Hi, newish DM here, I’ve been running the Call of the Netherdeep campaign and the characters are now level 7. I was planning a little side adventure into a dungeon but since this is my first real homebrew dungeon just wanted to see if the difficulty is good, too weak or too tough. We have 5 players at level 7: a barbarian, ranger, cleric, wizard and a sidekick (expert class).
There are 3 encounters. The first with a Bulette ambushing them, I did add a multi attack claw attack to it so increased the difficulty to CR6. The second room they will encounter a mummy (CR 3), two Anubians from the Tome of Beasts book(CR2) and then 2 Dust Mephits will ambush them on the 2nd round (CR 1/2).
The last encounter is the big boss. It’s a Lamia (CR4), with a bodyguard Gnoll Fang of Yeenoghu (CR4), a Death Dog (CR1) and 5 Jackelwere disguised as servants (CR 1/2).
Your party will walk through this dungeon like it’s nothing. Even as a side quest This is way too easy, you need to up the CR of every encounter by at least 2
the first encounter needs to be just a little bit tougher, maybe throw in 2-3 mummies.
the second encounter should be 3 mummies and they get ambushed by the Anubians.
and the final boss should either have many more minions (like 4 mummies instead of instead of jackelweres) or the boss should be like 3 CRs higher.
Cool, thank you for the help! I think I will make the mummy a bit stronger (make him a mummy king so more HP and maybe a multi attack and his attacks hit a little harder or something) and add another mummy to the fight. Last fight I think I have an idea, make the Lamia a bit stronger and add some spells to her spell list, and there was another CR4 creature called a Accursed Defiler from the Tome of Beasts, I’ll add 1 of them and have more Jackelwere come into the fight each round maybe as a lair action.
Sometimes it doesn't help much to add multi-attack to an enemy to make it stronger, since it still only has the same HP pool and likely still significantly fewer attacks per round than the party. Usually if you want to significantly increase an encounters difficulty, adding a few smaller enemies can go a lot farther than beefing up a bigger one.
Ok, yeah I think I’m gonna do a little of both, beef them up and add some more enemies. For the mummy fight I’m going to add one more mummy and beef him up a little, so essentially 2 mummies and still having the other creatures there, maybe add some zombies too. Then the last fight I’m going to add some HP, and some long range damage and crowd control spells for the Lamia like lightning bolt and confusion, and shield spell for some added survival, then I’m also going to add another fighter type bodyguard around CR level 6 or 7, the Dragonborn of Tiamat seems like a good one to add. https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/2059730-dragonborn-of-tiamat
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Hi, newish DM here, I’ve been running the Call of the Netherdeep campaign and the characters are now level 7. I was planning a little side adventure into a dungeon but since this is my first real homebrew dungeon just wanted to see if the difficulty is good, too weak or too tough. We have 5 players at level 7: a barbarian, ranger, cleric, wizard and a sidekick (expert class).
There are 3 encounters. The first with a Bulette ambushing them, I did add a multi attack claw attack to it so increased the difficulty to CR6. The second room they will encounter a mummy (CR 3), two Anubians from the Tome of Beasts book(CR2) and then 2 Dust Mephits will ambush them on the 2nd round (CR 1/2).
The last encounter is the big boss. It’s a Lamia (CR4), with a bodyguard Gnoll Fang of Yeenoghu (CR4), a Death Dog (CR1) and 5 Jackelwere disguised as servants (CR 1/2).
Thank you for any feedback
Your party will walk through this dungeon like it’s nothing. Even as a side quest This is way too easy, you need to up the CR of every encounter by at least 2
the first encounter needs to be just a little bit tougher, maybe throw in 2-3 mummies.
the second encounter should be 3 mummies and they get ambushed by the Anubians.
and the final boss should either have many more minions (like 4 mummies instead of instead of jackelweres) or the boss should be like 3 CRs higher.
Cool, thank you for the help! I think I will make the mummy a bit stronger (make him a mummy king so more HP and maybe a multi attack and his attacks hit a little harder or something) and add another mummy to the fight. Last fight I think I have an idea, make the Lamia a bit stronger and add some spells to her spell list, and there was another CR4 creature called a Accursed Defiler from the Tome of Beasts, I’ll add 1 of them and have more Jackelwere come into the fight each round maybe as a lair action.
Sometimes it doesn't help much to add multi-attack to an enemy to make it stronger, since it still only has the same HP pool and likely still significantly fewer attacks per round than the party. Usually if you want to significantly increase an encounters difficulty, adding a few smaller enemies can go a lot farther than beefing up a bigger one.
Ok, yeah I think I’m gonna do a little of both, beef them up and add some more enemies. For the mummy fight I’m going to add one more mummy and beef him up a little, so essentially 2 mummies and still having the other creatures there, maybe add some zombies too. Then the last fight I’m going to add some HP, and some long range damage and crowd control spells for the Lamia like lightning bolt and confusion, and shield spell for some added survival, then I’m also going to add another fighter type bodyguard around CR level 6 or 7, the Dragonborn of Tiamat seems like a good one to add. https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/2059730-dragonborn-of-tiamat