Dungeon construction: balancing difficulty and treasure?

[JulianLW]

Christopher Rice came up with a detailed Combat Effectiveness Rating system for Dungeon Fantasy in Pyramid 3/77, if you want a detailed discussion.

But ... here's an idea: you could also do a very quick-and-dirty guesstimation of combat effectiveness by 1) adding up the average damage from the highest powered attack, 2) multiplying that by Basic Speed, 3) multiplying again by the number of basic attacks (i.e. not Rapid Strikes) per turn, and then 4) adding DR x 5 (or the point-value, if known, if the DR is modified, as with Tough Skin) to the total.

So a totally average, 0 point unarmed human would have a score of .5 (1d-3 cr punch) x Speed 5 x 1 attack, add 0 (DR 0): 2.5.

But a powerful delver - like the barbarian Argua from Delvers to Go - might have a much higher score: 4d+3 cut (17) x Speed 6.25 x 1 attack, add 12 (Tough Skin 4): 118.25. Note that Argua is nearly 50 times more powerful than an average human. This seems about right to me, since even a crowd of 50 0 point unarmed humans would never be able to injure Argua with barehanded attacks....

Or Miao Miao: 2d+4 cut (11) x Speed 8 x 1 attack, add 5 (DR 1): 93.

A bugbear from DFRPG Monsters: 2d+1 cr (8) x Speed 6.5 x 1 attack, add 0 (DR 0): 52.

A small dragon from DFRPG Monsters: 2d+4 cut (11) x Speed 6.75 x 2 attacks, add 15 (DR 3): 163.5.

A large dragon: 5d+7 imp (24.5) x Speed 7.25 x 4 attacks, add 45 (DR 9): 755.5

A draugr: 4d+2 cut (16) x Speed 7 x 1 attack, add 30 (DR 6): 142.

This would be a VERY quick and dirty way of assessing combat effectiveness. It totally leaves out resistance to mind control and a million other things, but for a hack-and-slash-heavy genre like DFRPG, I think this is a good trade off for being an easy way to eyeball encounters.

Note that Basic Speed is a hasty stand-in for active defenses, skill levels, and death checks and that damage is a stand-in for HP in this calculation.

Quick-and-dirty combat rating: (Damage x Speed x Attacks) + (DR x 5)