Flying Snakes – do not read this post! It will ruin your fun later on.
With that out the way:
Are you tired of your boss monsters underperforming?
Have you known for a while now that after CR4, Challenge Rating is a bit of a joke?
Do you complain that the PCs breeze through every encounter hardly taking a scratch?
Do you find your min-maxed PCs slay CR21 monsters at level 9?
Do you lament the game design choice suggesting 6-8 encounters per day but your campaign rarely has more than one?
Do you wish that monsters weren't designed for fights to last at most 3 turns, and your players love long combats?
Do you want something truly threatening for your arc's final encounter?
I’m going to show you how I balance encounters for higher level parties so that they last a good amount of turns of combat (5, in this case), threaten the players even when they’re fully loaded on abilities, and don’t just fall over in turn 1.
This looks like it will take a long time – it really doesn’t.
Design Philosophy
Firstly, ignore everything form the DM Guide, and completely ignore your monster’s ability scores. Adhering to ability scores when designing monster attacks or hit points is a restriction, not a helpful tool. We want to design a monster capable of putting out a really exciting, dangerous encounter for even veteran players who have min-maxed their characters.
The worked example here uses the real stats of my PCs who are Level 10, and totally min-maxed.
Choose What the Monster Is– To keep this simple, in this case it’s a big old Green Dragon in this case called Gordon.
Work out the following data about your party, easily obtained through D&D Beyond’s Campaign system:
The party's total combined hit points, and the average
Average AC
Average + to hit modifier with main attacks
Average damage per attack
For dedicated casters, look at the most damaging spell from the caster’s 2 highest tier of spell and work out the average damage on a failed save, because they will use spells of varying levels, not just their max nukes.
3. First up, and easiest: Work out the monster's AC so it gets hit 50% of the time. Look at your party and average plus bonus is for attack rolls. The monster's AC should be 9 plus that number; which means they'll hit on about 50% of their attacks.
Example: With all their bonuses and magic items, The Flying Snakes have an average of +12 to hit, including assumptions that they will keep generating Advantage through Reckless Attack, Flanking, Guiding Bolts etc. Advantage is considered +4. You will know if the PCs can reliably gain advantage, and by level 10, most of them probably can. Gordon needs an AC of 22 to only take 50% of the attacks.
4. Look at what that damage output means across the party.
Example: For The Flying Snakes, a party of min-maxers, damage is most commonly as follows:
Barbarian +11, reckless, GWM, 27 damage x 2 attacks = 54 total
Bloodhunter, +10, SS, Hex, 28 damage x 2 attacks = 56 total
Rogue/Fighter multiclass, +15 to hit, 27 damage sneak attack = 27 total
Tempest Cleric, Call Lightning: 22 lightning damage, save for half = 22 total
Circle of Stars Druid, +10 to hit, 14 damage guiding bolt, Bonus action +10 to hit, 14 damage Archer form attack = 28 total
Bard, 4 level Shatter - 23 damage, save for half = 23 total
Note that these numbers are at the low end: they do not include maxing out damage for the cleric, having a Spiritual Weapon up, upcasting Guiding Bolt for the druid, polymorphing someone into a Giant Ape, 5 level spells, Action Surge, or activating magical items. This forms a basic level on which we can calculate what's reasonable to expect on the most average turn they'll take.
Total average damage if everything hits and no saves made: 210 damage per turn. On a low-average turn.
Next because we already did the AC calculation, we can assume that 50% of all attacks will miss, and 50% of saving throws will be made. Gordon is not going to blow legendary resistances on spells dealing 22 damage.
On this basis, average damage output is 109 per turn.
This is a big, important fight; I want my fight to last at least 5 turns, plus I want him to survive the alpha strike and assume that one of the healers will get off a big Mass Cure Wounds or similar at some point. So I’ll give him 109 hit points for each of the 5 turns, plus a bonus 109 to keep him alive through the alpha strike.
Even with an AC of 22, Gordon needs 654 hit points to give the Flying Snakes a decent challenge, even when he’s making saving throws and they’re missing 50% of their attacks. Note that very, very few monsters have anything close to this in official sources (a kraken is below 500), which is why so many 5e encounters are just a bop and leads to complaints that the PCs feel like super heroes.
5. The boss needs to be immune to debilitating effects that will prevent it from taking a turn; Stunning Strike, Charmed etc. Without that, it can easily be locked down in one turn.
Firstly, he needs to be able to resist certain effects that will just ruin the fight on a failed saving throw. For this party, they are Polymorph, and Banishment. However, your fight is going to feel rubbish to the players if he has 6 legendary resistances that just auto-pass.
I play Legendary Resistances a bit differently.
Instead of auto-pass, the boss gets 1 LR per PC. When using them, he can reroll the saving throw with an additional +5 bonus. This means that there is no time when a spell is truly a waste of time to cast. If they get a lucky Banishment mid-fight and get to heal up… so be it. But he can also reroll failed rerolls as well!
Therefore Gordon gets 6 Legendary Rerolls, one for each party member.
6. Now, we know the average party AC so how often do we want to hit with melee type attacks? We want a boss to be more powerful than the PCs, so he needs +13 to hit.
The Flying Snakes have an average AC of 17. This means Taath will hit on a roll of 4 or higher, or 85% of the time.
7. Damage is the one thing the DM Guide actually tends to get right! But only sort of...
Take the PC’s average hit points – 94 for the Flying Snakes – and divide by the hit score percentage.
94 / 0.85 = 110.
Taath must be able to deal 110 damage between the beginning of his turn and the beginning of his next turn, including Legendary Actions, in order to pose any kind of a threat to this party of 6 level 10 characters… but this ignores Rage resistance, ignores Uncanny Dodge, ignores Mass Cure Wounds, ignores Curse of the Eyeless, ignores Weal and Woe etc. We need to go way above this, by about 40%. So he needs to deal about 154 damage to be a real threat. Note that if we wanted a shorter combat, e.g. 3 turns, we’d be looking at him dealing 308 damage per turn.
We therefore give him:
Bite – 37 average damage (4d10+2d6+8)
2 x Claw – 19 average damage each (2d8+10)
Tail x 4 (legendary actions) – 19 average damage (2d8+10)
Note that the Legendary Actions are upped (see below), because the party is larger than the standard 4.
This gives us about 151 damage, easily close enough to his required DPR of 154 to pose threats. It’s a shame he does so much tail waving, so we can reflavour some of those attacks as Claw attacks.
He also needs a breath weapon. We can assume a 60 foot cone will hit 3 of the party at least. If he’s using the breath weapon, then we have to assume that 1.5 players make their saving throw, or have resistance, or have Evasion, or Absorb Elements.
The total breath weapon damage therefore needs to be equal to (154 x 1.5)/3 = 77 damage per character. It’s his big ace in the hole, and the only thing he’ll get to do that turn apart from a few tale swipes.
This means his breath weapon should deal 22d6 points of damage.
It sounds a lot, but the rogue will take 0 from Evasion, the dwarf has poison resistance, and there are 3 characters who can make up a lot of healing when they want to.
If we want to make absolute certain that our players win, then we can deal lower breath weapon damage – 16d6 will sound scary but won’t both them as much as you’d think.
But on a recharge of 5-6, there's a 1 in 9 chance that he hits the PCs with it every turn for the first 3 turns,in which case it's probably GG NO RE.
So instead, let's give him: Building Recharge.Roll a d6 at the beginning of Gordon's turn. On a 6, Gordon regains use of his breath weapon. Each time he fails to recharge it, he adds a stacking +1 to the next Building Recharge roll (so 2nd attempt succeeds on a 5+, 3rd attempt on a 4+ etc.).
This means we are unlikely to have 2 breath weapon attacks in 2 consecutive turns, giving our party time to respond with healing, while the chances of 3 in a row becomes 1 in 18. In all likelihood Gordon gets off 2 breaths in 5 turns.
Legendary Actions
Standard monsters assumes a party of 4. You need to up the LA’s, or the damage of the major attacks, to compensate if not. Because we want Taath to be mobile, damaging and be able to use his Detect ability once per turn, he needs 5 Legendary Actions.
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So in summary, for a dragon to threaten a party of 6 x Level 10 Characters:
Breath weapon for 22d6 damage
Non-breath damage output 151 damage per turn, assuming 85% hit rate
708 hit points to survive into turn 5
Increased Legendary Actions and Legendary Resistances to accommodate party size
And you know what…?
This is still probably going to be way too easy!We haven’t even mentioned critical hits, consumable items, weird magic item nonsense, spell combos, or what happens when those LR’s are all gone and he starts getting pummelled. But that's cool, we want the PCs to win in the end - we just want the fight to feel epic.
Good luck, Gordon. Though you deal 150 damage per turn and have 700 hit points, the PCs are still gonna rip you apart.
I generally like the the approach because I loves me some math but I can't shake that 700 HP.
It feels like for your situation no "mortal" dragon is a fair fight. If you were to add in multiple dragons (totaling 800 HP) who between them have a significant number of attacks (totally close to your 4 Legendary tail swipes plus claw/ claw/ bite, you'd have a fight that does what you want but with significantly less math at the planning point. And for the die-hards at your table, there wouldn't be a "how many HP does this thing have?!?!"
That said, if you present it as a 'Legendary Dragon' then I feel like that population should be pretty open to your "let's redo the statblock" math.
The monster has 700 hp because Sanvael wants a 5 round combat and is using flanking. If you want a 3 round combat and aren't using flanking, 400 is plenty. Or fewer, if the monster has action denial, obnoxious mobility, or unfair defensive abilities. Also, judging from listed stats, Sanvael's party is overstatted and/or overgeared.
In general, if you're trying to generate a long battle, I would go for multi-phase battle, not five rounds of continually banging on a monster whose stats don't change. Ways of doing that include just having a minion phase (either at the start, or as a summon), mythic monsters, and monsters that have a transformation (e.g. lesser star spawn emissary).
This is an impressive amount of reverse engineering. Moreover, if it works for you, great job and keep doin it.
I'm a much bigger fan of the Lazy Encounter Benchmark and making higher level combat encounters multi-part events. I may not be able to squeeze in 6-8 medium to hard encounters per game session, but I can easily get in 2-3 hard/deadly encounters back to back over the course of 6-9 turns. And I can set it up within moments knowing that, in your example, you have 60 levels worth of PC(6 x Lvl 10), you would need monsters worth a total of 30 CR for the overall encounter to possibly be deadly.
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I like the approach since I also loves me some math. You could extend this idea to a full blown simulation using a little python code. The code could "roll" all the dice for each character and the monsters until either all the monsters or all the PCs are at 0 hp, count the number of rounds it took and which monsters died when. Run this ~100 times and you'll have a pretty good idea for how the encounter will turn out "on average". You can make your code more sophisticated to account for healing ect. I'm a little surprised someone hasn't already posted something like this on github, maybe I should give it a go. :)
I like the approach since I also loves me some math. You could extend this idea to a full blown simulation using a little python code. The code could "roll" all the dice for each character and the monsters until either all the monsters or all the PCs are at 0 hp, count the number of rounds it took and which monsters died when. Run this ~100 times and you'll have a pretty good idea for how the encounter will turn out "on average". You can make your code more sophisticated to account for healing ect. I'm a little surprised someone hasn't already posted something like this on github, maybe I should give it a go. :)
I don't have a lot to contribute on this one yet, as I'm one more to "follow the math" than "invent the math"; but I gotta say I'm definitely intrigued by the OP methodology and enjoying the discussion.
I think this "design with your party in mind" is much more valuable guidance than the abstract indexes in the DMG and XGtE and would be really happy if this was the sort of form future "guidance" in the DM's _Guide_ took.
Now back to my Kobold gauntlet....
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The monster has 700 hp because Sanvael wants a 5 round combat and is using flanking. If you want a 3 round combat and aren't using flanking, 400 is plenty. Or fewer, if the monster has action denial, obnoxious mobility, or unfair defensive abilities. Also, judging from listed stats, Sanvael's party is overstatted and/or overgeared.
In general, if you're trying to generate a long battle, I would go for multi-phase battle, not five rounds of continually banging on a monster whose stats don't change. Ways of doing that include just having a minion phase (either at the start, or as a summon), mythic monsters, and monsters that have a transformation (e.g. lesser star spawn emissary).
Five rounds is a short battle in my games, nine is considered long ^_^. Different strokes for different folks, but you can adapt this system to any number of turns.
I mentioned that they are min-maxers, so the Bloodhunter 8/Wizard 2 with Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert, Archery fighting style, shoots for +4 (Dex) +4 (proficiency) +1 (+1 heavy crossbow) +2 Archery, so +11 to hit. He uses Hex on the target and Crimson Rite, so with Sharpshooter that means +7 to hit for 28 (1d10+1d6+1d6+15) damage. He has a gem that allows him to gain True Sight and then the Bard drops darkness on him so he can shoot for advantage every attack. They do it regularly enough that I factor it in to my encounter design. I don't really think that's all that crazy for a level 10 character.
But honestly it doesn't matter whether MY players have min-maxed, you can use the system I described for a party that has min-maxed, or one that has taken a random allotment of classes, Linguist feats, and have no magical items just as well. The DM Guide system doesn't work well for characters that are played at their most efficient, and it's a very common way to play the game.
I generally like the the approach because I loves me some math but I can't shake that 700 HP.
It feels like for your situation no "mortal" dragon is a fair fight. If you were to add in multiple dragons (totaling 800 HP) who between them have a significant number of attacks (totally close to your 4 Legendary tail swipes plus claw/ claw/ bite, you'd have a fight that does what you want but with significantly less math at the planning point. And for the die-hards at your table, there wouldn't be a "how many HP does this thing have?!?!"
That said, if you present it as a 'Legendary Dragon' then I feel like that population should be pretty open to your "let's redo the statblock" math.
It doesn't really matter if it's a dragon or whatever, this is a monster-building system to employ for any type of boss monster. Sometimes you just want one big old monster! My PCs have been chased around the kingdom by this thing and fled/hid from it a couple of times before, but I'd use this for other big-bads as well.
Four dragons means four breath weapon attacks in a turn, so 224 (64d6) poison damage in AoE - practically unwinnable by a party of any level. But that wasn't really the point.
My picky brain made me think in all the ways that this process could possibly fail, but I found none. I think you really hit a good spot.
I looked on my past boss fights that were not just steamrolled by the party and it pretty much follows your rules. (The ones that did got steamrolled were always short in one of the departments, being it too low AC, too few HP or too few damage).
Four dragons means four breath weapon attacks in a turn, so 224 (64d6) poison damage in AoE - practically unwinnable by a party of any level. But that wasn't really the point.
Don't forget the recharge. :)
Though your point is made, more dragons = more breath weapons. But that's part of the challenge in the action economy.
Overall I think I prefer the idea of waves and stages in a fight rather than a massive HP pool but it seems that your math checks if this is a direction to go.
This is all good stuff, and seems to me like the best way to ensure a given challenge level. I have come to do a lot of this over the years, although not with quite as much mathematical rigor.
One issue I'd like to bring up though is that this approach is (by necessity) built around the characters' primary tactics, spells, and strategies. It's expecting them to behave a certain way - the way they typically do. The problem with this is that it can entrench that behavior and result in every combat having the same win formula. The same decisions made every time, for the same reasons.
I think when you know a party's go-to tactics, you can make a big fight more memorable by disrupting their Plan A and forcing them to think on their feet and make new decisions. Not everywhere, but for at least two common strategies used by the PCs. Obviously, players want to do what they're good at and just blatantly counteracting their abilities is heavy-handed and can make players feel bitter. But finding ways to incentivize and reward adaptability and ingenuity can offset that frustration, as can allowing them to execute their Plan A on the boss's lieutenant or something before the big fight.
I try to make every encounter different, e.g. it has a gimmick that changes the normal state of play. This can be done through terrain, weather, monster abilities, limiting spellcasting, waves of attackers, boss-phases, doodads and more.
I don't want things to be a 50-50 chance for my players. They shouldn't be missing half the time, and the boss shouldn't be failing saves half the time- missing an attack does nothing, and a player having a turn doing nothing is generally not fun. On the other hand, players who are min-maxing have a lot of ways to control targets, and failing half of the saving throws does not allow the creatures to participate in the fight and be "interesting" since control effects can make even the most creative encounters into beating up a punching bag. I generally balance 75% hits land, 25% of saves fail- this might punish save heavy casters more disproportionately, but most of my min-maxing players are playing control casters nowadays (since Psychic Lance > Silvery Barbs is a ready made stun-lock for most creatures, since incapacitated immunity is basically nonexistent in 5e), while still allowing attacks to land. I don't generally make bosses immune to such effects (because I don't want to invalidate those builds entirely), but I do make sure they have legendary resistances and decent saving throws to compensate in order to guarantee at least a few turns of performance before they would come under control effects.
This change in formula also makes GWM/Sharpshooter a better tradeoff- you still have a good chance to hit, whereas a 50% chance of hit reduced to a 25% chance to hit tends to be a huge reduction in value. Abilities that rely on compromises to output, or even more importantly players who aren't as focused on power-gaming as other players, still get to participate when the threshold is lower. To compensate, I tend to do slightly more HP than you would, perhaps by a margin of 20-30%, so that hits consistently landing aren't going to accelerate the fight too quickly. I do this because to hit is generally a more accessible attack method than saving throws, and I want all my players, whether they're casters or martials, to feel like they can contribute in a fight.
I also don't know how I feel about your damage estimates- they seem a bit high for my table, and I've thrown some really strong enemies at my parties. I try to do usually about 10-20% of the party's HP per turn in a boss fight, but I'll often use mechanics that might make that number really fluctuate. For example, a while back I had a frost giant boss who cursed targets with a mark, and depending on whether the mark forced them to group up or separate, the damage was dependent not on the boss, but on the players' positioning. I had a player who ignored the mechanic and dealt hundreds of hp damage to the party (resulting in their character going down) and forced everyone else to do the mechanics around her (mitigating their performance in combat), and at the end of the day it felt more fair than if I just had each hit do 2d10 more damage.
I think throwing huge numbers at the party can also result in unintended "stacking" of damage on a single target- I prefer more weaker attacks instead of a few really powerful attacks that, on a crit, might not be salvageable for the party. I do use a VTT, so rolling a ton of attacks is simply a matter of clicking more times, so it's not as big of a deal to have six attacks with 3d10 instead of three with 6d10 (it also automatically tracks damage, so there's almost no math involved). Additionally, you're less at the whims of one bad dice roll to ruin the encounter's balance if you have more attacks- no minimum or maximum damage roll defines a turn.
I also think a good way to design boss encounters is to force the party to handle the bosses' mechanical effects. You mention giving the boss more legendary actions per turn, and that could be a good way to handle action economy, but you could also make more creative legendary actions that still force the party to make decisions. I had a giant plant monster that, when it attacked, would split off vines to attack party members, grabbing them if they failed an athletics/acrobatics check. This not only leveraged skill proficiency in combat, but it also meant that the party had to either manage the vines splitting off by burning them down (they only took a hit or two each), delegate someone to basically tank the vines, or otherwise deal with the grapple- some players used teleports, some used their high skill checks, and one just... didn't, and had a bad time (not exactly as intended, but I'm not going to cry about it since the mechanic worked as intended). It still addressed action economy, but it didn't (at least initially) impact damage or just make the boss itself do more.
My standard is around a 3 round combat, but party of my survival strategy for monsters is "PCs at 0 hp don't do damage" (my PCs are relatively low damage -- level 8, cleric*2, ranger, sorcerer, warlock -- but this also means I can safely have three unconscious PCs at the end of round 1 and figure everything will be fine).
Flying Snakes – do not read this post! It will ruin your fun later on.
With that out the way:
Are you tired of your boss monsters underperforming?
Have you known for a while now that after CR4, Challenge Rating is a bit of a joke?
Do you complain that the PCs breeze through every encounter hardly taking a scratch?
Do you find your min-maxed PCs slay CR21 monsters at level 9?
Do you lament the game design choice suggesting 6-8 encounters per day but your campaign rarely has more than one?
Do you wish that monsters weren't designed for fights to last at most 3 turns, and your players love long combats?
Do you want something truly threatening for your arc's final encounter?
I’m going to show you how I balance encounters for higher level parties so that they last a good amount of turns of combat (5, in this case), threaten the players even when they’re fully loaded on abilities, and don’t just fall over in turn 1.
This looks like it will take a long time – it really doesn’t.
Design Philosophy
Firstly, ignore everything form the DM Guide, and completely ignore your monster’s ability scores. Adhering to ability scores when designing monster attacks or hit points is a restriction, not a helpful tool. We want to design a monster capable of putting out a really exciting, dangerous encounter for even veteran players who have min-maxed their characters.
The worked example here uses the real stats of my PCs who are Level 10, and totally min-maxed.
Choose What the Monster Is– To keep this simple, in this case it’s a big old Green Dragon in this case called Gordon.
Work out the following data about your party, easily obtained through D&D Beyond’s Campaign system:
The party's total combined hit points, and the average
Average AC
Average + to hit modifier with main attacks
Average damage per attack
For dedicated casters, look at the most damaging spell from the caster’s 2 highest tier of spell and work out the average damage on a failed save, because they will use spells of varying levels, not just their max nukes.
3. First up, and easiest: Work out the monster's AC so it gets hit 50% of the time. Look at your party and average plus bonus is for attack rolls. The monster's AC should be 9 plus that number; which means they'll hit on about 50% of their attacks.
Example: With all their bonuses and magic items, The Flying Snakes have an average of +12 to hit, including assumptions that they will keep generating Advantage through Reckless Attack, Flanking, Guiding Bolts etc. Advantage is considered +4. You will know if the PCs can reliably gain advantage, and by level 10, most of them probably can. Gordon needs an AC of 22 to only take 50% of the attacks.
4. Look at what that damage output means across the party.
Example: For The Flying Snakes, a party of min-maxers, damage is most commonly as follows:
Barbarian +11, reckless, GWM, 27 damage x 2 attacks = 54 total
Bloodhunter, +10, SS, Hex, 28 damage x 2 attacks = 56 total
Rogue/Fighter multiclass, +15 to hit, 27 damage sneak attack = 27 total
Tempest Cleric, Call Lightning: 22 lightning damage, save for half = 22 total
Circle of Stars Druid, +10 to hit, 14 damage guiding bolt, Bonus action +10 to hit, 14 damage Archer form attack = 28 total
Bard, 4 level Shatter - 23 damage, save for half = 23 total
Note that these numbers are at the low end: they do not include maxing out damage for the cleric, having a Spiritual Weapon up, upcasting Guiding Bolt for the druid, polymorphing someone into a Giant Ape, 5 level spells, Action Surge, or activating magical items. This forms a basic level on which we can calculate what's reasonable to expect on the most average turn they'll take.
Total average damage if everything hits and no saves made: 210 damage per turn. On a low-average turn.
Next because we already did the AC calculation, we can assume that 50% of all attacks will miss, and 50% of saving throws will be made. Gordon is not going to blow legendary resistances on spells dealing 22 damage.
On this basis, average damage output is 109 per turn.
This is a big, important fight; I want my fight to last at least 5 turns, plus I want him to survive the alpha strike and assume that one of the healers will get off a big Mass Cure Wounds or similar at some point. So I’ll give him 109 hit points for each of the 5 turns, plus a bonus 109 to keep him alive through the alpha strike.
Even with an AC of 22, Gordon needs 654 hit points to give the Flying Snakes a decent challenge, even when he’s making saving throws and they’re missing 50% of their attacks. Note that very, very few monsters have anything close to this in official sources (a kraken is below 500), which is why so many 5e encounters are just a bop and leads to complaints that the PCs feel like super heroes.
5. The boss needs to be immune to debilitating effects that will prevent it from taking a turn; Stunning Strike, Charmed etc. Without that, it can easily be locked down in one turn.
Firstly, he needs to be able to resist certain effects that will just ruin the fight on a failed saving throw. For this party, they are Polymorph, and Banishment. However, your fight is going to feel rubbish to the players if he has 6 legendary resistances that just auto-pass.
I play Legendary Resistances a bit differently.
Instead of auto-pass, the boss gets 1 LR per PC. When using them, he can reroll the saving throw with an additional +5 bonus. This means that there is no time when a spell is truly a waste of time to cast. If they get a lucky Banishment mid-fight and get to heal up… so be it. But he can also reroll failed rerolls as well!
Therefore Gordon gets 6 Legendary Rerolls, one for each party member.
6. Now, we know the average party AC so how often do we want to hit with melee type attacks? We want a boss to be more powerful than the PCs, so he needs +13 to hit.
The Flying Snakes have an average AC of 17. This means Taath will hit on a roll of 4 or higher, or 85% of the time.
7. Damage is the one thing the DM Guide actually tends to get right! But only sort of...
Take the PC’s average hit points – 94 for the Flying Snakes – and divide by the hit score percentage.
94 / 0.85 = 110.
Taath must be able to deal 110 damage between the beginning of his turn and the beginning of his next turn, including Legendary Actions, in order to pose any kind of a threat to this party of 6 level 10 characters… but this ignores Rage resistance, ignores Uncanny Dodge, ignores Mass Cure Wounds, ignores Curse of the Eyeless, ignores Weal and Woe etc. We need to go way above this, by about 40%. So he needs to deal about 154 damage to be a real threat. Note that if we wanted a shorter combat, e.g. 3 turns, we’d be looking at him dealing 308 damage per turn.
We therefore give him:
Bite – 37 average damage (4d10+2d6+8)
2 x Claw – 19 average damage each (2d8+10)
Tail x 4 (legendary actions) – 19 average damage (2d8+10)
Note that the Legendary Actions are upped (see below), because the party is larger than the standard 4.
This gives us about 151 damage, easily close enough to his required DPR of 154 to pose threats. It’s a shame he does so much tail waving, so we can reflavour some of those attacks as Claw attacks.
He also needs a breath weapon. We can assume a 60 foot cone will hit 3 of the party at least. If he’s using the breath weapon, then we have to assume that 1.5 players make their saving throw, or have resistance, or have Evasion, or Absorb Elements.
The total breath weapon damage therefore needs to be equal to (154 x 1.5)/3 = 77 damage per character. It’s his big ace in the hole, and the only thing he’ll get to do that turn apart from a few tale swipes.
This means his breath weapon should deal 22d6 points of damage.
It sounds a lot, but the rogue will take 0 from Evasion, the dwarf has poison resistance, and there are 3 characters who can make up a lot of healing when they want to.
If we want to make absolute certain that our players win, then we can deal lower breath weapon damage – 16d6 will sound scary but won’t both them as much as you’d think.
But on a recharge of 5-6, there's a 1 in 9 chance that he hits the PCs with it every turn for the first 3 turns,in which case it's probably GG NO RE.
So instead, let's give him: Building Recharge.Roll a d6 at the beginning of Gordon's turn. On a 6, Gordon regains use of his breath weapon. Each time he fails to recharge it, he adds a stacking +1 to the next Building Recharge roll (so 2nd attempt succeeds on a 5+, 3rd attempt on a 4+ etc.).
This means we are unlikely to have 2 breath weapon attacks in 2 consecutive turns, giving our party time to respond with healing, while the chances of 3 in a row becomes 1 in 18. In all likelihood Gordon gets off 2 breaths in 5 turns.
Legendary Actions
Standard monsters assumes a party of 4. You need to up the LA’s, or the damage of the major attacks, to compensate if not. Because we want Taath to be mobile, damaging and be able to use his Detect ability once per turn, he needs 5 Legendary Actions.
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So in summary, for a dragon to threaten a party of 6 x Level 10 Characters:
Breath weapon for 22d6 damage
Non-breath damage output 151 damage per turn, assuming 85% hit rate
708 hit points to survive into turn 5
Increased Legendary Actions and Legendary Resistances to accommodate party size
And you know what…?
This is still probably going to be way too easy!We haven’t even mentioned critical hits, consumable items, weird magic item nonsense, spell combos, or what happens when those LR’s are all gone and he starts getting pummelled. But that's cool, we want the PCs to win in the end - we just want the fight to feel epic.
Good luck, Gordon. Though you deal 150 damage per turn and have 700 hit points, the PCs are still gonna rip you apart.
This might work for you and if it does all power to you, I find I just feel an encounter, might be an experience thing and years and years of balancing many many different RPG systems (legend of the 5 rings teaches you a new meaning to the terms brutality of combat) so by now I might start with CR but I will be able to look at the shape of the encounter and my party, as well as understand the trials they will face on the way to and after it, and so have a sense of how much harder I need to make it (or for that matter how much easier as, if this is encounter number 10 since the last long rest, all of a sudden 12 goblin archers becomes almost lethal to that level 12 party)
If you want enemies to last longer just give them max HP for their dice, or, just double HP, even. I mean, if you've got the free time to design the stats for all these things for every monster your party faces that's more power to you, really. But it is far easier and more importantly, faster, to make a quick modification to an already existing monster.
And then for something like a BBEG dragon... just use him as a clever tactical manipulator like green dragons tend to be. He can use a combination of hit and run plus terrain control lair actions to throw your players off their game. Use some of the additional lair effects, walls, grappling tendrils, charming fogs, vine animated zombies, attacking roots etc. Green dragons have control over the forest itself and the fight should really feel like they're at war with not only a massive flying poison-breathing monstrosity, but against nature itself. Plus, of all the types of dragons, greens are pretty likely to have manipulated other denizens of the woods into serving them directly. Whether that's monstrous humanoids or various plant creature to double down on theme, you can mix in non-boss enemies into the encounter. Green dragons don't fight fair, if you've managed to corner one into a fight it can't immediately overwhelm it will use every trick available to it to win.
Just trying to fix boss encounters by adding more hp and more attack modifier and more damage dice, IDK, feels like saying that he's just a dumb monster that will fight toe to toe with the fighter and you need to buff his stats because he'll just stand there trading hits for no reason like a mindless rabid animal.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
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Flying Snakes – do not read this post! It will ruin your fun later on.
With that out the way:
I’m going to show you how I balance encounters for higher level parties so that they last a good amount of turns of combat (5, in this case), threaten the players even when they’re fully loaded on abilities, and don’t just fall over in turn 1.
This looks like it will take a long time – it really doesn’t.
Design Philosophy
Firstly, ignore everything form the DM Guide, and completely ignore your monster’s ability scores. Adhering to ability scores when designing monster attacks or hit points is a restriction, not a helpful tool. We want to design a monster capable of putting out a really exciting, dangerous encounter for even veteran players who have min-maxed their characters.
The worked example here uses the real stats of my PCs who are Level 10, and totally min-maxed.
3. First up, and easiest: Work out the monster's AC so it gets hit 50% of the time. Look at your party and average plus bonus is for attack rolls. The monster's AC should be 9 plus that number; which means they'll hit on about 50% of their attacks.
Example: With all their bonuses and magic items, The Flying Snakes have an average of +12 to hit, including assumptions that they will keep generating Advantage through Reckless Attack, Flanking, Guiding Bolts etc. Advantage is considered +4. You will know if the PCs can reliably gain advantage, and by level 10, most of them probably can. Gordon needs an AC of 22 to only take 50% of the attacks.
4. Look at what that damage output means across the party.
Example: For The Flying Snakes, a party of min-maxers, damage is most commonly as follows:
Note that these numbers are at the low end: they do not include maxing out damage for the cleric, having a Spiritual Weapon up, upcasting Guiding Bolt for the druid, polymorphing someone into a Giant Ape, 5 level spells, Action Surge, or activating magical items. This forms a basic level on which we can calculate what's reasonable to expect on the most average turn they'll take.
Total average damage if everything hits and no saves made: 210 damage per turn. On a low-average turn.
Next because we already did the AC calculation, we can assume that 50% of all attacks will miss, and 50% of saving throws will be made. Gordon is not going to blow legendary resistances on spells dealing 22 damage.
On this basis, average damage output is 109 per turn.
This is a big, important fight; I want my fight to last at least 5 turns, plus I want him to survive the alpha strike and assume that one of the healers will get off a big Mass Cure Wounds or similar at some point. So I’ll give him 109 hit points for each of the 5 turns, plus a bonus 109 to keep him alive through the alpha strike.
Even with an AC of 22, Gordon needs 654 hit points to give the Flying Snakes a decent challenge, even when he’s making saving throws and they’re missing 50% of their attacks. Note that very, very few monsters have anything close to this in official sources (a kraken is below 500), which is why so many 5e encounters are just a bop and leads to complaints that the PCs feel like super heroes.
5. The boss needs to be immune to debilitating effects that will prevent it from taking a turn; Stunning Strike, Charmed etc. Without that, it can easily be locked down in one turn.
Firstly, he needs to be able to resist certain effects that will just ruin the fight on a failed saving throw. For this party, they are Polymorph, and Banishment. However, your fight is going to feel rubbish to the players if he has 6 legendary resistances that just auto-pass.
I play Legendary Resistances a bit differently.
Instead of auto-pass, the boss gets 1 LR per PC. When using them, he can reroll the saving throw with an additional +5 bonus. This means that there is no time when a spell is truly a waste of time to cast. If they get a lucky Banishment mid-fight and get to heal up… so be it. But he can also reroll failed rerolls as well!
Therefore Gordon gets 6 Legendary Rerolls, one for each party member.
6. Now, we know the average party AC so how often do we want to hit with melee type attacks? We want a boss to be more powerful than the PCs, so he needs +13 to hit.
The Flying Snakes have an average AC of 17. This means Taath will hit on a roll of 4 or higher, or 85% of the time.
7. Damage is the one thing the DM Guide actually tends to get right! But only sort of...
Take the PC’s average hit points – 94 for the Flying Snakes – and divide by the hit score percentage.
94 / 0.85 = 110.
Taath must be able to deal 110 damage between the beginning of his turn and the beginning of his next turn, including Legendary Actions, in order to pose any kind of a threat to this party of 6 level 10 characters… but this ignores Rage resistance, ignores Uncanny Dodge, ignores Mass Cure Wounds, ignores Curse of the Eyeless, ignores Weal and Woe etc. We need to go way above this, by about 40%. So he needs to deal about 154 damage to be a real threat. Note that if we wanted a shorter combat, e.g. 3 turns, we’d be looking at him dealing 308 damage per turn.
We therefore give him:
Note that the Legendary Actions are upped (see below), because the party is larger than the standard 4.
This gives us about 151 damage, easily close enough to his required DPR of 154 to pose threats. It’s a shame he does so much tail waving, so we can reflavour some of those attacks as Claw attacks.
He also needs a breath weapon. We can assume a 60 foot cone will hit 3 of the party at least. If he’s using the breath weapon, then we have to assume that 1.5 players make their saving throw, or have resistance, or have Evasion, or Absorb Elements.
The total breath weapon damage therefore needs to be equal to (154 x 1.5)/3 = 77 damage per character. It’s his big ace in the hole, and the only thing he’ll get to do that turn apart from a few tale swipes.
This means his breath weapon should deal 22d6 points of damage.
It sounds a lot, but the rogue will take 0 from Evasion, the dwarf has poison resistance, and there are 3 characters who can make up a lot of healing when they want to.
If we want to make absolute certain that our players win, then we can deal lower breath weapon damage – 16d6 will sound scary but won’t both them as much as you’d think.
But on a recharge of 5-6, there's a 1 in 9 chance that he hits the PCs with it every turn for the first 3 turns, in which case it's probably GG NO RE.
So instead, let's give him:
Building Recharge. Roll a d6 at the beginning of Gordon's turn. On a 6, Gordon regains use of his breath weapon. Each time he fails to recharge it, he adds a stacking +1 to the next Building Recharge roll (so 2nd attempt succeeds on a 5+, 3rd attempt on a 4+ etc.).
This means we are unlikely to have 2 breath weapon attacks in 2 consecutive turns, giving our party time to respond with healing, while the chances of 3 in a row becomes 1 in 18. In all likelihood Gordon gets off 2 breaths in 5 turns.
Standard monsters assumes a party of 4. You need to up the LA’s, or the damage of the major attacks, to compensate if not. Because we want Taath to be mobile, damaging and be able to use his Detect ability once per turn, he needs 5 Legendary Actions.
-------------------------------
So in summary, for a dragon to threaten a party of 6 x Level 10 Characters:
And you know what…?
This is still probably going to be way too easy! We haven’t even mentioned critical hits, consumable items, weird magic item nonsense, spell combos, or what happens when those LR’s are all gone and he starts getting pummelled. But that's cool, we want the PCs to win in the end - we just want the fight to feel epic.
Good luck, Gordon. Though you deal 150 damage per turn and have 700 hit points, the PCs are still gonna rip you apart.
I generally like the the approach because I loves me some math but I can't shake that 700 HP.
It feels like for your situation no "mortal" dragon is a fair fight. If you were to add in multiple dragons (totaling 800 HP) who between them have a significant number of attacks (totally close to your 4 Legendary tail swipes plus claw/ claw/ bite, you'd have a fight that does what you want but with significantly less math at the planning point. And for the die-hards at your table, there wouldn't be a "how many HP does this thing have?!?!"
That said, if you present it as a 'Legendary Dragon' then I feel like that population should be pretty open to your "let's redo the statblock" math.
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The monster has 700 hp because Sanvael wants a 5 round combat and is using flanking. If you want a 3 round combat and aren't using flanking, 400 is plenty. Or fewer, if the monster has action denial, obnoxious mobility, or unfair defensive abilities. Also, judging from listed stats, Sanvael's party is overstatted and/or overgeared.
In general, if you're trying to generate a long battle, I would go for multi-phase battle, not five rounds of continually banging on a monster whose stats don't change. Ways of doing that include just having a minion phase (either at the start, or as a summon), mythic monsters, and monsters that have a transformation (e.g. lesser star spawn emissary).
This is an impressive amount of reverse engineering. Moreover, if it works for you, great job and keep doin it.
I'm a much bigger fan of the Lazy Encounter Benchmark and making higher level combat encounters multi-part events. I may not be able to squeeze in 6-8 medium to hard encounters per game session, but I can easily get in 2-3 hard/deadly encounters back to back over the course of 6-9 turns. And I can set it up within moments knowing that, in your example, you have 60 levels worth of PC(6 x Lvl 10), you would need monsters worth a total of 30 CR for the overall encounter to possibly be deadly.
“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 like the approach since I also loves me some math. You could extend this idea to a full blown simulation using a little python code. The code could "roll" all the dice for each character and the monsters until either all the monsters or all the PCs are at 0 hp, count the number of rounds it took and which monsters died when. Run this ~100 times and you'll have a pretty good idea for how the encounter will turn out "on average". You can make your code more sophisticated to account for healing ect. I'm a little surprised someone hasn't already posted something like this on github, maybe I should give it a go. :)
https://www.dndcombat.com/dndcombat/Welcome.do looks like a simulator...
I don't have a lot to contribute on this one yet, as I'm one more to "follow the math" than "invent the math"; but I gotta say I'm definitely intrigued by the OP methodology and enjoying the discussion.
I think this "design with your party in mind" is much more valuable guidance than the abstract indexes in the DMG and XGtE and would be really happy if this was the sort of form future "guidance" in the DM's _Guide_ took.
Now back to my Kobold gauntlet....
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Five rounds is a short battle in my games, nine is considered long ^_^. Different strokes for different folks, but you can adapt this system to any number of turns.
I mentioned that they are min-maxers, so the Bloodhunter 8/Wizard 2 with Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert, Archery fighting style, shoots for +4 (Dex) +4 (proficiency) +1 (+1 heavy crossbow) +2 Archery, so +11 to hit. He uses Hex on the target and Crimson Rite, so with Sharpshooter that means +7 to hit for 28 (1d10+1d6+1d6+15) damage. He has a gem that allows him to gain True Sight and then the Bard drops darkness on him so he can shoot for advantage every attack. They do it regularly enough that I factor it in to my encounter design. I don't really think that's all that crazy for a level 10 character.
But honestly it doesn't matter whether MY players have min-maxed, you can use the system I described for a party that has min-maxed, or one that has taken a random allotment of classes, Linguist feats, and have no magical items just as well. The DM Guide system doesn't work well for characters that are played at their most efficient, and it's a very common way to play the game.
It doesn't really matter if it's a dragon or whatever, this is a monster-building system to employ for any type of boss monster. Sometimes you just want one big old monster! My PCs have been chased around the kingdom by this thing and fled/hid from it a couple of times before, but I'd use this for other big-bads as well.
Four dragons means four breath weapon attacks in a turn, so 224 (64d6) poison damage in AoE - practically unwinnable by a party of any level. But that wasn't really the point.
Really liked it.
My picky brain made me think in all the ways that this process could possibly fail, but I found none. I think you really hit a good spot.
I looked on my past boss fights that were not just steamrolled by the party and it pretty much follows your rules. (The ones that did got steamrolled were always short in one of the departments, being it too low AC, too few HP or too few damage).
I "stole" your rules to my DM drive online.
Good job ^^
Don't forget the recharge. :)
Though your point is made, more dragons = more breath weapons. But that's part of the challenge in the action economy.
Overall I think I prefer the idea of waves and stages in a fight rather than a massive HP pool but it seems that your math checks if this is a direction to go.
"Teller of tales, dreamer of dreams"
Tips, Tricks, Maps: Lantern Noir Presents
**Streams hosted at at twitch.tv/LaternNoir
This is all good stuff, and seems to me like the best way to ensure a given challenge level. I have come to do a lot of this over the years, although not with quite as much mathematical rigor.
One issue I'd like to bring up though is that this approach is (by necessity) built around the characters' primary tactics, spells, and strategies. It's expecting them to behave a certain way - the way they typically do. The problem with this is that it can entrench that behavior and result in every combat having the same win formula. The same decisions made every time, for the same reasons.
I think when you know a party's go-to tactics, you can make a big fight more memorable by disrupting their Plan A and forcing them to think on their feet and make new decisions. Not everywhere, but for at least two common strategies used by the PCs. Obviously, players want to do what they're good at and just blatantly counteracting their abilities is heavy-handed and can make players feel bitter. But finding ways to incentivize and reward adaptability and ingenuity can offset that frustration, as can allowing them to execute their Plan A on the boss's lieutenant or something before the big fight.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I try to make every encounter different, e.g. it has a gimmick that changes the normal state of play. This can be done through terrain, weather, monster abilities, limiting spellcasting, waves of attackers, boss-phases, doodads and more.
Does this work with lower level characters?
What about save DC for Breath Weapon/Spells?
Only spilt the party if you see something shiny.
Ariendela Sneakerson, Half-elf Rogue (8); Harmony Wolfsbane, Tiefling Bard (10); Agnomally, Gnomish Sorcerer (3); Breeze, Tabaxi Monk (8); Grace, Dragonborn Barbarian (7); DM, Homebrew- The Sequestered Lands/Underwater Explorers; Candlekeep
I think my knee-jerk reaction to this is:
I don't want things to be a 50-50 chance for my players. They shouldn't be missing half the time, and the boss shouldn't be failing saves half the time- missing an attack does nothing, and a player having a turn doing nothing is generally not fun. On the other hand, players who are min-maxing have a lot of ways to control targets, and failing half of the saving throws does not allow the creatures to participate in the fight and be "interesting" since control effects can make even the most creative encounters into beating up a punching bag. I generally balance 75% hits land, 25% of saves fail- this might punish save heavy casters more disproportionately, but most of my min-maxing players are playing control casters nowadays (since Psychic Lance > Silvery Barbs is a ready made stun-lock for most creatures, since incapacitated immunity is basically nonexistent in 5e), while still allowing attacks to land. I don't generally make bosses immune to such effects (because I don't want to invalidate those builds entirely), but I do make sure they have legendary resistances and decent saving throws to compensate in order to guarantee at least a few turns of performance before they would come under control effects.
This change in formula also makes GWM/Sharpshooter a better tradeoff- you still have a good chance to hit, whereas a 50% chance of hit reduced to a 25% chance to hit tends to be a huge reduction in value. Abilities that rely on compromises to output, or even more importantly players who aren't as focused on power-gaming as other players, still get to participate when the threshold is lower. To compensate, I tend to do slightly more HP than you would, perhaps by a margin of 20-30%, so that hits consistently landing aren't going to accelerate the fight too quickly. I do this because to hit is generally a more accessible attack method than saving throws, and I want all my players, whether they're casters or martials, to feel like they can contribute in a fight.
I also don't know how I feel about your damage estimates- they seem a bit high for my table, and I've thrown some really strong enemies at my parties. I try to do usually about 10-20% of the party's HP per turn in a boss fight, but I'll often use mechanics that might make that number really fluctuate. For example, a while back I had a frost giant boss who cursed targets with a mark, and depending on whether the mark forced them to group up or separate, the damage was dependent not on the boss, but on the players' positioning. I had a player who ignored the mechanic and dealt hundreds of hp damage to the party (resulting in their character going down) and forced everyone else to do the mechanics around her (mitigating their performance in combat), and at the end of the day it felt more fair than if I just had each hit do 2d10 more damage.
I think throwing huge numbers at the party can also result in unintended "stacking" of damage on a single target- I prefer more weaker attacks instead of a few really powerful attacks that, on a crit, might not be salvageable for the party. I do use a VTT, so rolling a ton of attacks is simply a matter of clicking more times, so it's not as big of a deal to have six attacks with 3d10 instead of three with 6d10 (it also automatically tracks damage, so there's almost no math involved). Additionally, you're less at the whims of one bad dice roll to ruin the encounter's balance if you have more attacks- no minimum or maximum damage roll defines a turn.
I also think a good way to design boss encounters is to force the party to handle the bosses' mechanical effects. You mention giving the boss more legendary actions per turn, and that could be a good way to handle action economy, but you could also make more creative legendary actions that still force the party to make decisions. I had a giant plant monster that, when it attacked, would split off vines to attack party members, grabbing them if they failed an athletics/acrobatics check. This not only leveraged skill proficiency in combat, but it also meant that the party had to either manage the vines splitting off by burning them down (they only took a hit or two each), delegate someone to basically tank the vines, or otherwise deal with the grapple- some players used teleports, some used their high skill checks, and one just... didn't, and had a bad time (not exactly as intended, but I'm not going to cry about it since the mechanic worked as intended). It still addressed action economy, but it didn't (at least initially) impact damage or just make the boss itself do more.
My standard is around a 3 round combat, but party of my survival strategy for monsters is "PCs at 0 hp don't do damage" (my PCs are relatively low damage -- level 8, cleric*2, ranger, sorcerer, warlock -- but this also means I can safely have three unconscious PCs at the end of round 1 and figure everything will be fine).
This might work for you and if it does all power to you, I find I just feel an encounter, might be an experience thing and years and years of balancing many many different RPG systems (legend of the 5 rings teaches you a new meaning to the terms brutality of combat) so by now I might start with CR but I will be able to look at the shape of the encounter and my party, as well as understand the trials they will face on the way to and after it, and so have a sense of how much harder I need to make it (or for that matter how much easier as, if this is encounter number 10 since the last long rest, all of a sudden 12 goblin archers becomes almost lethal to that level 12 party)
If you want enemies to last longer just give them max HP for their dice, or, just double HP, even. I mean, if you've got the free time to design the stats for all these things for every monster your party faces that's more power to you, really. But it is far easier and more importantly, faster, to make a quick modification to an already existing monster.
And then for something like a BBEG dragon... just use him as a clever tactical manipulator like green dragons tend to be. He can use a combination of hit and run plus terrain control lair actions to throw your players off their game. Use some of the additional lair effects, walls, grappling tendrils, charming fogs, vine animated zombies, attacking roots etc. Green dragons have control over the forest itself and the fight should really feel like they're at war with not only a massive flying poison-breathing monstrosity, but against nature itself. Plus, of all the types of dragons, greens are pretty likely to have manipulated other denizens of the woods into serving them directly. Whether that's monstrous humanoids or various plant creature to double down on theme, you can mix in non-boss enemies into the encounter. Green dragons don't fight fair, if you've managed to corner one into a fight it can't immediately overwhelm it will use every trick available to it to win.
Just trying to fix boss encounters by adding more hp and more attack modifier and more damage dice, IDK, feels like saying that he's just a dumb monster that will fight toe to toe with the fighter and you need to buff his stats because he'll just stand there trading hits for no reason like a mindless rabid animal.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.