I'm new to DMing and am preparing to run the starting adventure Tides of Retribution. The last encounter has you fighting two Sharkbody Abominations (hunter shark stat block) (it actually insinuates there might be three if the warlock is creating another, but three seems not winnable) but when I put even two into the encounter builder tool against four level 2 characters it shows as "deadly" and even one of them is "medium." The adventure specifically has an option for if the party is defeated, where they just knock everyone out and the warlock asks them to team up, so I understand it being difficult be default, I just wanna make sure it isn't leaning towards the defeat option and I haven't built encounters myself so I have no frame of reference. What difficulty should most encounters be?
Side question: is DnD Beyond's encounter builder beta good? Or should I look up knowing how to build them by the numbers?
PS question: I just noticed the encounter builder asks for "average party level" which I assumed meant if my characters are all level 2 then the average party level is 2 right? Just wanna make sure that's not the issue, but I don't think it is that seems straight forward.
When I set up the Encounter Builders for Avernus with a full party of 6 the builder almost lists every encounter as Deadly. :)
And yes, you take the total levels of the party, divide by the number of characters and that's the average party level. 4 Level 2s would be average party level of 2.
The thing to understand about DMG difficulty levels is that a medium encounter is expected to consume 40-50% of your encounter resources and 15-20% of your daily resources, and even a deadly encounter is only expected to consume around 1/3 of your daily resources. Actual coin-flip fights are generally way over the deadly budget.
Number crunching, it's going to depend on your party mix (and I don't know the actual map setup), but assuming a traditional fighter/thief/cleric/wizard mix, we can look at their offense and defense if they go full nova:
Fighter (dueling style, Str 16, Chain+Shield, Trident): Attack +5/1d8+5, has Action Surge. Expected DPR vs AC 12 is 6.65, plus action surge.
Thief (dual wielding shortswords, Dex 16, Studded Leather): Attack +5/1d6+3 and +5/1d6, sneak attack 1d6. Expected DPR vs AC 12 is 13.2, assuming sneak attack possible.
Wizard (magic missile): 3d4+3; expected DPR vs AC 12 is 10.5.
Cleric (inflict wounds): +5/3d10, expected DPR vs AC 12 is 11.55
Thus, they can realistically drop a shark in one round. On the minus side, there's a pretty good chance the sharks drop a PC in round 1 (everyone but the wizard will probably have over 13 hp and good AC, but there's two sharks), and round 2 firepower from the fighter is considerably reduced. Still, it's reasonable to think that one shark will only be able to attack once, and then three PCs vs one shark will be a decently even fight.
Now, if the PCs don't have spells remaining, or have a less optimal offensive mix prepared, I would expect them to struggle a lot because the spellcasters aren't contributing much, but even then it's realistic to win, it just requires a bit of luck.
Ahh see I had heard about how in general it's geared towards having at least several encounters with a mix of weaker and stronger enemies, so since this example is really just two-ish encounters it's probably not really that bad. 2 of those shark abominations and 8 sahuagin initially attack the ship which also has 4 NPCs available to fight, but after the first shark is killed the sahuagin leave and the NPC crew take care of the last one while you go on to deal with now 2 sharks again and the Warlock. So since that's only two encounters, and the first one doesn't requiring killing every enemy, it's really not that bad just risky, and if they focused on killing the sahuagin first or something they'd probably lose and trigger the defeat ending. That doesn't sound so bad, though I'd be tempted to force an insight check or something to give them a hint that killing the sharks is advantageous.
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I'm new to DMing and am preparing to run the starting adventure Tides of Retribution. The last encounter has you fighting two Sharkbody Abominations (hunter shark stat block) (it actually insinuates there might be three if the warlock is creating another, but three seems not winnable) but when I put even two into the encounter builder tool against four level 2 characters it shows as "deadly" and even one of them is "medium." The adventure specifically has an option for if the party is defeated, where they just knock everyone out and the warlock asks them to team up, so I understand it being difficult be default, I just wanna make sure it isn't leaning towards the defeat option and I haven't built encounters myself so I have no frame of reference. What difficulty should most encounters be?
Side question: is DnD Beyond's encounter builder beta good? Or should I look up knowing how to build them by the numbers?
PS question: I just noticed the encounter builder asks for "average party level" which I assumed meant if my characters are all level 2 then the average party level is 2 right? Just wanna make sure that's not the issue, but I don't think it is that seems straight forward.
When I set up the Encounter Builders for Avernus with a full party of 6 the builder almost lists every encounter as Deadly. :)
And yes, you take the total levels of the party, divide by the number of characters and that's the average party level. 4 Level 2s would be average party level of 2.
The thing to understand about DMG difficulty levels is that a medium encounter is expected to consume 40-50% of your encounter resources and 15-20% of your daily resources, and even a deadly encounter is only expected to consume around 1/3 of your daily resources. Actual coin-flip fights are generally way over the deadly budget.
Number crunching, it's going to depend on your party mix (and I don't know the actual map setup), but assuming a traditional fighter/thief/cleric/wizard mix, we can look at their offense and defense if they go full nova:
Thus, they can realistically drop a shark in one round. On the minus side, there's a pretty good chance the sharks drop a PC in round 1 (everyone but the wizard will probably have over 13 hp and good AC, but there's two sharks), and round 2 firepower from the fighter is considerably reduced. Still, it's reasonable to think that one shark will only be able to attack once, and then three PCs vs one shark will be a decently even fight.
Now, if the PCs don't have spells remaining, or have a less optimal offensive mix prepared, I would expect them to struggle a lot because the spellcasters aren't contributing much, but even then it's realistic to win, it just requires a bit of luck.
Ahh see I had heard about how in general it's geared towards having at least several encounters with a mix of weaker and stronger enemies, so since this example is really just two-ish encounters it's probably not really that bad. 2 of those shark abominations and 8 sahuagin initially attack the ship which also has 4 NPCs available to fight, but after the first shark is killed the sahuagin leave and the NPC crew take care of the last one while you go on to deal with now 2 sharks again and the Warlock. So since that's only two encounters, and the first one doesn't requiring killing every enemy, it's really not that bad just risky, and if they focused on killing the sahuagin first or something they'd probably lose and trigger the defeat ending. That doesn't sound so bad, though I'd be tempted to force an insight check or something to give them a hint that killing the sharks is advantageous.