The Premise
Me and a few others decided to hold this game's feet to the fire and see if this stuff really works: the "challenge rating" guidelines from the Monster Manual and the "adventuring day" guidelines from the Dungeon Master's Guide.
For those unaware, Challenge Rating is defined the Monster Manual as:
An appropriately equipped and well-rested party of four adventurers should be able to defeat a monster that has a challenge rating equal to its level without suffering any deaths. For example, a party of four 3rd-level characters should find a monster with a challenge rating of 3 to be a worthy challenge, but not a deadly one.
And the adventuring day guidelines from the Dungeon Master's Guide:
Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer.
and
In general, over the course of a full adventuring day, the party will likely need to take two short rests, about one-third and two-thirds of the way through the day.
We also keep in mind the “Adjusting XP for multiple monsters” guidelines from the DMG.
The Party
The characters chosen for this endeavor were intended to be the most classic characters, and ones that will perform the most consistently in each encounter.
Hill Dwarf Fighter: Champion
Lightfoot Halfling Rogue: Thief
High Elf Wizard: School of Evocation
Human Cleric: Life Domain
Not going to go into too much detail about the classes but you can assume we picked the most "basic" and strongest spells and options. I.e., Wizard had Magic Missile, Shield, Sleep, Misty Step, Fireball, etc. and Cleric had Bless, Healing Word, Spiritual Weapon, Spirit Guardians, etc.
No feats, no multiclassing, and no magic items outside of basic +X weapons and armor and potions of healing. We gave ourselves little treasure "hoards" using the Tiers of Play as a guideline from the Dungeon Master's Guide. 500 gp plus 1d10 × 25 gp, one uncommon magic item, normal starting equipment at 5th level; 5,000 gp plus 1d10 × 250 gp, three uncommon magic items, one rare item, normal starting equipment at 11th level; and 20,000 gp plus 1d10 × 250 gp, three uncommon magic items, two rare items, one very rare item, normal starting equipment at 17th level.
The fights all took place in a vacuum 20x20 (or 100 ft by 100 ft) room with both parties rolling initiative about 40 ft apart from the other. We let our characters be surprised if an enemy's "passive" Stealth was higher than our individual characters' passive Perceptions. We just assumed our party wouldn't really surprise anyone because of our two heavy armor wearers and the Cleric always having Light up.
Challenge Rating 3
Encounter 1: One Owlbear
Not too exciting. Fighter took about 30 damage but nobody went down.
Encounter 2: One Manticore
Holy fuck. Manticore flies in the air. 3 tail spikes to down the Wizard in one turn. Shield wouldn’t have helped, and he didn’t cast Mage Armor yet “just in case.” Fighter is trying to use his bow for the first time. Manticore downs the Rogue next. Cleric is spending every turn healing and stabilizing. The manticore has twenty-four tail spikes with a 100-ft range so the manticore is flying around 70 feet off the ground out of the range of most spells. The Cleric can’t keep up and both Rogue and Wizard are down again. We all collectively acknowledge if this were a real fight, we would just pick up their bodies and fucking run.
You’re supposed to fight this thing at level 1 in Dragon of Icespire Peak?? Are the developers literally stupid? This combined with the 4 goblins you fight in Lost Mine of Phandelver and then the cave full of about a dozen more, I don’t think these people had any idea what they were doing.
Eventually Cleric heals the Wizard who then uses Mage Armor and Shield to actually survive and starts throwing out Magic Missile. Collectively we spent seven 1st-level spell slots and two 2nd-level spell slots just on this fucking thing. Fight lasted 7 rounds so the manticore never even ran out of tail spikes. Rogue survived his death saving throws. Party opts to short rest, which the Rogue can’t take because he is unconscious.
Encounter 3: Three Thugs
Wizard opens up with Shatter, which they all fail, but he only rolls 7 damage. Thugs surround the Fighter who lasts a few rounds but inevitably hits zero. Wizard and Cleric get surrounded and take some hits but the Rogue takes out the rest. No deaths. Not as scary as the manticore—somehow—but still a tough fight. We opt to save our last short rest since we don’t really have the spell slots to make up for not having one later. Fighter wakes up with 1 HP uses his Second Wind, and then hopes for the best.
Encounter 4: One Giant Scorpion
Turns out 3 attacks is a lot at this level. Fighter goes down in the first round and we all realize 3 is the magic number to turn any monster into a death machine. Initiative makes it hard to want to heal the Fighter because the Fighter goes before the Cleric, but after the Scorpion. So healing him would mean he just lies there and hopes the scorpion doesn't down him before his next turn. We opt to just push for damage because we know it has bad Wisdom saves.
Wizard took a risk and used a cantrip instead of a leveled spell to kill it, but it survived. He ends up using the spell slot anyway to cast Shield and keep himself alive. Rogue finishes it off next turn.
We can’t take any risks now so we heal the fighter and then take the short rest.
We are not looking great. Wizard has full health but one 1st-level spell slot. Cleric is near full and has one 2nd-level spell slot. Rogue is at about half HP. Fighter is about ¾.
Encounter 5: Two Dire Wolves
Party pushes hard to down one wolf ASAP to avoid the Pack Tactics, but it doesn’t work out well. Wolves jump on the Cleric and down him. Fighter action surges to take out the first wolf. Non-serious IRL drama is forming because the Wizard is refusing to cast anything but cantrips because “I might need the spell slot later.” Whether or not he’s right, it is causing people to get a little spicy.
Rogue is having a hard time getting advantage on his attacks because the wolf’s keen senses, but the Fighter still gives him sneak attack. Against all odds, Cleric jumps up with 1 hp on a critical success death save. Heroically jumps up to hit the wolf, which it tanks, then bites him back and the Cleric goes back down immediately. Wizard finishes off the wolf and proudly announces he didn’t need to use a spell slot to do so. Cleric survives and starts the next fight with 1 HP. Honestly everyone is looking fine except the Cleric.
Encounter 6: Six Goblins
“DM, please. There is no reason for this,” the party cries. Everyone is surprised. Fighter tanks the hits with 3 HP left. Rogue gets a natural 20 and deals 34 damage, killing a goblin so terribly that his reincarnated form dies too. Wizard casts Magic Missile, killing another. Cleric kills another. Damage swapping ensues. Fighter rolls a climactic natural 19 on the last goblin, then deals minimum damage, so it survives. Rogue gets the killing blow. Again.
Conclusion
Okay so the difficulty seemed to spike dramatically here. The manticore and giant scorpion were especially scary and the big clincher here seems to be certain enemies having three attacks instead of two. That third attack just really pushes enemies over the edge to being absolute monsters that will fuck you up. Even the six goblins seemed easier to deal with than the one manticore.
I also now unfortunately have to agree with people who say “you need a tank” though. Even if there is no way to “draw aggro” or anything like that, just having someone with 19 AC who was just bullrushing into enemies was incredibly important here. The Fighter was invaluable.
The Cleric was also invaluable although was mostly relegated to a heal bot who hit things with a mace sometimes.
The Rogue was basically god tier. Never dealt less than 10 damage a turn. Basically had at-will advantage from hiding as a bonus action behind the Wizard, with a +7 bonus to Stealth. I’m not saying I agree, but I at least understand why brand new DMs want to nerf Rogues. They are very powerful at this level.
I don’t know what happened but the Wizard was just a worse version of a Warlock here. The most important thing he did was allow the Rogue Halfling to hide behind him. Enemies usually had too much HP to cast Sleep on. Shatter was good, but never felt like a pivotal move in a fight. It seems like half his spell slots went to keeping himself alive. Eldritch Blast would have been better than Fire Bolt and having six 2nd-level spells would have been so fucking useful here. So we’ll see how he starts to feel at higher levels. The pendulum will probably swing back at 5th level for obvious reasons.
Although I also have to say that at these lower levels, it is apparent spellcasters are sort of self-regulating and kept in check by the number of encounters. If we threw in a few traps and puzzles, I don’t think the Wizard would have been able to cast anything except Detect Magic to help with those. He would absolutely not have used a spell slot to just Misty Step past a trap to turn it off. The party probably would have literally thrown the Rogue across the room since the Rogue is almost always avoiding problems in combat, except from the manticore. Otherwise the Fighter and Rogue were almost always fine and ready to keep going. Cleric was better off than the Wizard because even at 0 spell slots, he still had 18 AC and more HP.
I would consider this a success, though. A lot of close calls, but nobody died. Even though no one died in this part, it just felt much more deadly for some reason. The back and forth and ups and downs and the game resource attrition all seem to be working pretty smoothly. If anything it felt a little harsh on the Wizard, even with Arcane Recovery, but for the overall party it was solid.
