Also need to point out, Large monsters come in smaller groups, meaning the possibility of the heroes focusing fire on one is increased, as opposed to dealing with a swarm of smaller opponents.

With a 4 hero group, that means 2 large monsters taking all of the attacks and you only need one really lucky shot to down a monster. The OL for our group was quite flustered when our healer, Elder Mok, turned out to be able to oneshot his Arachyuras. Depending on the group composition, and armament, a large monster groups could conceivably be gone after the second of the hero's character's turn, leaving the other heroes to go after another monster group or a quest objective.

Large monsters have their qualities, but quantity is one of the qualities they do not have and when it's been demonstrated that it only takes one hero to down one of the OL's large monsters, the ability to reinforce only one small or one large monster per turn becomes moot.

One of the mistakes I feel newer players consistently make is overvaluing large monsters and undervaluing small ones. Small monsters generally do more damage, give you more options, and are more resistant to bad die rolls.

Basic example - damage output of goblin archers vs. ettins.

Archers - blue + yellow (2.3 damage average) - grey (1.33 shield average) = .97 damage average. Plus surge damage - 5/6 surge for blue + yellow * 1 damage for minions * 4 minions + 5/6 surge * 2 surge damage for masters * 1 master / 5 goblins total = 1 surge damage per goblin average. Goblins do 1.97 damage average * 5 goblins = 9.85 damage average.

Ettins - Blue + red (3.13 damage average) - grey (1.33 shield average) = 1.8 damage. Plus surge damage - 1/2 surge for blue + red * 2 damage for minion * 1 minion + 1/2 surge * 3 damage for masters * 1 master / 2 ettins = 1.25 surge damage per ettin total. Ettins do 3.05 damage each or 6.1 damage total.

Goblins do almost 2/3rds more damage than ettins. They do it at range; they are more resistant to bad luck because of their greater numbers; they are more flexible with how they dish that damage out. I'm not saying that there are no cases I'd prefer Ettins to Goblin Archers (although I WOULD say there are no cases I'd prefer Ettins to Kobolds) but in general, the goblins are vastly more dangerous than the ettins, and I'll take them most of the time.

What people (INCLUDING FFG LATELY) don't seem to really understand is that the reinforcement rules are a balancing factor that helps make large monsters playable. They are, on the balance, much weaker; being able to reinforce one goblin vs. one ettin helps balance those scales a bit.

What people (INCLUDING FFG LATELY) don't seem to really understand is that the reinforcement rules are a balancing factor that helps make large monsters playable. They are, on the balance, much weaker; being able to reinforce one goblin vs. one ettin helps balance those scales a bit.

Believe it or not, some mechanics in D2E actually help balance things (perhaps "threat" reinforcement isn't always the best course?)

I have a script written that calculates the probabilities of damage, surges, and range for a given dice roll. It would be a small matter to calculate the average attack results of each monster group for "1 round of attacks." Sometime when I have time, I'll do that.

One of the mistakes I feel newer players consistently make is overvaluing large monsters and undervaluing small ones. Small monsters generally do more damage, give you more options, and are more resistant to bad die rolls.

Basic example - damage output of goblin archers vs. ettins.

Archers - blue + yellow (2.3 damage average) - grey (1.33 shield average) = .97 damage average. Plus surge damage - 5/6 surge for blue + yellow * 1 damage for minions * 4 minions + 5/6 surge * 2 surge damage for masters * 1 master / 5 goblins total = 1 surge damage per goblin average. Goblins do 1.97 damage average * 5 goblins = 9.85 damage average.

Ettins - Blue + red (3.13 damage average) - grey (1.33 shield average) = 1.8 damage. Plus surge damage - 1/2 surge for blue + red * 2 damage for minion * 1 minion + 1/2 surge * 3 damage for masters * 1 master / 2 ettins = 1.25 surge damage per ettin total. Ettins do 3.05 damage each or 6.1 damage total.

Goblins do almost 2/3rds more damage than ettins. They do it at range; they are more resistant to bad luck because of their greater numbers; they are more flexible with how they dish that damage out. I'm not saying that there are no cases I'd prefer Ettins to Goblin Archers (although I WOULD say there are no cases I'd prefer Ettins to Kobolds) but in general, the goblins are vastly more dangerous than the ettins, and I'll take them most of the time.

What people (INCLUDING FFG LATELY) don't seem to really understand is that the reinforcement rules are a balancing factor that helps make large monsters playable. They are, on the balance, much weaker; being able to reinforce one goblin vs. one ettin helps balance those scales a bit.

I don't know man, I feel your numbers are kind of off. Yellow and Blue doing only 0.8 less damage than blue and red (without surges) goes completely against my expiriences, I mean there are at least 2 sides on the yellow dice that has no damage at all, while the red die has only one side with 1 damage and goes only up from there.

Moreover you won't roll nearly enough attacks to really get to the avarages, so the results are always much more swingy in the real games (and blue+red swings much higher than blue+yellow)

Then you have to keep in mind that goblin archers can't spend their surges if their master is dead, which will happen pretty quickly and you didn't account for that in your statistics.

Last but not least, rerolling the blue die in case of misses is much more rewarding when you roll 3 damage and one surge instead of 1 damage and one surge.

I don't say large monsters do more damage throughout the game, but they are definatly stronger in the first few act 1 quests given the right circumstances. (heroes picking up armor, heroes lacking reach/ranged weapons and so on) Moreover the Ettin master has the really nice throw ability, while goblin archers only can move through heroes and you are comparing the worst big monsters to the second worst small monsters here.

I don't know man, I feel your numbers are kind of off. Yellow and Blue doing only 0.8 less damage than blue and red (without surges) goes completely against my expiriences,

Here are all of the weighted damage results for dice rolls up to 2 power dice (3 dice total.) Surges are not accounted for, but misses are. The average damages vary much less than you might expect, though it's true you don't really get a statistical average over the course of a campaign. Monstergroup size will definitely make a difference in whether or not small groups are "better" than large groups, as well as what the minions roll compared to the master. It probably won't be finished for a little while, but I can calculate the average and standard deviation of a single round of attacks from each monster group pretty easily. It just won't include surge abilities (but if you do that, everything gets more complicated anyway because you need to start weighing damage against conditions.)

DAMaz - you are certainly welcome to play the game however you like. If you like Ettins because you enjoy the feeling of the (rare) one big hit rather than smaller, consistent hits - more power to you. But hard numbers win every time, and the goblins dish out WAY more damage then the ettins. As I said, it is perfectly normal to feel like the large monsters are more powerful, but it's simply not true; look at the numbers rather than the way you 'feel' about them.

It's CERTAINLY not true that Ettins are more powerful early on. Ettins will, however, start catching up once the heroes start stacking defenses. With two grey defense dice across the whole party, ettins will do slightly more damage than goblins.

Also remember that Goblins don't need THEIR master, just A master or lieutenant. The number of situations where the Cowardly ability actually comes into play is vanishingly small - I may never have seen it happen, to be honest. Honestly, I think that you need to play with them more if you think goblin archers are the "Second worst small monster in the game." Archers are one of the most powerful monsters in the game, and IMO learning to use them well is an important part of becoming a good OL. They're tier-1 damage dealers - probably the most powerful ranged attackers, and pretty powerful compared to most melee groups - with ridiculous speed, top-notch numbers, and the incredibly powerful Scamper ability. Looking through the list, and setting aside Kobolds, there's only a handful of small monsters I can see choosing over goblins, and each one is because of scenario-dependent specials - Ironbound, Razorwings, Sorcerers, maybe Volucrux Reavers can all be better depending on the situation. But Goblins are just all-around amazingly good.

DAMaz - you are certainly welcome to play the game however you like. If you like Ettins because you enjoy the feeling of the (rare) one big hit rather than smaller, consistent hits - more power to you. But hard numbers win every time, and the goblins dish out WAY more damage then the ettins. As I said, it is perfectly normal to feel like the large monsters are more powerful, but it's simply not true; look at the numbers rather than the way you 'feel' about them.

It's CERTAINLY not true that Ettins are more powerful early on. Ettins will, however, start catching up once the heroes start stacking defenses. With two grey defense dice across the whole party, ettins will do slightly more damage than goblins.

Also remember that Goblins don't need THEIR master, just A master or lieutenant. The number of situations where the Cowardly ability actually comes into play is vanishingly small - I may never have seen it happen, to be honest. Honestly, I think that you need to play with them more if you think goblin archers are the "Second worst small monster in the game." Archers are one of the most powerful monsters in the game, and IMO learning to use them well is an important part of becoming a good OL. They're tier-1 damage dealers - probably the most powerful ranged attackers, and pretty powerful compared to most melee groups - with ridiculous speed, top-notch numbers, and the incredibly powerful Scamper ability. Looking through the list, and setting aside Kobolds, there's only a handful of small monsters I can see choosing over goblins, and each one is because of scenario-dependent specials - Ironbound, Razorwings, Sorcerers, maybe Volucrux Reavers can all be better depending on the situation. But Goblins are just all-around amazingly good.

I never said I feel some monster is better than the other. I said those are my expiriences with the game in real game-situations.

So far goblin archers always died much too fast in my games to really start stacking those numbers and then their numbers were gone (I only played the base campaign yet, so no reinforce more than one monster for me)

If goblin archers really are this kind of top-tier small monster, why are you comparing them to the worst big monster? That's hardly a comparison that can entail a general proposition

Ettins arent the worst big monster, I find them to be one of the better ones in fact because of the throw ability, and in act 1 they have the highest single target damage in the game with a surge for +3 damage on the master.

I generally find them to be more useful than Merriods, which tend to die too quickly to really root anyone down for more than a turn. I prefer Ettins to Ynfernael hulks as well.

Pick a big monster and let's compare - Ettins were mentioned in the thread so they're the ones that I used. You say that they're the worst big monster, but off the top of my head they're the heaviest hitters - I can't think of anyone else that's got B/R with +2/+3 on a surge. They've got average HP, the best defense dice in act one (IIRC) and an incredibly useful tactical ability in Throw. But if you think they're the worst big monster, I'm happy to take a look at any big monster you think is good.

In terms of damage output ettins are indeed one of the worst big monsters. Their surge ability is all but guaranteed with r+b and all the interesting abilities (HP, defense and throw) that actually make them good have no role in your little statistical game.

What about Merriods where the master can hit up to 2 heroes simultaneously

What about shadowdragons where the master can hit up to 4 heroes simultaneously?

what about barghests?

If you don't consider just the base game take giants into consideration where the master can hit up to 4 heroes simultaneously

btw. in my real games huge chunks of damage always do a far better job at taking a hero down than small sustained damage. You need high impact damage you can enhance with your cards to down the healer before he can heal himself, or before he can heal the wounded hero up.

I prefer Ettins to Ynfernael hulks as well.

Ettins are good monsters, but I would take the Ynfernael Hulks anytime over them whenever a quest allows. The main reason being that they cover long distances through Bloodrush very easily. On a straight line that's 5 (Bloodrush) + 1 (expand) + 3 (normal move) + 1 (expand) = 10 squares. bar the use of Dash or Blinding Speed, obviously, which makes this even more insane.

I use this in quests like Into the Dark (SoN) where non-1x1 monsters are a good choice (for a change..). Also you can use that for the Charge which is normally devastating. It's a tough monster so throwing it into the action to divert my heroes is a good thing to do by default, especially if you have lava/hazard spaces around. heck throwing heroes at each other is a funny thing to do too. There should actually be a rule saying that you can do this on an occupied space or even against a wall, thematically it would make a lot of sense and is already covered to some extent by things like Grease Trap. The Throw ability on the Ettins is nice, but getting a surge out of an attack on a Hulk is perfectly doable.

About Sweep and Firebreath, I mean these are powerful abilities however your heroes can definitely negate them quite easily through clever positioning of the Heroes. This is where things like Shifting Earth and everything forcing the heroes to move one space in the direction of your choice is important, but that's really situational too. The heroes have this too with the Wildlander's ability to move one space every time a omnster closes down to him/her. Anyhow, I rarely get to use Sweep with my Giants, and I rarely get to use Blast with my Lava Beetles. Then Giants are good for their body alone.

I like Elementals. The only shame is the lack of combat abilities, but utility-wise they are very good. The Golems also fill that spot of being a great utility tool for blocking corridors.

I also like Chaos Beasts a lot more than I thought I would, especially with these RRB weapons my heroes are wielding now.

Damage is Damage: every monster does some.

And situational powers are situational. I can't recall more than 2 or 3 attacks where the OL in our games got to use a fire breath on more than one character, and I'm pretty sure for most of them, it was Villagers, that weren't under the direct control of the heroes (Don't get to choose where they set up, limited choices of actions, etc)

Same thing with sweep, with the extra added caution that if you get close to certain heroes, you're opening yourself up for a whacking.

The ettin has been a good OL tool almost every time he's been used, despite how fast he can be killed, sometimes. His ability to throw helps the OL remove hero barricades, helps the OL get some tactical control over the battlefield and that's what helps you win.

Okay, sure, let's take a look at those other monsters. (And ignore comments like "your little statistical game.")

Merriod - Even assuming that the Master Merriod ALWAYS hits two heroes, the meriods will deal out 7.4 damage per round - still significantly less than than goblins.

Shadowdragons - If the heroes clump up near a master shadowdragon and let you blast four of them with firebreath, why are we even having this conversation? You are going to win. However, for the sake of argument, let's say that you can on average catch a spectacular 3 heroes in firebreath. Then dragons will deal out an average of 8.03 damage per round.

Giants - Giants have no surge damage ability. Even if you manage to Sweep all 4 heroes - which again, requires some fairly terrible heroes - you're only doing 9 damage a round. Not only that, but you're spreading it out among many heroes - much easier to deal with.

Barghests - They're not large monsters, they're medium ones - and like many medium monsters, I think they're pretty good. (They're no Rat Swarms, but...) A pack of barghests dishes out 9.7 damage per turn - almost even with our Goblins - is tough, fast, and has Howl, which is a very worthwhile ability.

Not only that, but every one of these monsters are melee. Goblins are not only doing more damage, they're doing it from range - AND they have a + range surge ability, AND they're really fast. It's pretty easy for a group of goblins to move into range, shoot, then move out of range again - forcing the heroes to chase them down. (Goblins have better than a 50% chance to hit at range 5.) You may enjoy those big hits more, DAMaz, but numbers don't lie; unless you've got heavily armored heroes, those goblins are going to be doing WAY more damage.

I think one problem, DAMaz, might be with how you think of the yellow die - you mentioned earlier that you remember that it has two blank faces. Nope - it is EXACTLY -1 damage from the red die. It's got one zero, three ones, and two twos. It's also got some range on the low end and three surges. So a master elemental (BR damage, but no surge abilities at all) does almost the exact same damage as a minion goblin (BY with a 5/6 chance of a +1 damage surge.)

My central thesis, repeated - the game is balanced against large monsters. Packs of smaller guys are generally better. (And the ridiculous pack size of Kobolds makes them the best of all, by far.) People often don't realize this because dishing out 20 damage in a round with Goblins isn't memorable. Rolling 5 damage and 2 surges on a Master Shadow Dragon, and nailing four heroes for seven damage each - the kind of thing that might happen once in all the time you're playing - is monumentally memorable. But that's an anecdote; the data is there for anyone to look at. In most circumstance, small monsters dish out far more damage. The reinforcement rules help even things out for the large monsters. Even so, it's not balanced, but it makes them much more playable.

And that is why I consider the Rune Master the most obnoxious thing to play against. Blast at will guaranteed for the most part is rather irritating, because it limits somewhat the effectiveness of small monsters. You need to spread them around to avoid blast, which limits their movement options and damage potential.

Okay, sure, let's take a look at those other monsters. (And ignore comments like "your little statistical game.")

Merriod - Even assuming that the Master Merriod ALWAYS hits two heroes, the meriods will deal out 7.4 damage per round - still significantly less than than goblins.

Shadowdragons - If the heroes clump up near a master shadowdragon and let you blast four of them with firebreath, why are we even having this conversation? You are going to win. However, for the sake of argument, let's say that you can on average catch a spectacular 3 heroes in firebreath. Then dragons will deal out an average of 8.03 damage per round.

Giants - Giants have no surge damage ability. Even if you manage to Sweep all 4 heroes - which again, requires some fairly terrible heroes - you're only doing 9 damage a round. Not only that, but you're spreading it out among many heroes - much easier to deal with.

Barghests - They're not large monsters, they're medium ones - and like many medium monsters, I think they're pretty good. (They're no Rat Swarms, but...) A pack of barghests dishes out 9.7 damage per turn - almost even with our Goblins - is tough, fast, and has Howl, which is a very worthwhile ability.

Not only that, but every one of these monsters are melee. Goblins are not only doing more damage, they're doing it from range - AND they have a + range surge ability, AND they're really fast. It's pretty easy for a group of goblins to move into range, shoot, then move out of range again - forcing the heroes to chase them down. (Goblins have better than a 50% chance to hit at range 5.) You may enjoy those big hits more, DAMaz, but numbers don't lie; unless you've got heavily armored heroes, those goblins are going to be doing WAY more damage.

I think one problem, DAMaz, might be with how you think of the yellow die - you mentioned earlier that you remember that it has two blank faces. Nope - it is EXACTLY -1 damage from the red die. It's got one zero, three ones, and two twos. It's also got some range on the low end and three surges. So a master elemental (BR damage, but no surge abilities at all) does almost the exact same damage as a minion goblin (BY with a 5/6 chance of a +1 damage surge.)

My central thesis, repeated - the game is balanced against large monsters. Packs of smaller guys are generally better. (And the ridiculous pack size of Kobolds makes them the best of all, by far.) People often don't realize this because dishing out 20 damage in a round with Goblins isn't memorable. Rolling 5 damage and 2 surges on a Master Shadow Dragon, and nailing four heroes for seven damage each - the kind of thing that might happen once in all the time you're playing - is monumentally memorable. But that's an anecdote; the data is there for anyone to look at. In most circumstance, small monsters dish out far more damage. The reinforcement rules help even things out for the large monsters. Even so, it's not balanced, but it makes them much more playable.

If you still ignore the fact that you can't just blindly apply statistics and keep telling me that numbers don't lie, I don't know if you can somehow understand what I'm trying to say.

The thing is you are abstracting alot to get the clear numbers of your statistics and by that you ignore details that interact with other game-mechanics quite a lot and are therefore not so meaningless that you can just ignore them like your statistics do.

Take for example the misschance of big monsters. While they are statistically as high as the misschance for archers they behave a little different. While you shoot alot with goblins a miss will come up a few times every encounter. With big monsters you hit much less often, so a miss will come up so rarly, that it's entirly possible to reroll any miss, at least any miss that comes with a good red die-roll.

Playing a frenzy card on a large monster is also much more effective than playing it on one goblin archer.

Last, but not least especially in the first few quests killing even one large monster costs the heroes a lot of actions, maybe even all of their actions, considering they aren't extremely lucky. Even then you can reinforce this monster and get it in position with one dash card very easily. Killing 2-3 goblin archers often gets done with only 3 actions, less if you play against a mage (but I guess every mage of the base game makes small monsters obsolete). If you can reinforce only one goblin, well I think we don't have to keep on discussing, but even in your anecdote of being able to reinforce all 3 you won't be able to get them back in battle as easily as the one big monster, because you would need an absurd amount of cards to do that.

So my expiriences with monstertypes have been that in the first round the damage output is fairly even, but the longer the encounter goes, the less damage small monsters do

If you still ignore the fact that you can't just blindly apply statistics and keep telling me that numbers don't lie, I don't know if you can somehow understand what I'm trying to say.

DAMaz, I certainly understand what you're trying to say, quite well. But when you say things like "Take for example the misschance of big monsters. While they are statistically as high as the misschance for archers they behave a little different." I feel like you fundamentally misunderstand the way statistics work.

In any case, you seem to be taking the discussion very personally, so I think I'll bow out at this point. I've said what I have to say, and you can choose to agree, disagree, take offense at, or whatever else you like.

If you still ignore the fact that you can't just blindly apply statistics and keep telling me that numbers don't lie, I don't know if you can somehow understand what I'm trying to say.

DAMaz, I certainly understand what you're trying to say, quite well. But when you say things like "Take for example the misschance of big monsters. While they are statistically as high as the misschance for archers they behave a little different." I feel like you fundamentally misunderstand the way statistics work.

In any case, you seem to be taking the discussion very personally, so I think I'll bow out at this point. I've said what I have to say, and you can choose to agree, disagree, take offense at, or whatever else you like.

Feel free to do what pleases you. Just rest assured I don't take this discussion personal in any way shape or form.

English isn't my native language so I might have worded some things in a way, where your conclusion is legit, while I did not intend to evoke that notion.

What I meant by "Take for example the misschance of big monsters. While they are statistically as high as the misschance for archers they behave a little different." is ""Take for example the misschance of big monsters. While it is statistically as high as the misschance for archers, in an actual game, big monsters will miss much less, because of how the low number of their attacks interact with other game-mechanisms (like OL-cards).

like I said do as you please and happy gaming

You're both making good points, even if the discussion is getting heated. I think what we've arrived at so far is:

1) While large monsters do (that is, roll ) higher average damage per attack, by virtue of small monster groups having more monsters, there are more attacks and, therefore, a higher damage output .

2) Armor makes a difference. 5 blue/yellow attacks may not get through gray black armor at all, while 2 blue/red/red attacks almost certainly will.

3) Surge abilities and other monster abilities/attack type/speed, etc really muddle the picture.

Large monsters roll fewer dice so there will be fewer overall misses, but there will also be fewer overall hits. They both miss 1/6th of the time. The difference is that the miss on the large monster is more significant, while a miss on a smaller monster, while occurring more frequently in the absolute (but not relative sense) will be less significant.

It still averages out in favor of smaller monsters. Bigger monsters do better against heavily armored targets. This is a general rule: surge abilities modify this stuff significantly (like volucrux reavers being AMAZING against armor).

Large monsters are very useful for blocking space and tanking a group with weak damage abilities or without high piercing. Small monsters are better for high single target damage attacks or high piercing, since their defense is less relevent anyway.

Large monsters roll fewer dice so there will be fewer overall misses, but there will also be fewer overall hits. They both miss 1/6th of the time. The difference is that the miss on the large monster is more significant, while a miss on a smaller monster, while occurring more frequently in the absolute (but not relative sense) will be less significant.

I'm just arguing that you can combat misses on large monsters much easier with OL cards due to their small absolute number, making their impact nearly non-existant. This isn't so effective on smaller monsters

Moreover playing frenzy has a much higher impact on large monsters.

My point is that considering all these things I don't consider large monster to have a lower damage output than small monsters in general.

Large monsters roll fewer dice so there will be fewer overall misses, but there will also be fewer overall hits. They both miss 1/6th of the time. The difference is that the miss on the large monster is more significant, while a miss on a smaller monster, while occurring more frequently in the absolute (but not relative sense) will be less significant.

I'm just arguing that you can combat misses on large monsters much easier with OL cards due to their small absolute number, making their impact nearly non-existant. This isn't so effective on smaller monsters

Moreover playing frenzy has a much higher impact on large monsters.

My point is that considering all these things I don't consider large monster to have a lower damage output than small monsters in general.

Frenzy isn't that much more effective though. Compare frenzy on the master ettin vs. master goblin archer: it's what, an average of a point and a half of damage better, maybe? The overwhelming damage numbers from small numbers vastly outperforms even using overlord cards on large monsters.

Large monsters roll fewer dice so there will be fewer overall misses, but there will also be fewer overall hits. They both miss 1/6th of the time. The difference is that the miss on the large monster is more significant, while a miss on a smaller monster, while occurring more frequently in the absolute (but not relative sense) will be less significant.

I'm just arguing that you can combat misses on large monsters much easier with OL cards due to their small absolute number, making their impact nearly non-existant. This isn't so effective on smaller monsters

Moreover playing frenzy has a much higher impact on large monsters.

My point is that considering all these things I don't consider large monster to have a lower damage output than small monsters in general.

Frenzy isn't that much more effective though. Compare frenzy on the master ettin vs. master goblin archer: it's what, an average of a point and a half of damage better, maybe? The overwhelming damage numbers from small numbers vastly outperforms even using overlord cards on large monsters.

With blue and red dice you have a chance of over 50% to roll 4 or 5 damage, your surge does +3 damage which you can add with an OL card if necessary. With blue and yellow dice you have a chance of over 50% to roll 2 or 3 damage (which is nearly the half of the ettin) and a surge for +2 damage. You can say: Well that's only 2 damage more but on the other hand it's nearly twice as much.

I still don't get why you guys think it's as easy to attack every round with 5 goblin archers as it is to attack with 2 ettins, when you only can reinforce 1 monster per turn and goblin archers have typically 2 HP while ettins have 5 and 8 and double the defense. Realistically you won't be attacking with more than 3 goblin archers per turn, while you often attack with 2 ettins. If you half the miss chance (because you can reroll a few misses in a real game), you will see that the numbers show how 2 ettins do more damage on average than 3 goblins and that's although I'm pretty sure ettins will often miss not once given the right circumstances (no bad luck, right OL cards). This will make their avarage damage output even higher, because doing 0 damage affects a high average much stronger than a low damage average that's simple math.

Why are you guys still arguing over the excact numbers, I never doubted them. I only argued how to interpret them and so far you never discussed their interpretation with me, which I find very confusing.

Goblin archers are ranged and take less room, so it's easier to attack with them. They have a speed of 5, so they can stay away and stay alive easier.

When you start getting down into "interpretation" of numbers, you're just missing the point.

When you start getting down into "interpretation" of numbers, you're just missing the point.

To be fair, Whitewing, that's just not true. If we had a model that accounted for the monster group's different surge abilities, monster actions, and the actual defense of the party, perhaps we could make some objective statements about monster functionality in game. However, all we're working with is "average damage output of monster * number of monsters in group" and looking at that number. From that information we can certainly say without any doubt that on average, goblin archers, cave spiders, and volucrix reavers (for example) roll more damage per round of attacks than ettins or shadow dragons, purely considering the dice roll. That is indisputable, the numbers do not lie. However, that number also does not tell us everything.

As soon as a shadow dragon does Fire Breath, that master's attack suddenly can count as 4 attacks, bumping the shadow dragon up to one of the highest potential damage monsters in the game. Does it happen often that a shadow dragon will hit 4 heroes for 11 damage? Definitely not often enough to put it in the model, but it's an example of the type of event our model simply does not reflect. It also doesn't reflect the fact that goblin archers can strike and run, or scamper, or that hybrid sentinels can fly while shadow dragons can't. The truth is that different size monster groups are better in different quests/ situations. Neither shadow dragons nor goblin archers are the best group for the job in every scenario- and you know that as well as I do.

While that's true, Zaltyre, I think you're oversimplifying things. Sure, we can't crunch monsters down into numbers and just pick the monster with the highest score. But we CAN look at the damage output, make reasonable determinations about about the value of the other monster abilities, and use our experience to then talk about relative monster power.

For example - while fire breathing on 4 heroes at once can, conceivably, happen, it's not something that happens often. I think most people would agree that two potential fire breath targets is a reasonable average. Sorcerer's summon ability isn't really quantifiable - but it's easy to see that - in any situation where the OL needs to move monsters quickly - it is phenomenally powerful. Experience shows us that the master cave spider's web ability - which initially seems really good - isn't that powerful.

Using all of these things, I can tell you that in most cases, I would prefer to use goblin archers than ettins. Not in all cases, certainly - but in most cases, and because of that, I can safely call them a "better" monster group.