I am running my first long campaign in 5e. I have created several encounters for the party, which should have been difficult at their level, and they handled them with ease.
The party composition is as follows:
Human Tempest Cleric Tiefling Druid, Circle of the Moon Halfling Bard, School of Whispers Dwarf Fighter, Battle Master Triton Wizard, Transmutation
All level 3.
The theme of the campaign is based around the idea of an ancient wizard who was an advisor to the king committed several acts of treasonous betrayal to the crown. (For reasons never revealed.) Anyway, the wizard was eventually captured alive at the order of the King, and instead of death, was sentenced to exile on a small remote island, and placed under constant guard. (basically exiled imprisonment.) Anyway, using his wiles, he convinces one of the guards to bring him a book to read. And over the remainder of his lifetime, accumulates several books, and eventually finds the means to attain lichdom.
As he has continued to study for several hundred years, he finally feels the confidence that he needs to seek vengeance on the lands that exiled and imprisoned him. (So it seems for the common people, but the real reason for his return is not to be revealed until the party is much much stronger, and ready for a direct confrontation with him.)
Anyway, he has sent some agents out to begin amassing armies of any kind. Some agents are amassing an army of goblinoids, orcs, etc, while others are seeking armies of more colorful types.
Anyway during this same time, a cult is also working to assemble all the needed pieces of a puzzle to resurrect an ancient god who has very little information recorded about them. The lore places this god as the Original ruler of the abyss. During a time of weakness, he was overthrown by Asmodeus and "Sealed" away under the guise of multiple complex puzzles. Well the remnants of his followers have been working to release him for hundreds of years, and now are very near to accomplishing this goal. (The original reason why the Wizard had committed the acts of treason was to prevent this.)
So, with a rising cult bent on releasing an ancient God, a Lich bent on war to prevent this release, but appearing to be amassing armies for an assault on the many kingdoms, and the ordinary baddies of the land...
What would be an appropriate encounter for them?
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You can lead a dwarf to water, but you can't make him get in the boat.
It seems like you already have very good ideas, this sounds like a fun campaign to play in.
If you are having a hard time making the encounters challenging, I might have some ideas you will find useful. Create encounters with luck of the dice and unforseen occurrences in mind. If the group is breezing through an encounter, have reinforcements planned or a secondary encounter that keeps the party under the gun. If the group is having terrible luck, drop some planned enemies out of the encounter or have something intervene on their behalf. Make the players work for information or for devising plans through roleplaying, don't allow too much out of character metagaming. Three to six players will outsmart your ideas every time unless you create ingame limitations such as cost, time, character knowledge etc.
thanks, I utilized a "cause and effect" encounter in our last session that is going to come back to bite them later. Bandit Chief and some bandits laid in ambush, and they routed the ambush before each party member had 2 rounds to attack.
The bandit chief ran, but the bandits he commanded all died. He will be stalking and returning later for vengeance of his own.
Anyway, they are moving towards a mining town and I want to utilize the nearby mine as part of their next "quest". I was thinking of bringing in a cavern of dark crystals and using a Shadow demon and dretch, but after the speed which they dispatched the last conflict, I am wondering if such an encounter would be enough.
I like spell caster enemies and anything with multiattack to act as difficulty dials in a fight. If the fight's going too easily, have the creature with 3 attacks per round spend them all on those squishy targets. If it's too hard, spread those 3 attacks between several players.
For casters I'll sometimes alter their spell list. I had a battlemaster who was just... destroying encounters I was setting up, so one fight he got hit with a polymorph on round one. For practical purposes he was taken out of the fight, the player is always up for whatever so he just spent a few rounds doing the Help Action until someone could break the enemy's concentration. I totally can't pull that card again but just a simple spell swap completely upended the party's go to strategies.
Unrelated, I have to agree with Wtfdndad. Sounds like a great campaign!
Your story sounds great, but to help with the encounter building I wish I had a little more information. It sounds like so far you threw some bandits at them? What else hasn't lived up to your thoughts on challenging the way you had hoped so far?
A few quick general tips are always:
An "adventuring day" (ie dungeon diving and similiar concepts) are theoretically balanced around 5-6 encounters as a means to drain resources. If a party only gets 1 or 2 fights, they have all of their best abilities ready and itching to be used. Note not all days are adventuring days.
Minions Minions Minions - weak allies to your encounter centerpiece eat up Action Economy. I still throw regular goblins at a level 7 party of 6 because they chew up an attack action. If they get ignored, they are able to harry those pesky casters in the back.
Retreat and Reinforcements - sounds like you tried this already. Don't give up on it, most creatures will flee when faced with the chance of dying. (except PCs for some reason lol)
Use the environment to challenge - spider webs slow down movement, clouds of noxious gas could poison a character, river to put distance between NPCs and PCs, or ledges to give them protection from martials
Don't be afraid to give your enemies more HPs if you simply want the fight to go a little longer.
A useful trick I find to find out how survivable the NPCs are is by getting a rough calculation on my players Damage Per Round. Basically look at their character sheet and take the most powerful or likely actions they would take and take the average damages of those attacks. The last time I did that was when my players were level 4, they had the potential to do an average of 75 points of damage per round. This assumes an all out offensive blitz and all attacks succeeding. I know that if I want a fight that should go at least 3 rounds, then I need to have at least 150-200 hps worth of enemies on the field.
Thanks, this actually helps a lot. Especially the last bullet point. I will go over their estimated dmg per round if they were to deal the maximum damage possible. This will probably be a lot higher than I expect.
Other encounters have been mostly around Goblinoids, Bugbears, Hobgoblins. In a ruins environment I had several encounters in place leading to a boss battle with many minions. So, they had in boss room the Boss (Priest), Cult Fanatic, and 8 cultists. (Party has a few AOE spells.) There were 5 smaller skirmishes which the party dispatched quickly without using much of their skill set. A few cultists, 1 more cult fanatic, a goblin boss, a few goblins, and before entering the underground section these conflicts took place, was another with 2 Goblins, A hobgoblin, and 2 bugbears.
Only 2 of these lasted more than 2 or 3 rounds. (It was intended for the smaller ones to be simple because I was throwing a lot in one room.)
Still, the dispatched everything with greater ease than I expected them to. I thought I would have to fudge a couple of rolls in the last fight, and instead, didn't even get the Priest to escape as was originally planned.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
You can lead a dwarf to water, but you can't make him get in the boat.
So it sounds like you have a solid plan. I would guess you have players who make intelligent choices and coordinate well together.
A center piece encounter using a Shadow Demon could definitely be doable and interesting. If I was to run that against your party, for sure it would be in a room filled with darkness. That blinds your wizard and cleric, which will make things interesting unless they bust out a light source. Combine the darkness with it's Incorporeal movement and you can definitely cause some issues. Maybe use Shadows as a minion. That strength drain is another issue to be dealt with for them.
in terms of "stocking the dungeon" for earlier encounters: dretch is a good choice, Abyssla Wretches, quasits (already shaped changed or invisible for a surprise attack perhaps), spectre?
The idea of the mine is that the miners opened up what seemed like a resource rich cavern of darkened crystals. They continued to mine these crystals, not knowing what they were, and the more then mined, the more the other crystals began to pulse with a sort of dark energy, until finally some of them exploded and the "Sealed" shadow demon was released. The idea of the shadows is great. May even incorporate light limitations due to the dark energies which have permeated the cavern.
I calculated the damage possibility for the party. In the impossible scenario where they hit with max damage (no crits) in optimal conditions and only hit one target at a time, they can deal up to 132 damage in round 1 if everyone gets an attack. That said, 2 of the PCs have AOE (thunderwave on 2 of them (bard and cleric), and Cleric has Shatter.) When combined with channel divinity, it can hit with 24 dmg to everything in it's sphere of effect. (Against the bandits, he forgot about the Channel divinity or would have killed all in one hit, minus bandit chief.)
After a few rolls with everyone and averaging out, they still have 80+ dmg per round potential.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
You can lead a dwarf to water, but you can't make him get in the boat.
Yeah, again this is optimal conditions. So if they were to 1v1 your Shadow Demon, he would be dead within 2 rounds even with it's resistances.
Things to consider as well is Level 3 is a substantial power bump for most classes (subclass features, 2nd level spell slots, etc). You will hit another one at level 5.
A lot of good advice here, one other thing I'd recommend is to keep in mind the bad guys are fighting on their home turf. In many cases it's appropriate to set up the terrain to very much favor the enemy.
Similar to your polymorph thing, the most interesting encounters are often the ones that force your party to go to plan B. Not only does it keep combats from all starting to feel the same, you also start to see some feedback effects where players will make character choices that are more well-rounded and not completely optimized for a single strategy.
I think you've seen the danger here too though - you can't just use unlimited DM power to directly confound the group's choices either. It has to feel natural and be a reasonable approach the enemy would make to avoid the metagame response of "Ok, the DM is trying to shut down Bob again."
One thing that makes this more workable is when you have someone - like your bandit leader - who has seen the party in action. Escaping enemies carry information about party tactics, and should inform later encounters designed to foil those tactics. After the first couple times you make it clear that Guy Who Escaped had info about them, they will be much more motivated to stop people from escaping in the future - and an alternative encounter goal like "Stop the guy from escaping" is in turn a great way to force the party to change up their tactics.
Hi,
I am running my first long campaign in 5e. I have created several encounters for the party, which should have been difficult at their level, and they handled them with ease.
The party composition is as follows:
Human Tempest Cleric
Tiefling Druid, Circle of the Moon
Halfling Bard, School of Whispers
Dwarf Fighter, Battle Master
Triton Wizard, Transmutation
All level 3.
The theme of the campaign is based around the idea of an ancient wizard who was an advisor to the king committed several acts of treasonous betrayal to the crown. (For reasons never revealed.) Anyway, the wizard was eventually captured alive at the order of the King, and instead of death, was sentenced to exile on a small remote island, and placed under constant guard. (basically exiled imprisonment.) Anyway, using his wiles, he convinces one of the guards to bring him a book to read. And over the remainder of his lifetime, accumulates several books, and eventually finds the means to attain lichdom.
As he has continued to study for several hundred years, he finally feels the confidence that he needs to seek vengeance on the lands that exiled and imprisoned him. (So it seems for the common people, but the real reason for his return is not to be revealed until the party is much much stronger, and ready for a direct confrontation with him.)
Anyway, he has sent some agents out to begin amassing armies of any kind. Some agents are amassing an army of goblinoids, orcs, etc, while others are seeking armies of more colorful types.
Anyway during this same time, a cult is also working to assemble all the needed pieces of a puzzle to resurrect an ancient god who has very little information recorded about them. The lore places this god as the Original ruler of the abyss. During a time of weakness, he was overthrown by Asmodeus and "Sealed" away under the guise of multiple complex puzzles. Well the remnants of his followers have been working to release him for hundreds of years, and now are very near to accomplishing this goal. (The original reason why the Wizard had committed the acts of treason was to prevent this.)
So, with a rising cult bent on releasing an ancient God, a Lich bent on war to prevent this release, but appearing to be amassing armies for an assault on the many kingdoms, and the ordinary baddies of the land...
What would be an appropriate encounter for them?
You can lead a dwarf to water, but you can't make him get in the boat.
It seems like you already have very good ideas, this sounds like a fun campaign to play in.
If you are having a hard time making the encounters challenging, I might have some ideas you will find useful. Create encounters with luck of the dice and unforseen occurrences in mind. If the group is breezing through an encounter, have reinforcements planned or a secondary encounter that keeps the party under the gun. If the group is having terrible luck, drop some planned enemies out of the encounter or have something intervene on their behalf. Make the players work for information or for devising plans through roleplaying, don't allow too much out of character metagaming. Three to six players will outsmart your ideas every time unless you create ingame limitations such as cost, time, character knowledge etc.
thanks, I utilized a "cause and effect" encounter in our last session that is going to come back to bite them later. Bandit Chief and some bandits laid in ambush, and they routed the ambush before each party member had 2 rounds to attack.
The bandit chief ran, but the bandits he commanded all died. He will be stalking and returning later for vengeance of his own.
Anyway, they are moving towards a mining town and I want to utilize the nearby mine as part of their next "quest". I was thinking of bringing in a cavern of dark crystals and using a Shadow demon and dretch, but after the speed which they dispatched the last conflict, I am wondering if such an encounter would be enough.
You can lead a dwarf to water, but you can't make him get in the boat.
I like spell caster enemies and anything with multiattack to act as difficulty dials in a fight. If the fight's going too easily, have the creature with 3 attacks per round spend them all on those squishy targets. If it's too hard, spread those 3 attacks between several players.
For casters I'll sometimes alter their spell list. I had a battlemaster who was just... destroying encounters I was setting up, so one fight he got hit with a polymorph on round one. For practical purposes he was taken out of the fight, the player is always up for whatever so he just spent a few rounds doing the Help Action until someone could break the enemy's concentration. I totally can't pull that card again but just a simple spell swap completely upended the party's go to strategies.
Unrelated, I have to agree with Wtfdndad. Sounds like a great campaign!
Your story sounds great, but to help with the encounter building I wish I had a little more information. It sounds like so far you threw some bandits at them? What else hasn't lived up to your thoughts on challenging the way you had hoped so far?
A few quick general tips are always:
Thanks, this actually helps a lot. Especially the last bullet point. I will go over their estimated dmg per round if they were to deal the maximum damage possible. This will probably be a lot higher than I expect.
Other encounters have been mostly around Goblinoids, Bugbears, Hobgoblins. In a ruins environment I had several encounters in place leading to a boss battle with many minions. So, they had in boss room the Boss (Priest), Cult Fanatic, and 8 cultists. (Party has a few AOE spells.) There were 5 smaller skirmishes which the party dispatched quickly without using much of their skill set. A few cultists, 1 more cult fanatic, a goblin boss, a few goblins, and before entering the underground section these conflicts took place, was another with 2 Goblins, A hobgoblin, and 2 bugbears.
Only 2 of these lasted more than 2 or 3 rounds. (It was intended for the smaller ones to be simple because I was throwing a lot in one room.)
Still, the dispatched everything with greater ease than I expected them to. I thought I would have to fudge a couple of rolls in the last fight, and instead, didn't even get the Priest to escape as was originally planned.
You can lead a dwarf to water, but you can't make him get in the boat.
So it sounds like you have a solid plan. I would guess you have players who make intelligent choices and coordinate well together.
A center piece encounter using a Shadow Demon could definitely be doable and interesting. If I was to run that against your party, for sure it would be in a room filled with darkness. That blinds your wizard and cleric, which will make things interesting unless they bust out a light source. Combine the darkness with it's Incorporeal movement and you can definitely cause some issues. Maybe use Shadows as a minion. That strength drain is another issue to be dealt with for them.
in terms of "stocking the dungeon" for earlier encounters: dretch is a good choice, Abyssla Wretches, quasits (already shaped changed or invisible for a surprise attack perhaps), spectre?
The idea of the mine is that the miners opened up what seemed like a resource rich cavern of darkened crystals. They continued to mine these crystals, not knowing what they were, and the more then mined, the more the other crystals began to pulse with a sort of dark energy, until finally some of them exploded and the "Sealed" shadow demon was released. The idea of the shadows is great. May even incorporate light limitations due to the dark energies which have permeated the cavern.
I calculated the damage possibility for the party. In the impossible scenario where they hit with max damage (no crits) in optimal conditions and only hit one target at a time, they can deal up to 132 damage in round 1 if everyone gets an attack. That said, 2 of the PCs have AOE (thunderwave on 2 of them (bard and cleric), and Cleric has Shatter.) When combined with channel divinity, it can hit with 24 dmg to everything in it's sphere of effect. (Against the bandits, he forgot about the Channel divinity or would have killed all in one hit, minus bandit chief.)
After a few rolls with everyone and averaging out, they still have 80+ dmg per round potential.
You can lead a dwarf to water, but you can't make him get in the boat.
Yeah, again this is optimal conditions. So if they were to 1v1 your Shadow Demon, he would be dead within 2 rounds even with it's resistances.
Things to consider as well is Level 3 is a substantial power bump for most classes (subclass features, 2nd level spell slots, etc). You will hit another one at level 5.
It is okay to let them feel badass :)
A lot of good advice here, one other thing I'd recommend is to keep in mind the bad guys are fighting on their home turf. In many cases it's appropriate to set up the terrain to very much favor the enemy.
Similar to your polymorph thing, the most interesting encounters are often the ones that force your party to go to plan B. Not only does it keep combats from all starting to feel the same, you also start to see some feedback effects where players will make character choices that are more well-rounded and not completely optimized for a single strategy.
I think you've seen the danger here too though - you can't just use unlimited DM power to directly confound the group's choices either. It has to feel natural and be a reasonable approach the enemy would make to avoid the metagame response of "Ok, the DM is trying to shut down Bob again."
One thing that makes this more workable is when you have someone - like your bandit leader - who has seen the party in action. Escaping enemies carry information about party tactics, and should inform later encounters designed to foil those tactics. After the first couple times you make it clear that Guy Who Escaped had info about them, they will be much more motivated to stop people from escaping in the future - and an alternative encounter goal like "Stop the guy from escaping" is in turn a great way to force the party to change up their tactics.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm