Firstly, if your character names are Ovyr, Mist or Scut please stop reading.
Secondly, characters in campaign:
Dragonborn - Warlock: Raven Queen (Level 6)
Tortle - Barbarian: Totem Warrior Queen (Level 6)
Tabaxi - Bard: Raven Queen (Level 6)
[DMPC] Mountain Dwarf - Cleric: (to be decided) (Level 6)
So I need some help with balancing an encounter as the title says, very derailed LMOP which has ended with the Black Spider being controlled by a Mindflayer.
The idea is that the players fight the Black Spider and his henchmen whilst the Mindflayer attemps to open the forge of spells; then when the Black Spider dies he does a quick monologue I stole from reddit and gets sucked by the Mindflayer, then the players will fight him until the henchmen die and he will Plane Shift away. Onto the stats!
So of course, because the players are Level 6 instead of Level 2 as in the adventure I went with the Black Spider being a Drow Mage (CR7) and for the Mindflayer I decided to go with a Mindflayer Arcanist (for the juicy spellcasting). The problem is their CRs are very high but theyre super squishy so I needed hechmen; heres where I had issues. I need hechmen which can survive enough rounds for the Black Spider to die plus for the Mindflayer to give a good fight. For its survivability I wanted to go with a Troll (maybe lowering its DPS) but that brings the Adjusted XP to 7050 (8550 for second part but they only have to survive a couple rounds) where they can in theory only survive 5600. Now you might say, "yeahhh.... bad idea" but my PCs enjoy deadly combat a lot, to the point where at Level 4 they went up against a +1700 XP (might've been +2600) encounter with an ally betraying them for a couple rounds. I'll make sure to give them a good stock of Magic Potions and allow them to have a Long Rest beforehand.
First of all... aren't you looking at two encounters instead of one, and without a chance to take a long or short rest in between? Cause that makes the math a little easier to look at.
In the first one... if you reskin Nezznar as a higher level mage, why not ramp up the spiders to Phase Spiders (they are a fun challenge). 2 of them plus a Drow Mage should be at Deadly... but you may want to add in some kind of tank if you think that isn't challenging enough and that they can focus fire something (largely the mage) if the spider's phase out.
Then when the Mindflayer Arcanist takes over, have it bring forth one of the Troll variants (Ice or Four-Armed would work well) while the Mindflayer prepares his escape. Since you aren't really trying to fight much with the Mindflayer, you could even take the Troll up to a Rot Troll and limit the Mindflayer to taunting and tactical spells (and to mess with their minds). In total that's 9,300 XP, but broken across two encounters (and I didn't include the Arcanist... so you would add some for that... ), but should be some challenging fights with a good One-Two punch. I think the key here is to think of it as two encounters that work as one...
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Firstly, if your character names are Ovyr, Mist or Scut please stop reading.
Secondly, characters in campaign:
Dragonborn - Warlock: Raven Queen (Level 6)
Tortle - Barbarian: Totem Warrior Queen (Level 6)
Tabaxi - Bard: Raven Queen (Level 6)
[DMPC] Mountain Dwarf - Cleric: (to be decided) (Level 6)
So I need some help with balancing an encounter as the title says, very derailed LMOP which has ended with the Black Spider being controlled by a Mindflayer.
The idea is that the players fight the Black Spider and his henchmen whilst the Mindflayer attemps to open the forge of spells; then when the Black Spider dies he does a quick monologue I stole from reddit and gets sucked by the Mindflayer, then the players will fight him until the henchmen die and he will Plane Shift away. Onto the stats!
So of course, because the players are Level 6 instead of Level 2 as in the adventure I went with the Black Spider being a Drow Mage (CR7) and for the Mindflayer I decided to go with a Mindflayer Arcanist (for the juicy spellcasting). The problem is their CRs are very high but theyre super squishy so I needed hechmen; heres where I had issues. I need hechmen which can survive enough rounds for the Black Spider to die plus for the Mindflayer to give a good fight. For its survivability I wanted to go with a Troll (maybe lowering its DPS) but that brings the Adjusted XP to 7050 (8550 for second part but they only have to survive a couple rounds) where they can in theory only survive 5600. Now you might say, "yeahhh.... bad idea" but my PCs enjoy deadly combat a lot, to the point where at Level 4 they went up against a +1700 XP (might've been +2600) encounter with an ally betraying them for a couple rounds. I'll make sure to give them a good stock of Magic Potions and allow them to have a Long Rest beforehand.
Let me know what you think. Thanks in advance.
TLDR: Am I going to kill my players?
First of all... aren't you looking at two encounters instead of one, and without a chance to take a long or short rest in between? Cause that makes the math a little easier to look at.
In the first one... if you reskin Nezznar as a higher level mage, why not ramp up the spiders to Phase Spiders (they are a fun challenge). 2 of them plus a Drow Mage should be at Deadly... but you may want to add in some kind of tank if you think that isn't challenging enough and that they can focus fire something (largely the mage) if the spider's phase out.
Then when the Mindflayer Arcanist takes over, have it bring forth one of the Troll variants (Ice or Four-Armed would work well) while the Mindflayer prepares his escape. Since you aren't really trying to fight much with the Mindflayer, you could even take the Troll up to a Rot Troll and limit the Mindflayer to taunting and tactical spells (and to mess with their minds). In total that's 9,300 XP, but broken across two encounters (and I didn't include the Arcanist... so you would add some for that... ), but should be some challenging fights with a good One-Two punch. I think the key here is to think of it as two encounters that work as one...