Hello there, I am running a homebrew campaign and my players are about to hit lvl 6. What I'm having a difficult time with and as I'm sure most dms struggle with continuously balancing a fight.i want them to face off against a badass death cleric that has acquired some strong items. Similar to the ripley fight in critical role. My question is, how do you make a npc like a pc character without making the villian weak and get one shotted or too strong and tpking the party in a round. I've heard use a Stat block from a monster a handful of times but I'm still not fully understanding how to adapt it for the fight and story. Another question I have is there a way on dnd beyond to give a play a weapon with redactions? Mainly so they can unlock things as the story progresses, or do i need to make a weapon for them and leave bits off to add on later? Thank you so much in advance for your help. i'm sure all of you know that pregame weekly panic im going through.
Using a stat card from something else is just picking something of the appropriate level and using its stats. Give it some spells and gear and poof - new bad guy.
Give the bad guy some adds for the fight. They can soak damage, heal the bad guy, and generally get in the way. You can even have them re-pop if you need more.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Read the DM's Worskshop section in the DMG, it goes into detail what dictates CR, what levels certain CR makes for a good fight against what, and at what ratio of players to monster. I'm having a similsr issue, and my solution: Just grab one of the CR suggested presets, lower the AC a little bit, and then give them abilities: the added offensive capability makes up for a lacking in AC. I also love to give bosses Legendary Actions: those are GREAT. Avoid making them as menacing as a dragon, but certainly look for inspiration by imagining what a dragon does versus what you want your enemy to do.
like wyspera said find a monster(preferably a legendary one) whose skills and stats fit your villain thematically and replace the name(s) of the character and abilities as needed. another alternative is to just actually create your own PC, roll stats and give them feats and items and play them like an actual pc(be warned, any items you give your villain your players will try to steal, if you don't want something in the hands of your players don't put it in your game*cough* wand of orcus *cough*), give them legendary actions and resistances to balance the numbers advantage or just give them adds to use, especially with a death cleric you could have undead hordes that can be 1 shot like the old minion system or that the cleric could sacrifice to heal himself. also remember that number advantage increases difficulty of a fight exponentially not additively for the side with more numbers because it is a turn based game. also if you feel your enemies are too strong for your characters remember they don't have to fight to the death, everything has a fight OR flight response, when an enemy starts to take too much damage it may prioritize running away over trying to finish someone off, plus if an enemy escapes it makes for a great returning villain. sorry for the long response hope any of this helps you.
Thank you, that helps a lot! I could have a bread crumb trail for them to have a way out if things get too tough. And I totally forgot about the players trying to snag the items. Thanks for that otherwise I’d be in real trouble lol
I agree with previous posts (I love to "reskin" enemies to match the encounter thematically). You may want to browse the homebrew monsters here on dndbeyond, too, if you can't find an official creature you like.
One other thing that I find helpful is scaling encounters by total XP per encounter, rather than CR. My party has six level 5 players and some weak NPCs and they were completely destroying everything I threw at them. There's a table that tells you how much XP each PC should earn, depending on how difficult you want the fight to be, and then you add up the XP payout of all the monsters in the encounter. I used this method for a gladiator fight I set up and ended up giving them a CR 10 monster after a literal boatload of minions...and they beat it with no casualties!
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Hello there, I am running a homebrew campaign and my players are about to hit lvl 6. What I'm having a difficult time with and as I'm sure most dms struggle with continuously balancing a fight.i want them to face off against a badass death cleric that has acquired some strong items. Similar to the ripley fight in critical role. My question is, how do you make a npc like a pc character without making the villian weak and get one shotted or too strong and tpking the party in a round. I've heard use a Stat block from a monster a handful of times but I'm still not fully understanding how to adapt it for the fight and story.
Another question I have is there a way on dnd beyond to give a play a weapon with redactions? Mainly so they can unlock things as the story progresses, or do i need to make a weapon for them and leave bits off to add on later?
Thank you so much in advance for your help. i'm sure all of you know that pregame weekly panic im going through.
Using a stat card from something else is just picking something of the appropriate level and using its stats. Give it some spells and gear and poof - new bad guy.
Give the bad guy some adds for the fight. They can soak damage, heal the bad guy, and generally get in the way. You can even have them re-pop if you need more.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Read the DM's Worskshop section in the DMG, it goes into detail what dictates CR, what levels certain CR makes for a good fight against what, and at what ratio of players to monster. I'm having a similsr issue, and my solution: Just grab one of the CR suggested presets, lower the AC a little bit, and then give them abilities: the added offensive capability makes up for a lacking in AC. I also love to give bosses Legendary Actions: those are GREAT. Avoid making them as menacing as a dragon, but certainly look for inspiration by imagining what a dragon does versus what you want your enemy to do.
like wyspera said find a monster(preferably a legendary one) whose skills and stats fit your villain thematically and replace the name(s) of the character and abilities as needed. another alternative is to just actually create your own PC, roll stats and give them feats and items and play them like an actual pc(be warned, any items you give your villain your players will try to steal, if you don't want something in the hands of your players don't put it in your game*cough* wand of orcus *cough*), give them legendary actions and resistances to balance the numbers advantage or just give them adds to use, especially with a death cleric you could have undead hordes that can be 1 shot like the old minion system or that the cleric could sacrifice to heal himself. also remember that number advantage increases difficulty of a fight exponentially not additively for the side with more numbers because it is a turn based game. also if you feel your enemies are too strong for your characters remember they don't have to fight to the death, everything has a fight OR flight response, when an enemy starts to take too much damage it may prioritize running away over trying to finish someone off, plus if an enemy escapes it makes for a great returning villain. sorry for the long response hope any of this helps you.
Thank you, that helps a lot! I could have a bread crumb trail for them to have a way out if things get too tough. And I totally forgot about the players trying to snag the items. Thanks for that otherwise I’d be in real trouble lol
thanks for the help, I think I’m leaning towards adds popping in the fight now!
I agree with previous posts (I love to "reskin" enemies to match the encounter thematically). You may want to browse the homebrew monsters here on dndbeyond, too, if you can't find an official creature you like.
One other thing that I find helpful is scaling encounters by total XP per encounter, rather than CR. My party has six level 5 players and some weak NPCs and they were completely destroying everything I threw at them. There's a table that tells you how much XP each PC should earn, depending on how difficult you want the fight to be, and then you add up the XP payout of all the monsters in the encounter. I used this method for a gladiator fight I set up and ended up giving them a CR 10 monster after a literal boatload of minions...and they beat it with no casualties!