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Old 11-27-2021, 04:16 AM   #9
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Why dose my party struggle with basic thugs but not boss monsters?

Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
I would speculate that it might be a combination of two other things:

* Truly random rolls produce unexpected outcomes: The really inept combatant gets a lucky roll, or the really skilled one gets an unlucky one

* You tend to remember those outcomes more vividly because they're improbable, and not to remember the many more events that lack surprise

And there may be more going on than that, but that's the null hypothesis I'd want to eliminate first.
Indeed. The way to check this is to start taking notes - this can be as simple as writing down what category a given battle was meant to fall into (mook fight vs boss fight) and what the result was (party win/loss/retreat, number of dead PC's, number of surviving PC's reduced to or below 0 HP, number of PC's wounded to a lesser extent). After a few sessions, review your notes. Add up the number of party losses, PC deaths, severe wounds (<0 HP), and lesser wounds separately for each category, then divide by the number of battles in that category to get the average. If the null hypothesis is true, you should see lower averages for losses, retreats, deaths, severe wounds, and lesser wounds for the mook fights than for the boss fights. Of course, because the latter is going to be working with a much smaller sample size, its results are going to be a bit more swingy - if the "true" average is 0.1 PC deaths per mook fight and 0.2 PC deaths per boss fight, and you had 20 mook fights but only two boss fights, there's a very good chance you saw at least one death from the mook fights (anticipated deaths: 2.0) and no deaths from the boss fights (anticipated deaths: 0.4). If it's the case that you had some PC deaths in mook fights and none in boss fights, calculate the expected number of deaths you would have experienced in the boss fights if they were at the same level of occurrence; if the value is less than 1, you need more data. You can probably look at the occurrence rates for severe wounds (reduced to or below 0 HP) and lesser wounds to help, however - if boss fights are truly easier than mook fights, you should see lower averages in these categories as well.
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