I need the hive mind help to evaluate how deadly is really an encounter.
My group have now 7 players at the 4th level.
Last session I created a deadly encounter with one Cr 7 and two Cr 5 monsters and they wiped the floor with them. Now I am doing s new with an archmage Cr 12 e warlock Cr 7. Wouldvthis be a challenging experience or I might be facing a tpk?
All these things make a big difference; a shadow is only a CR 1/2 (same as a crocodile) but the shadow is a lot harder if you only have martial characters with no magical weapons.
Generally speaking though - the more PCs the easier time they will have (action economy). Usually accommodate but not necessarily putting up the CR but by increasing the number of enemies.
well, they're theoretically roughly twice as hard (11300 xp vs 6500), but also keep in mind you have one less action on the baddy's side. it just boils down to how the players play and how the DM plays his monsters imo. imagine that same first scenario - if you had twice the baddies, would they still have mopped the floor? if so, that's probably about as good an answer as you're going to get.
Even then the main thing is how many attacks against the 2 monsters are the players going to get. If you are set on only 2 bad guys, you will want to do one of a few things. Bump the bad guys HP, add some detriment to the environment that only affects the PCs, add lair or legendary actions, or cause the players to not do as much.
I had something like this happen with my players: 5 level 4 characters. Drunken Fist Monk, Circle of the Moon Druid, Arcane Archer Fighter, Storm Sorcerer, and Arcane Trickster Rogue with standard array with a +1 to all stats and a high magic campaign.
The main bad guys was a Druid that worshiped the Great Old Ones. He could shape change into abominations so I had him be a Gibbering Mouther at first. His minions were very young spiders of Leng that I ran as normal giant spiders. The ability to entrap a player in webbing allowed them to block the doorway into the room. Once they "killed" him, he turned into an Maw Demon. The aura effects had 1/2 the party not able to do anything for a little while so the druid and spiders beat up on them. Once the archer in the back targeted the druid with action surge and Grasping Arrow, the Hound on Tindalos teleported into the back of the party. They finally managed to kill the Gibbering Mouther with a critical and he went back to being a 1/2 orc druid. He went through 2 shape changes, the druid HP, the extra attack the Maw Demon gets when down to 0 HP then standing back up at 1 HP, and him getting back up at 1 HP because he was a 1/2 orc. Once they killed the Druid the Hound slipped into the corner and teleported away because it had taken a beating from the sorcerer and arcane archer.
That fight caused them to use almost all their resources, have to dip into healing potions, use their antivenom potions, and all the Arcane Archer shots. The main reason for that was:
The BBEG for the adventure had a lot of HP even though he was only 1 level higher than the party.
Party mobility limited on how they could deploy their actions.
The total number of actions deployed against the bad guys was slightly limited because of Gibbering Mouther's aura or just not being able to get through the doorway.
All the other monsters were in line with CR 3 for the druid and hound, and CR 1 for the 3 spiders. The players felt this fight was worth and enjoyed it because they had a tough time of it. I was starting to get a little worried that they would have party members die and then the next part was going to give them major problems to get out of the place quickly enough.
In my experience this type of encounter will go one of two ways. either they will wipe the floor with this combat or they are going get tpk. A 12 level arch-mage has lots of hard hits and area effect spells. the war lock is going to have more hit points and is going hit more characters with eldritch blast more consistently.
The question is scenario. if the team gets the drop on them full health long rest and use battle tactics. easy wipe the floor with the encounter. action economy is in their favor and buffs can help taking a few hits. (Aid, any temp hit points, and buffs like bless and lucky) however wear them down even a little and the tides turn quickly because the level difference is too big. High level monsters have lots of resistances, area of effect spells and hit like a truck. they still might not hit often or the players roll well but one hit and you can have a TPK. I almost never use creatures more than a tier level above the players until high level play (1 tier= 4-5 levels) without a back up plan.
In order to balance things out I would would definitely lower the level. the Cr 7 and two Cr 5 is too weak because of action economy. add in some henchmen. have them fight a Cr 5 earth elemental with 5 earth mephitis is much harder than two earth elementals. same overall challenge rating much different action economy. also sometimes the dice just aren't with you.
Look at your players characters... are you letting them rest? are they min maxing? also some types of character do very well against certain types of creatures (do you have a lot of one type of class or are they well rounded? How many spell casters do you have, what are your frontliners and buffers? Do you have someone with healing spells? Do they have magical items?
Things you might consider if you are having a lot of trouble. Check advice on youtube (lots of good advice from nerdarchy, How to be a great DM, Dungeon Dudes and more), A book called The Monsters Know What They are Doing (gives some great advice. I just started reading it a month ago and it is great). other wise try to see reduce rests and give more resistances and area effect spells (watch the DC and number of hit dice they do. an area effect spell should probably do only half of the tanks hp at most to avoid instant tpk) watch your players. why are they killing so easily? shear numbers or are they thinking things through? Look at what types of spells do the spell casters have? (a fire mage is going to have a horrible time with fire elementals but easy with ice).
Not every battle should be hard... but the battles that are should have minions and/or tailored to the players to be hard. Minions are 1 hit point creatures they deal normal damage and either save and take no damage or fail and die. The key with minions is that more minion keep coming until the bosses are dead. I use minions in battles 5th level and above usually. 1 minion per person. every 3 levels above sixth add a minion or increase their damage out put in some way.
I need the hive mind help to evaluate how deadly is really an encounter.
My group have now 7 players at the 4th level.
Last session I created a deadly encounter with one Cr 7 and two Cr 5 monsters and they wiped the floor with them. Now I am doing s new with an archmage Cr 12 e warlock Cr 7. Wouldvthis be a challenging experience or I might be facing a tpk?
thanks in advance!
Do this would be a challenging
What spells does the CR 7 warlock have? Do you have PDFs or links for your 7 characters. If so I can tell you fairly accurately how it will go
An excellent start. I played 1 battle - 4 level 1's vs 3 redbrand ruffians. The rogue ran in and got killed, the barbarian slaughtered everyone while the cleric healed the barbarian and the mage stood and did nothing.
Sadly almost exactly like one of my games would have run. All joking aside, the cleric healed the barbarian in favour of the rogue (who was dying). The wizard did nothing, and the cleric didn't close into melee ever.
I am sure you know all these issues, and I don't say it to discourage you. It has been a fantastic job so far and I have never seen anything like it (well aside from video games I suppose). I really look forward to the day I can plug in an adventure and see just how it will (likely) go. I can see this becoming a very useful tool for DMs - please finish it.
An excellent start. I played 1 battle - 4 level 1's vs 3 redbrand ruffians. The rogue ran in and got killed, the barbarian slaughtered everyone while the cleric healed the barbarian and the mage stood and did nothing.
Sadly almost exactly like one of my games would have run. All joking aside, the cleric healed the barbarian in favour of the rogue (who was dying). The wizard did nothing, and the cleric didn't close into melee ever.
I am sure you know all these issues, and I don't say it to discourage you. It has been a fantastic job so far and I have never seen anything like it (well aside from video games I suppose). I really look forward to the day I can plug in an adventure and see just how it will (likely) go. I can see this becoming a very useful tool for DMs - please finish it.
I was wondering why the Wizard1 was doing no actions, but I see that "too close to used ranged weapons" was coming up due to a bug of being measured in feet instead of squares. Yeah if rogues don't have buffs to cast they do tend to go in early :-) Spell casters are tricky, before they would go into combat too much, so still figuring out the balance. Fun stuff, thanks for the feedback !
Making an encounter challenging isn't about throwing higher CR baddies at the group. Higher CR monsters have harder hitting attacks. Meaning they can take out lower level characters fairly easy. Such spike damage is something you do not want. Use CR only to determine the range of monsters that fit with the PC's so you can avoid such Spike damage. Beyond that throw CR out of the window and focus on Action Economy instead.
When it comes to AE I always try to have the baddies about a 5-10% advantage on it at the start of an encounter. Especially if you have some low HP minions throw in there the group can easily turn that around. Another way I go about it is to have it fairly equal in number. However I give the main baddie a "Villanous Action" it can do once a round. I've been using those since forever. But I took the name from Matt Colville on Youtube since he's the first to actually explain it. And turn it into a more workable format instead of winging it for all that time. These Villanous Actions can really give an Eb and Flow to combat that is well received with many players.
Next step is to figure out what kind of enemies to put in the encounter. This is determined by your party setup. Are they fairly balanced with all the base archetypes present? Or are they more aimed towards melee or ranged? or mostly spellcasters of some type or another? Depending on this you can then adjust the enemies. If your party is mostly ranged it is a good idea to give melee monsters more HP to close that gap while they're getting shot at. And since the melee in that case only gets a few hits in you might want to make them hit harder. Which can be done by giving enemies a multi-attack 2 or 3 levels before the PC's get access to it. While a mostly spellcasting group requires a different approach. These fine tune elements you pick up the more sessions you play with your table and how the players act.
The battlefield itself is very important. Enclosed space, a narrow corridor an open field... What else is in that space that you can turn into an environmental hazard? Is there a statue that the baddie can activate. That statue than doing an attack in a certain radius...or maybe do a charm at a recharge of 6. Just to confuse the PC's and have them kill each other instead. Maybe the baddie can activate some swinging scythes near the back to keep the spellcasters occupied. Perhaps he let's the battlefield flood with a liquid or gas and once it gets in touch with another thing in the area it'll cause a certain reaction. Causing the players to decide what to do and what to prioritize with multiple objectives other than just fight, kill and loot.
And what about the layout? Are there multiple floors? Perhaps you can throw in a stealthy Meazel that jumps out the shadows onto someone in the backrow. Then teleports 500ft max away. Which just so happens to be outside the building on the roof. And then dropping the PC off the edge for 60-80ft for falling damage. And isolating that player from the others.
Those are the most basic elements to encounter design to make stuff more challenging. Instead of just throwing more enemies or higher CR monsters at players. Increasing the number will also drastically slow down the encounter overall. So don't go to far with that. Usually 1 monster for 1 PC is a decent ratio. As said you can then fine tune over time the more you play with the same players and PC's. Increasing Monster HP has a similar impact. Make sure to know roughly how much damage the PC's do. For a while I used max HP for monsters, but now the cleric is gone with his massive DPS compared to the rest, that HP will be brought down in numbers. The guideline is usually taking the damage PC's do x 4 or 5. where the 4-5 is the amount of rounds a combat usually lasts.
That is not to say lengthier encounters can't be fun. They sure drain resources and add to the tension. However such encounters should be rare. Having regular 12-15 round combats aint fun.
For sure any experienced DM gets to know their players and PCs and can balance encounters over time by making small incremental changes as the PCs increase in power.
The challenge is taking 6 or 7 level 10 characters you never saw before through a one shot. Because depending on who built the characters one party could be 1/2 the power of the other party. I don't think adjusting monsters during the fight to be stronger because you realized they are too weak is very fair gaming.
On top of that what is even more challenging is a series of fights where they didn't get rest and you are trying judge how much resources are going to be used up to make the fight a decent challenge (without having to cheat to prevent a tpk).
Anyway I just find it fun to code and automate the battles, I like the challenge coming from D&D having so many unique spells.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Hi;
I need the hive mind help to evaluate how deadly is really an encounter.
My group have now 7 players at the 4th level.
Last session I created a deadly encounter with one Cr 7 and two Cr 5 monsters and they wiped the floor with them. Now I am doing s new with an archmage Cr 12 e warlock Cr 7. Wouldvthis be a challenging experience or I might be facing a tpk?
thanks in advance!
Do this would be a challenging
More information.
What are the players class and race breakdowns.
Where were the CR7 and CR5 monsters?
What are the specs for the Archmage and Warlock?
All these things make a big difference; a shadow is only a CR 1/2 (same as a crocodile) but the shadow is a lot harder if you only have martial characters with no magical weapons.
Generally speaking though - the more PCs the easier time they will have (action economy). Usually accommodate but not necessarily putting up the CR but by increasing the number of enemies.
well, they're theoretically roughly twice as hard (11300 xp vs 6500), but also keep in mind you have one less action on the baddy's side. it just boils down to how the players play and how the DM plays his monsters imo. imagine that same first scenario - if you had twice the baddies, would they still have mopped the floor? if so, that's probably about as good an answer as you're going to get.
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
thank you!
Also try this: cr calculator
Enjoy my magic items, spells, monsters, my race, and a few feats. And GIVE ME FEEDBACK... or else.
Like what I say?
⬐ Just press this little guy right here.
Even then the main thing is how many attacks against the 2 monsters are the players going to get. If you are set on only 2 bad guys, you will want to do one of a few things. Bump the bad guys HP, add some detriment to the environment that only affects the PCs, add lair or legendary actions, or cause the players to not do as much.
I had something like this happen with my players: 5 level 4 characters. Drunken Fist Monk, Circle of the Moon Druid, Arcane Archer Fighter, Storm Sorcerer, and Arcane Trickster Rogue with standard array with a +1 to all stats and a high magic campaign.
The main bad guys was a Druid that worshiped the Great Old Ones. He could shape change into abominations so I had him be a Gibbering Mouther at first. His minions were very young spiders of Leng that I ran as normal giant spiders. The ability to entrap a player in webbing allowed them to block the doorway into the room. Once they "killed" him, he turned into an Maw Demon. The aura effects had 1/2 the party not able to do anything for a little while so the druid and spiders beat up on them. Once the archer in the back targeted the druid with action surge and Grasping Arrow, the Hound on Tindalos teleported into the back of the party. They finally managed to kill the Gibbering Mouther with a critical and he went back to being a 1/2 orc druid. He went through 2 shape changes, the druid HP, the extra attack the Maw Demon gets when down to 0 HP then standing back up at 1 HP, and him getting back up at 1 HP because he was a 1/2 orc. Once they killed the Druid the Hound slipped into the corner and teleported away because it had taken a beating from the sorcerer and arcane archer.
That fight caused them to use almost all their resources, have to dip into healing potions, use their antivenom potions, and all the Arcane Archer shots. The main reason for that was:
All the other monsters were in line with CR 3 for the druid and hound, and CR 1 for the 3 spiders. The players felt this fight was worth and enjoyed it because they had a tough time of it. I was starting to get a little worried that they would have party members die and then the next part was going to give them major problems to get out of the place quickly enough.
In my experience this type of encounter will go one of two ways. either they will wipe the floor with this combat or they are going get tpk. A 12 level arch-mage has lots of hard hits and area effect spells. the war lock is going to have more hit points and is going hit more characters with eldritch blast more consistently.
The question is scenario. if the team gets the drop on them full health long rest and use battle tactics. easy wipe the floor with the encounter. action economy is in their favor and buffs can help taking a few hits. (Aid, any temp hit points, and buffs like bless and lucky) however wear them down even a little and the tides turn quickly because the level difference is too big. High level monsters have lots of resistances, area of effect spells and hit like a truck. they still might not hit often or the players roll well but one hit and you can have a TPK. I almost never use creatures more than a tier level above the players until high level play (1 tier= 4-5 levels) without a back up plan.
In order to balance things out I would would definitely lower the level. the Cr 7 and two Cr 5 is too weak because of action economy. add in some henchmen. have them fight a Cr 5 earth elemental with 5 earth mephitis is much harder than two earth elementals. same overall challenge rating much different action economy. also sometimes the dice just aren't with you.
Look at your players characters... are you letting them rest? are they min maxing? also some types of character do very well against certain types of creatures (do you have a lot of one type of class or are they well rounded? How many spell casters do you have, what are your frontliners and buffers? Do you have someone with healing spells? Do they have magical items?
Things you might consider if you are having a lot of trouble. Check advice on youtube (lots of good advice from nerdarchy, How to be a great DM, Dungeon Dudes and more), A book called The Monsters Know What They are Doing (gives some great advice. I just started reading it a month ago and it is great). other wise try to see reduce rests and give more resistances and area effect spells (watch the DC and number of hit dice they do. an area effect spell should probably do only half of the tanks hp at most to avoid instant tpk) watch your players. why are they killing so easily? shear numbers or are they thinking things through? Look at what types of spells do the spell casters have? (a fire mage is going to have a horrible time with fire elementals but easy with ice).
Not every battle should be hard... but the battles that are should have minions and/or tailored to the players to be hard. Minions are 1 hit point creatures they deal normal damage and either save and take no damage or fail and die. The key with minions is that more minion keep coming until the bosses are dead. I use minions in battles 5th level and above usually. 1 minion per person. every 3 levels above sixth add a minion or increase their damage out put in some way.
I hope this helps! Be creative and Fight on.
What spells does the CR 7 warlock have? Do you have PDFs or links for your 7 characters. If so I can tell you fairly accurately how it will go
dndcombat.com took too long to respond ... etc etc.
Very interested to see what you come up with when it is finished though. Could be a very valuable tool.
its fine, maybe you at work behind a limited network or something. pretty much 30 people on it daily. I'll get the archmage spells implemented later.
the http was down doh. the address is https://www.dndcombat.com
An excellent start. I played 1 battle - 4 level 1's vs 3 redbrand ruffians. The rogue ran in and got killed, the barbarian slaughtered everyone while the cleric healed the barbarian and the mage stood and did nothing.
Sadly almost exactly like one of my games would have run.
All joking aside, the cleric healed the barbarian in favour of the rogue (who was dying). The wizard did nothing, and the cleric didn't close into melee ever.
I am sure you know all these issues, and I don't say it to discourage you. It has been a fantastic job so far and I have never seen anything like it (well aside from video games I suppose). I really look forward to the day I can plug in an adventure and see just how it will (likely) go. I can see this becoming a very useful tool for DMs - please finish it.
I was wondering why the Wizard1 was doing no actions, but I see that "too close to used ranged weapons" was coming up due to a bug of being measured in feet instead of squares. Yeah if rogues don't have buffs to cast they do tend to go in early :-) Spell casters are tricky, before they would go into combat too much, so still figuring out the balance. Fun stuff, thanks for the feedback !
Making an encounter challenging isn't about throwing higher CR baddies at the group. Higher CR monsters have harder hitting attacks. Meaning they can take out lower level characters fairly easy. Such spike damage is something you do not want. Use CR only to determine the range of monsters that fit with the PC's so you can avoid such Spike damage. Beyond that throw CR out of the window and focus on Action Economy instead.
When it comes to AE I always try to have the baddies about a 5-10% advantage on it at the start of an encounter. Especially if you have some low HP minions throw in there the group can easily turn that around. Another way I go about it is to have it fairly equal in number. However I give the main baddie a "Villanous Action" it can do once a round. I've been using those since forever. But I took the name from Matt Colville on Youtube since he's the first to actually explain it. And turn it into a more workable format instead of winging it for all that time. These Villanous Actions can really give an Eb and Flow to combat that is well received with many players.
Next step is to figure out what kind of enemies to put in the encounter. This is determined by your party setup. Are they fairly balanced with all the base archetypes present? Or are they more aimed towards melee or ranged? or mostly spellcasters of some type or another? Depending on this you can then adjust the enemies. If your party is mostly ranged it is a good idea to give melee monsters more HP to close that gap while they're getting shot at. And since the melee in that case only gets a few hits in you might want to make them hit harder. Which can be done by giving enemies a multi-attack 2 or 3 levels before the PC's get access to it. While a mostly spellcasting group requires a different approach. These fine tune elements you pick up the more sessions you play with your table and how the players act.
The battlefield itself is very important. Enclosed space, a narrow corridor an open field... What else is in that space that you can turn into an environmental hazard? Is there a statue that the baddie can activate. That statue than doing an attack in a certain radius...or maybe do a charm at a recharge of 6. Just to confuse the PC's and have them kill each other instead. Maybe the baddie can activate some swinging scythes near the back to keep the spellcasters occupied. Perhaps he let's the battlefield flood with a liquid or gas and once it gets in touch with another thing in the area it'll cause a certain reaction. Causing the players to decide what to do and what to prioritize with multiple objectives other than just fight, kill and loot.
And what about the layout? Are there multiple floors? Perhaps you can throw in a stealthy Meazel that jumps out the shadows onto someone in the backrow. Then teleports 500ft max away. Which just so happens to be outside the building on the roof. And then dropping the PC off the edge for 60-80ft for falling damage. And isolating that player from the others.
Those are the most basic elements to encounter design to make stuff more challenging. Instead of just throwing more enemies or higher CR monsters at players. Increasing the number will also drastically slow down the encounter overall. So don't go to far with that. Usually 1 monster for 1 PC is a decent ratio. As said you can then fine tune over time the more you play with the same players and PC's. Increasing Monster HP has a similar impact. Make sure to know roughly how much damage the PC's do. For a while I used max HP for monsters, but now the cleric is gone with his massive DPS compared to the rest, that HP will be brought down in numbers. The guideline is usually taking the damage PC's do x 4 or 5. where the 4-5 is the amount of rounds a combat usually lasts.
That is not to say lengthier encounters can't be fun. They sure drain resources and add to the tension. However such encounters should be rare. Having regular 12-15 round combats aint fun.
For sure any experienced DM gets to know their players and PCs and can balance encounters over time by making small incremental changes as the PCs increase in power.
The challenge is taking 6 or 7 level 10 characters you never saw before through a one shot. Because depending on who built the characters one party could be 1/2 the power of the other party. I don't think adjusting monsters during the fight to be stronger because you realized they are too weak is very fair gaming.
On top of that what is even more challenging is a series of fights where they didn't get rest and you are trying judge how much resources are going to be used up to make the fight a decent challenge (without having to cheat to prevent a tpk).
Anyway I just find it fun to code and automate the battles, I like the challenge coming from D&D having so many unique spells.