Number Appearing vs. Challenge Rating

So, I write this article after having a realization of the obvious. What I’m about to describe might be self-evident to you, but it felt like a big deal to me.

How did I come to this realization? I looked through the D&D 5^th Edition Monster Manual, which I haven’t done in a long time. I recently started a campaign using Five Torches Deep (which I will eventually review), which necessitated my perusal of the bestiary.

 

Here's the situation: I was designing a mini-adventure for the party. The village elf tasked them with getting some honey from nearby giant bees so the elf could make salves of de-petrification for two party members turned to stone by a gorgon (the metal gas-breathing kind, not the snake-hair kind). I needed to develop some random encounters for the players to possibly run into on their way to or from the beehive, if the numbers came up right.

 

I decided that a good random encounter would be an ambush by orcs. Very original, right? But I was sick and pressed for time. Plus, it sometimes just feels good to have a classic encounter like that.

 

So I looked up orcs in the Monster Manual to get their stats, and this is what I found (sort of). This image is from Roll20, though what I found was obviously in the Monster Manual.

Which gives me almost all the info I would need for a random encounter with orcs. But there was one crucial piece of information missing: how many orcs attack the party?

 

I stared at the page, wondering where that information was. “Perhaps it’s in the 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide I lent my sister,” I thought. So as a stop-gap, I looked up orcs in Old School Essentials instead.

Sure enough, there was the NA (number appearing) stat, right where I expected it to be: 2d4 (in the wilderness. 1d6x10 in the lair).

So I ran the adventure and, as it turned out, the party encountered five orcs on their way to the beehive (since they were travelling in the forest and rolled a 2 out of 6 for wilderness encounters). One of them was knocked unconscious, but they managed to kill four of them (including the leader) before the last ran away.

 

Overall the party was very badly wounded and lost a lot of HP before they even made it to the beehive, making it a pyrrhic victory. Of course, the beehive itself was much more interesting and deadly as a result ;)

 

Had they rolled a 1 or 2 on a d6 on the return trip, they would have encountered an inquisitive treant. But alas, they rolled a 5.

 

That question about the number appearing still stuck with me afterwards, though. Why couldn’t I find the number appearing in the 5^th edition Monster Manual? I used to run 5e, back in the day. How did I do it then?

 

Eventually, it "clicked" for me: 5e doesn’t have the “Number Appearing” in its monster descriptions. It uses CR (challenge rating), instead.

 

Again, this may seem obvious to you. But it felt like a real lightbulb moment for me, partly because this feels like a fundamentally different approach between “new-school” and “old-school” systems. One that has profound implications for the kind of game you play.

 

As usual, I am not the first one to come to this realization. A similar realization was made on RPG Stack Exchange over four years ago. I have included a quote of SevenSidedDie’s post below:

In AD&D and earlier, combat encounters are intended to be somewhat more naturalistic and organic to the setting. The idea of “number appearing” follows this philosophy, indicating how many creatures tend to be encountered when that type of creature is encountered. This is regardless of how difficult it would be to fight that many of that type of creature. DMs can also easily choose more or fewer creatures for a situation, as appropriate to the situation — again, because the game is concerned with giving the DM tools for deciding what makes naturalistic or adventure-plot sense. The players are expected to scout ahead and learn about the dangers around them, to make informed decisions about whether and how to engage them. (A party that fails to do this is making a strategic error.) A war party of 300 orcs was possible for a 1st-level party to run into in AD&D.

D&D 3rd edition and later use a different encounter design philosophy that is orthogonal in purpose and execution. Instead of asking “if they meet an orc, how many are they likely to meet?”, the game instead asks “how many creatures of what toughness make for a good combat challenge, and how many such challenges should there be in a day?” This philosophy means that “number appearing” isn't directly useful rules-wise, and instead a measure of the creature's combat difficult is needed. This is what Challenge Rating is.

So in old-school games (such as B/X and AD&D), the number of monsters encountered was more “naturalistic,” considering the type of creature and their social organization. Conversely, in “new-school” games, the rules expect the Dungeon Master to have the party encounter an “appropriate” number of creatures using the Challenge Rating (or their XP value).

It reminded me a bit of the difference between Morrowind and Oblivion. While both of these games have some degree of level scaling, the level scaling is much more pronounced in Oblivion. In other words, the monster and treasure encountered in the game world leveled with you. You could enter a dungeon as a level 1 character in Oblivion to find rats and iron weapons, but enter that same dungeon at level 10 to find spriggans and dwarven weapons.

The same isn’t quite as true in Morrowind. I remember wandering around as a low-level character, entering a random tomb, and encountering a Bonelord. I promptly shut off the Xbox out of fear.

 

It is important that we don’t "paint with too broad a brush," however. Even in early D&D, there is some indication in the text that “balance” should be considered when designing encounters for adventurers.

 

The first indication is that monsters are scaled to the level of the dungeon they’re encountered on. In a typical dungeon, 1HD creatures are encountered on Level 1, then 2HD creatures are encountered on level 2, and so on. As the party ascends in character levels and descends deeper in the dungeon levels, their capabilities and the challenges they face are commensurate.

 

You can see some examples of this idea of “balance” in harlandski’s quotes from Moldvay’s rules in these posts, where the Basic set says, “The Wandering Monster tables (below) give a balanced mixture of monsters for the dungeon levels,” as well as, “Most Wandering Monsters are the same level as the level of the dungeon (...) The "Number Appearing" of some monsters has been adjusted to make them more appropriate for encounters on a dungeon level" (emphasis added).

 

Over at Delta’s D&D HotSpot, Delta also pulled out some references to this idea of scaling as far back as OD&D. For example, a footnote to the Monster Reference Table gives the referee the “option” to “increase or decrease according to party concerned.”

 

There is also some indication in OD&D that the number of monsters encountered was adjusted according to the number of party members, rather than their level. According to Delta, the Monster Determination table gives the following instruction:

 

If the level beneath the surface roughly corresponds with the level of the monster then the number of monsters will be based on a single creature, modified by type (that is Orcs and the like will be in groups) and the number of adventurers in the party. A party of from 1-3 would draw the basic number of monsters, 4-6 would bring about twice as many, and so on. The referee is advised to exercise his discretion in regard to exact determinations, for the number of variables is too great to make a hard and fast rule... 

 

So it would be unfair to say that the idea of scaling encounters to the party’s level, or to the number of characters in the party, is completely a “new-school” mindset. That idea has clearly been around in some form since the inception of D&D.

 

However, it is fair to say that the idea of scaling encounters to the party’s abilities is much more prevalent in new-school games (from 3^rd edition forward). In fact, it is so prevalent that the 5e Monster Manual omits a “number appearing” entry in its monster descriptions, instead providing Challenge Rating.

 

Sort of like Morrowind and Oblivion. Level scaling is present in both, but it is much more noticeable in Oblivion – such as when every bandit you encounter suddenly has glass armor and daedric weapons.

How did every bandit ringleader come to possess glass armor and Daedric weapons? The world may never know.

It is important to recognize that these assumptions have an impact on the game, however. If the players can “rest easy” knowing that most encounters are scaled to their level, they are much more likely to enter combat frequently and confidently. The world (including dungeons) also becomes much less scary and dangerous, as a result.

 

However, if the players know that the difficulty of encounters is “up to the dice,” I think it encourages them to play with much more caution and creativity. This lack of level scaling encourages investigative and careful play, in my experience.

 

Though really, given the presence of some degree of level scaling in early D&D, it seems to me that most folks would likely use both of these measures.  When it comes to Number Appearing and Challenge Rating, why not list both?

REVIEW: Castle Xyntillan

I write this review after running Castle Xyntillan for about eight months using a slightly house-ruled version of Basic Fantasy RPG. If you’re reading this review, you’ve likely already seen Questing Beast’s review or Bryce Lynch’s review. If you haven’t already, I recommend you check those out. I bought this adventure on their recommendation.

This review contains SPOILERS for the adventure. Only Dungeon Masters past this point, please.

GOOD THINGS

Overall, I think Castle Xyntillan (CX) is a very strong adventure. Perhaps the most noticeable strength of CX, as other reviewers have noted, is its formatting. CX uses a concise “bullet-point” style formatting of its room descriptions to ease use of the text at the table. To see what I’m talking about, see the example below:

This is probably some of the best formatting I’ve seen in a published product, reminiscent of Gavin Norman’s work in The Hole In the Oak and Winter’s Daughter. It first provides an overview of the situation with interactive bits highlighted in bold, then an explanation of the interactivity below. Relevant stats for creatures are also provided close-at-hand for ease of reference.

 

Admittedly, there are some instances where some relevant information is hidden in the bulleted text. For example:

In the example above, I think the animated hammer should definitely be referenced in the overview paragraph, as PCs would notice it immediately when entering the room (and perhaps even beforehand, due to the noise it makes). These instances are generally few and far between, however, and I would say the descriptions overall are exceptionally well-formatted. I wish every dungeon was formatted this way.

 

Furthermore, beyond the layout of the writing, the writing itself is genuinely good. There are many things for the players to investigate and interact with. It’s not all “bust down the door and kill things” (though players certainly could try that). The tone is a mix of fairy-tale fancy and grimdark macabre, which I think tends to work well. I often find myself rewriting parts of published modules to make them more dynamic and interactive when I can tell the authors got lazy. I had to do very little of that with CX, though – the rooms were generally fun and interesting to run as-written.

 

CX is also very well-constructed in terms of its blueprint. You could say Castle Xyntillan is significantly “Jacquayed.”There are plenty of directional options for the players, a variety of room shapes (it’s not all 30ft. square rooms), and loops & connections between sections. One thing I would have liked to see would be a sort of “theme” for each region to “clue players in” when they’re entering a new section (ex. a color theme for each wing of the castle or something), but overall the castle’s blueprint shows thoughtful and careful design as a dungeon.

 

Another strength about the maps is the different digital formats. The PDF version I downloaded came with labelled and unlabeled digital versions of the maps. It also provided a map optimized for use with virtual tabletops, as well as explicit instructions for how to upload it to your virtual tabletop of choice. This was my first time seeing that sort of support in a published module, and I thought it was stellar.

THINGS TO CHANGE OR ADD

 

My most significant criticism of CX is its lack of high-level support the referee. While it does a great job facilitating play at the table with its formatting, I found that CX offered very little support for the referee “out-of-session.” One significant thing I missed was some overall explanation of “what’s going on” or “how the castle got this way.” Admittedly, the author Gabor Lux responded to this omission in the very first paragraph of the adventure’s foreword:

"(Castle Xyntillan) makes no claim to either realism or narrative consistency: it is a storehouse of the macabre and the whimsical, founded on dream logic and loose association, and striving to be confounding and entertaining above all else. And yet, it is not formless. You may note places where its elements form apparent patterns, or at least seem to rhyme – but it will be up to you to make the connections, and interpret them according to your ideas, as well as the needs of your campaign."

So basically, what I interpreted the above statement to mean is that the adventure wants you to “make it up yourself,” when it comes to what happened or what’s going on now. Personally, I found that unsatisfying, and I think the inconsistency deprived my players of a sense of “discovery” in their explorations. They could not “figure out what was going on” through their explorations, as ultimately there was nothing larger going on – at least not as written. The dungeon just kind of is there, being weird. There's nothing to make sense of, because there is no sense behind the situations.

 

This issue with the lack of support extends beyond the “backstory” to the NPCs themselves. While CX provides a good appendix of NPCs at the back of the book, it provides little description of their wants and motivations, or what they think of one another. As a result, I found it difficult to run them – particularly when players would try to talk to them and ask them questions about the castle, as it’s hard to get a sense of what each NPC would know.

(Also, as a brief aside, the adventure made little distinction between intelligent and unintelligent undead, which made it a bit difficult to tell whether the PCs could talk to certain NPCs or not. I ultimately ruled that the PCs could talk to most undead family members, including skeletons, but some guidance here would have been helpful).

 

I am not the first person to experience this issue with the lack of support for running the NPCs; someone else noted it in a comment on Bryce’s review, and the author (Melan) responded:

I understand Melan’s point here that a web of ALL the NPCs would have been unwieldy. However, a relationship map of the half-dozen most significant NPCs (ex. The Count / Countess, the Beast), a list of the folks allied with them, and what each major NPC thinks of the others could have taken only something like a two-page spread. For an example of what I’m talking about, you can reference this relationship matrix from Woodfall:

While I do think the one from Woodfall is a bit too dense, having just a half-dozen factions or important NPCs would make it much more manageable.

 

More information about the NPCs would have encouraged faction-based play, facilitating a dynamic environment for the PCs to explore where the Castle’s denizens react to the actions of the PCs. It would give me a better idea of what each NPC wants, if the PCs offer to complete a quest for them. It would also give me direction on how the castle might change over time, as the different factions try to achieve their goals. As-written, the NPCs are basically all just standing around, waiting for the PCs to walk into their room. They have no plots, plans, or aspirations.

 

You may be thinking, “Well why not just that make that stuff yourself, like the adventure says?” However, I find two issues with that suggestion.

1.     I buy published modules to do this work for me and save me time. If the author tells me to write this content myself, that defeats the purpose of me buying the module.

2.     Castle Xyntillan is SO large that, having purchased it (rather than written it), creating a sense of “what happened here” or a write-up for each faction would require me to put in hours of work and study… which I think is exactly what the concise room & NPC descriptions were trying to prevent. Reading and annotating the entire module seems to negate the value of having short descriptions I can run with little prep, since I would have to closely study them anyway.

 

CONCLUSIONS

 

Overall, I would say Castle Xyntillan is an excellent dungeon on the micro-level. Its room entries are written perfectly for low-prep, session-level play and it provides great support for the referee to run the game at the table. It has fun and interesting encounters that are concisely written with little wasted text. I would like to see more adventures emulate its format.

 

However, I would like to have seen greater support for the referee at the “macro” level. This adventure does not have a consolidated description of what NPCs want or how they relate to each other. It has no high-level explanation of “what’s going on” or “what happened here” for the referee. The text tells you to come up with those parts yourself… which disappointed me and defeated the purpose of buying a published product (in my opinion).

 

Ultimately, I could compare Castle Xyntillan to a bag of M&Ms. Each M&M (room description) tastes good, on its own. However, the only thing that holds the M&Ms together is the fact that they’re in the same bag (i.e. in the same castle). With a “mega-dungeon” like Castle Xyntillan, where the PCs will explore the same location across many sessions, I found myself needing greater “cohesion” between its disparate parts to turn the Castle into something satisfying. That sort of nonsensical play got tired and unfulfilling after a few months. Turning the Castle into something more than a weird, inexplicable funhouse proved too difficult / time-consuming for me, considering the lack of support in the text.

 

Overall I would recommend this adventure if you’re interested in a well-formatted funhouse dungeon that’s easy to run with little prep. Understand that it really is a true funhouse dungeon, however, meaning that there is little sense to make of it or mysteries to uncover (beyond hidden objects to find). Players who enjoy that sense of discovery and “figuring things out” likely will feel unfulfilled unless you invest the time and effort to provide those things yourself. For me it was fun for a while, but lost its zest quicker than I expected.

 

4/5 Stars