The Goblins Fan Forum

Let's say that the fighter has the following:
• CON of 14, and took the average at level 2 to be sitting at 20 HP
• Chainmail for an AC of 16
• A STR of 16 to give him +5 to hit on attacks

If you just look at CR, cats sit at 0, so we're *justified* in having an infinite amount .

The cats slashing at his legs only are rolling a d20 to hit for one damage, so only connect 25% of the time. If he's surrounded by 8 cats at a time, he's losing ~2 HP per round, so will be dead in about a minute. In that same minute, he's been slashing around him and any time he connects, he deals more than a cat's 2 HP. At an AC of 12, he will hit 70% of the time, so manages to kill ~7 before he dies.

Remember, that's all with a CR of 0. If we look at the XP budget, 200 xp would make for a deadly encounter. So if we only have 20 cats in a room, rather than infinite... well, that's not any better. He's still taking 8 attacks per round, two hitting on average, and is still only going to finish off 7 before he goes. ((If he's freshly woken up, he has action surge and second wind, so may last a bit longer.))

Another bit of that is that in addition to CR not scaling evenly, XP budget doesn't either, there is always an advantage to whichever side has more individuals taking turns, which is why legendary creatures get lair actions, legendary actions, etc. A party of high level adventurers would otherwise be able to stomp a similarly CR'd boss. But adding even a few low level minions to the fight makes a boss fight much more challenging.

Adjusted XP helps to take into account the numbers being faced, I just Kobold Fight Club if I'm looking check XP budget, since it nicely figures adjusted xp and lumps it into an easy, medium, hard or deadly encounter.

Turns out that fight against 20 cats has an adjusted XP of 1000. Way above that 200 = deadly budget!




TL;DR

Who knows what these shadowy undead are, let's kill them fast!