Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Hi,
I have a party of 5. They are level 8, and are coming up on the BBEG, who is a spellcaster. I have monk, rogue, bard, fighter and sorcerer. I really want to use the Arch Hag stats from the 2024 MM, is that way too hard? My party has a few +1 magic items, and just between the three martial classes I have they probably deal 50 damage a round. I could have the party have an ally if needed or I could change the stats a bit to make it a little fairer. They would only face the hag, and they would hopefully have a full rest and some health potions.
If anyone has had level 8 players, what CR was your BBEG?
CR 21 would destroy your players. It would probably kill off one to two of them in a round alone, and looking at it's AoE, it would be pretty nasty.
I would instead use a different kind of hag, or skin a spellcasting enemy as a hag, like the Noble Prodigy. Your party is well balanced, between the bard, sorcerer, and fighter alone, they would be able to get things done, not mentioning the extra support the rogue and monk can offer. I would recommend running a spellcasting enemy skinned as a hag, seeing as most hags are too low CR to function as a BBEG. Throw in some minions to act as meat shields and some dynamic terrain for the BBEG to exploit.
Example: Noble Prodigy skinned as a powerful hag with sorcerous abilities, supported by two lesser hags in a coven, such as Beaur or Annis hags. The lesser hags take the front and distract the players in close range while the BBEG rains fire down on them from a covered position.
He doesn't have much besides the skin on his bones. Me: I'll take the skin on his bones, then.
"You see a gigantic, monstrous praying mantis burst from out of the ground. It sprays a stream of acid from it's mouth at one soldier, dissolving him instantly, then it turns and chomps another soldier in half with it's- "
"When are we gonna take a snack break?"
You probably want around CR 10, and minions are absolutely essential.
A few questions that will allow better answering of your question:
1 - Are you running 5e or 5.5e?
2 - Are you allowing for multiclassing in your game?
3 - On average how many magic items (and of what rarities) does each player character have?
All of these can radically alter the balance of the CR calculations.
For base 5e, I'd usually suggest a CR10 boss, with three CR2 minions. Or a CR8 with two CR4 henchmen. If playing with multiclassing though, I'd bump all those CRs up by 1. If you've given no magic items however, I'd drop maybe even by 2 CR for each monster.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
The easiest way to check, is to game it out for a couple of rounds.
The Arch-Hag has initiative +16 so it is certainly going first.
The Hag could cast Hypnotic Pattern if it starts far from the player characters with a DC 22, if the Paladin has a +4 Aura of Protection then the Paladin will have a +8 Wisdom saving throw modifier which is about 30% chance to succeed, the other characters will have ~15% chance to succeed, so probably all but 1 character is immediately hypnotized - the 1 unhypnotized character then has to choose between trying to attack the Hag vs trying to wake up the rest of the party. The Arch-Hag can cast Hypnotic Pattern at will so it could just keep doing this every round while staying 100 ft away from the party.
Alternatively the Hag could get closer to the party and then use Cackling Wave, assuming the same Paladin aura, the Rogue and Monk with their Evasion have 30% chance to take no damage, and 70% chance of half damage so aren't too bad off, but the rest of the party is immediately reduced to less than 50% of their max HP and Cursed. The Hag then uses Witch Strike dealing another 14 damage to most of the party - the sorcerer & bard will have less than 20 hp left. The Hag then make its two Ranged Spectral Claw attacks which KO at least one member of the party and possibly two. At the end of this turn the Rogue and Monk have ~40 hp left, the rest of the party is down or about to go down.
One member of the party then gets to act, if they cast a spell the Hag counters it using Tongue Twister (almost certainly successfully), if they get into melee they have ~50% chance to hit the Hag and do some damage. At the end of their turn the Hag gets a Legendary action to either use Hypnotic Pattern with the efficacy above (i.e. all but one or two party members are hypnotized) or uses another Spectral Claw - ensuring at least 2 members are KO before they even got a turn.
If the Paladin is Oath of Devotion, the party would at least get 1 round to take actions by being immune to Hypnotic Pattern, but this encounter is a TPK on the Hag's second turn.
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If you want to use the Arch-Hag as inspiration but make it appropriate for a level 8 party you could do it using the following modifications:
1) Nerf Cackling Wave : Remove Cackling Wave from the multiattack, the Arch-Hag can either make two spectral claws or use Cackling Wave. And make Cackling Wave recharge on a 5-6 rather than useable each turn (akin to dragon breath).
2) Rebalance modifiers/DCs : Reduce all the DCs to 16. Reduce all of the Hag's saving throw bonuses and attack bonus by 3.
3) Reduce damage dealt : Reduce the damage from Witch Strike to 1d12, Reduce the damage from Spectral Claw to 1d6+7 and instead make the target cursed by the hag until the end of the hag's next turn - to synergize with Witch Strike.
4) Nerf Spellcasting : Remove all the 2/day spells, and instead make Hypnotic Pattern and Dimension Door both 2/day spells.
5) Nerf Defenses : cut HP in half. Remove it's Magic Resistance trait. Reduce the range of it's Truesight to 30 ft.
What sot of fights have they faced in the past? Were those easy for them? If some were hard, what sorts of enemies were tough fights?
Besides relatively easy reads like "a CR 21 boss will eat their lunch", most of encounter design is about calibration to the actual group, both to their actual capabilities, and to what sort of encounters they find fun.