists of six players, two of which are 4th level and four of which are 5th level, their APL is 6th (28 total levels, divided by six players, rounding up, and adding one to the final result).

[Ryze Kuja]

PF1E CR Calculator is what I use. Just plug in all your numbers and voila! *chef's kiss*

[mewnknight1]

Ryze Kuja wrote:

PF1E CR Calculator is what I use. Just plug in all your numbThers and voila! *chef's kiss*

Thanks so much.

[Claxon]

The problem here is we have no idea what your GM actually sent against you. In the GM in fact sent a CR 8 creature (Ogre Mage) against a 5th level party. On it's own that would be a challenging boss fight. If you truly have no magic items, that would make it even worse.

Unless the GM was playing to win (pro-tip, the GM can always win and should never be trying to "win") or completely doesn't understand the CR system (like not got something a little wrong but wayyyyyy offfff) then I have to imagine they're making adjustments on their side.

Unless you guys TPK on like the first or second round. In which case maybe it did happen.

[Mark Hoover 330]

So like... as many folks said, lots of gray areas here. Let's look at what we know:

Five 5th level characters:
Witch
Monk
Rogue
Swashbuckler
Cleric

Since all of these feature no other character details, race obviously won't be a factor in the builds and all classes should be assumed vanilla. The default for the game is a 15 point buy, so we'll go with that as the stat array. The CR system assumes only a modest amount of optimization, so under those conditions the party is APL5

6 gnolls w/strength bows: well, standard gnoll is a CR1 foe armed with Simple weapons, Light armor and a shield. Increasing the Simple weapon to Martial but not changing their Power Attack feat means you're barely adding anything to their offense, so I'm going with a budget of 2400 XP for these foes in the fight.

Without calculating ANY other monsters, these 6 gnolls represent a CR 6 combat. Let's just stop there.

Gnolls aren't dexterous; giving them strength bows is actually a terrible idea since without changing anything in their stat block besides the weapon they've got a ranged +2 attack dealing an average of 1d8+2 damage.

However, if the gnolls were using Stealth behind Cover; say, hidden behind trees, they MIGHT, maybe, gain a surprise round. Now, I want you to think about JUST that much of the fight: PCs are moving through Light Forest terrain, fail perception checks and 6 arrows come flying out at them from the darkness.

An unarmored witch with "almost no magic items" to increase their AC has a flat footed AC of 10 unless a class ability or their familiar somehow makes them never flat footed. If the gnolls, on a surprise round, fired 6 arrows all at the witch and just 3 of them hit, that's 19.5 avg damage. A witch with a 15 point buy that remembered to get their Con stat to 12 has 8 HP at L1, with 5.5 HP ever level thereafter for a total of 30 HP, and they just took 19.

THAT set up to this fight is a lot different from: PCs are walking through a flat, featureless meadow with clear view of a band of 6 gnolls, 200' away, all standing shoulder to shoulder and readying to lob a volley of arrows.

Now let's consider an Ogre Mage. This creature alone, with no help from anyone else is a CR 8 foe. They have Inveisibility, Fly and Darkness at will. The Ogre Mage can also deliver a 60' cone of such intense cold it deals 9d6 damage to everything inside it, DC 18 Ref save for half. That's 31.5 avg damage unless folks either make their save or have Evasion/Improved Evasion or such.

Like... what? 5 15 point buy, vanilla PCs with few magic items between them facing just the gnolls and ogre mage would be between a CR 9 and CR 10 fight alone. Then you're going to ADD IN 4 ogres, 8 hyenas, and all the other gnoll variants we don't know the stat blocks for? This fight is a TPK waiting to happen. This is beyond a CR 10. It is NOT an "average" combat if you're going to go to the trouble of using the CR system.

A typical fight for this party would be CR 5: 2 of the stock standard gnolls from the bestiary, a single hyena, and a PC race foe with either 3 levels of an NPC class or 2 levels of a PC class; say a halfling sorcerer 2. The halfling is built as a controller using Stealth and Cover to stay hidden while laying down Grease, and Summon Monster spells to weaken the party's tactics, all while one of the gnolls throws spears and commands the hyena with their Move actions and the other gnoll, the hyena, and any summoned monster that shows up use flanking to the best of their ability.

That's a CR 5 fight, an "average" fight against an APL5 party.