I'm a new DM, just completed session 6, and i'm looking for help with an encounter. I'm having a problem finding some options for a cave encounter for a group of 5 level 10's. I'm trying to find something that'll startle the players and make them panic a bit, but I don't want it outright deadly. The party is made up of a Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Ranger, and a Sorcerer, so only one real frontliner and a lot of strength, intelegence, and charisma dump-stats.
So, the current as to what is happening is that the players are being sent to an old, abandoned mountain fortress and they have to get there through an set of tunnels dug by soldiers wanting to siege the town the PC's are coming from. The Fortress itself inhabited by a BBEG I'm using this to introduce, and the tunnels just long unused. The tunnels don't go deep enough to be even close to the underdark, but I do want to throw something dangerous at them that'll get them a bit panicked.
The big thing is that they've rolled over every encounter thus far. They had an encounter with a Behir recently and they blew it away in two rounds, and in a 1v1 I'm sure the Barb alone would have been able to take it out in the setting I put it (Out of its natural habitat, because of something dangerous up in the mountains... the BBEG they're about to meet.) I'm searching for an encounter that would actually be dangerous for the barb but not deadly for everyone else.
I've got a few possible encounters, but I'm having a hard time deciding on which one would be the best to use.
1. A Cloaker Ambush - Doesn't really seem all that dangerous, until it grabs someone with a strength dump-stat. They can't get out on their own and if everyone else just decides to bombard the cloaker, then they risk downing or killing their companion because of the shared damage they don't know about. Then there's logical gameplay, the Cloaker isn't going to fight to the death. Barb walks up, chunks it and his friend for half their hp, and the cloaker just flies away if given the chance and the encounter wasn't dangerous at all.
2. Shadows - Possibly one of the scariest things, for me, to throw at them. Even two of these can be seriously deadly to everyone but the Barb and the Cleric. Planning on introducing these along a dark pathway that seems to grow darker over time, and even those with dark vision start having a hard time seeing further than 15 to 20 feet. Suddenly, the barb feels a small nick like he bumped into a rather sharp rock, but there's nothing there... and then he feels a bit drained, his equipment a bit heavier. Then, others start feeling those sharp nicks and the weakness (intentionally only giving -1 STR). They see a light ahead and start running towards it only to find a small open cavern with light beaming from above and darkness moving out of the corners of their eyes, and the real fight begins. Story wise, I love this idea. I also see how ludicrously deadly this could be against a party full of Strength dumpers. I'm extremely hesitant on using it, regardless of how easy they are to kill after the fight starts proper. If the cleric get's downed or doesn't prepare a spell to bring people back, it's a possible campaign wrecker.
3. Cave Fishers - Same as the Shadows. Anyone with a strength dump stat just risks dying to one of these, but the Cleric and Barb are almost completely safe against them just from the weight limit on the tether. The thought of the ranger being pulled up 20ft face to face with the fisher with no real way of fighting back (range disadvantage) and the other party members fighting against 3 quarters cover to hit the fisher if they can see it at all without just nuking it and their companion. I just have the feeling that someone will die from this if I play the fishers the way they should be. Let alone that the only person that can cut the tether would be the barb (magic axe) which doesn't have a way up to the fishers to save others.
4. Umber Hulks - Other than being nowhere near the underdark where these things tend to live, the only ones with a half decent charisma are the Bard and Sorcerer. Luckily, the ranger is a typical Gloomstalker with Underdark favored terrain, so i'll give her the chance to recognize the silhouette and look away when the party is surprised by one. The Barb and the Cleric on the otherhand are relying solely on their dice to keep them from being confused. The hulks also deal enough damage to most of the party to be a serious threat while the barb and cleric are preoccupied. I'm hesitant on using more than one, but only one won't be much of a threat. Then there's logical gameplay, the whole "it's not going to fight to the death and will flee in the face of guaranteed death" and it's movement speed; I have to make it collapse the tunnel behind it, or they'll catch up and kill it with near no problem. It just doesn't seem like a fun encounter to run. Either they all die, or the hulk(s) get overrun.
Am I worrying too much about one of these encounters, or should I be looking at something different to use?
Have you considered doing an organized trap kobold fight?
Basically have kobolds carve out the dungeon in the same manner as true castle entrance with murder holes.
The entire first part of the cave is filled with windy passage ways filled with murder holes. It ends in a big murder room, with a single secret entrance that leads to passageways to all the murder holes, and then finally back to a Kobold encampment.
The PC's get peppered with attacks. At first they have no idea what is going on - they think invisible attackers, etc. Then they figure it out and have to find a way to defeat a bunch of kobolds with Total cover.
Wait did you say they were at level 10? Shadows are not a threat for level 10 they have a challenge rating of 1/2, I had a party of 5 level 3’s go up against 4 of them and walk away mostly unscathed.
Have you considered doing an organized trap kobold fight?
Basically have kobolds carve out the dungeon in the same manner as true castle entrance with murder holes.
The entire first part of the cave is filled with windy passage ways filled with murder holes. It ends in a big murder room, with a single secret entrance that leads to passageways to all the murder holes, and then finally back to a Kobold encampment.
The PC's get peppered with attacks. At first they have no idea what is going on - they think invisible attackers, etc. Then they figure it out and have to find a way to defeat a bunch of kobolds with Total cover.
So, I actually already have something like this planned with the added bonus of a pitfall full of Gelatinous Cube that I'm hoping the Barbarian will fall into. Any time I play a barb in other people's campaigns, I insist on being first in the marching order in case of enemies or traps(with no rogue in the party). I'm hoping the other common barbarian player will pick that up without me playing a PC and tumble into my trap. Then the others will have to deal with the Kobold firing squad while he wrestles with a cube he can't force his way out of.
A single purple worm could work, if you're okay with the possibility of one or more of them dying.
As much as I would like to do one of these two, one of the other campaigns i'm playing with this group just used both of these. The formorian a lot more recently and my Purple Worm encounter would be very similar to how the other person ran it.
Wait did you say they were at level 10? Shadows are not a threat for level 10 they have a challenge rating of 1/2, I had a party of 5 level 3’s go up against 4 of them and walk away mostly unscathed.
I would use a wraith or a banshee or a ghost
What classes were your party? My main fear with the Shadows is that 3 of my players have dumped their strength. The way i'm planning the shadow encounter makes the actual fight a lot more dangerous than normal, and the fight isn't going to be easy with the way I'm planning on having the shadows fight. Shadows playing hit and run tactics while hiding in a dark room can make them far more deadly than they really should be.
Challenge rating is also a weird thing that doesn't necessarily mean anything depending on what creatures there are in the encounter and how intelligently you play them. Creatures with weird "welp, you're dead" abilities can almost always fight above their weight class, where as some high CR creatures can be complete pushovers if you put them outside their natural habitat or play them too straight forward. A purple worm for example can be a push over if you just make it fight the party, but if It comes up, just takes someone and leaves, then It can be quite deadly.
You could use Intellect Devourers, but at a nominally medium encounter (7 of them) they'll probably either all die before they get an action or get multiple kills (on average, about 3 of them to stun and body thief an int 8 character without int save proficiency).
I mean I am guessing at level 10 your barbarian has 100 hp and can do rages for what +11 for two attacks a round at d12 +11?
So I don’t think it’s me putting too much faith in the CR system to think that an AC12 16hp creature that will have a 50% chance to miss for 2d6+2 damage once a round is not a sizeable threat
If I could take a step back. You mentioned they are rolling over the encounters. Are you giving them multiple encounters per day? Sometimes the problem with fights being too easy is that there are too few of them in a day and the party can then blow their resources on a single fight, long rest, repeat. If they face three-four encounters (or more) before they can rest again, those later ones can be very challenging after they've used all or most of their spell slots/rages/bardic inspirations, etc.
As for an encounter at level 10. Well, they're in a dungeon, and dragon is the other thing right in the name of the game. I'm kind of surprised no one else mentioned it yet :)
Dragons being smart, it could easily be allied with/cut a deal with the BBEG which would explain it being there.
I mean I am guessing at level 10 your barbarian has 100 hp and can do rages for what +11 for two attacks a round at d12 +11?
So I don’t think it’s me putting too much faith in the CR system to think that an AC12 16hp creature that will have a 50% chance to miss for 2d6+2 damage once a round is not a sizeable threat
Ok, I'll say this again: I am not worried about the 20 STR Barb with an AC of 20. I can never roll high enough to hit him most times.
Ok, fun story. Threw a bunch of ankegs at them, 8 at a time with a total of 16; When one died another took it's place in initiative. Battle started with the Barb being dug out from under, thrown prone, and being ambushed by 4 of them that now had advantage. The only 1 to hit him, ONE, was the initial attack to knock him prone. EVERYONE ELSE ALMOST DIED.
I am not worried about the Barb. I am worried about everyone else. Yes, I have realized thanks to you that 2 shadows are not enough, but I'm not going to throw the proper CR allotment at them.
If I could take a step back. You mentioned they are rolling over the encounters. Are you giving them multiple encounters per day? Sometimes the problem with fights being too easy is that there are too few of them in a day and the party can then blow their resources on a single fight, long rest, repeat. If they face three-four encounters (or more) before they can rest again, those later ones can be very challenging after they've used all or most of their spell slots/rages/bardic inspirations, etc.
As for an encounter at level 10. Well, they're in a dungeon, and dragon is the other thing right in the name of the game. I'm kind of surprised no one else mentioned it yet :)
Dragons being smart, it could easily be allied with/cut a deal with the BBEG which would explain it being there.
I'm actually having a problem giving them multiple encounters a day. I think I might be a bit too logical about things. I imagine creatures of higher CR being rarer than creatures of lower CR. Wolves are more common that Dire Wolves, and werewolves being fairly rare. A pack of wolves aren't going to be much of a challenge for one of them at this point, and I don't want every encounter to be CR 10+. A thing that one of my players asks regularly, "With things like this in the world, how to rando citizens survive? How do towns exist?"
Granted, they aren't just getting one encounter and then the next day. This is their first time, in my campaign starting at lvl 10, that they're going into something akin to a dungeon. Most of my encounter have been random roadside, traveling from town to town, encounters cause that's all i've had them do so far. They started in one town, faffed about a bit in a "magic, you can't really die cause I'm learning how to DM but don't own any module books so I'm testing on how to balance things better, Dungeon." and then I sent them to a town that no one returns from to find out why. Behir on the road, far from it's natural habitat, and it's not the only thing fleeing the mountains. "hey, can you guys go up in the mountains and figure out why?"
Most of my sessions have been social. For the next few sessions, I want it to be combat heavy and kind of doom and panic ridden. Their travel to the BBEG's lair is going to be 3 days, and I want it to be a slog the whole way. I want them to question when, and sometimes if, they'll get their rests. Kobold dens, spider dens, etc. If the players spend 4 ingame hours fighing and running from kobolds while trying to avoid their traps, then it's awesome. I want exhaustion levels to be a legitimate thing that can happen, at most one or two, but still.
Quote from darkeshrine A thing that one of my players asks regularly, "With things like this in the world, how to rando citizens survive? How do towns exist?"
Lol. D&D works best when you don’t think about it too hard.
I think multiple encounters might really help. It can be hard when you’re not doing a dungeon crawl, but it forces players to spread their resources a bit more thin, which makes the fights more challenging. Dungeon crawls can be a good way to do that. Also a time element, which means they can’t spend 8 hours sitting around — or even 1 hour for a short rest — can really amp up the difficulty. Give them a few smaller fights to drain their resources and the big fight will be much more challenging.
You don't have to use particularly high CR creatures when you are playing with monsters who can fight intelligently and plan ahead. Mog's suggestion re: kobold trap tunnels is just one example. Hobgoblins with scouts, terrain advantage and some arcane class levels is another.
If this is a mountainous environment, a troupe of stone giants hurling boulders should really wake them up. At least one of them is a sorc. The party is encroaching on the stone giants' territory with heavy weaponry. That's enough reason for the giants to arguably strike first and ask questions later.
If you're worried about STR drain from Shadows being too challenging for the party, what about using Allips instead? Wisdom drain, similar tactics, and 50% chance of ignoring damage from any corporeal source.
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I'm a new DM, just completed session 6, and i'm looking for help with an encounter. I'm having a problem finding some options for a cave encounter for a group of 5 level 10's. I'm trying to find something that'll startle the players and make them panic a bit, but I don't want it outright deadly. The party is made up of a Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Ranger, and a Sorcerer, so only one real frontliner and a lot of strength, intelegence, and charisma dump-stats.
So, the current as to what is happening is that the players are being sent to an old, abandoned mountain fortress and they have to get there through an set of tunnels dug by soldiers wanting to siege the town the PC's are coming from. The Fortress itself inhabited by a BBEG I'm using this to introduce, and the tunnels just long unused. The tunnels don't go deep enough to be even close to the underdark, but I do want to throw something dangerous at them that'll get them a bit panicked.
The big thing is that they've rolled over every encounter thus far. They had an encounter with a Behir recently and they blew it away in two rounds, and in a 1v1 I'm sure the Barb alone would have been able to take it out in the setting I put it (Out of its natural habitat, because of something dangerous up in the mountains... the BBEG they're about to meet.) I'm searching for an encounter that would actually be dangerous for the barb but not deadly for everyone else.
I've got a few possible encounters, but I'm having a hard time deciding on which one would be the best to use.
1. A Cloaker Ambush - Doesn't really seem all that dangerous, until it grabs someone with a strength dump-stat. They can't get out on their own and if everyone else just decides to bombard the cloaker, then they risk downing or killing their companion because of the shared damage they don't know about. Then there's logical gameplay, the Cloaker isn't going to fight to the death. Barb walks up, chunks it and his friend for half their hp, and the cloaker just flies away if given the chance and the encounter wasn't dangerous at all.
2. Shadows - Possibly one of the scariest things, for me, to throw at them. Even two of these can be seriously deadly to everyone but the Barb and the Cleric. Planning on introducing these along a dark pathway that seems to grow darker over time, and even those with dark vision start having a hard time seeing further than 15 to 20 feet. Suddenly, the barb feels a small nick like he bumped into a rather sharp rock, but there's nothing there... and then he feels a bit drained, his equipment a bit heavier. Then, others start feeling those sharp nicks and the weakness (intentionally only giving -1 STR). They see a light ahead and start running towards it only to find a small open cavern with light beaming from above and darkness moving out of the corners of their eyes, and the real fight begins. Story wise, I love this idea. I also see how ludicrously deadly this could be against a party full of Strength dumpers. I'm extremely hesitant on using it, regardless of how easy they are to kill after the fight starts proper. If the cleric get's downed or doesn't prepare a spell to bring people back, it's a possible campaign wrecker.
3. Cave Fishers - Same as the Shadows. Anyone with a strength dump stat just risks dying to one of these, but the Cleric and Barb are almost completely safe against them just from the weight limit on the tether. The thought of the ranger being pulled up 20ft face to face with the fisher with no real way of fighting back (range disadvantage) and the other party members fighting against 3 quarters cover to hit the fisher if they can see it at all without just nuking it and their companion. I just have the feeling that someone will die from this if I play the fishers the way they should be. Let alone that the only person that can cut the tether would be the barb (magic axe) which doesn't have a way up to the fishers to save others.
4. Umber Hulks - Other than being nowhere near the underdark where these things tend to live, the only ones with a half decent charisma are the Bard and Sorcerer. Luckily, the ranger is a typical Gloomstalker with Underdark favored terrain, so i'll give her the chance to recognize the silhouette and look away when the party is surprised by one. The Barb and the Cleric on the otherhand are relying solely on their dice to keep them from being confused. The hulks also deal enough damage to most of the party to be a serious threat while the barb and cleric are preoccupied. I'm hesitant on using more than one, but only one won't be much of a threat. Then there's logical gameplay, the whole "it's not going to fight to the death and will flee in the face of guaranteed death" and it's movement speed; I have to make it collapse the tunnel behind it, or they'll catch up and kill it with near no problem. It just doesn't seem like a fun encounter to run. Either they all die, or the hulk(s) get overrun.
Am I worrying too much about one of these encounters, or should I be looking at something different to use?
Have you considered doing an organized trap kobold fight?
Basically have kobolds carve out the dungeon in the same manner as true castle entrance with murder holes.
The entire first part of the cave is filled with windy passage ways filled with murder holes. It ends in a big murder room, with a single secret entrance that leads to passageways to all the murder holes, and then finally back to a Kobold encampment.
The PC's get peppered with attacks. At first they have no idea what is going on - they think invisible attackers, etc. Then they figure it out and have to find a way to defeat a bunch of kobolds with Total cover.
Could use a couple of Fomorians; two of them should be hard but beatable (particularly if the cleric doesn't regularly prep Remove Curse).
Wait did you say they were at level 10? Shadows are not a threat for level 10 they have a challenge rating of 1/2, I had a party of 5 level 3’s go up against 4 of them and walk away mostly unscathed.
I would use a wraith or a banshee or a ghost
A single purple worm could work, if you're okay with the possibility of one or more of them dying.
There is no dawn after eternal night.
Homebrew: Magic items, Subclasses
So, I actually already have something like this planned with the added bonus of a pitfall full of Gelatinous Cube that I'm hoping the Barbarian will fall into. Any time I play a barb in other people's campaigns, I insist on being first in the marching order in case of enemies or traps(with no rogue in the party). I'm hoping the other common barbarian player will pick that up without me playing a PC and tumble into my trap. Then the others will have to deal with the Kobold firing squad while he wrestles with a cube he can't force his way out of.
As much as I would like to do one of these two, one of the other campaigns i'm playing with this group just used both of these. The formorian a lot more recently and my Purple Worm encounter would be very similar to how the other person ran it.
What classes were your party? My main fear with the Shadows is that 3 of my players have dumped their strength. The way i'm planning the shadow encounter makes the actual fight a lot more dangerous than normal, and the fight isn't going to be easy with the way I'm planning on having the shadows fight. Shadows playing hit and run tactics while hiding in a dark room can make them far more deadly than they really should be.
Challenge rating is also a weird thing that doesn't necessarily mean anything depending on what creatures there are in the encounter and how intelligently you play them. Creatures with weird "welp, you're dead" abilities can almost always fight above their weight class, where as some high CR creatures can be complete pushovers if you put them outside their natural habitat or play them too straight forward. A purple worm for example can be a push over if you just make it fight the party, but if It comes up, just takes someone and leaves, then It can be quite deadly.
You could use Intellect Devourers, but at a nominally medium encounter (7 of them) they'll probably either all die before they get an action or get multiple kills (on average, about 3 of them to stun and body thief an int 8 character without int save proficiency).
I mean I am guessing at level 10 your barbarian has 100 hp and can do rages for what +11 for two attacks a round at d12 +11?
So I don’t think it’s me putting too much faith in the CR system to think that an AC12 16hp creature that will have a 50% chance to miss for 2d6+2 damage once a round is not a sizeable threat
If I could take a step back. You mentioned they are rolling over the encounters. Are you giving them multiple encounters per day? Sometimes the problem with fights being too easy is that there are too few of them in a day and the party can then blow their resources on a single fight, long rest, repeat. If they face three-four encounters (or more) before they can rest again, those later ones can be very challenging after they've used all or most of their spell slots/rages/bardic inspirations, etc.
As for an encounter at level 10. Well, they're in a dungeon, and dragon is the other thing right in the name of the game. I'm kind of surprised no one else mentioned it yet :)
Dragons being smart, it could easily be allied with/cut a deal with the BBEG which would explain it being there.
Ok, I'll say this again: I am not worried about the 20 STR Barb with an AC of 20. I can never roll high enough to hit him most times.
Ok, fun story. Threw a bunch of ankegs at them, 8 at a time with a total of 16; When one died another took it's place in initiative. Battle started with the Barb being dug out from under, thrown prone, and being ambushed by 4 of them that now had advantage. The only 1 to hit him, ONE, was the initial attack to knock him prone. EVERYONE ELSE ALMOST DIED.
I am not worried about the Barb. I am worried about everyone else. Yes, I have realized thanks to you that 2 shadows are not enough, but I'm not going to throw the proper CR allotment at them.
I'm actually having a problem giving them multiple encounters a day. I think I might be a bit too logical about things. I imagine creatures of higher CR being rarer than creatures of lower CR. Wolves are more common that Dire Wolves, and werewolves being fairly rare. A pack of wolves aren't going to be much of a challenge for one of them at this point, and I don't want every encounter to be CR 10+. A thing that one of my players asks regularly, "With things like this in the world, how to rando citizens survive? How do towns exist?"
Granted, they aren't just getting one encounter and then the next day. This is their first time, in my campaign starting at lvl 10, that they're going into something akin to a dungeon. Most of my encounter have been random roadside, traveling from town to town, encounters cause that's all i've had them do so far. They started in one town, faffed about a bit in a "magic, you can't really die cause I'm learning how to DM but don't own any module books so I'm testing on how to balance things better, Dungeon." and then I sent them to a town that no one returns from to find out why. Behir on the road, far from it's natural habitat, and it's not the only thing fleeing the mountains. "hey, can you guys go up in the mountains and figure out why?"
Most of my sessions have been social. For the next few sessions, I want it to be combat heavy and kind of doom and panic ridden. Their travel to the BBEG's lair is going to be 3 days, and I want it to be a slog the whole way. I want them to question when, and sometimes if, they'll get their rests. Kobold dens, spider dens, etc. If the players spend 4 ingame hours fighing and running from kobolds while trying to avoid their traps, then it's awesome. I want exhaustion levels to be a legitimate thing that can happen, at most one or two, but still.
Lol. D&D works best when you don’t think about it too hard.
I think multiple encounters might really help. It can be hard when you’re not doing a dungeon crawl, but it forces players to spread their resources a bit more thin, which makes the fights more challenging. Dungeon crawls can be a good way to do that. Also a time element, which means they can’t spend 8 hours sitting around — or even 1 hour for a short rest — can really amp up the difficulty. Give them a few smaller fights to drain their resources and the big fight will be much more challenging.
You don't have to use particularly high CR creatures when you are playing with monsters who can fight intelligently and plan ahead. Mog's suggestion re: kobold trap tunnels is just one example. Hobgoblins with scouts, terrain advantage and some arcane class levels is another.
If this is a mountainous environment, a troupe of stone giants hurling boulders should really wake them up. At least one of them is a sorc. The party is encroaching on the stone giants' territory with heavy weaponry. That's enough reason for the giants to arguably strike first and ask questions later.
If you're worried about STR drain from Shadows being too challenging for the party, what about using Allips instead? Wisdom drain, similar tactics, and 50% chance of ignoring damage from any corporeal source.