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Oct 11, 2012 -- 10:09AM, Drycanth wrote:

Take a look in the test packet in the pdf spells. you send 20 goblins and my two mages drop them all taking no hits in one round with two castings of burning hands. You can't think in a vacume. Players have ways of dealing with groups of monsters besides hack and slash. Oh look there are a bunch of orgres comming twards the castle ... lets wait till they get to the gate and dump a large ammount of oil on them and set them on fire ... one torch later no more ogres.

The burning hands spell is a cone 15 feet long. Goblins take up a 5 foot space therefor the absolute most you can kill with one casting of the burning hands spell is six; one in the first five feet two in the second and three in the third. It's impossible for two casters to kill 20 goblins in one round. 

Actually unless the casters are facing in two different directions or are fifteen feet apart their spells will overlap causing even fewer goblin deaths.

Oct 13, 2012 -- 6:04PM, NightsLastHero wrote:

Not to mention those Goblins aren't going to be just standing side by side lined up in a neat cone for a wizard to kill with burning hands.

Why not, most people think they will line up around the fighter providing a cleave every round?

Even if they stand right next to each other (which they shouldn't be, cause that seems a bit much for an unorganized group of Monsters) they wouldn't be three lines deep in a pyramid shape.

I believe the low xp is currently correct for each monster. A goblin as present is in fact only worth 10 xp. It doesn't need any more xp added, that would mess up the system. The xp budget is what is supposed to challenge a group of PC's. 1 Goblin currenlty isn't worth more then 10 xp. Now what I believe happened is the xp got lowered to the correct level. Now in the next playtest packet it is going to be time to raise the monsters up to a reasonable number per encounter.

You should not be changing the xp of the monsters! The Xp is Correct! What you should be saying is okay, 40 Goblins is way too many. 20 sounds like a better number. So how do I get only 20 Goblins? Okay so I double their hitpoints to 6 HP Each. They got to hit better so maybe lets give them a +2 to hit instead of a -1. Since they are hitting more often now, they really don't need to increase their attack damage, so we can leave it alone. Now how much xp is our new Goblin worth? Maybe 20xp or maybe he hits just a little too much so he is actually worth 30xp. So maybe are new Goblins require less then 20, but that is Okay because that would be preffered.

Just starting with increasing the xp values isn't going to help you out any. If you want higher xp values, just use the last playtest packet. The monster stats need to go up before the xp values are increased.   

Oct 16, 2012 -- 8:57PM, NightsLastHero wrote:

I believe the low xp is currently correct for each monster. A goblin as present is in fact only worth 10 xp. It doesn't need any more xp added, that would mess up the system. The xp budget is what is supposed to challenge a group of PC's. 1 Goblin currenlty isn't worth more then 10 xp. Now what I believe happened is the xp got lowered to the correct level. Now in the next playtest packet it is going to be time to raise the monsters up to a reasonable number per encounter.

You should not be changing the xp of the monsters! The Xp is Correct! What you should be saying is okay, 40 Goblins is way too many. 20 sounds like a better number. So how do I get only 20 Goblins? Okay so I double their hitpoints to 6 HP Each. They got to hit better so maybe lets give them a +2 to hit instead of a -1. Since they are hitting more often now, they really don't need to increase their attack damage, so we can leave it alone. Now how much xp is our new Goblin worth? Maybe 20xp or maybe he hits just a little too much so he is actually worth 30xp. So maybe are new Goblins require less then 20, but that is Okay because that would be preffered.

Just starting with increasing the xp values isn't going to help you out any. If you want higher xp values, just use the last playtest packet. The monster stats need to go up before the xp values are increased.   

I think you missed the point of my post.  I'm not suggesting that monsters need their XP increased due to their overwhelming and challenging nature .  In fact I agree that the monsters are underpowered in the current system and we are using the +2-3 hit bonus across the board.

What I'm saying is that the reason you can have 40 Goblins in a level 2 encounters is the nature of the math in the current system.  If you notice, I also increased the amount of XP per encounter per PC by the same amount I increased each monster to illustrate the effect it has on how many monsters of a particular level are considered a "suitable" encounter based on the XP budget, and then its effect at a subseuent level.

Obviously you could build a tougher goblin that is worth more XP to keep the number of creatures down in a particular encounter, but that doesn't address the issue that a tough 5th level encounter with 4 PCs should contain 828 Goblins based on the rules as written.  Obviously that's rediculous.  However, its possible due to the nature of the math involved, and the problem is particularly exaggerated with the lowest level monsters as their XP is a tiny fraction of creatures that are even a couple levels higher.

Consider looking at it from the opposite direction, if 1 Goblin is accurately valued at 10 XP, which I don't neccessarily disagree with, is a Goblin Leader worth 80 XP?  Will the goblin leader inflict 8 times as much damage, last 8 times the number of rounds, provide 8 times the challenge, etc?  I think not.  In fact it may end up being one shotted just like its weaker breathren.