An adventuring party has a success chance of ~64%. We need to get three of them to win in a row. This is worrying.
It looks like level has almost no impact on chance of success, but there’s a major confounder in that more expensive teams get sent on longer and more arduous journeys: length of a dungeon correlates very strongly with the total price of an expedition, and dungeons with multiple dragons attract a disproportionate number of >level 6 adventurers.
Success rates for dungeons with ‘Goblin’ in the name are much lower than average, though so is the average level of the party sent. I think this means the current market is pretty good at pricing in general, but systematically underestimates Goblins.
A (very) crude approximation is that the price of an expedition is about 2000gp times the number of encounters to be encountered. Our adventurers have to survive a total of 23 encounters, and we only have 36000gp to play with. This is worrying.
Classes seem about evenly distributed, but there’s a bias towards diversity; there are far fewer teams with two or more of a given class than you’d expect if it were random. However, this bias is if anything not strong enough; success rates for parties with four unique classes are much higher than success rates for parties with three. I don’t know to what extent this is because more variety increases the odds that a party will have the right counter to an obstacle, and to what extent class diversity is Inherently Good.
Adventuring parties tend to have everyone be about the same level; this tendency is so strong that the sampling bias makes it hard to work out whether it’s a good idea. I guess I’ll trust convention here?
Literally all the parties with a gap of >3 between their max and min levels are like that because a high-level Rogue joined a low-level party. I’d suspect that this is Rogues faking being higher-levelled to get more gold, but actually teams like this have an above-average success rate, so I have no idea what’s going on. (Fortunately, I don’t have to, since my strategy makes no use of high-level Rogues.)
In general, Clerics are the most useful class, followed by Mages and Fighters.
The actual backbone of my strategy:
A dungeon is a marathon, not a series of sprints; probability of success in later stages is affected by how well a party handled earlier ones. This is shown by the fact that literally all parties managed to defeat their first encounter, and only <0.1% fall to their second (despite the fact that either of these can be Dragons!). The practical implication is that handling ‘easy’ encounters smoothly probably matters, since it means the party will be fresh for the real threats.
Specific encounters have specific counters. By finding what distinguishes the average party defeated by a thing from the average party that encounters a thing, I can determine what classes best combat which obstacles.
Measure has very cleverly inferred what encounters each dungeon is likely to contain, and I’m not shy about copying their homework. (Thank you, Measure.)
Different encounters have vastly different failure probabilities. Dragons are the most dangerous, and Goblin Chieftains are also pretty bad. Our parties will probably have to fight both. This is worrying.
Decisions:
(I reserve the right to change all of these if I come up with a better idea or another commenter shares a new and relevant insight.)
For the Lost Temple of Lemarchand, I’ll send a level 2 Rogue to handle the needletraps*, a level 2 Druid to handle the snakepits, and a level 2 Cleric and a level 2 Mage to handle the various undead.
For the Infernal Den of Cheliax, I’ll send a level 5 Fighter to fight the orcs and the dragon, a level 3 Druid to keep everyone safe from the snakepits and wolves so they’re fresh for the boss fight, and a level 3 Ranger and level 3 Mage to help the Fighter with the dragon (dragons are scary!).
For the Goblin Warrens of Khaz-Gorond, I’ll send a level 4 Fighter to handle the goblin chieftain and the boulders, a level 4 Ranger to handle the rank-and-file goblins, a level 3 Cleric to help the Ranger out, and . . . I guess a level 3 Fighter to support the first one? (I hate to have doubles on a team but there’s no other class that does as well against chiefs and boulders.)
*This is the one place I feel confident Measure made a mistake: “Rogues help with needletraps” is the most reliable inference I ran into in my encounter-countering research, so I don’t get why they’d include a Mage and a Fighter but not a Rogue in Adventuring Party #1.
However:
The odds don’t seem great. The odds of all three adventures concluding successfully really don’t seem great. And that’s assuming all my inferences are correct, which they aren’t. I know my character is set on this path, but if I was faced with a prospect like this in real life, there’s no way I’d bet anything I’d be afraid to lose.
My analysis found that for poison needle traps, clerics and druids were almost as good as rogues, especially at low levels, and the druid will be better for the snake pits.
I admit that I made my choices without considering that later encounters are harder than earlier ones (I suspect this has something to do with lost hp, though I’m still confused by the sharp cutoff in success rates—not only to all parties beat their first encounter, for dungeons with eight or more encounters, the first two encounters are guaranteed wins, and longer dungeons have an even stronger effect.).
Thank you for making this.
Misc. Insights:
An adventuring party has a success chance of ~64%. We need to get three of them to win in a row. This is worrying.
It looks like level has almost no impact on chance of success, but there’s a major confounder in that more expensive teams get sent on longer and more arduous journeys: length of a dungeon correlates very strongly with the total price of an expedition, and dungeons with multiple dragons attract a disproportionate number of >level 6 adventurers.
Success rates for dungeons with ‘Goblin’ in the name are much lower than average, though so is the average level of the party sent. I think this means the current market is pretty good at pricing in general, but systematically underestimates Goblins.
A (very) crude approximation is that the price of an expedition is about 2000gp times the number of encounters to be encountered. Our adventurers have to survive a total of 23 encounters, and we only have 36000gp to play with. This is worrying.
Classes seem about evenly distributed, but there’s a bias towards diversity; there are far fewer teams with two or more of a given class than you’d expect if it were random. However, this bias is if anything not strong enough; success rates for parties with four unique classes are much higher than success rates for parties with three. I don’t know to what extent this is because more variety increases the odds that a party will have the right counter to an obstacle, and to what extent class diversity is Inherently Good.
Adventuring parties tend to have everyone be about the same level; this tendency is so strong that the sampling bias makes it hard to work out whether it’s a good idea. I guess I’ll trust convention here?
Literally all the parties with a gap of >3 between their max and min levels are like that because a high-level Rogue joined a low-level party. I’d suspect that this is Rogues faking being higher-levelled to get more gold, but actually teams like this have an above-average success rate, so I have no idea what’s going on. (Fortunately, I don’t have to, since my strategy makes no use of high-level Rogues.)
In general, Clerics are the most useful class, followed by Mages and Fighters.
The actual backbone of my strategy:
A dungeon is a marathon, not a series of sprints; probability of success in later stages is affected by how well a party handled earlier ones. This is shown by the fact that literally all parties managed to defeat their first encounter, and only <0.1% fall to their second (despite the fact that either of these can be Dragons!). The practical implication is that handling ‘easy’ encounters smoothly probably matters, since it means the party will be fresh for the real threats.
Specific encounters have specific counters. By finding what distinguishes the average party defeated by a thing from the average party that encounters a thing, I can determine what classes best combat which obstacles.
Measure has very cleverly inferred what encounters each dungeon is likely to contain, and I’m not shy about copying their homework. (Thank you, Measure.)
Different encounters have vastly different failure probabilities. Dragons are the most dangerous, and Goblin Chieftains are also pretty bad. Our parties will probably have to fight both. This is worrying.
Decisions:
(I reserve the right to change all of these if I come up with a better idea or another commenter shares a new and relevant insight.)
For the Lost Temple of Lemarchand, I’ll send a level 2 Rogue to handle the needletraps*, a level 2 Druid to handle the snakepits, and a level 2 Cleric and a level 2 Mage to handle the various undead.
For the Infernal Den of Cheliax, I’ll send a level 5 Fighter to fight the orcs and the dragon, a level 3 Druid to keep everyone safe from the snakepits and wolves so they’re fresh for the boss fight, and a level 3 Ranger and level 3 Mage to help the Fighter with the dragon (dragons are scary!).
For the Goblin Warrens of Khaz-Gorond, I’ll send a level 4 Fighter to handle the goblin chieftain and the boulders, a level 4 Ranger to handle the rank-and-file goblins, a level 3 Cleric to help the Ranger out, and . . . I guess a level 3 Fighter to support the first one? (I hate to have doubles on a team but there’s no other class that does as well against chiefs and boulders.)
*This is the one place I feel confident Measure made a mistake: “Rogues help with needletraps” is the most reliable inference I ran into in my encounter-countering research, so I don’t get why they’d include a Mage and a Fighter but not a Rogue in Adventuring Party #1.
However:
The odds don’t seem great. The odds of all three adventures concluding successfully really don’t seem great. And that’s assuming all my inferences are correct, which they aren’t. I know my character is set on this path, but if I was faced with a prospect like this in real life, there’s no way I’d bet anything I’d be afraid to lose.
Everyone’s been getting all the names right this time. I’m quite surprised, and feel like I should be awarding roleplaying XP or something.
My analysis found that for poison needle traps, clerics and druids were almost as good as rogues, especially at low levels, and the druid will be better for the snake pits.
I admit that I made my choices without considering that later encounters are harder than earlier ones (I suspect this has something to do with lost hp, though I’m still confused by the sharp cutoff in success rates—not only to all parties beat their first encounter, for dungeons with eight or more encounters, the first two encounters are guaranteed wins, and longer dungeons have an even stronger effect.).