I have been asked to DM a one shot for them. While I can throttle the difficulty of the encounters by changing my fighting and spellcasting etc I would like some advice on what a normal encounter like this would be. I am not the largest fan of CR as a goalpost or guideon as it seems to become less effective at higher levels.
Do you have any experience DM'ing for higher level characters, or will level 16 be new to you? This is important because the DM learns a lot about balancing encounters on the way up from level 1 all the way to level 20. Creating a balanced encounter is more art than science. You just have a feel for what will work or won't, and that's really the only way because there are an infinite number of things that can happen, and it is actually impossible to prepare for the stuff that 7 players are gonna pull.
If you have not DM'd a campaign levelling up then run a one shot where the PCs are level 3 or maybe level 5. At those levels, the CR and mathematics actually work relatively well; past around level 8 they have virtually no meaning.
I have played in a few games over level 15. Never DM'd one this high. I usually cut my campaigns short at about level 10. I don't have much choice in this one, I am going to have to just put them up against something CR 20+ or so after a couple of CR14 to 16 encounters that will give me a better idea of what they can do.
I was thinking about a reskinned Solar or something for the BBEG of the one shot. it's mobility and killing bow shots would be pretty deadly. I am just looking for advice. Thank you for yours!
I have been asked to DM a one shot for them. While I can throttle the difficulty of the encounters by changing my fighting and spellcasting etc I would like some advice on what a normal encounter like this would be.
Brains bleeding out your ears annoying? I would set something up so I have a good way of adding stuff to the encounter, such as an infernal or abyssal portal, and then use what looks like absurd amounts of force, because anything that seems sane is too easy. With 7 PCs, if two of them aren't dying or dead by the end of the first round you weren't using enough force.
Let's look at what happens when a Solar (CR23) fights 7 x level 16 Fighters. I've gone with Fighter because it keeps things simplest, and we're using them as the same class so I don't have to both doing the calculations multiple times.
The Solar has +15 to hit. Let's say our fighters have basic plate only, so AC18.
The Solar only deals on average 49 damage per Greatsword attack, so 98 damage in one turn if it hits with both attacks which it only needs 3+ on a d20 for, but honestly, between Bane, Weal/Woe, Curse of the Eyeless, Rage resistance, Blur, Invisibility, Mirror Image, Shield, Portent high AC and so on that a group of level 16 characters have available, this almost certainly not going to happen.
That means that the Solar will probably do about 49 points of damage in its first turn.
Our fighters have on average 141 hit points if they rolled average every level and have +3 Con modifier. So in the first turn the solar has done 1/3 of one of our 7 PC's hit points. By comparison, the party have a total hit point pool of 984 between them, so effectively the solar has managed to do nothing.
Each fighter then does its attacks: 3 attacks each for (22) 2d6+15 damage per hit (GWM). Solar only has 21 AC so let's assume 11 of the 21 miss. Then let's Action Surge, and that means we should have 20 hits in total.
The Solar should take 20 x 22= 440 points of damage in the first turn of combat, compared to the 49 points of damage it will deal. Even taking away the GWM feat from our Fighters, we will still deal 240 damage in the first turn, which is the Solar's full hit point pool. EVERY character by level 16 can pull off this kind of alpha-strike, and every character can have a 2 level dip into fighter.
What you need in this encounter are THREE or maybe even FOUR Solars if you want to tax the opposing party at all, and even then it won't be all that challenging. You can't use CR at all at these levels, it's effectively meaningless.
I might suggest taking a look at SlyFourish's Lazy Encounter Benchmark and Dials of Monster Difficulty as a method to handle all of the math a little easier. (A party of 7 Lvl 16 might need 56 levels of monster to be a deadly encounter. So, @Sanvael's suggestion of 3 Solars @ CR 21 would hit the benchmark with a bit to spare.
As for the elements of the encounter, they might be the same as the elements of an encounter that you would use in a 10th level battle, but one or two orders of magnitude larger. You might want something that draws all of the PCs focus, something that can punch well above it's bodyweight but takes a while to recharge, and something that revitalizes its allies. You'll also likely want to include terrain features or lair actions that proc on initiative count 20 and/or 10. And lastly, you may want to include a few minions that heal the boss or do burst damage on death and you might consider providing legendary actions to your big actors if they don't have them already (I'm going to assume that they already do).
If you have the ability to run the party through the DMG assumed 6-8 encounters in the adventuring day, your grand finale might be a bilt less swingy. Quite often, the assumption of the party working through an entire adventuring day XP budget is omitted or forgotten. But all of this is simply supposition and planning for probability.
Good luck! Let us know how it works out.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Honestly? Level 16 characters are powerful, and 7 players is a huge party. Throw everything at them till you're afraid you might be TPKing them, then double it. That's an exaggeration, but not much of one.
In my experience, players can usually take more than I'm comfortable throwing at them, and I've had a few "climactic" deadly opponents fizzle against smaller parties.
If you notice you actually have made it too difficult once the fight starts, you can always hit the emergency button and adjust hit point totals and combat resources on the fly to make it more fair, but honestly you'd be surprised what players can handle.
And if you do kill them all and you have the feeling it wasn't 100% a fair fight, that sucks, but you can always apologize. As a one shot, stakes aren't as high and canonicity to an existing adventure can always be revoked. People generally understand that one-shots are hard to balance for difficulty.
What you ideally want is a swarm of low level mobs that tempt your players to expend their resources too early. You'd like them to enter the final fight with a few aces left up their sleeves, but not all of them.
I am very appreciative of everyone's input. I think I have an idea of how this should run.
The one thing that scares me about solars is the same reason I love the idea. I can scale their difficulty with their teleportation and the killing effect of their bow.
Power word kill with an arrow after doing damage? WOW!
I am off to do maths and will be referring back to this post often while doing so.
I am very appreciative of everyone's input. I think I have an idea of how this should run.
The one thing that scares me about solars is the same reason I love the idea. I can scale their difficulty with their teleportation and the killing effect of their bow.
Power word kill with an arrow after doing damage? WOW!
I am off to do maths and will be referring back to this post often while doing so.
This community is amazing!
A level 16 wizard or sorcerer probably has 170+ hit points, so remember you'll need to beat them up a lot before the solar's bow becomes powerful. Personally as both DM and player I don't like any ability that says "you die," I don't really see who that is fun for. I'd change it to be an "Execute" type attack, dealing 18d12 fire damage on a target below 100 hit points or something like that - that way there is still a damage roll to be made, which can be mitigated and feels fairer.
A level 16 wizard or sorcerer probably has 170+ hit points, so remember you'll need to beat them up a lot before the solar's bow becomes powerful. Personally as both DM and player I don't like any ability that says "you die," I don't really see who that is fun for. I'd change it to be an "Execute" type attack, dealing 18d12 fire damage on a target below 100 hit points or something like that - that way there is still a damage roll to be made, which can be mitigated and feels fairer.
A level 16 with a amulet of health and tough has 179 hp, but I wouldn't say every wizard or sorcerer has those bonuses.
A level 16 wizard or sorcerer probably has 170+ hit points, so remember you'll need to beat them up a lot before the solar's bow becomes powerful. Personally as both DM and player I don't like any ability that says "you die," I don't really see who that is fun for. I'd change it to be an "Execute" type attack, dealing 18d12 fire damage on a target below 100 hit points or something like that - that way there is still a damage roll to be made, which can be mitigated and feels fairer.
A level 16 with a amulet of health and tough has 179 hp, but I wouldn't say every wizard or sorcerer has those bonuses.
Actually my head maths was just way off, they should have:
Level 1: 6 Average 3.5 per level 2-16: 52.5 Con bonus +4: 64
123 total.
This makes the Solar's bow attack even less fun to play against.
I have 7 players that are going to be level 16.
I have been asked to DM a one shot for them. While I can throttle the difficulty of the encounters by changing my fighting and spellcasting etc I would like some advice on what a normal encounter like this would be. I am not the largest fan of CR as a goalpost or guideon as it seems to become less effective at higher levels.
Any Advice?
Do you have any experience DM'ing for higher level characters, or will level 16 be new to you? This is important because the DM learns a lot about balancing encounters on the way up from level 1 all the way to level 20. Creating a balanced encounter is more art than science. You just have a feel for what will work or won't, and that's really the only way because there are an infinite number of things that can happen, and it is actually impossible to prepare for the stuff that 7 players are gonna pull.
If you have not DM'd a campaign levelling up then run a one shot where the PCs are level 3 or maybe level 5. At those levels, the CR and mathematics actually work relatively well; past around level 8 they have virtually no meaning.
I have played in a few games over level 15. Never DM'd one this high. I usually cut my campaigns short at about level 10. I don't have much choice in this one, I am going to have to just put them up against something CR 20+ or so after a couple of CR14 to 16 encounters that will give me a better idea of what they can do.
I was thinking about a reskinned Solar or something for the BBEG of the one shot. it's mobility and killing bow shots would be pretty deadly. I am just looking for advice. Thank you for yours!
Brains bleeding out your ears annoying? I would set something up so I have a good way of adding stuff to the encounter, such as an infernal or abyssal portal, and then use what looks like absurd amounts of force, because anything that seems sane is too easy. With 7 PCs, if two of them aren't dying or dead by the end of the first round you weren't using enough force.
Ok, then you gotta go and do a bunch of maths.
Let's look at what happens when a Solar (CR23) fights 7 x level 16 Fighters. I've gone with Fighter because it keeps things simplest, and we're using them as the same class so I don't have to both doing the calculations multiple times.
The Solar has +15 to hit. Let's say our fighters have basic plate only, so AC18.
The Solar only deals on average 49 damage per Greatsword attack, so 98 damage in one turn if it hits with both attacks which it only needs 3+ on a d20 for, but honestly, between Bane, Weal/Woe, Curse of the Eyeless, Rage resistance, Blur, Invisibility, Mirror Image, Shield, Portent high AC and so on that a group of level 16 characters have available, this almost certainly not going to happen.
That means that the Solar will probably do about 49 points of damage in its first turn.
Our fighters have on average 141 hit points if they rolled average every level and have +3 Con modifier. So in the first turn the solar has done 1/3 of one of our 7 PC's hit points. By comparison, the party have a total hit point pool of 984 between them, so effectively the solar has managed to do nothing.
Each fighter then does its attacks: 3 attacks each for (22) 2d6+15 damage per hit (GWM). Solar only has 21 AC so let's assume 11 of the 21 miss. Then let's Action Surge, and that means we should have 20 hits in total.
The Solar should take 20 x 22= 440 points of damage in the first turn of combat, compared to the 49 points of damage it will deal. Even taking away the GWM feat from our Fighters, we will still deal 240 damage in the first turn, which is the Solar's full hit point pool. EVERY character by level 16 can pull off this kind of alpha-strike, and every character can have a 2 level dip into fighter.
What you need in this encounter are THREE or maybe even FOUR Solars if you want to tax the opposing party at all, and even then it won't be all that challenging. You can't use CR at all at these levels, it's effectively meaningless.
I might suggest taking a look at SlyFourish's Lazy Encounter Benchmark and Dials of Monster Difficulty as a method to handle all of the math a little easier. (A party of 7 Lvl 16 might need 56 levels of monster to be a deadly encounter. So, @Sanvael's suggestion of 3 Solars @ CR 21 would hit the benchmark with a bit to spare.
As for the elements of the encounter, they might be the same as the elements of an encounter that you would use in a 10th level battle, but one or two orders of magnitude larger. You might want something that draws all of the PCs focus, something that can punch well above it's bodyweight but takes a while to recharge, and something that revitalizes its allies. You'll also likely want to include terrain features or lair actions that proc on initiative count 20 and/or 10. And lastly, you may want to include a few minions that heal the boss or do burst damage on death and you might consider providing legendary actions to your big actors if they don't have them already (I'm going to assume that they already do).
If you have the ability to run the party through the DMG assumed 6-8 encounters in the adventuring day, your grand finale might be a bilt less swingy. Quite often, the assumption of the party working through an entire adventuring day XP budget is omitted or forgotten. But all of this is simply supposition and planning for probability.
Good luck! Let us know how it works out.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Honestly? Level 16 characters are powerful, and 7 players is a huge party. Throw everything at them till you're afraid you might be TPKing them, then double it. That's an exaggeration, but not much of one.
In my experience, players can usually take more than I'm comfortable throwing at them, and I've had a few "climactic" deadly opponents fizzle against smaller parties.
If you notice you actually have made it too difficult once the fight starts, you can always hit the emergency button and adjust hit point totals and combat resources on the fly to make it more fair, but honestly you'd be surprised what players can handle.
And if you do kill them all and you have the feeling it wasn't 100% a fair fight, that sucks, but you can always apologize. As a one shot, stakes aren't as high and canonicity to an existing adventure can always be revoked. People generally understand that one-shots are hard to balance for difficulty.
What you ideally want is a swarm of low level mobs that tempt your players to expend their resources too early. You'd like them to enter the final fight with a few aces left up their sleeves, but not all of them.
I am very appreciative of everyone's input. I think I have an idea of how this should run.
The one thing that scares me about solars is the same reason I love the idea. I can scale their difficulty with their teleportation and the killing effect of their bow.
Power word kill with an arrow after doing damage? WOW!
I am off to do maths and will be referring back to this post often while doing so.
This community is amazing!
A level 16 wizard or sorcerer probably has 170+ hit points, so remember you'll need to beat them up a lot before the solar's bow becomes powerful. Personally as both DM and player I don't like any ability that says "you die," I don't really see who that is fun for. I'd change it to be an "Execute" type attack, dealing 18d12 fire damage on a target below 100 hit points or something like that - that way there is still a damage roll to be made, which can be mitigated and feels fairer.
A level 16 with a amulet of health and tough has 179 hp, but I wouldn't say every wizard or sorcerer has those bonuses.
Actually my head maths was just way off, they should have:
Level 1: 6
Average 3.5 per level 2-16: 52.5
Con bonus +4: 64
123 total.
This makes the Solar's bow attack even less fun to play against.
Whoops, 179 is wrong too, should be 162 (6 at level 1, +4*15 for additional levels, +4*16 for amulet, +2*16 for tough). 179 is a d8 hit die class.