I am requesting knowledge pertaining to encounters. I've noticed that the encounters I've had for my group were a bit too squishy. Provided below was one of the encounter's my group had and they had little to no sweat tearing these bandits apart. I am seeking advice or knowledge on any resources or "guideline" you all use to increase the difficulty of pretty much any encounter you want.
Once again any help is great help always. Thank you very much once again for your time and assistance.
If you could provide more information? What level are your players currently at? How many bandits did you throw at them? The DBB Encounter Builder or Kobold Fight Club are both good ways to figure out how hard an encounter is going to be.
There are a lot of different ways to increase difficulty but a lot of it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. The general ways to do it are first to increase the number of combatants. So instead of one bandit for every player you have two bandits for every player. You can mix it up and have regular bandits and a higher challenge "leader." Up the AC so that they are harder to hit. Up the HP so combat takes longer. Provide difficult terrain or terrain that the bandits can use for range attacks. I'm sure more DMs will way in with more specific information.
You can also increase the challenge by having the bad guys use tactics. Set an ambush (a tree across a road in a forest, or on top of cliffs as the road goes through a valley, etc). Have partial cover to hide behind. Have a 1st level spell caster in their midst (maybe their leader). Have them use the help action on attacks.
This may not be popular but also remember these character sheets are tools to help you craft the story. Sometimes it's totally fine for your players to breeze through an encounter & feel like Gods. Sometimes you want to build tension either within the encounter or for an upcoming story point so you prolong the encounter to add tension or burn through some resources to add tension later. Not all the bandits needed to have the same AC or hit points. They were hitting too often? Have some more heavily armored bandits join the fray while some lighter armored bandits send arrows from 150ft away. The point is get creative and know what the purpose of the encounter is going in. Then make the encounter work to your needs. Just make sure your needs/goals are for the party to have fun, because if they're not having fun what are we doing here?
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
The level of the players is important. If you have a group of level ones tearing through bandits, that's fine, because those bandits will also tear through level 1s. It's all luck at that point-- and honestly fudging dice or ensuring that the group of level 1s become level 3s without dying is not a bad plan. Level 1 is not a fun level. It's brutal and the players have next to no tactical decisions that let them overcome bandits with planning and class abilities.
This may not be popular but also remember these character sheets are tools to help you craft the story. Sometimes it's totally fine for your players to breeze through an encounter & feel like Gods. Sometimes you want to build tension either within the encounter or for an upcoming story point so you prolong the encounter to add tension or burn through some resources to add tension later. Not all the bandits needed to have the same AC or hit points. They were hitting too often? Have some more heavily armored bandits join the fray while some lighter armored bandits send arrows from 150ft away. The point is get creative and know what the purpose of the encounter is going in. Then make the encounter work to your needs. Just make sure your needs/goals are for the party to have fun, because if they're not having fun what are we doing here?
Good point and fully agree, but it's also important to remember that players are players in a game, they see D&D as a game and when initiative is rolled, they go into tactical mode. This is a perfectly normal group head change, players are going to very naturally look at an encounter with the basic question being "how do we crush this fight" and then they will do that, the story will play no part in that no matter how hard the DM tries to make story relevant in a fight. This is just the natural behavior of players and it's why so much effort is put into creating balanced encounters and having a system that governs it.
You're not wrong that clever tactics, advantageous environment and things like that can turn up the difficulty for an encounter for players, but in the end, players will approach every fight like a tactical battle and so as a DM you have to make that tactical battle interesting and challenging for them. Understanding how 5e deals handles balance is the key to doing that successfully.
I agree and disagree. The players will definitely look at each encounter as tactically as possible, and when they use clever tactics that should absolutely be rewarded. But tension can lend itself to the story as well, so can foreshadowing. I ran a session of Lost Mine of Phandelver last night. My level 3 players headed for Wyvern Tor to take on the band of orcs. On the way, they rolled a random encounter and got an Ogre. I saw it as an opportunity since there is an Ogre in Wyvern Tor. I intended to have him smack them around a bit and then run away and he would be the Ogre they encountered at Wyvern Tor. They had other ideas and absolutely brutalized the Ogre killing him before he could get away. They even took his head as a trophy. When they got to Wyvern Tor the sorcerer used a scroll of fireball they had found and wiped out the 6 orcs in round 1, before they could act. They felt on top of the world, when the cave began to rumble and another Ogre came from the adjoining cave. Now they found themselves in close quarters with an Ogre and a more powerful Orc (the captain of the band). And the Ogre saw the head of someone he must've known because he flew off into a violent rage focusing on the rogue who was carrying the head. It was tense, it was satisfying, the party had a fantastic time. This is a very long way for me to say that the party acting tactically doesn't mean with some planning and foreshadowing, and a bit of luck, the party can be tactical and your encounters can still be tense and tell a story.
I do apologize if I have not responded to everyone. But I do what to thank every single one for the input and I will adjust things accordingly on my end.
some weeks ago i threw against my party 12 goblins and 2 boars, at least half of then had advantage attack and the group of 3 lvl1 members easily won the fight. the dice didn't even favor them. any encounter builder i test says 12 goblins would be deadly in that case, well i ain't trusting any encounter builder tool after that
That's crazy, the goblin ambush in Phandelver is considered a deadly encounter and has a propensity for dropping and occasionally killing pc's and that's generally 4 goblins against 4-5 adventurers. Goblins are squishy but have a great chance to hit with their bows and do a good amount of damage with them. What kind of tactics are you running with them? You might consider reading The Monsters Know What They’re Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters: The MonsteThe Monsters Know What They’re Doing by Keith Ammann, Kevin T. Collins it's really helpful for thinking tactically as a DM which helps you to craft strong encounters.
K so I'm late to the party. Damn power shutoff. Thought I'd try to help anyway though lol.
I can help more here if I had more info, bandits in my opinion need a lot of strategy to work after level 3. Also, the number of players would be useful. I run a 9 or 10 person campaign and I still have to fudge rolls. If the level of the party is above 2 and there are at least 4 of them then it is time to get creative. If you don't want to read this comment then go to Runesmith on Youtube, he is cool.
1; The 5 minute Ambush: This is simple and easy to set up ambush, I always have it on standby if I need to stall. The enemies are easy to tweak to your diffculty.
"You call this a challenge, we call it a DIFFICULTY TWEAK." --Cloaker
Enemies: 2 bandits with 14 Dex. and 8 HP with a shortbow or longbow and a dagger, aka an archer. 3 regular bandits (+ a bandit captain if your party is tough enough).
Positioning: One of the archers is hiding in a bush and will attack when the party's back is turned. The other archer is in a tree constantly moving then firing. The 3 bandits attack as a distraction for the party.
Traps: The bush has 4 caltrops infront of it.
Ok, so I just relized you are asking for a guideline on how to increase/decrease the difficulty accordingly. My answer is that if you want a small number of brute force tanks then you should always do the following: Find the health of the highest HP party member. Add 2 times there level to said HP and that should be your baseline health. Then find the medium (rounded up) of the party's normal damage per turn, the add the highest level party members level to the damage. Then throw half the number of the party at them. Aka, say the highest HP party member is a fighter who has 46 and is level 4. The health of the monster is 54. The most common damage is 1d8 + 5 Aka 9 damage. Then all the party members are fourth level and there are 5 party members so you have 3 54 HP monsters with 1d8 + 9 damage attacks. That should give the party a bit of a challenge.
P.S. if there are no really tanky players then add like an extra 10-20 HP depending on the level it can even be 30-50.
Good suggestion to read The Monsters Know, maybe just start with his Goblin Tactics blog post.
I really can't say that you're doing something wrong, but what I can suggest is that the encounter builder is not an encounter operator. I does the wonky math requirements to see if the encounter should hurt that's all. The DM is the power behind the monsters and what makes the encounter work.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I agree and disagree. The players will definitely look at each encounter as tactically as possible, and when they use clever tactics that should absolutely be rewarded. But tension can lend itself to the story as well, so can foreshadowing. I ran a session of Lost Mine of Phandelver last night. My level 3 players headed for Wyvern Tor to take on the band of orcs. On the way, they rolled a random encounter and got an Ogre. I saw it as an opportunity since there is an Ogre in Wyvern Tor. I intended to have him smack them around a bit and then run away and he would be the Ogre they encountered at Wyvern Tor. They had other ideas and absolutely brutalized the Ogre killing him before he could get away. They even took his head as a trophy. When they got to Wyvern Tor the sorcerer used a scroll of fireball they had found and wiped out the 6 orcs in round 1, before they could act. They felt on top of the world, when the cave began to rumble and another Ogre came from the adjoining cave. Now they found themselves in close quarters with an Ogre and a more powerful Orc (the captain of the band). And the Ogre saw the head of someone he must've known because he flew off into a violent rage focusing on the rogue who was carrying the head. It was tense, it was satisfying, the party had a fantastic time. This is a very long way for me to say that the party acting tactically doesn't mean with some planning and foreshadowing, and a bit of luck, the party can be tactical and your encounters can still be tense and tell a story.
We are talking about two different concepts of "story". You're defining the story behind the "reason" for the fight (aka the narrative of the game), I'm talking about the narrative of the combat. The point I'm making here is that wether there is or is not a story behind the fight, it will not alter how the players approach the D&D fights, which is to use the rules and the tactics that emerge from using those rules to beat whatever encounter you throw at them as optimally, efficiently and brutally as possible. They will crush your encounters and show you ZERO respect in so doing, you trying to make it scary by using big adjectives means jack or shit to your players. I don't care how much of an Edgar Allan Poe player you have, when initiative is rolled, everyone becomes a tactician and they will break the game if they can.
Combat is combat, the story before or after has nothing to do with understanding how to balance 5e with concepts like attrition and tipping point and why it's so critical to the success of a D&D game. Speaking as a player if your combats are easy, poorly design, if I think you're pulling punches or using combat as a way to burn some session time, in my eyes, you're at the very least an inexperienced, soft or poorly prepared DM and at worst, just absolute shit.
So this I pretty much completely disagree with. First, not all players even care about combat, they definitely don't all turn into tacticians. A lot of players, newer players especially, get into D&D for the roleplaying & Cooperative storytelling. 2nd, Story is more than the overarching narrative. The gargantuan Ogre ignoring front line fighters and chasing down the squishy thief carrying his friends head created tension. It was a twist on the rote combat the party had to adjust to. 3rd the combat can and should serve the story, there are 3 pillars to D&D combat, exploration, & roleplay. A skilled dm uses the story to tie each together and give a satisfying experience. If all you want is a combat simulator there are better options than D&D.
So this I pretty much completely disagree with. First, not all players even care about combat, they definitely don't all turn into tacticians. A lot of players, newer players especially, get into D&D for the roleplaying & Cooperative storytelling. 2nd, Story is more than the overarching narrative. The gargantuan Ogre ignoring front line fighters and chasing down the squishy thief carrying his friends head created tension. It was a twist on the rote combat the party had to adjust to. 3rd the combat can and should serve the story, there are 3 pillars to D&D combat, exploration, & roleplay. A skilled dm uses the story to tie each together and give a satisfying experience. If all you want is a combat simulator there are better options than D&D.
I understand that in modern D&D culture there is an aversion to admitting that when playing D&D combat is a core element of play, it is almost politically incorrect to suggest that but that attitude stems from the fact that the assumption is that if you like combat that this is to the exclusion of other things. No matter how you examine D&D, its primary function is almost exclusively as a combat simulator, that is what D&D is as a game mechanic, an instructional manual on how to execute combat. The act of role-playing, creating stories and running an RPG has absolutely nothing to do with the system itself, you can have as much or as little combat in D&D and any RPG you choose, the game itself neither discourages or recommends either way of doing it. Nothing about the system binds you to or excludes you from be more or less story-focused. However to suggest that there are "better" combat simulators than D&D is pretty ridiculous, it is by far the single best combat simulator RPG in existence and by a considerable margin, it's what D&D does best and it's the primary reason for its popularity.
The real question is, if you don't like combat, why would you pick D&D? Like if you don't like fighting monsters and you don't enjoy tactical combat, why on earth would you pick D&D as an RPG, its quite literally the strongest aspect of the game. The fact that most D&D players also inject story into their experience is a natural component of RPG's, having fun stories is a core element of every role-playing game it is in no way unique to D&D, but very few games have the brevity and go into as much detail in their attempt to make tactical combat experience as much fun as D&D does, its the king of combat.
Players who play D&D, do so because they get to create kick-ass heroes who whoop monsters but, that is the driving force of the game.
The other two pillars of play are designed and exist for the purpose of creating the opportunity for combat. You explore dangerous places filled with monsters and traps, you role-play to give players a narrative reason to go explore dangerous places filled with monsters and traps. Combat isn't some link in the chain, it's the defining component of the entire franchise. It's why we have a monster manual and not an exploration manual or a role-playing manual as the third book.
D&D is a very simple formula that you can't get away from.
1. Story - What are we doing, why, and where does it take us (what will we explore)
2. Exploration - The dangerous place that our story leads us to, the place where we will find the monsters to fight.
3. Monsters - The metric that defines whether we succeed or fail.. beat the monsters, you succeed, get beaten by the monsters and you have failed.
Without the final step, you're not playing D&D, you are just role-playing (which is perfectly fine, but its a distinction with a difference) and you don't need a system for that. I can do step 1 and 2 without a character sheet or the books, all I need is a back story that defines who I am. Fighting monsters, you will need the D&D system to acomplish.
Again, I disagree with a great deal of this. Character creation in 5e is extremely focused on story. You have a background, a backstory, traits, etc. Every published adventure has suggested ways characters can tie their backstory to the adventure. For you it might all be in service of combat and that's fine, but that is not the universal experience. Combat is not only not the only option in most encounters its also often the least efficient as it burns the most resources. Published adventures often offer multiple ways a party may approach a given encounter and if they overcome the encounter with social skills instead of combat, great they get the same experience as if they had fought the battle. To reduce D&D to just combat or suggest that every aspect of D&D is only meant to serve combat is ludicrous in my opinion. Combat is incredibly important, the entire point of my original post on this thread was about using story to keep the combat engaging. The most immersed I have ever been in D&D as a player was during a roleplay session where our DM didn't speak for 90 minutes. Our party argued back and forth over whether or not to kill an unarmed prisoner who had caused a lot of problems. The other was in combat but not when we were being badasses. It was when a young green dragon used its breath attack to open combat downing one player and killing our tank instantly. In that moment I was terrified, my hands literally began to sweat irl. One-shotting a boss is boring, unsatisfying. To be a badass hero you need to fight formidable opponents.
Hi “Grab any D&D module ever printed for 5e and prove me wrong.”
tomb of horrors
was printed for 5e in TftYP
no combat is necessary. It is all exploration and a small amount of story.
YOU don’t even have to fight the Demilich. Or the gargoyle. Because it’s all traps and you only need the loot so you just need to fight the ghost but 20th level party should be fine against it.
Tomb of Horrors is one of the greatest modules of all time for that reason.
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Good day my fellow DMs,
I am requesting knowledge pertaining to encounters. I've noticed that the encounters I've had for my group were a bit too squishy. Provided below was one of the encounter's my group had and they had little to no sweat tearing these bandits apart. I am seeking advice or knowledge on any resources or "guideline" you all use to increase the difficulty of pretty much any encounter you want.
Once again any help is great help always. Thank you very much once again for your time and assistance.
Scimitar. Melee Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 4 (1d6 + 1) slashing damage.
Light Crossbow. Ranged Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, range 80 ft./320 ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d8 + 1) piercing damage.
If you could provide more information? What level are your players currently at? How many bandits did you throw at them? The DBB Encounter Builder or Kobold Fight Club are both good ways to figure out how hard an encounter is going to be.
There are a lot of different ways to increase difficulty but a lot of it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. The general ways to do it are first to increase the number of combatants. So instead of one bandit for every player you have two bandits for every player. You can mix it up and have regular bandits and a higher challenge "leader." Up the AC so that they are harder to hit. Up the HP so combat takes longer. Provide difficult terrain or terrain that the bandits can use for range attacks. I'm sure more DMs will way in with more specific information.
You can also increase the challenge by having the bad guys use tactics. Set an ambush (a tree across a road in a forest, or on top of cliffs as the road goes through a valley, etc). Have partial cover to hide behind. Have a 1st level spell caster in their midst (maybe their leader). Have them use the help action on attacks.
This may not be popular but also remember these character sheets are tools to help you craft the story. Sometimes it's totally fine for your players to breeze through an encounter & feel like Gods. Sometimes you want to build tension either within the encounter or for an upcoming story point so you prolong the encounter to add tension or burn through some resources to add tension later. Not all the bandits needed to have the same AC or hit points. They were hitting too often? Have some more heavily armored bandits join the fray while some lighter armored bandits send arrows from 150ft away. The point is get creative and know what the purpose of the encounter is going in. Then make the encounter work to your needs. Just make sure your needs/goals are for the party to have fun, because if they're not having fun what are we doing here?
I've always found Sly Flourish's guides invaluable maybe this one is of help to you to -> slyflourish.com dials_of_monster_difficulty
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
The level of the players is important. If you have a group of level ones tearing through bandits, that's fine, because those bandits will also tear through level 1s. It's all luck at that point-- and honestly fudging dice or ensuring that the group of level 1s become level 3s without dying is not a bad plan. Level 1 is not a fun level. It's brutal and the players have next to no tactical decisions that let them overcome bandits with planning and class abilities.
I agree and disagree. The players will definitely look at each encounter as tactically as possible, and when they use clever tactics that should absolutely be rewarded. But tension can lend itself to the story as well, so can foreshadowing. I ran a session of Lost Mine of Phandelver last night. My level 3 players headed for Wyvern Tor to take on the band of orcs. On the way, they rolled a random encounter and got an Ogre. I saw it as an opportunity since there is an Ogre in Wyvern Tor. I intended to have him smack them around a bit and then run away and he would be the Ogre they encountered at Wyvern Tor. They had other ideas and absolutely brutalized the Ogre killing him before he could get away. They even took his head as a trophy. When they got to Wyvern Tor the sorcerer used a scroll of fireball they had found and wiped out the 6 orcs in round 1, before they could act. They felt on top of the world, when the cave began to rumble and another Ogre came from the adjoining cave. Now they found themselves in close quarters with an Ogre and a more powerful Orc (the captain of the band). And the Ogre saw the head of someone he must've known because he flew off into a violent rage focusing on the rogue who was carrying the head. It was tense, it was satisfying, the party had a fantastic time. This is a very long way for me to say that the party acting tactically doesn't mean with some planning and foreshadowing, and a bit of luck, the party can be tactical and your encounters can still be tense and tell a story.
I do apologize if I have not responded to everyone. But I do what to thank every single one for the input and I will adjust things accordingly on my end.
i'm looking forward for those tips too
some weeks ago i threw against my party 12 goblins and 2 boars, at least half of then had advantage attack and the group of 3 lvl1 members easily won the fight. the dice didn't even favor them. any encounter builder i test says 12 goblins would be deadly in that case, well i ain't trusting any encounter builder tool after that
That's crazy, the goblin ambush in Phandelver is considered a deadly encounter and has a propensity for dropping and occasionally killing pc's and that's generally 4 goblins against 4-5 adventurers. Goblins are squishy but have a great chance to hit with their bows and do a good amount of damage with them. What kind of tactics are you running with them? You might consider reading The Monsters Know What They’re Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters: The MonsteThe Monsters Know What They’re Doing by Keith Ammann, Kevin T. Collins it's really helpful for thinking tactically as a DM which helps you to craft strong encounters.
K so I'm late to the party. Damn power shutoff. Thought I'd try to help anyway though lol.
I can help more here if I had more info, bandits in my opinion need a lot of strategy to work after level 3. Also, the number of players would be useful. I run a 9 or 10 person campaign and I still have to fudge rolls. If the level of the party is above 2 and there are at least 4 of them then it is time to get creative. If you don't want to read this comment then go to Runesmith on Youtube, he is cool.
1; The 5 minute Ambush: This is simple and easy to set up ambush, I always have it on standby if I need to stall. The enemies are easy to tweak to your diffculty.
"You call this a challenge, we call it a DIFFICULTY TWEAK." --Cloaker
Enemies: 2 bandits with 14 Dex. and 8 HP with a shortbow or longbow and a dagger, aka an archer. 3 regular bandits (+ a bandit captain if your party is tough enough).
Positioning: One of the archers is hiding in a bush and will attack when the party's back is turned. The other archer is in a tree constantly moving then firing. The 3 bandits attack as a distraction for the party.
Traps: The bush has 4 caltrops infront of it.
Ok, so I just relized you are asking for a guideline on how to increase/decrease the difficulty accordingly. My answer is that if you want a small number of brute force tanks then you should always do the following: Find the health of the highest HP party member. Add 2 times there level to said HP and that should be your baseline health. Then find the medium (rounded up) of the party's normal damage per turn, the add the highest level party members level to the damage. Then throw half the number of the party at them. Aka, say the highest HP party member is a fighter who has 46 and is level 4. The health of the monster is 54. The most common damage is 1d8 + 5 Aka 9 damage. Then all the party members are fourth level and there are 5 party members so you have 3 54 HP monsters with 1d8 + 9 damage attacks. That should give the party a bit of a challenge.
P.S. if there are no really tanky players then add like an extra 10-20 HP depending on the level it can even be 30-50.
Good suggestion to read The Monsters Know, maybe just start with his Goblin Tactics blog post.
I really can't say that you're doing something wrong, but what I can suggest is that the encounter builder is not an encounter operator. I does the wonky math requirements to see if the encounter should hurt that's all. The DM is the power behind the monsters and what makes the encounter work.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
So this I pretty much completely disagree with. First, not all players even care about combat, they definitely don't all turn into tacticians. A lot of players, newer players especially, get into D&D for the roleplaying & Cooperative storytelling. 2nd, Story is more than the overarching narrative. The gargantuan Ogre ignoring front line fighters and chasing down the squishy thief carrying his friends head created tension. It was a twist on the rote combat the party had to adjust to. 3rd the combat can and should serve the story, there are 3 pillars to D&D combat, exploration, & roleplay. A skilled dm uses the story to tie each together and give a satisfying experience. If all you want is a combat simulator there are better options than D&D.
You could set the encounter difficulty to hard so there is a chance of character death.
Again, I disagree with a great deal of this. Character creation in 5e is extremely focused on story. You have a background, a backstory, traits, etc. Every published adventure has suggested ways characters can tie their backstory to the adventure. For you it might all be in service of combat and that's fine, but that is not the universal experience. Combat is not only not the only option in most encounters its also often the least efficient as it burns the most resources. Published adventures often offer multiple ways a party may approach a given encounter and if they overcome the encounter with social skills instead of combat, great they get the same experience as if they had fought the battle. To reduce D&D to just combat or suggest that every aspect of D&D is only meant to serve combat is ludicrous in my opinion. Combat is incredibly important, the entire point of my original post on this thread was about using story to keep the combat engaging. The most immersed I have ever been in D&D as a player was during a roleplay session where our DM didn't speak for 90 minutes. Our party argued back and forth over whether or not to kill an unarmed prisoner who had caused a lot of problems. The other was in combat but not when we were being badasses. It was when a young green dragon used its breath attack to open combat downing one player and killing our tank instantly. In that moment I was terrified, my hands literally began to sweat irl. One-shotting a boss is boring, unsatisfying. To be a badass hero you need to fight formidable opponents.
YOU don’t even have to fight the Demilich. Or the gargoyle. Because it’s all traps and you only need the loot so you just need to fight the ghost but 20th level party should be fine against it.
Tomb of Horrors is one of the greatest modules of all time for that reason.