As abstractapplic notes, parties are less likely to fail on earlier encounters. I can think of multiple possible reasons:
resource depletion. Fights can deplete a resource (or possibly there could be multiple resources) and the party gives up when it runs out of the/a resource.
depth-dependent difficulty. Each fight is an independent binary check, but at a difficulty that depends on the depth of that fight.
debuffs. Each fight can apply a debuff that reduces success chance on later fights. Importantly different from 1 in what you can deduce from failure rate on a particular fight.
incomplete data. It’s just too embarrassing to report to the guild that you turned back at the very beginning.
I’m proceeding assuming (1), but on a weak basis: it’s the a priori most likely (imo), things don’t immediately appear incompatible with this (without me having really checked), and the “Threat Level” stat seems most compatible with this. But I don’t really know!
If resource depletion (at least, single-resource) is an accurate model, losses to an encounter type should be fairly informative about the difficulty of an encounter type and what is strong against it, with at least these caveats:
later encounters should falsely appear harder due to resources have been depleted
classes that are better at earlier encounters in the same sort of dungeon that the later encounter is in will falsely appear stronger in the later encounter due to having higher resources entering the later encounters
I am keeping these points in mind but have not really done anything to actually deal with them in the analysis.
I’m also assuming things like only the encounters in the dungeon matter and not the name, order of party members doesn’t matter, etc.
edited to add: after posting this i did a brief check on the effect of levels and noticed two outliers where a high level party was defeated early:
Abandoned Dungeon of Azmar: Ranger 7 Druid 6 Fighter 6 Rogue 7 Snake Pit lich Lich (...etc, but defeated there)
Forgotten Temple of Stormwind: Ranger 4 Rogue 6 Fighter 5 Cleric 6 Basilisk Basilisk (...etc, but defeated there)
This makes me think a single-resource-depletion model is maybe less likely, and it might be a multiple-resource model (such that repeated encounters deplete the same resource), but I have no time to re-consider things.
The Goblin Warrens of Khaz-Gorond:
Goblins → Boulder Trap → Unknown x 8
Measure reports:
Encounters 3-9 are 2⁄3 Goblins and 1⁄3 Boulder Trap, and the final encounter is 3⁄4 Goblin Chieftain and 1⁄4 Goblins
I confirm, but go a bit further. Dungeons with “Goblin” in the name all seem to have basically the same encounter generation, unless they have the “Night” prefix (in which case they can have Ghosts) or the “Mountain” prefix (in which case they can have Wolves). There are 118 Dungeons with “Goblin” in the name that have 9 or more encounters; all of these end with a Goblin Chieftain. Also, dungeons with “Goblin” in the name never have exactly 8 encounters, suggesting a discontinuity in the generation rules. Thus, the dungeon will end with a Goblin Chieftain (high confidence).
Threat Level: 3.95 (but beware potential bias regarding perceived difficulty of Goblins, reported by abstractapplic)
Goblins: Rangers are strongest.
Goblin Chieftain: Looks like a relatively hard encounter (but be aware of late dungeon bias). Fighter is strongest.
Boulder Trap: looks like a relatively easy encounter. Fighter is strongest.
Ranger and Fighter are obvious choices.
There are a decent number of very similar dungeons to this in the data. Restricting to dungeons with 7 or more total encounters including Goblins, Boulder Trap, Goblin Chieftain and no other encounters, there are 12 wins and 22 losses, maybe not enough to do accurate statistical analysis, but certainly enough for me to engage in my favourite pastime of overfitting to spurious patterns.
Looking at these particular dungeons, Rangers look incredibly strong, Mages look very bad, and Clerics look uncharacteristically meh (they are usually quite good). Going by strongest-looking to weakest-looking and selecting the top four different types, it looks like Ranger, Fighter, Druid, Rogue would be the strongest party.
However, going further down the overfitting-to-spurious-patterns rabbit hole, Druids and Rogues together have a terrible record (1-9) on these dungeons. Note, Druids and Rogues don’t seem to have particular antisynergy in general, so this is most likely completely spurious. However, double Ranger (2-1) looks better assuming the likely spurious patterns are real. Who to drop of Druid and Rogue?
Ranger+Rogue looks good, Fighter+Rogue not so much, Ranger+Druid and Fighter+Druid both OK, so Druid looks the safer choice.
All of this, to be clear, is far too low N to be of any reliable use. But I’m doing it anyway because, whatever, maybe there’s something there.
Another possibility would be Ranger+Fighter+ double Cleric, since both double Cleric parties won. But I’m sticking with double Ranger, Fighter, Druid.
None of these look like particularly tough fights.
Skeletons, Zombies, : Cleric looks best, followed by mage.
Ghosts: Cleric still looks best, but mages look about comparable to fighters in distant second place.
Note: Ghosts commonly occur in both physical and undead-oriented dungeons, while Skeletons and Zombies are more restricted to undead-themed dungeons. So, potential for different biases to creep in from parties being weakened by other fights in different dungeon types.
Poison Needle Trap: Rogues do best, as reported by abstractapplic and yonge.
Snake Pit: Druids do best, as reported by abstractapplic and yonge. Possibly notable: Fighters don’t look especially good here, despite Snake Pits commonly occuring in physical-oriented dungeons.
Obvious choice from just this info is Cleric+Mage+Rogue+Druid.
There isn’t a big pool of dungeons with this exact encounter combo to look at for my overfitting. Although undead-themed dungeons with Skeletons, Zombies and Ghosts are common, and they often have Poison Needle Traps, they don’t often have Snake Pits. In fact, dungeons with “Undead” in the name never have Snake Pits. However, Undead-themed dungeons without “Undead” in the name apparently have looser rules.
However, we can look at dungeons that have subsets of these encounters (with the understanding that the sample is low in Snake Pits).
Looking at this, Clerics, Mages and Rogues look good as expected, but next place is Fighter. Druids look quite bad.
If we look at synergies between these in this tiny data pool, all of Clerics, Mages and Rogues work well with each other, and while Druids still don’t look as good as Fighters, they do OK when paired with these. So, I speculate that druids are only bad for missing something we needed more and we probably have what we need with this party, and that therefore taking Druid to deal with Snake Traps is probably worth missing out on whatever Fighter is bringing us on other fights.
So: Cleric+Mage+Rogue+Druid (same as abstractapplic and Yonge)
Orcs: Fighters do best, then Clerics (as reported by Yonge).
Snake Pit: encounter is also in The Lost Temple of Lemarchand. Druids do best, as reported by abstractapplic and Yonge.
Wolves: Looks like an easy fight, but I expect this is largely because both Fighters and Druids do well against them, and since parties typically have 4 of the 6 classes the large majority of parties will have at least one Fighter or Druid. Fortunately, we are likely to want a Fighter for Orcs or a Druid for Snake Pits anyway.
Dragon: a very hard fight. No class looks to have a big advantage; Fighters, Rangers, Mages and Clerics all do comparably well/badly with Druids worse (by a bit) and Rogues worst.
There are few dungeons that are really close to this one, so only really looked at the individual fights.
If you look at parties with Fighters in them Rangers seem to do better against Dragons than Mages, so I am thinking: Fighter+Ranger+Druid+Cleric.
Conclusion
I have not analyzed the effect of levels. I will just slightly buff up the characters that seem the most important and on the dungeons I expect to be harder, and vice versa. I don’t know the effect of giving different characters much different levels and will avoid that to avoid possible danger.
My strategy and analysis:
general remarks:
As abstractapplic notes, parties are less likely to fail on earlier encounters. I can think of multiple possible reasons:
resource depletion. Fights can deplete a resource (or possibly there could be multiple resources) and the party gives up when it runs out of the/a resource.
depth-dependent difficulty. Each fight is an independent binary check, but at a difficulty that depends on the depth of that fight.
debuffs. Each fight can apply a debuff that reduces success chance on later fights. Importantly different from 1 in what you can deduce from failure rate on a particular fight.
incomplete data. It’s just too embarrassing to report to the guild that you turned back at the very beginning.
I’m proceeding assuming (1), but on a weak basis: it’s the a priori most likely (imo), things don’t immediately appear incompatible with this (without me having really checked), and the “Threat Level” stat seems most compatible with this. But I don’t really know!
If resource depletion (at least, single-resource) is an accurate model, losses to an encounter type should be fairly informative about the difficulty of an encounter type and what is strong against it, with at least these caveats:
later encounters should falsely appear harder due to resources have been depleted
classes that are better at earlier encounters in the same sort of dungeon that the later encounter is in will falsely appear stronger in the later encounter due to having higher resources entering the later encounters
I am keeping these points in mind but have not really done anything to actually deal with them in the analysis.
I’m also assuming things like only the encounters in the dungeon matter and not the name, order of party members doesn’t matter, etc.
edited to add: after posting this i did a brief check on the effect of levels and noticed two outliers where a high level party was defeated early:
Abandoned Dungeon of Azmar: Ranger 7 Druid 6 Fighter 6 Rogue 7 Snake Pit lich Lich (...etc, but defeated there)
Forgotten Temple of Stormwind: Ranger 4 Rogue 6 Fighter 5 Cleric 6 Basilisk Basilisk (...etc, but defeated there)
This makes me think a single-resource-depletion model is maybe less likely, and it might be a multiple-resource model (such that repeated encounters deplete the same resource), but I have no time to re-consider things.
The Goblin Warrens of Khaz-Gorond:
Goblins → Boulder Trap → Unknown x 8
Measure reports:
Encounters 3-9 are 2⁄3 Goblins and 1⁄3 Boulder Trap, and the final encounter is 3⁄4 Goblin Chieftain and 1⁄4 Goblins
I confirm, but go a bit further. Dungeons with “Goblin” in the name all seem to have basically the same encounter generation, unless they have the “Night” prefix (in which case they can have Ghosts) or the “Mountain” prefix (in which case they can have Wolves). There are 118 Dungeons with “Goblin” in the name that have 9 or more encounters; all of these end with a Goblin Chieftain. Also, dungeons with “Goblin” in the name never have exactly 8 encounters, suggesting a discontinuity in the generation rules. Thus, the dungeon will end with a Goblin Chieftain (high confidence).
Threat Level: 3.95 (but beware potential bias regarding perceived difficulty of Goblins, reported by abstractapplic)
Goblins: Rangers are strongest.
Goblin Chieftain: Looks like a relatively hard encounter (but be aware of late dungeon bias). Fighter is strongest.
Boulder Trap: looks like a relatively easy encounter. Fighter is strongest.
Ranger and Fighter are obvious choices.
There are a decent number of very similar dungeons to this in the data. Restricting to dungeons with 7 or more total encounters including Goblins, Boulder Trap, Goblin Chieftain and no other encounters, there are 12 wins and 22 losses, maybe not enough to do accurate statistical analysis, but certainly enough for me to engage in my favourite pastime of overfitting to spurious patterns.
Looking at these particular dungeons, Rangers look incredibly strong, Mages look very bad, and Clerics look uncharacteristically meh (they are usually quite good). Going by strongest-looking to weakest-looking and selecting the top four different types, it looks like Ranger, Fighter, Druid, Rogue would be the strongest party.
However, going further down the overfitting-to-spurious-patterns rabbit hole, Druids and Rogues together have a terrible record (1-9) on these dungeons. Note, Druids and Rogues don’t seem to have particular antisynergy in general, so this is most likely completely spurious. However, double Ranger (2-1) looks better assuming the likely spurious patterns are real. Who to drop of Druid and Rogue?
Ranger+Rogue looks good, Fighter+Rogue not so much, Ranger+Druid and Fighter+Druid both OK, so Druid looks the safer choice.
All of this, to be clear, is far too low N to be of any reliable use. But I’m doing it anyway because, whatever, maybe there’s something there.
Another possibility would be Ranger+Fighter+ double Cleric, since both double Cleric parties won. But I’m sticking with double Ranger, Fighter, Druid.
Levels: see below.
The Lost Temple of Lemarchand:
Skeletons → Poison Needle Trap → Zombies → Snake Pit → Poison Needle Trap → Skeletons → Snake Pit → Ghosts
Threat Level: 4
None of these look like particularly tough fights.
Skeletons, Zombies, : Cleric looks best, followed by mage.
Ghosts: Cleric still looks best, but mages look about comparable to fighters in distant second place.
Note: Ghosts commonly occur in both physical and undead-oriented dungeons, while Skeletons and Zombies are more restricted to undead-themed dungeons. So, potential for different biases to creep in from parties being weakened by other fights in different dungeon types.
Poison Needle Trap: Rogues do best, as reported by abstractapplic and yonge.
Snake Pit: Druids do best, as reported by abstractapplic and yonge. Possibly notable: Fighters don’t look especially good here, despite Snake Pits commonly occuring in physical-oriented dungeons.
Obvious choice from just this info is Cleric+Mage+Rogue+Druid.
There isn’t a big pool of dungeons with this exact encounter combo to look at for my overfitting. Although undead-themed dungeons with Skeletons, Zombies and Ghosts are common, and they often have Poison Needle Traps, they don’t often have Snake Pits. In fact, dungeons with “Undead” in the name never have Snake Pits. However, Undead-themed dungeons without “Undead” in the name apparently have looser rules.
However, we can look at dungeons that have subsets of these encounters (with the understanding that the sample is low in Snake Pits).
Looking at this, Clerics, Mages and Rogues look good as expected, but next place is Fighter. Druids look quite bad.
If we look at synergies between these in this tiny data pool, all of Clerics, Mages and Rogues work well with each other, and while Druids still don’t look as good as Fighters, they do OK when paired with these. So, I speculate that druids are only bad for missing something we needed more and we probably have what we need with this party, and that therefore taking Druid to deal with Snake Traps is probably worth missing out on whatever Fighter is bringing us on other fights.
So: Cleric+Mage+Rogue+Druid (same as abstractapplic and Yonge)
Level: see below
The Infernal Den of Cheliax:
Orcs → Snake Pit → Wolves → Snake Pit → Unknown
Measure reports:
The final encounter is a Dragon.
I confirm.
Threat Level: 4.5
Orcs: Fighters do best, then Clerics (as reported by Yonge).
Snake Pit: encounter is also in The Lost Temple of Lemarchand. Druids do best, as reported by abstractapplic and Yonge.
Wolves: Looks like an easy fight, but I expect this is largely because both Fighters and Druids do well against them, and since parties typically have 4 of the 6 classes the large majority of parties will have at least one Fighter or Druid. Fortunately, we are likely to want a Fighter for Orcs or a Druid for Snake Pits anyway.
Dragon: a very hard fight. No class looks to have a big advantage; Fighters, Rangers, Mages and Clerics all do comparably well/badly with Druids worse (by a bit) and Rogues worst.
There are few dungeons that are really close to this one, so only really looked at the individual fights.
If you look at parties with Fighters in them Rangers seem to do better against Dragons than Mages, so I am thinking: Fighter+Ranger+Druid+Cleric.
Conclusion
I have not analyzed the effect of levels. I will just slightly buff up the characters that seem the most important and on the dungeons I expect to be harder, and vice versa. I don’t know the effect of giving different characters much different levels and will avoid that to avoid possible danger.
Solution (unless I change it later):
The Lost Temple of Lemarchand (9,000gp):
Cleric: 3
Mage: 2
Rogue: 2
Druid: 2
The Infernal Den of Cheliax (14,000gp):
Fighter: 4
Ranger: 4
Druid: 3
Cleric: 3
The Goblin Warrens of Khaz-Gorond (13,000gp):
Ranger: 3
Fighter: 4
Druid: 3
Ranger: 3