So i started the losy mines of phandelver with 3 friends, and we have already had hours of fun! To Spice it up sine they where only 3 People i gave them some spicy items.. and we have continued the adventure after completing the Main story (im homebrewing now)..

Problem is, they are to strong for my creatures.. but I dont want to put in a creature that Just oneshots them 🤷‍♂️

Anyone got a good tip with CR balance? Now they are soon lvl 6 and the powerspike Just keeps comming 😅 they got 2 +1weapons and 1 +2 with hella good spells.. they are likley to meet a night hag and a baselisk this next session.. but im afraid its gonna be a short encounter 😂

Anyone got tips or a CR calculator that actually works? 

Well, first, they shouldn't have that many magic items at level 6. +2 weapons are meant for around level 10. Second, you can try using the maximum HP for monsters (hit dice* dice size + CON bonus to HP) instead of the average. Third, you can try using monsters with Legendary Actions or Lair Actions so that they can get some damage in. Finally, make sure you're using the right amount of encounters per rest. The DMG recommends 6-8 medium encounters or ~3 deadly encounters.

Thanks! Yeh, iknow they are a little to strong equipment wise! 😊 thank you so much for good tips!

Next time ill send some deadlier creatures on them 😎 but I dont want to kill.. all of them 😅 they are 2 relativly New players and one much more experienced 😊 we still have fun but I fear it gets to easy and they wont get the thrill of feeling mortal 😏

Quote from Ole619 >>

Thanks! Yeh, iknow they are a little to strong equipment wise! 😊 thank you so much for good tips!

 

Next time ill send some deadlier creatures on them 😎 but I dont want to kill.. all of them 😅 they are 2 relativly New players and one much more experienced 😊 we still have fun but I fear it gets to easy and they wont get the thrill of feeling mortal 😏

 Deadly encounters aren't actually deadly, most of the time. A party will roll over a deadly encounter if it's the only encounter they have between long rests. 2-3 deadly encounters should be an adequate challenge without killing any of them.

I've had this problem before, I just tripled their hit points and that balanced it out.

Quote from Ole619 >>

So i started the losy mines of phandelver with 3 friends, and we have already had hours of fun! To Spice it up sine they where only 3 People i gave them some spicy items.. and we have continued the adventure after completing the Main story (im homebrewing now)..

 

Problem is, they are to strong for my creatures.. but I dont want to put in a creature that Just oneshots them 🤷‍♂️

 

Anyone got a good tip with CR balance? Now they are soon lvl 6 and the powerspike Just keeps comming 😅 they got 2 +1weapons and 1 +2 with hella good spells.. they are likley to meet a night hag and a baselisk this next session.. but im afraid its gonna be a short encounter 😂

Anyone got tips or a CR calculator that actually works? 

 Out of game solution. Dear Friends, your stuff is too powerful. I going to down grade the weapons to +1 until you hit level 10. Always admit your mistakes and correct them out of game. 

PCs in general in 5e are glass cannons, and monsters often are as well, so one-shots are hard to avoid for any reasonably challenging fight.

CR and powerful characters is not the problem here.

in a word the problem is "tactics"

Hags, for instance, might want to, I dunno, harm children or some such. If that is the case they do not want to die in a straight up fight with powerful adventurers. The hags may instead try to split the party, misleading them, out maneuvering. How would the adventurers react if there were children hostages?

Basilisk is a bit different, with animal intelligence they are not really supposed to be a cunning opponent. I would suggest in that situation you change the win conditions i.e. the basilisk must be captured alive. Perhaps so an alchemist can study it in an effort to cure a petrified king etc.

Thank you all for some Great tips and feedback! 

Going to have atleast 1 session during this week! Looking forward to it!

I second the “Play intelligent monsters as if they’re intelligent” suggestion. Intelligent monsters will scout out the party ahead of time and they’ll focus on knocking out one PC at a time, just like the PCs focus on one monster at a time. 

I have also cheated by giving the monsters more HP at the last second when they go down to quickly and easily. I don’t do that except when the PCs take them down in one or two rounds, I only do it to make the fight more fun for everyone. Fights where the PCs win in one round tend to be boring.

I also regularly tweak how much damage monsters do. I’ll bump their damage up by either doubling the damage bonus or cutting it in half. So instead of 1d6+2 I’ll change it to either 1d6+1 or 1d6+4 as needed to make the encounter more fun. 

I also throw in some encounters that are way too weak. Sometimes it’s nice for the PCs to win a fight before the end of the second round. They are heroes and they’re stronger than normal people are. I give them that feeling sometimes. 

I went through a period of judging how much my party could take using the owl bear method as I call it. 

I started with 2 owl bears which the CR said should be deadly, one encounter and 3 rounds later owl bears dead but they did knock a player unconscious twice. 

Next session an encounter yet with 3 owl bears, again player knocked unconscious slightly more rounds to complete. 

I will probably in a session or 2 present them with 4 owl bears.

By using consitantly the same monsters in this fashion you can quickly gauge what is the right level of threat and then translate that to any other encounter by ensuring the XP of the adventure are roughly the same. 

My players don't have that much by way of magic items, but at level 5 their min-maxing has made them seriously overpowered. A Blood Hunter in particular is using a heavy crossbow, archery fighting style, crossbow expert, Hex, and his attacks hit for 1d10+4+d6+d6 damage for an average of 16 damage, with +9 to hit. The recklessly attacking barbarian with great weapon master is hitting for an average 21 damage. This is all within the rules, but I had to have a chat with our rogue to make sure he is feeling useful, as even with Sneak Attack, hitting for d8+4+3d6 he has only half of the barbarian's output. Given an enemy AC in the 16-18 range, the party of 6 typically deals around 100 damage in each turn of the combat. Most creatures with <30 hit points go down in turn 1 without rolling a die.

Things like +2 weapons get seriously overrated in terms of the difference it will make to the game, but I wouldn't recommend giving them any more until they're level 9/10.

So, for my OP players, I had them fight a CR9 creature, gave it Lair actions, and increased its hit points from 136 to 450. That gave them a decent length fight.

The hit points given to creatures in the MM and other source books are all way too low in my opinion, and fights are scaled around lasting 1-3 turns of combat. I like my boss fights to last longer - around 5-10 turns, depending on the fight. Triple the boss creatures' hit points, but make sure that they have access to steady, powerful damage but not massive insta-kill effects that deal 16d8 damage or "save or go to 0 hit points." You want the players to feel that they're threatened, and they're on a clock to kill the bad guy.

If you have the campaign characters on D&D beyond, go into each character sheet and look at what their damage output is and make a spreadsheet to calculate average damage against a standard AC for their level which off the top of my head is probably 17. Work out how much average damage each character will deal per turn if they use their most powerful damaging abilities straight off the bat. When you know that value, multiply it by 5, and you'll have a good amount of hit points for a boss creature.

Remember as well, the more dice rolls you get to make, the more luck won't ruin your plans. A lone enemy with no legendary actions isn't that fearsome - 6 x Level 7 characters can easily take on a CR19 Balor, because the Balor only gets one action a turn. If it uses it to cast Fireball, then how does that match up to the 6 spells/multi attacks it receives in return? It'll be dead in 2 turns having barely scratched them!

A good rule of thumb is that the enemies must get one action for each action the players get. If you have 5 players, your boss monster needs its action + 4 Legendary actions, or action, Lair, 3 Legendary actions. If you put them up against 5 enemy creatures then each of those creatures should have multiattack or a spell to match the party. They don't need to be as powerful as the party, but if you only have a single enemy making one roll (or 2-3 attacks) then one or two bad dice rolls and the monster is toast, and the party didn't even take damage. This is known as 'action economy.'  

Another trick I use is to split initiatives of enemies even if they are the same, it means that the players don't all get to react to what your monsters do before your monsters get another go, this can really make a difference tactically. 

Also attacking in waves, they may clear out one lot but that may leave the barbarian out of position as the next wave moves in behind and takes out the soft targets. 

Also the fact damage can't be transfered means that if your party can inflict 100 damage a round, use multiple enemies more force them to think tactically, also use magic, one of my fav things to do is use charm attacks to turn the players on each other, that barbarian is suddenly charging at his own player. 

Single enemies should be a rare thing, and if they don't have extra actions they will be easily destroyed. Action economy is everything in 5e - if your players get 5 turns per round and Team Monster gets 1, Team Monster is going to get stomped even if it has triple the hp and can 1-shot a PC.

Give team monster at least as many turns as the PCs, and spread them out, using their home terrain to their advantage. Don't be afraid to introduce more enemies mid-battle if things are too easy, or throwing in a bunch of monsters with the intention of having them retreat when they are reduced to half strength. This allows you to keep the tension and threat high throughout the majority of the fight rather than one intense round followed by mop-up.

You can also consider working into the story the loss of their equipment. A lich paralyses everyone, gloats, steals anything shiny and teleports them away, or they wake from sleep with a blade to their throat and are taken prisoner. Sold by slavers, it could be along time before they catch up for revenge. Or perhaps they are invited to meet the King at a formal banquet. No weapons or armour allowed, everyone must be dressed in finery. During the event catastrophe strikes, leaving them separated from their gear. 

Besides taking their equipment away (which can be interesting if your players are down to that sort of gaming), the biggest advantage that PC usually have over most enemies is the action economy. Except for the creatures that have legendary actions, even strong monsters will have only have one turn each to the PC's many. The way the rules are, this always benefit the side with the most actions since that will be more chances for crits, or failed saving throws or what have you.

The solution to this is simple and have already been touched upon, instead of one or a few really dangerous enemies, try throwing more than a few minor enemies just to stir things up. Maybe the dragon has a bunch of kobold cultists hanging around it? The bear shares its cave with a swarm of bats that freak out and also attack the players. The arch mage will obviously have her entourage of loyal followers and brutish mercenaries, and so on. This wil effectively turn the tables on the players. Sure, those bats might not be able to do more than a single HP in damage each but each hit is a concentration check for a spellcaster. A good tanky fighter or paladin can easily tank half a dozen kobolds, but sooner or later one of them will score a crit and all together they will start eating away at the tank's HP. Then what?

And of course, you can always throw problems at the players that can't be solved by violence. Sure, that +2 weapon is really good for carving up elves, but what if the orc chieftain just wants them to make him a really nice shrubbery, or find him a new court musician?

Waow i love this community 🤩🤩 thanks for all the good feedback!! 

Last session we had, things got interesting! Managed to get one player knocked out and almost petrefied another! A whole other experience for all of us😎

To me, this is the challenge\problem many DM's create.  To make the party "interesting" they are given magic items way above their level.  And then, the PC's are far too strong for the CR of their encounters.  So the DM then makes the monsters tougher to compensate.  Often, these tougher monsters have better treasure to match their threat level, and the power creep continues.

My DM sprinkled in some common magic items from Xanathar's at the early levels for flavor.  We also came across a few potions and scrolls.  We are now 5th level and we *just* got our first +1 magic weapons for the group.  We have into our second printed adventure and had a homebrewed adventure.  IMO we have been slightly better than the CR of what we fight.  I prefer this more; then the PC's really appreciate good magic items, and they find uses for consumable stuff too.

You might include sequences that cause / require them to lose / trade away their powerful items.    

If you overpowered them, undo the mistake.  

This may not help you now, or at all if my players hate it, but I'm starting a mini-campaign next week (should only take 5-6 sessions) and I have ideas on ways to make fights more interesting. One idea is the players will be caught in the middle of a battle between Giants, Ettins, and Ogres. Normally they live in harmony on the mountain but something has possessed them. There may be 20 Giants, Ettins, and Ogres fighting each other but the players will only be engaged in a battle between a few. During the fight, one of the Ettins the players aren't engaged in throws a boulder at the Ogre it's fighting and misses and the boulder is going to land on the players so they make a Dex save - succeed take half damage, fail take full damage and your prone. Maybe the players think they should draw their battle away from the commotion now. I suppose it's similar to a Lair Action but a little more flavor.