My fourth and final player just informed me he will be playing a vengeance paladin. That makes two paladins, a great weapon fighter, and a Blood Hunter. No spell-caster and no healer.
They're going to pulverize anything I put in front of them. Any suggestions on how to keep the combat challenging?
Unless your players have a solid idea of their characters' personalities, I'd hold off on assuming they won't have brains. The brainiest character I ever played was a fighter, and the current strategist/mastermind in my party is a rogue. Class choice won't always indicate play style.
Two paladins means you have two combat medics in the party. They're probably not going to spend too much time healing, but they can jump in with Lay on Hands in a pinch. I've also played with paladins who actually used their smite slots to cast spells...people be crazy, sometimes.
Combat can be challenging because of terrain, enemies you can't see, puzzles you need to solve while fighting for your life, people you need to protect while fighting for your life, and external effects (like lair actions, wild magic, etc.). Your party wants to wallop baddies, so you can put baddies with tough AC or lots of HP for them to whack. You can also spice things up with sneaky baddies, lots of baddies, mages, and even skill challenges. The more creative you get, the more you can make your players exercise their imaginations.
My fourth and final player just informed me he will be playing a vengeance paladin. That makes two paladins, a great weapon fighter, and a Blood Hunter. No spell-caster and no healer.
They're going to pulverize anything I put in front of them. Any suggestions on how to keep the combat challenging?
First of all, there's nothing wrong with letting the PCs pulverize stuff on occasion. However, if you want to challenge them while using nominally balanced encounters, 20xswarm of bats or swarm of rats is nominally a Hard (not even Deadly) encounter at 5th level, and will probably...kill the entire party.
Use ranged attacks, either physical or magical. or both. Control spells. Flying monsters. Giants tossing boulders from 300 yards away. Gnoll/orc archers. Ogres with ballistas. Stealth. Terrain....steps should always be curved to favor the defenders free swinging with the right hand, while the attackers have to fight uphill and with a wall impeding their swings....
I'd say for early encounters, let them pulverize enemies, intermittently throwing something that flies, but stays low to the ground, hinting at a progression of difficulty that if they're clever, they'll adjust their builds for. That way, when you throw something that flies at them, and may even have the Flyby ability, it's not completely unfair, and the party must confront their weakness. But whatever you do, don't forget to give them encounters that play into their strengths, because there's little worse for a player than building a character to be really good at something, only to be de-facto nerfed by the DM never or rarely giving you the chance to use that.
As standard for most campaigns, most of your enemies should be on the ground, and because the party is built around single-target damage, you can also increase the difficulty by using larger quantities of slightly weaker enemies. That lets the player-characters' strengths shine, but still challenges them, because 50 damage in a hit on one target still can't kill three enemies, even if that damage is higher than their cumulative hit points. The exact level of optimizing your party does will determine how many enemies is appropriate to give them a challenge.
Maybe at an appropriate level, have a boss be an Arcane Archer riding a Wyvern. That will give the party a lot of trouble.
Also, sometimes try to hint that it might not be a good idea to just pulverize the enemy. My current group (I DM) has just finished a big, drawn-out encounter with multiple options for figuring out what is happening behind the scenes, the plans of the baddies etc, but they consistently chose the "pulverize everything"-route - and now they STILL have no idea what is happening around them. Bodies don't talk (yeah yeah Speak with Dead) and plans, maps and notes don't survive multiple fireballs.
Long story short; try to make them WANT to not pulverize everything. :)
I loved to play a wizard from witherbloom in your campaign to solve the problem but I know that's not an option. So I personally suggest is giving your players a homebrew magic item that can cast spells needed for the campaign.
The answer I'd give here is to make combat tactical from your side. Get the enemies and NPCs to utilise the full extent of tactics. Give the NPCs access to high ground, or have them start in a place with loads of cover and concealment. You can mix this in with wards and magical traps that are used in protection. You've also got the option to swarm player characters. A swarm of low level creatures can actually be a lot more dangerous than a single adult dragon on occaisions.
I'vbe had the flip of this situation where I had a party of four warlocks who extensively utilised the same few spells. Enter Helmed Horror. I had a pack of these things all immune to Eldritch Blast and a hand full of other spells. It really put the party on the back foot. They were scrambling to effectively deal with these creatures and forced them to rethink they skill sets. This particular fight was just prior to a town in which retraining and respec was going to be an option. Once the party realised that not everything can be dealt with using the same three options, they actually began to put in a bit more thought and from their feedback it made the combat more fun again.
In your circumstance, let's say that the party are all going to be melee fighters. That's absolutely awesome you know why? Resistances! Do not, allow access to magic weapons, ammo, or silvered items. This means that they're always going to find battles with creatures like Vampire, Mummy, or even Imp that little more difficult. Without silvered or magical weaponry, these creatures become that bit more challenging.
Don't forget too, that it's totally okay, in fact encouraged to change up the NPC stat blocks. Want a creature to be resistant or immune to something? Cool, make it resistant or immune to that thing. For example, I think it's totally an oversight to have skeleton not be resistant to piercing damage. So, in my world skeletons are resistant to piercing.
Then finally, you've got encounter behaviour. I've seen too many GMs, myself included forget to have the enemies run away. So, I have a note on my GM screen that simply says: call reinforcements, or run, or mutually assured destruction, or surrender, or intervention. The reason I have this is to remind me that enemies can behave in a whole host of ways and they should. If you're going to go for an enemy that is always running away, they're going to present a challenge...do you run after them, or you risk trying to take them down from range? What about the enemy who has reinforcements? Does the enemy have Dimension Door?
As to healing...that's kinda not your problem as a GM. That's your players' issue. I think it's worth allowing them to encounter sellers of potions here and there, but largely, if they forget to rest up, or take care of damage...that's on them as players. Mid-fight healing makes encounters easier, but it's far from essential. Your players always have the option to have their characters run away.
Personally, I'd be prepared to receive multi-classing requests down the line. It could be that some of these players anticipate dipping into other classes down the line. In which case problem is solved.
My fourth and final player just informed me he will be playing a vengeance paladin. That makes two paladins, a great weapon fighter, and a Blood Hunter. No spell-caster and no healer.
They're going to pulverize anything I put in front of them. Any suggestions on how to keep the combat challenging?
Throw a lesson at them. One that they can escape, but not without a few scares. Make sure it involves the PC threatening a NPC, or they Do a Leroy Jenkins. Make them think twice.
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“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat." -Sun Tzu
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat." -Sun Tzu
As others have said, 2 paladins means 2 healers. And for my 2 pence, the party could struggle against more interesting combats.
Looks like what you have here is 3 melee characters and 1 ranged/melee character. I would recommend:
for general encounters, once you've gauged their abilities, just up the combatants and CR a little to make the fight a challenge. An all-melee party should wipe the floor most of the time when they fight in melee.
Add ranged enemies. Look at the ranges for shortbows and really make them work to get to the enemy. 5 goblins up a tree with shortbows could be a real issue for an all-melee party. Give them sleeping poison on the arrows to suddenly make the party realise they have issues here.
Magic. An all-hacking party will find themselves struggling against mages with poor tactics, and inevitably dying to mages with good tactics. If they can't get to hit the mage (misty step, thunderstep, wall of force, Fly, Mirror Image, Blur, and many more besides) then their only tactic falls by the wayside. Don't overuse this, because it won't be fun - and the goal of D&D is to have fun, not to "win" or to force the players into making more balanced parties by abusing their weaknesses - and bring this out for when the fight is meant to be tough, and for when gathering intelligence on the enemy would have served them well.
Start combat further off. If the party are passing through an open field, have an arrow loop towards them - maybe even hitting them. Then start combat with several longbow-wielders, 500ft. away. Melee players will realise their weaknesses a little more - likely blowing the dust off their default ranged equipment!
My fourth and final player just informed me he will be playing a vengeance paladin. That makes two paladins, a great weapon fighter, and a Blood Hunter. No spell-caster and no healer.
They're going to pulverize anything I put in front of them. Any suggestions on how to keep the combat challenging?
Unless your players have a solid idea of their characters' personalities, I'd hold off on assuming they won't have brains. The brainiest character I ever played was a fighter, and the current strategist/mastermind in my party is a rogue. Class choice won't always indicate play style.
Two paladins means you have two combat medics in the party. They're probably not going to spend too much time healing, but they can jump in with Lay on Hands in a pinch. I've also played with paladins who actually used their smite slots to cast spells...people be crazy, sometimes.
Combat can be challenging because of terrain, enemies you can't see, puzzles you need to solve while fighting for your life, people you need to protect while fighting for your life, and external effects (like lair actions, wild magic, etc.). Your party wants to wallop baddies, so you can put baddies with tough AC or lots of HP for them to whack. You can also spice things up with sneaky baddies, lots of baddies, mages, and even skill challenges. The more creative you get, the more you can make your players exercise their imaginations.
First of all, there's nothing wrong with letting the PCs pulverize stuff on occasion. However, if you want to challenge them while using nominally balanced encounters, 20xswarm of bats or swarm of rats is nominally a Hard (not even Deadly) encounter at 5th level, and will probably...kill the entire party.
Use ranged attacks, either physical or magical. or both. Control spells. Flying monsters. Giants tossing boulders from 300 yards away. Gnoll/orc archers. Ogres with ballistas. Stealth. Terrain....steps should always be curved to favor the defenders free swinging with the right hand, while the attackers have to fight uphill and with a wall impeding their swings....
I'd say for early encounters, let them pulverize enemies, intermittently throwing something that flies, but stays low to the ground, hinting at a progression of difficulty that if they're clever, they'll adjust their builds for. That way, when you throw something that flies at them, and may even have the Flyby ability, it's not completely unfair, and the party must confront their weakness. But whatever you do, don't forget to give them encounters that play into their strengths, because there's little worse for a player than building a character to be really good at something, only to be de-facto nerfed by the DM never or rarely giving you the chance to use that.
As standard for most campaigns, most of your enemies should be on the ground, and because the party is built around single-target damage, you can also increase the difficulty by using larger quantities of slightly weaker enemies. That lets the player-characters' strengths shine, but still challenges them, because 50 damage in a hit on one target still can't kill three enemies, even if that damage is higher than their cumulative hit points. The exact level of optimizing your party does will determine how many enemies is appropriate to give them a challenge.
Maybe at an appropriate level, have a boss be an Arcane Archer riding a Wyvern. That will give the party a lot of trouble.
Also, sometimes try to hint that it might not be a good idea to just pulverize the enemy. My current group (I DM) has just finished a big, drawn-out encounter with multiple options for figuring out what is happening behind the scenes, the plans of the baddies etc, but they consistently chose the "pulverize everything"-route - and now they STILL have no idea what is happening around them. Bodies don't talk (yeah yeah Speak with Dead) and plans, maps and notes don't survive multiple fireballs.
Long story short; try to make them WANT to not pulverize everything. :)
I loved to play a wizard from witherbloom in your campaign to solve the problem but I know that's not an option. So I personally suggest is giving your players a homebrew magic item that can cast spells needed for the campaign.
The answer I'd give here is to make combat tactical from your side. Get the enemies and NPCs to utilise the full extent of tactics. Give the NPCs access to high ground, or have them start in a place with loads of cover and concealment. You can mix this in with wards and magical traps that are used in protection. You've also got the option to swarm player characters. A swarm of low level creatures can actually be a lot more dangerous than a single adult dragon on occaisions.
I'vbe had the flip of this situation where I had a party of four warlocks who extensively utilised the same few spells. Enter Helmed Horror. I had a pack of these things all immune to Eldritch Blast and a hand full of other spells. It really put the party on the back foot. They were scrambling to effectively deal with these creatures and forced them to rethink they skill sets. This particular fight was just prior to a town in which retraining and respec was going to be an option. Once the party realised that not everything can be dealt with using the same three options, they actually began to put in a bit more thought and from their feedback it made the combat more fun again.
In your circumstance, let's say that the party are all going to be melee fighters. That's absolutely awesome you know why? Resistances! Do not, allow access to magic weapons, ammo, or silvered items. This means that they're always going to find battles with creatures like Vampire, Mummy, or even Imp that little more difficult. Without silvered or magical weaponry, these creatures become that bit more challenging.
Don't forget too, that it's totally okay, in fact encouraged to change up the NPC stat blocks. Want a creature to be resistant or immune to something? Cool, make it resistant or immune to that thing. For example, I think it's totally an oversight to have skeleton not be resistant to piercing damage. So, in my world skeletons are resistant to piercing.
Then finally, you've got encounter behaviour. I've seen too many GMs, myself included forget to have the enemies run away. So, I have a note on my GM screen that simply says: call reinforcements, or run, or mutually assured destruction, or surrender, or intervention. The reason I have this is to remind me that enemies can behave in a whole host of ways and they should. If you're going to go for an enemy that is always running away, they're going to present a challenge...do you run after them, or you risk trying to take them down from range? What about the enemy who has reinforcements? Does the enemy have Dimension Door?
As to healing...that's kinda not your problem as a GM. That's your players' issue. I think it's worth allowing them to encounter sellers of potions here and there, but largely, if they forget to rest up, or take care of damage...that's on them as players. Mid-fight healing makes encounters easier, but it's far from essential. Your players always have the option to have their characters run away.
Personally, I'd be prepared to receive multi-classing requests down the line. It could be that some of these players anticipate dipping into other classes down the line. In which case problem is solved.
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Throw a lesson at them. One that they can escape, but not without a few scares. Make sure it involves the PC threatening a NPC, or they Do a Leroy Jenkins. Make them think twice.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat." -Sun Tzu
I dig the Leroy Jenkins reference. LMAO
I may be a GenZ, but I Know My references.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat." -Sun Tzu
As others have said, 2 paladins means 2 healers. And for my 2 pence, the party could struggle against more interesting combats.
Looks like what you have here is 3 melee characters and 1 ranged/melee character. I would recommend:
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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