I did it to my self. None of them had played before so I wanted them to feel bad ass. 4d6, drop the lowest, reroll 1s. They all have +6 to hit. I had two combat encounters with them tonight, both ended in one round. The Barb never even got to swing his axe.
The point: how do I keep my low level enemies alive long enough to allow all my players to contribute to the fight? Being level 1, a crit can still knock them out with a single blow, unbalancing the action economy could snowball into a TPK. Whats the safest way to go about buffing my encounters?
Just have more of them. Lets say the situation calls for 4 kobolds. Either bump it up to 5-10 or have a second wave after a round or two and decide how many join the battle. This leads to players using perception and sneak more, too. scouting out to see just how many they are dealing with after 4 leads to 12 often enough. This makes players feel more engaged in the environment which is often better for some players than being a star on the grid. Another thing to do is to add a Captain or something with beefed up HP and the same or slightly better attacks. My point in short is you can change the flow of battle just by how good the players are doing without telling them that you haven't yet decided how difficult the battle will be when it starts.
Adding more enemies is, of course, a classic way of increasing difficulty. You should be very careful with this, however, as adding additional enemies is a force multiplier that could quickly swing the imbalance of power against the party. Starting an encounter where the players have low initiative can easily cause that TPK snowball.
If the issue is that they are simply killing individual creatures too quickly, then just increase the HP of the creatures.
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You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
I did it to my self. None of them had played before so I wanted them to feel bad ass. 4d6, drop the lowest, reroll 1s. They all have +6 to hit. I had two combat encounters with them tonight, both ended in one round. The Barb never even got to swing his axe.
The point: how do I keep my low level enemies alive long enough to allow all my players to contribute to the fight? Being level 1, a crit can still knock them out with a single blow, unbalancing the action economy could snowball into a TPK. Whats the safest way to go about buffing my encounters?
If you haven't started yet, use the max HP instead of the average HP. From there, you can increase the number or add a tougher version of the same creature (ie. For goblins, use a hobgoblin, bugbear, or for a different challenge a nilbog. Just read up on them before using them.) You can also use better tactics: hit and runs, ambushes, party being surprised, etc.
My team consists of a Barbarian, Druid, Light Cleric, and Ranger. High DeX and high Wis all around.
I shouldn't have let the Ranger spot the four Twig Blights waiting to join the fight, they should have been indistinguishable from actual bushes, but the Ranger spent his action to do it, rolled a 19 and I wanted to reward him for not just mindlessly dealing damage.
I think almost everyone gets a plus 4 to initiative and it didn't help all 8 Twig Blights ended up at the bottom of the order.
They will be fighting Kobolds and Goblins soon, we see how they fair against more cunning enemies.
My team consists of a Barbarian, Druid, Light Cleric, and Ranger. High DeX and high Wis all around.
I shouldn't have let the Ranger spot the four Twig Blights waiting to join the fight, they should have been indistinguishable from actual bushes, but the Ranger spent his action to do it, rolled a 19 and I wanted to reward him for not just mindlessly dealing damage.
I think almost everyone gets a plus 4 to initiative and it didn't help all 8 Twig Blights ended up at the bottom of the order.
They will be fighting Kobolds and Goblins soon, we see how they fair against more cunning enemies.
Did you roll initiative for the Blights as a single group? It helps to split creatures up into at least two initiative groups. That way you get the benefit of not bogging down the turn order, but you also avoid the situation of one side getting unfairly clobbered; all enemies going at the same time, regardless of actual place in the order, is a bad idea.
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You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
If your players are +6 to hit and the twig blights are an AC of 13, this gives the players a 70% chance to hit. +6TH is six chances on a d20 (30%). AC13 means they hit on a straight 13-20, 8 chances (40%). So, they are dealing damage seven times out of ten. Want to make it tougher, raise their AC by 2 to an AC of 15. This will reduce the chances to 60%. Not a huge drop, the characters will still land hits more than half of their attacks. But enough it might make enough of a difference. And throw in maybe one or two more blights for good measure.
Or throw in more blights right away, maybe double or double +2 the opponent strength. If the dice behave, this would prolong the encounter and give the players a feeling of having earned it. They will be hitting 70% of the time and just have more to swing at. Again, as long as the damage dealt by their opponents will not drop them in one blow.
I have found that a party of level 1 characters can handle a little bit in the way of quantity of low level baddies. As long as the damage dealt is not of a one hit caliber. And also of great import, THE PLAYERS HAVE TO PLAY SMART. They need to plan, be tactical in character. Otherwise an inferior enemy played smartly by the DM could easily gain a foothold and overwhelm the party. Very tough to balance party strength v the enemy.
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Thank you. ChrisW
Ones are righteous. And one day, we just might believe it.
This seems kinda odd to me. You wanted to feel like bad ass warriors and they are, now you want it harder? If they are having fun your doing it right. A few levels and the state won't make such a big difference. I say let them be bad ass, let them crush things.
If you need to let things live one more round just cheat, let it have 1 last hp for the last pc to finish it off.
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I did it to my self. None of them had played before so I wanted them to feel bad ass. 4d6, drop the lowest, reroll 1s. They all have +6 to hit. I had two combat encounters with them tonight, both ended in one round. The Barb never even got to swing his axe.
The point: how do I keep my low level enemies alive long enough to allow all my players to contribute to the fight? Being level 1, a crit can still knock them out with a single blow, unbalancing the action economy could snowball into a TPK. Whats the safest way to go about buffing my encounters?
Just have more of them. Lets say the situation calls for 4 kobolds. Either bump it up to 5-10 or have a second wave after a round or two and decide how many join the battle. This leads to players using perception and sneak more, too. scouting out to see just how many they are dealing with after 4 leads to 12 often enough. This makes players feel more engaged in the environment which is often better for some players than being a star on the grid. Another thing to do is to add a Captain or something with beefed up HP and the same or slightly better attacks. My point in short is you can change the flow of battle just by how good the players are doing without telling them that you haven't yet decided how difficult the battle will be when it starts.
Adding more enemies is, of course, a classic way of increasing difficulty. You should be very careful with this, however, as adding additional enemies is a force multiplier that could quickly swing the imbalance of power against the party. Starting an encounter where the players have low initiative can easily cause that TPK snowball.
If the issue is that they are simply killing individual creatures too quickly, then just increase the HP of the creatures.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
If you haven't started yet, use the max HP instead of the average HP. From there, you can increase the number or add a tougher version of the same creature (ie. For goblins, use a hobgoblin, bugbear, or for a different challenge a nilbog. Just read up on them before using them.) You can also use better tactics: hit and runs, ambushes, party being surprised, etc.
My team consists of a Barbarian, Druid, Light Cleric, and Ranger. High DeX and high Wis all around.
I shouldn't have let the Ranger spot the four Twig Blights waiting to join the fight, they should have been indistinguishable from actual bushes, but the Ranger spent his action to do it, rolled a 19 and I wanted to reward him for not just mindlessly dealing damage.
I think almost everyone gets a plus 4 to initiative and it didn't help all 8 Twig Blights ended up at the bottom of the order.
They will be fighting Kobolds and Goblins soon, we see how they fair against more cunning enemies.
Did you roll initiative for the Blights as a single group? It helps to split creatures up into at least two initiative groups. That way you get the benefit of not bogging down the turn order, but you also avoid the situation of one side getting unfairly clobbered; all enemies going at the same time, regardless of actual place in the order, is a bad idea.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
You can use the max HP of the monster rather than the listed average value.
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They just all rolled poorly with a -2 to DeX
If your players are +6 to hit and the twig blights are an AC of 13, this gives the players a 70% chance to hit. +6TH is six chances on a d20 (30%). AC13 means they hit on a straight 13-20, 8 chances (40%). So, they are dealing damage seven times out of ten. Want to make it tougher, raise their AC by 2 to an AC of 15. This will reduce the chances to 60%. Not a huge drop, the characters will still land hits more than half of their attacks. But enough it might make enough of a difference. And throw in maybe one or two more blights for good measure.
Or throw in more blights right away, maybe double or double +2 the opponent strength. If the dice behave, this would prolong the encounter and give the players a feeling of having earned it. They will be hitting 70% of the time and just have more to swing at. Again, as long as the damage dealt by their opponents will not drop them in one blow.
I have found that a party of level 1 characters can handle a little bit in the way of quantity of low level baddies. As long as the damage dealt is not of a one hit caliber. And also of great import, THE PLAYERS HAVE TO PLAY SMART. They need to plan, be tactical in character. Otherwise an inferior enemy played smartly by the DM could easily gain a foothold and overwhelm the party. Very tough to balance party strength v the enemy.
Thank you.
ChrisW
Ones are righteous. And one day, we just might believe it.
This seems kinda odd to me. You wanted to feel like bad ass warriors and they are, now you want it harder? If they are having fun your doing it right. A few levels and the state won't make such a big difference. I say let them be bad ass, let them crush things.
If you need to let things live one more round just cheat, let it have 1 last hp for the last pc to finish it off.