So I usually use kobold fight club to check encounters before running them as I haven't tried my hand at calculating them myself, but it seems my players are breezing through them with combat only lasting 1-2 rounds usually. Now, at times this is preferable because it doesn't bog down the party for half the session with one fight as players are already waiting a long time for their turns. In the next session however, I'd like to have them battle either a shadow dragon or a dracolich, but I'm not sure what would actually challenge them and what would probably kill them at lvl6.
Going off past encounters I'd probably need something between the 'Hard' and 'Deadly' that KFC gives as a guideline.
The party consists of a Barbarian, Monk, Druid, Artificer, Bard and an Arcane Ranger. Big damage dealers are the Arcane Ranger and the druid(druid summons 2 bears with conjure animals). The monk has a bunch of damage too but is pretty good at using his abilities to lock down or stun enemies (Kobold pack tactics + Mo4E). The artificer has an iron defender and the bard never gives out bardic inspiration but uses it on his own blade flourish. Some of these things can turn around very quickly (for example, druid loses concentration on his animals), but overall they're pretty consistent
So when the fighting gets going there are 9 players and companions going all out on the monster. Now, I don't mind it that my players feel powerful or have a good combo going, but I'd like to at least make this fight a bit challenging. Note:I'm not complaining about my players, but I want to give them a good time and I don't think an entire campaign of steamrolling encounters would be particularly interesting to them.
How would I best go about this? A single dragon with higher CR than what they're supposed to be able to fight or a medium/hard one with a bunch of adds? Maybe I'm doing something wrong? Or any other suggestions?
I agree between the hard and deadly raising for your players.
Overall adding a shadow dragon or dracolich is crazy in my opinion. Personally I’d homebrew something that could tank a lot of hits but not deal insane amounts of damage so players aren’t downed in the first round of combat. Maybe something that could fly and has multiattack ranged attacks could be quite challenging for your players. Just remember to not try to TPK them or anything but give a challenge. Also legendary actions is a great way too to spread out damage. I would recommend giving the big boss minions or players will just destroy the boss with powerful abilities and magic.
Minions added to boss fight, to me, is the best way to make thigns last more than a couple rounds. The players get to feel powerful by plowing through these weaker guys, but they're also eating up turns to make it feel like everything is lasting longer. If your players are going in with 9 viable combatants, you should have at least that many minions assisting the boss fight.
A young shadow dragon is CR13, an adult dracolich is CR17.
They both fly and have breath weapons.
Either should be able to wipe this party. Both are intelligent creatures. They won't land and attack. The shadow dragon won't attack during the day. They will use tactics to rip the party apart. However, they are definitely at a disadvantage in terms of the action economy and if the party was lucky they might be able to take out the shadow dragon with good tactics, failed saves and luck.
Anyway, one way to deal with a party like this is to have the party face larger numbers of creatures which have more options. Ranged and melee attacks, spells. If you put this party up against a melee heavy opponent in a confined space then the party will hit above their level since they have the extra damage from the bears and other pets and good spell support. On the other hand, a more open battle field against multiple opponents can mean that every character in the party can end up attacked at the same time. Concentration drops, spells don't work as well.
Minions added to boss fight, to me, is the best way to make thigns last more than a couple rounds. The players get to feel powerful by plowing through these weaker guys, but they're also eating up turns to make it feel like everything is lasting longer. If your players are going in with 9 viable combatants, you should have at least that many minions assisting the boss fight.
I was going to write up pretty much the same thing so I'll just second this recommendation.
Magic items, if you've been liberal with handing them out, can also throw the math off. So can having smarter players than you, which may have come out wrong. It's not a bad thing when more heads mean more ideas and more possibilities. You simply can't account for everything.
Well, you could, but I imagine you'd drive yourself mad doing so.
I used KFC to pit my party of 4 7th level players up against a cambion and a pack of 3 hell hounds. Technically a deadly encounter, yet nobody was knocked unconscious. I should have redesigned the encounter with more enemies. It happens.
A young shadow dragon is CR13, an adult dracolich is CR17.
They both fly and have breath weapons.
Either should be able to wipe this party. Both are intelligent creatures. They won't land and attack. The shadow dragon won't attack during the day. They will use tactics to rip the party apart. However, they are definitely at a disadvantage in terms of the action economy and if the party was lucky they might be able to take out the shadow dragon with good tactics, failed saves and luck.
...I must admit I hadn't considered the flying (quite dumb, its... a dragon) but I had thought to have them attack the shadow dragon inside, then again, it wouldn't make a lair where it was at a disadvantage, so I should've thought that through a bit more.
I think I'll have to go back to the drawing board and take a look at the monster manual to use a lower CR dragon to make a shadow (for story reasons important that it is, I might've painted myself into a corner there). We're wrapping up the campaign in one or two sessions so I'm not too averse to give some extra magic items. They know it is a dragon, so I hope they'll plan accordingly.
For a 1 vs 9 fight, you pretty much need to make the solo boss immune to status effects. Also, be generally aware that the way 5e balances encounters makes assumptions that are increasingly dubious as numbers ratios change -- particularly the weighting of single target vs area damage.
As far as tossing in a shadow dragon or dracolich: the Young Red Shadow Dragon isn't a legendary so it's going to have a good chance of being stunlocked for the entire fight, but if it actually gets an action, most PCs do not have 56 hp, so any character who fails a DC 18 Dex save against its breath weapon will instantly die. That's unlikely to result in a satisfying encounter either way it goes.
For a 1 vs 9 fight, you pretty much need to make the solo boss immune to status effects. Also, be generally aware that the way 5e balances encounters makes assumptions that are increasingly dubious as numbers ratios change -- particularly the weighting of single target vs area damage.
As far as tossing in a shadow dragon or dracolich: the Young Red Shadow Dragon isn't a legendary so it's going to have a good chance of being stunlocked for the entire fight, but if it actually gets an action, most PCs do not have 56 hp, so any character who fails a DC 18 Dex save against its breath weapon will instantly die. That's unlikely to result in a satisfying encounter either way it goes.
Yes, red might be a bit too strong, but I was looking at a young white or young green dragon to turn into a shadow version of itself, those are a bit lower and a DC15 doesn't seem too insane, along with that, I usually roll and I'm not averse to fudging it if it goes really south.
Matt Colville has an interesting video about upgrading/downgrading monsters that might be worth looking at if you would at least keep a certain monster but give them a fair boost to make it more challenging. https://youtu.be/QgTIGo6zJbs
Here is another about a character with solo action-oriented monster, again may be helpful for your needs. https://youtu.be/y_zl8WWaSyI
Yes, red might be a bit too strong, but I was looking at a young white or young green dragon to turn into a shadow version of itself, those are a bit lower and a DC15 doesn't seem too insane, along with that, I usually roll and I'm not averse to fudging it if it goes really south.
In general large parties have a couple of issues:
Enough damage to actually threaten the PCs is overwhelming. Even boss-type fights rarely go more than 4-5 rounds, so to be a credible threat the boss, if using targeted attacks, should be dropping two or so PCs per round. Area damage is a reasonable option here.
The boss doesn't have very many actions, so any effects that deny actions (e.g. stun attacks) are disproportionately strong.
The mechanics of healing in 5e require playing whack-a-mole to actually have much effect, so bosses should have a method of making sure people stay down.
I would probably custom-brew a monster rather than using existing templates, but if you want a shadow dragon, the easiest option is to use one of the weaker templates and then throw in some shadows in (prior victims) as a meat shield.
Gonna echo the need for minions for any boss monster you do use. The simple fact is that a party consisting of 9 entities taking actions independently (several of them with Extra Attack) is always going to overwhelm a party of 1.
I'd recommend a tiered approach. A relatively large number of weak monsters, which through AoE damage might get obliterated in 1 or 2 good AoE effects, with a few bigger monsters that are either high HP or moderate AC, or both, but don't have all that much damage themselves. Ideally these medium monsters should not themselves be dangerous, but be "enablers" for other monsters to be dangerous, in some way. Whether that's through applying Conditions to the party, or buffing other monsters, is up to you. Then you have your actual boss monster.
Couple things. I have 6 players also and have noticed similar things. so in my own experience:
1. Single target enemies (according to CR recommendations) are just too easy. You can try to use 1 stronger monster but this ends up bringing up other issues. Multiple monsters work much better for larger groups.
2. The way D&D is designed to be played (I think?) is multiple encounters to test your resource management abilities throughout 1 adventuring day, not all encounters need to be combat just anything to get the players to use their abilities, spell slots, and any other resources. So there is nothing wrong with fights being too easy, in fact they are a very good thing, there will just be more to come and by the time they get to that last encounter it’s all been building up to, their resources are depleted and it becomes a more fair fight, or even a difficult one.
granted, not every adventuring day is going to be like this and sometimes a battle that lasts 2-4 hours is necessary to give that epic final boss battle feeling. In which case, refer to Transmorpher’s post, add minions perhaps even ones that come in waves.
3. The battlefield is as important as the enemies you’re fighting. Battlefields that forces the players to move around with certain effects can be huge, or anything that throws their plans for a loop. Maybe a platform they are standing on starts to move and sends the people standing on it to the other side of the map, they were going to melee attack the creature now they are stuck 40 ft up and they are faced with a completely new challenge, just an example off the top of my head but there are tons of ways to make the battlefield an enemy as well.
Gonna echo the need for minions for any boss monster you do use. The simple fact is that a party consisting of 9 entities taking actions independently (several of them with Extra Attack) is always going to overwhelm a party of 1.
Well, it's possible to avoid that with a sufficiently overwhelming adversary, but then you run into instant PC death as an issue -- a medium encounter for 9 level 6 PCs is CR 16. A reasonably average PC at level 6 has d8s for HP and 12-14 Con for 39-45 hp, so anything that does that much in a turn will be oneshotting PCs. Looking at the CR 16 options in the MM:
Gonna echo the need for minions for any boss monster you do use. The simple fact is that a party consisting of 9 entities taking actions independently (several of them with Extra Attack) is always going to overwhelm a party of 1.
Well, it's possible to avoid that with a sufficiently overwhelming adversary, but then you run into instant PC death as an issue -- a medium encounter for 9 level 6 PCs is CR 16. A reasonably average PC at level 6 has d8s for HP and 12-14 Con for 39-45 hp, so anything that does that much in a turn will be oneshotting PCs. Looking at the CR 16 options in the MM:
Which is why, unless you are deliberately looking to put a character down for a dirt nap, you shouldn't use one large monster to make that CR of 16, but rather a group of lesser ones that add up to a CR of 16 instead.
Someone said on another thread... you are better off with high to-hit, low damage on monsters than low to-hit, high damage. Less swingy. Less likely to accidentally one-shot someone.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
This might be utterly scandalous to admit, but if I need fight to feel satisfying and dangerous, I just keep the monster alive till I think they've earned it. Usually that only means keeping it alive for one or two rounds longer than it should have been up for, but if my players had a better time than if I hadn't (and if I know that I have nothing else planned for the the extra resources they spend on the fight) then so what.
Edit: Oh, and I like to call this the "In-Situ Homebrew Technique", if that helps.
This might be utterly scandalous to admit, but if I need fight to feel satisfying and dangerous, I just keep the monster alive till I think they've earned it. Usually that only means keeping it alive for one or two rounds longer than it should have been up for, but if my players had a better time than if I hadn't (and if I know that I have nothing else planned for the the extra resources they spend on the fight) then so what.
Edit: Oh, and I like to call this the "In-Situ Homebrew Technique", if that helps.
Dynamically altering HP totals mid-combat is a time-tested DM technique ;)
I realize the party size is only 6, which is a bit better (only requires CR 11 to be medium, 14 to be hard) but it's still generally better to use multiple enemies or enemies with legendary actions so the damage output is more split up.
This might be utterly scandalous to admit, but if I need fight to feel satisfying and dangerous, I just keep the monster alive till I think they've earned it. Usually that only means keeping it alive for one or two rounds longer than it should have been up for, but if my players had a better time than if I hadn't (and if I know that I have nothing else planned for the the extra resources they spend on the fight) then so what.
Edit: Oh, and I like to call this the "In-Situ Homebrew Technique", if that helps.
Dynamically altering HP totals mid-combat is a time-tested DM technique ;)
You know, I was just explaining that in another thread earlier. There are some apparently that consider that the worst form of “cheating.” 🤷♂️
So I usually use kobold fight club to check encounters before running them as I haven't tried my hand at calculating them myself, but it seems my players are breezing through them with combat only lasting 1-2 rounds usually. Now, at times this is preferable because it doesn't bog down the party for half the session with one fight as players are already waiting a long time for their turns. In the next session however, I'd like to have them battle either a shadow dragon or a dracolich, but I'm not sure what would actually challenge them and what would probably kill them at lvl6.
Going off past encounters I'd probably need something between the 'Hard' and 'Deadly' that KFC gives as a guideline.
The party consists of a Barbarian, Monk, Druid, Artificer, Bard and an Arcane Ranger. Big damage dealers are the Arcane Ranger and the druid(druid summons 2 bears with conjure animals). The monk has a bunch of damage too but is pretty good at using his abilities to lock down or stun enemies (Kobold pack tactics + Mo4E). The artificer has an iron defender and the bard never gives out bardic inspiration but uses it on his own blade flourish. Some of these things can turn around very quickly (for example, druid loses concentration on his animals), but overall they're pretty consistent
So when the fighting gets going there are 9 players and companions going all out on the monster. Now, I don't mind it that my players feel powerful or have a good combo going, but I'd like to at least make this fight a bit challenging. Note: I'm not complaining about my players, but I want to give them a good time and I don't think an entire campaign of steamrolling encounters would be particularly interesting to them.
How would I best go about this? A single dragon with higher CR than what they're supposed to be able to fight or a medium/hard one with a bunch of adds? Maybe I'm doing something wrong? Or any other suggestions?
I agree between the hard and deadly raising for your players.
Overall adding a shadow dragon or dracolich is crazy in my opinion. Personally I’d homebrew something that could tank a lot of hits but not deal insane amounts of damage so players aren’t downed in the first round of combat. Maybe something that could fly and has multiattack ranged attacks could be quite challenging for your players. Just remember to not try to TPK them or anything but give a challenge. Also legendary actions is a great way too to spread out damage. I would recommend giving the big boss minions or players will just destroy the boss with powerful abilities and magic.
Minions added to boss fight, to me, is the best way to make thigns last more than a couple rounds. The players get to feel powerful by plowing through these weaker guys, but they're also eating up turns to make it feel like everything is lasting longer. If your players are going in with 9 viable combatants, you should have at least that many minions assisting the boss fight.
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A young shadow dragon is CR13, an adult dracolich is CR17.
They both fly and have breath weapons.
Either should be able to wipe this party. Both are intelligent creatures. They won't land and attack. The shadow dragon won't attack during the day. They will use tactics to rip the party apart. However, they are definitely at a disadvantage in terms of the action economy and if the party was lucky they might be able to take out the shadow dragon with good tactics, failed saves and luck.
Anyway, one way to deal with a party like this is to have the party face larger numbers of creatures which have more options. Ranged and melee attacks, spells. If you put this party up against a melee heavy opponent in a confined space then the party will hit above their level since they have the extra damage from the bears and other pets and good spell support. On the other hand, a more open battle field against multiple opponents can mean that every character in the party can end up attacked at the same time. Concentration drops, spells don't work as well.
I was going to write up pretty much the same thing so I'll just second this recommendation.
Magic items, if you've been liberal with handing them out, can also throw the math off. So can having smarter players than you, which may have come out wrong. It's not a bad thing when more heads mean more ideas and more possibilities. You simply can't account for everything.
Well, you could, but I imagine you'd drive yourself mad doing so.
I used KFC to pit my party of 4 7th level players up against a cambion and a pack of 3 hell hounds. Technically a deadly encounter, yet nobody was knocked unconscious. I should have redesigned the encounter with more enemies. It happens.
...I must admit I hadn't considered the flying (quite dumb, its... a dragon) but I had thought to have them attack the shadow dragon inside, then again, it wouldn't make a lair where it was at a disadvantage, so I should've thought that through a bit more.
I think I'll have to go back to the drawing board and take a look at the monster manual to use a lower CR dragon to make a shadow (for story reasons important that it is, I might've painted myself into a corner there). We're wrapping up the campaign in one or two sessions so I'm not too averse to give some extra magic items. They know it is a dragon, so I hope they'll plan accordingly.
Thanks for the advice so far everyone!
For a 1 vs 9 fight, you pretty much need to make the solo boss immune to status effects. Also, be generally aware that the way 5e balances encounters makes assumptions that are increasingly dubious as numbers ratios change -- particularly the weighting of single target vs area damage.
As far as tossing in a shadow dragon or dracolich: the Young Red Shadow Dragon isn't a legendary so it's going to have a good chance of being stunlocked for the entire fight, but if it actually gets an action, most PCs do not have 56 hp, so any character who fails a DC 18 Dex save against its breath weapon will instantly die. That's unlikely to result in a satisfying encounter either way it goes.
Yes, red might be a bit too strong, but I was looking at a young white or young green dragon to turn into a shadow version of itself, those are a bit lower and a DC15 doesn't seem too insane, along with that, I usually roll and I'm not averse to fudging it if it goes really south.
Matt Colville has an interesting video about upgrading/downgrading monsters that might be worth looking at if you would at least keep a certain monster but give them a fair boost to make it more challenging. https://youtu.be/QgTIGo6zJbs
Here is another about a character with solo action-oriented monster, again may be helpful for your needs. https://youtu.be/y_zl8WWaSyI
In general large parties have a couple of issues:
I would probably custom-brew a monster rather than using existing templates, but if you want a shadow dragon, the easiest option is to use one of the weaker templates and then throw in some shadows in (prior victims) as a meat shield.
Gonna echo the need for minions for any boss monster you do use. The simple fact is that a party consisting of 9 entities taking actions independently (several of them with Extra Attack) is always going to overwhelm a party of 1.
I'd recommend a tiered approach. A relatively large number of weak monsters, which through AoE damage might get obliterated in 1 or 2 good AoE effects, with a few bigger monsters that are either high HP or moderate AC, or both, but don't have all that much damage themselves. Ideally these medium monsters should not themselves be dangerous, but be "enablers" for other monsters to be dangerous, in some way. Whether that's through applying Conditions to the party, or buffing other monsters, is up to you. Then you have your actual boss monster.
Couple things. I have 6 players also and have noticed similar things. so in my own experience:
1. Single target enemies (according to CR recommendations) are just too easy. You can try to use 1 stronger monster but this ends up bringing up other issues. Multiple monsters work much better for larger groups.
2. The way D&D is designed to be played (I think?) is multiple encounters to test your resource management abilities throughout 1 adventuring day, not all encounters need to be combat just anything to get the players to use their abilities, spell slots, and any other resources. So there is nothing wrong with fights being too easy, in fact they are a very good thing, there will just be more to come and by the time they get to that last encounter it’s all been building up to, their resources are depleted and it becomes a more fair fight, or even a difficult one.
granted, not every adventuring day is going to be like this and sometimes a battle that lasts 2-4 hours is necessary to give that epic final boss battle feeling. In which case, refer to Transmorpher’s post, add minions perhaps even ones that come in waves.
3. The battlefield is as important as the enemies you’re fighting. Battlefields that forces the players to move around with certain effects can be huge, or anything that throws their plans for a loop. Maybe a platform they are standing on starts to move and sends the people standing on it to the other side of the map, they were going to melee attack the creature now they are stuck 40 ft up and they are faced with a completely new challenge, just an example off the top of my head but there are tons of ways to make the battlefield an enemy as well.
Well, it's possible to avoid that with a sufficiently overwhelming adversary, but then you run into instant PC death as an issue -- a medium encounter for 9 level 6 PCs is CR 16. A reasonably average PC at level 6 has d8s for HP and 12-14 Con for 39-45 hp, so anything that does that much in a turn will be oneshotting PCs. Looking at the CR 16 options in the MM:
Which is why, unless you are deliberately looking to put a character down for a dirt nap, you shouldn't use one large monster to make that CR of 16, but rather a group of lesser ones that add up to a CR of 16 instead.
Someone said on another thread... you are better off with high to-hit, low damage on monsters than low to-hit, high damage. Less swingy. Less likely to accidentally one-shot someone.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
This might be utterly scandalous to admit, but if I need fight to feel satisfying and dangerous, I just keep the monster alive till I think they've earned it. Usually that only means keeping it alive for one or two rounds longer than it should have been up for, but if my players had a better time than if I hadn't (and if I know that I have nothing else planned for the the extra resources they spend on the fight) then so what.
Edit: Oh, and I like to call this the "In-Situ Homebrew Technique", if that helps.
Dynamically altering HP totals mid-combat is a time-tested DM technique ;)
I realize the party size is only 6, which is a bit better (only requires CR 11 to be medium, 14 to be hard) but it's still generally better to use multiple enemies or enemies with legendary actions so the damage output is more split up.
You know, I was just explaining that in another thread earlier. There are some apparently that consider that the worst form of “cheating.” 🤷♂️
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