Forgive me if I was unable to find this already. I want to run my players through a new adventure campaign, and they are already lvl 6 and the adventure starts at lvl 1. They don't want to start new characters, I want to use this adventure. How do I bump up the challenge of the main villain and the encounters when they are already such a high level? I feel that starting them in the middle would be an issue as their is backstory from the earlier parts of the adventure.
There's plenty of websites that will generate Challenge Rating appropriate encounters for you. I use one of those and either replace the encounters completely or just reskin. There's no reason a goblin can't have the stats of an orc and it'll throw off anybody who likes to have the Monster Manual memorized.
Do the ol' classic. Add some 1's and 0's to enemy health pools, give them a few extra spells/abilities/resistances, scale up the amount of fodder the party faces in battles. Hell, you could even give some tougher enemies things like legendary actions and magical items to give players an extra challenge. Homebrew stats, simple as.
Modify the monsters with more CP or swap out the monster with the same type but a higher CR lvl?
You can pretty easily do it either way, base the decision on whichever monsters you think are coolest to include.
As an example I was running a module with CR2 Gargoyles in a fight but the party was Level 6, so I used the stat block of CR5 Barbed Devils (only the stuff that makes sense like AC, HP, Attack damage) but said they were Gargoyles. I could've just used Barbed Devils instead but the Gargoyles fit the theme better than Devils.
I can strongly recommend a book called "Flee Mortals" by MCDM. They address the issue of upgrading and downgrading adventure/encounter difficulty in a very innovative way using specialized characteristics for monsters. Its hard to describe but, of all the book investments you can make for 5th edition, this is without question at the top of the list of recommendations, it solves soooo many issues with 5e monster design and encounter balance, not to mention what it does for improving the excitement of combat. Hands down one of the best monster books ever made. https://shop.mcdmproductions.com/products/flee-mortals-the-mcdm-monster-book-pdf
Keep in mind that an increase in enemy numbers can often bump up a combat pretty significantly. You can also swap out similar monsters that are higher CR. For example, if it's goblins, make them hobgoblins. If they're zombies, make them ghouls. You can get a lot of mileage out of those simple tricks.
Where I would focus your energies is on bumping up the primary boss(es). That's where you'll get the most bang for your dollar.
1. Max out all monster HP. That makes them harder than designed without introducing any new mechanics.
2. Make a template that you can apply to any of the monsters to upgrade them.
A Goblin becomes an Enhanced Goblin and gains +3 hit dice and one interesting power that makes sense to them (sneak attack is fun).
Ok three things:
Then I focus on the boss fights and redesign them as needed to be appropriately challenging. That's where you really want to work. Your players will be ok with trivial encounters not being scaled up properly if it's fun. The boss fights need to be boss fights.
bring the party in to the level 6 part of the adventure
open up the dmg and read the stats for the appropriate cr from the create a monster table
Other than that you basically have to go through and replace the challenges with cr appropriate ones. That can be changing the monsters, buffing the stat blocks or simply placing more. It's also possible to with careful planing make weak monsters challenging by using certain tactics like murder holes, ambushes, equipment etc...
out of curiosity which adventure were you thinking?
Why not let your players curb stomp a few battles? Surely part of the reward of advancing in level is that some things get easier? And at the same time, surely the role-playing challenge benefits from asking questions like, "what can the characters do with the power they've earned," and, "what should the characters do with the power they've earned?"
If you could tell us the specific adventure you plan on running, we might have a better context for the changes you could make. In addition to the other great advice here, this is what I propose:
Per eapiv's suggestion, the party roflstomps the early encounters, provided the enemies are dumb enough to even show up. "You're walking through the wilderness, and some hunters, hunched over a campfire, see you and wave. Roll Insight." As it turns out these are bandits, but they won't attack the party because they're famous for being better at robbing people of their souls than these bandits are of people's gold. They'd rather avoid the fight, because while they're desperate, they're not that desperate. Maybe they're recognised as bandits and have a bounty on their heads. Maybe they'll turn themselves in if it means they can repent.
Give monsters feats. Every group of enemies has at least one specialist who can do something. A goblin with the chef feat was one of my all-time favourites, who would command others to eat a healing cookie. Imagine a bugbear with Polearm Master. Imagine a bunch of monsters with different Eldritch Adept feat choices.
Use traps and wear down the party. Tucker's Kobolds tells the hilarious tale of how a bunch of weaklings utterly humiliate and destroy a seasoned adventuring party.
Hope that helps, and I hope you and your team have a great time with the adventure!
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Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
Second, adding extra hitpoints can help draw battles out, but it still just makes them boring. You can up the CR on the monsters and swap them out for stronger, which helps, but you can also tweak stats. Add an extra point of two to dex so they get a slight increase to AC (treat the monsters as though they are your own characters when doing this. A dex boost of 2 points will also mean when your players for the save you have a little bit slipperier gobbo.)
Look at the terrain and place your monsters more carefully. TBH I'm still a beginner, but Dragon Heist's first foray into the sewers with my players taught me not to underestimate the terrain, choke points, and just how horrible cramped spaces can be. In a sport or two, I added an extra monster or two to balance out against the fact that I have a larger group, but it just drew things out because only so many monsters can rush them at a time.
Mind you, you can reverse that and use the terrain to your advantage, I was just trying to get my sea legs so to speak.
Resistances are also a consideration. If they're level 6, you should have an idea as to what their tendencies in battle are, what spells and damage they prefer, and use player blindspots to up the challenge..
And of course, don't overdo it. You're not trying to outright kill them, but they should have a sense that they may lose this one...
If you could tell us the specific adventure you plan on running, we might have a better context for the changes you could make. In addition to the other great advice here, this is what I propose:
Per eapiv's suggestion, the party roflstomps the early encounters, provided the enemies are dumb enough to even show up. "You're walking through the wilderness, and some hunters, hunched over a campfire, see you and wave. Roll Insight." As it turns out these are bandits, but they won't attack the party because they're famous for being better at robbing people of their souls than these bandits are of people's gold. They'd rather avoid the fight, because while they're desperate, they're not that desperate. Maybe they're recognised as bandits and have a bounty on their heads. Maybe they'll turn themselves in if it means they can repent.
Give monsters feats. Every group of enemies has at least one specialist who can do something. A goblin with the chef feat was one of my all-time favourites, who would command others to eat a healing cookie. Imagine a bugbear with Polearm Master. Imagine a bunch of monsters with different Eldritch Adept feat choices.
Use traps and wear down the party. Tucker's Kobolds tells the hilarious tale of how a bunch of weaklings utterly humiliate and destroy a seasoned adventuring party.
Hope that helps, and I hope you and your team have a great time with the adventure!
Looking at the Curse of Strahd.
Love Tuckers Kobolds as a story, terrified of them as a player, inspired by them as a DM.
Tucker's kobolds style often requires a pretty thorough redesign of most adventures. It involves giving favorable terrain and equipment like murder holes, crawl tunnels and narrow corridors. It works particularly well for small creatures because they have an advantage of fitting in places players can't.
With large monsters it can look like things such as pushing boulders down passage ways, collapsing tunnels and smashing through walls.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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Forgive me if I was unable to find this already. I want to run my players through a new adventure campaign, and they are already lvl 6 and the adventure starts at lvl 1. They don't want to start new characters, I want to use this adventure. How do I bump up the challenge of the main villain and the encounters when they are already such a high level? I feel that starting them in the middle would be an issue as their is backstory from the earlier parts of the adventure.
Just add some extra monsters to each encounter. Or upgrade the existing monsters by a few CR levels.
Modify the monsters with more CP or swap out the monster with the same type but a higher CR lvl?
Honestly, a level 1-6 jump is so large that you should write a new adventure, just using the original as a resource for themes, NPCs, and maps.
There's plenty of websites that will generate Challenge Rating appropriate encounters for you. I use one of those and either replace the encounters completely or just reskin. There's no reason a goblin can't have the stats of an orc and it'll throw off anybody who likes to have the Monster Manual memorized.
Do the ol' classic. Add some 1's and 0's to enemy health pools, give them a few extra spells/abilities/resistances, scale up the amount of fodder the party faces in battles. Hell, you could even give some tougher enemies things like legendary actions and magical items to give players an extra challenge.
Homebrew stats, simple as.
You can pretty easily do it either way, base the decision on whichever monsters you think are coolest to include.
As an example I was running a module with CR2 Gargoyles in a fight but the party was Level 6, so I used the stat block of CR5 Barbed Devils (only the stuff that makes sense like AC, HP, Attack damage) but said they were Gargoyles. I could've just used Barbed Devils instead but the Gargoyles fit the theme better than Devils.
I can strongly recommend a book called "Flee Mortals" by MCDM. They address the issue of upgrading and downgrading adventure/encounter difficulty in a very innovative way using specialized characteristics for monsters. Its hard to describe but, of all the book investments you can make for 5th edition, this is without question at the top of the list of recommendations, it solves soooo many issues with 5e monster design and encounter balance, not to mention what it does for improving the excitement of combat. Hands down one of the best monster books ever made. https://shop.mcdmproductions.com/products/flee-mortals-the-mcdm-monster-book-pdf
Keep in mind that an increase in enemy numbers can often bump up a combat pretty significantly. You can also swap out similar monsters that are higher CR. For example, if it's goblins, make them hobgoblins. If they're zombies, make them ghouls. You can get a lot of mileage out of those simple tricks.
Where I would focus your energies is on bumping up the primary boss(es). That's where you'll get the most bang for your dollar.
I do two things to keep it easy:
1. Max out all monster HP. That makes them harder than designed without introducing any new mechanics.
2. Make a template that you can apply to any of the monsters to upgrade them.
A Goblin becomes an Enhanced Goblin and gains +3 hit dice and one interesting power that makes sense to them (sneak attack is fun).
Ok three things:
Then I focus on the boss fights and redesign them as needed to be appropriately challenging. That's where you really want to work. Your players will be ok with trivial encounters not being scaled up properly if it's fun. The boss fights need to be boss fights.
If you want to be lazy do one of the following
Other than that you basically have to go through and replace the challenges with cr appropriate ones. That can be changing the monsters, buffing the stat blocks or simply placing more. It's also possible to with careful planing make weak monsters challenging by using certain tactics like murder holes, ambushes, equipment etc...
out of curiosity which adventure were you thinking?
Why not let your players curb stomp a few battles? Surely part of the reward of advancing in level is that some things get easier? And at the same time, surely the role-playing challenge benefits from asking questions like, "what can the characters do with the power they've earned," and, "what should the characters do with the power they've earned?"
If you could tell us the specific adventure you plan on running, we might have a better context for the changes you could make. In addition to the other great advice here, this is what I propose:
Hope that helps, and I hope you and your team have a great time with the adventure!
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
- The Assemblage of Houses, World of Warcraft
first of all, which adventure?
Second, adding extra hitpoints can help draw battles out, but it still just makes them boring. You can up the CR on the monsters and swap them out for stronger, which helps, but you can also tweak stats. Add an extra point of two to dex so they get a slight increase to AC (treat the monsters as though they are your own characters when doing this. A dex boost of 2 points will also mean when your players for the save you have a little bit slipperier gobbo.)
Look at the terrain and place your monsters more carefully. TBH I'm still a beginner, but Dragon Heist's first foray into the sewers with my players taught me not to underestimate the terrain, choke points, and just how horrible cramped spaces can be. In a sport or two, I added an extra monster or two to balance out against the fact that I have a larger group, but it just drew things out because only so many monsters can rush them at a time.
Mind you, you can reverse that and use the terrain to your advantage, I was just trying to get my sea legs so to speak.
Resistances are also a consideration. If they're level 6, you should have an idea as to what their tendencies in battle are, what spells and damage they prefer, and use player blindspots to up the challenge..
And of course, don't overdo it. You're not trying to outright kill them, but they should have a sense that they may lose this one...
Looking at the Curse of Strahd.
Love Tuckers Kobolds as a story, terrified of them as a player, inspired by them as a DM.
Tucker's kobolds style often requires a pretty thorough redesign of most adventures. It involves giving favorable terrain and equipment like murder holes, crawl tunnels and narrow corridors. It works particularly well for small creatures because they have an advantage of fitting in places players can't.
With large monsters it can look like things such as pushing boulders down passage ways, collapsing tunnels and smashing through walls.