So i am the DM of a misfit group of players and things are starting to go too well for them *wink wink* I've created a really long campaign and my players have just done really well when it comes to combat and mow sky rocketed in levels. So I'm still pretty fresh to D&D but i want to make combat more difficult without obviously preforming a TPK and or just adding higher numbers of the same creatures or just customs of the same creatures but stronger. I don't know, to me just adding more of the same monsters or stronger versions just feels like there was no effort put into it. any suggestions?CONTEXT:
so the campaign is a kind of invasion of devils. my players are still pretty early in but essentially i have created this event at night where if they are outside the safe haven of a town, castle, caves etc. They will have a mist come and impede vision and then they have to fight the majority of the night with a "hoard" of devils. kind of imagine a zombie event but with devils. so like before the players are getting stronger and i don't necessarily want to just throw more creatures at them during the events as i feel it will grow old and tedious for both me and them. So kind of hard to explain so ill just throw down an example of one night event we just had. They're in a large open plains with small hills: Surrounded by a magical mist i created they see only 10 ft. in front of them and will have Perception checks to help locate some devils while some come at them and fight head on. I had one bone devil come in and commence the majority of melee combat while they had 15 Spined devils hide in the mist and try to pierce them with their thrown spines.
Party: Lvl 8 half orc barbarian, Lvl 7 human wizard(heavy on conjuring), Lvl 7 Tiefling Warlock, and Lvl 6 Wood elf Paladin.
(if you request any more info just lmk guys)
K so i will have a better opportunity to write more about the campaign as a whole and my players later today. i wont go into minute details but give the basic rundown so you pretty much know where i am at.
It would help if you state: How many PCs are there and at what level? What monsters and how many have they fought? What have the CR of the monsters been?
so the campaign is a kind of invasion of devils. my players are still pretty early in but essentially i have created this event at night where if they are outside the safe haven of a town, castle, caves etc. They will have to fight the majority of the night with a "hoard" of devils. kind of imagine a zombie event but with devils. so like before the players are getting stronger and i don't necessarily want to just throw more creatures at them during the events as i feel it will grow old and tedious for both me and them.
You can't have a horde without multiple creatures; even stories that involve "special" zombies use them in conjunction with large quantities of normal zombies.
Unless the whole point of your adventure is to kill hordes of monsters, fighting them doesn't have to be interesting. The interesting part of your adventure is 1) the logistics of surviving and 2) stopping the invasion. If you can make the horde tedious and dangerous to fight, all the better; it'll encourage them to solve the problem of not having a safe haven.
Also, using groups of similar creatures makes running encounters with multiple monsters much easier and faster for you than running 8 different monsters. Your players don't care many shortcuts you take to provide a certain story or experience. You shouldn't pass up opportunities to make your life easier.
You can't have a horde without multiple creatures; even stories that involve "special" zombies use them in conjunction with large quantities of normal zombies.
Unless the whole point of your adventure is to kill hordes of monsters, fighting them doesn't have to be interesting. The interesting part of your adventure is 1) the logistics of surviving and 2) stopping the invasion. If you can make the horde tedious and dangerous to fight, all the better; it'll encourage them to solve the problem of not having a safe haven.
Okay, so i guess the better question would've been what would be the best solution to approaching progression into the story and how to keep my players interested in the task i have presented them(figuring out why this is happening and how to stop it). Ill keep in mind that tediousness along with close calls will just kind of enforce the idea of progressing through the story.
Okay, so i guess the better question would've been what would be the best solution to approaching progression into the story and how to keep my players interested in the task i have presented them(figuring out why this is happening and how to stop it). Ill keep in mind that tediousness along with close calls will just kind of enforce the idea of progressing through the story.
Ultimately you just want to make sure the players will cross paths with clues about the nature of the invasion. They don't have to encounter these in any particular order (or even find all possible clues), but ideally they'll be able to make some progress regardless of which decisions they make, and chasing a lead should lead them to more clues. Make it hard for them to get stuck. A popular piece of advice is to leave 3 clues for any conclusions you want them to reach. It's hard to get more specific than that without knowing the story.
Some ways you could try to go about this is to have a list of locations they can try to take shelter in and place clues or NPCs there. There could be commonalities to the horde events that also clue them in; maybe they always happen when the moon is in a certain phase? What's the horde's goals anyways? Is there a pattern to where the horde's attacking or heading? If the players can hide and observe, will they learn something about the devils' plans? Can they take a devil hostage and question it?
If players go in an unexpected direction don't be afraid to recycle parts from the routes you planned but they didn't take. They can't tell you're moving things around behind the scenes, and it won't make any difference to them.
Just mindlessly throwing more opponents, or higher level ones, at your group isn't the way to go. This is something you do after taking other measures first.
1. Are you using flanking tactics? 2. Are you using disarming Tactics? 3. Are you using Grappling and knocking players prone tactics? 4. Are you having your monsters use AID? 5. Are you thinking about spells/attacks your monsters could have which would counter some things your players are accustomed of doing a lot? 6. Are you adding plenty of varied mind control/environmental hazards? 7. Are you combining those tactics?
I mean my players went through most encounters fairly easily. Until I introduced a new mechanic. Then when they're used to that I add the next one.
Devils often have strong psychic attacks. And I'm pretty sure not all of your players are spellcasters. Thus have lower int/wisdom... so they're easier to control and turn against your party. In my last boss fight I controlled half the party. Thinking it was an easy fight and suddenly they're killing each other. Even had 1 character die and that player has to remake one for next session. While another character was 1 save away from full death.
Alright, Thanks guys! it seems this was a right choice to make, i feel i have some new thoughts to base my future edits and writings on and i should be good to go. i am excited to see how this goes and i will of course be posting my final version of this major campaign upon completion if anyone ever finds themselves interested. I am really new to the site but my final goal is to drop the books and go fully electronic so i don't have to shuffle through papers and skim through books every encounter. Last question, i am sure there is a forum on is there somewhere but how do i see others campaigns? assuming they can be posted publicly.
if youre using devils, mix it up and create a counter invasion of demons. also don't just add numbers or beef up the existing monsters, devils are lawful evil, theyre very structured and disciplined. if you have a pack of imps as a random encounter think about what would be controlling these imps, whose their commanding officer? if its goblins you would add hobgoblins too add more strategy to the group. add a tactician to the encounter and use him effectively basically.
More dynamic battlefields (things that would make use of cover would certainly make things difficult.
Charm/control your PCs (I somehow doubt that your barb would have the stats to resist a wis/cha save).
Exploit the flaws they have but don't exploit to the point of being unfun. Like, don't send hordes of creatures directly towards your Wizard/Warlock, but for example a more intelligent creature/enemy would recognizing and potentially strategize against the PCs.
On top of that create conditions that make life difficult for the PCs. For example, if the Devils have hostages, but there's also a few footsoldiers in front of them- have the devils kill a commoner every round while the party is dealing with trying to get to them. Another example is that a building may be in the process of collapsing and that they feel the effects and have to both deal with combatants and also escape with their lives.
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So i am the DM of a misfit group of players and things are starting to go too well for them *wink wink* I've created a really long campaign and my players have just done really well when it comes to combat and mow sky rocketed in levels. So I'm still pretty fresh to D&D but i want to make combat more difficult without obviously preforming a TPK and or just adding higher numbers of the same creatures or just customs of the same creatures but stronger. I don't know, to me just adding more of the same monsters or stronger versions just feels like there was no effort put into it. any suggestions?CONTEXT:
so the campaign is a kind of invasion of devils. my players are still pretty early in but essentially i have created this event at night where if they are outside the safe haven of a town, castle, caves etc. They will have a mist come and impede vision and then they have to fight the majority of the night with a "hoard" of devils. kind of imagine a zombie event but with devils. so like before the players are getting stronger and i don't necessarily want to just throw more creatures at them during the events as i feel it will grow old and tedious for both me and them. So kind of hard to explain so ill just throw down an example of one night event we just had. They're in a large open plains with small hills: Surrounded by a magical mist i created they see only 10 ft. in front of them and will have Perception checks to help locate some devils while some come at them and fight head on. I had one bone devil come in and commence the majority of melee combat while they had 15 Spined devils hide in the mist and try to pierce them with their thrown spines.
Party: Lvl 8 half orc barbarian, Lvl 7 human wizard(heavy on conjuring), Lvl 7 Tiefling Warlock, and Lvl 6 Wood elf Paladin.
(if you request any more info just lmk guys)
K so i will have a better opportunity to write more about the campaign as a whole and my players later today. i wont go into minute details but give the basic rundown so you pretty much know where i am at.
Free the DMs
Use higher number of different creatures then? Use the same number of creatures but higher CR? It'd help if you told us what you've been doing so far.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
It would help if you state: How many PCs are there and at what level? What monsters and how many have they fought? What have the CR of the monsters been?
You can't have a horde without multiple creatures; even stories that involve "special" zombies use them in conjunction with large quantities of normal zombies.
Unless the whole point of your adventure is to kill hordes of monsters, fighting them doesn't have to be interesting. The interesting part of your adventure is 1) the logistics of surviving and 2) stopping the invasion. If you can make the horde tedious and dangerous to fight, all the better; it'll encourage them to solve the problem of not having a safe haven.
Also, using groups of similar creatures makes running encounters with multiple monsters much easier and faster for you than running 8 different monsters. Your players don't care many shortcuts you take to provide a certain story or experience. You shouldn't pass up opportunities to make your life easier.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
Okay, so i guess the better question would've been what would be the best solution to approaching progression into the story and how to keep my players interested in the task i have presented them(figuring out why this is happening and how to stop it). Ill keep in mind that tediousness along with close calls will just kind of enforce the idea of progressing through the story.
Free the DMs
Ultimately you just want to make sure the players will cross paths with clues about the nature of the invasion. They don't have to encounter these in any particular order (or even find all possible clues), but ideally they'll be able to make some progress regardless of which decisions they make, and chasing a lead should lead them to more clues. Make it hard for them to get stuck. A popular piece of advice is to leave 3 clues for any conclusions you want them to reach. It's hard to get more specific than that without knowing the story.
Some ways you could try to go about this is to have a list of locations they can try to take shelter in and place clues or NPCs there. There could be commonalities to the horde events that also clue them in; maybe they always happen when the moon is in a certain phase? What's the horde's goals anyways? Is there a pattern to where the horde's attacking or heading? If the players can hide and observe, will they learn something about the devils' plans? Can they take a devil hostage and question it?
If players go in an unexpected direction don't be afraid to recycle parts from the routes you planned but they didn't take. They can't tell you're moving things around behind the scenes, and it won't make any difference to them.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
Just mindlessly throwing more opponents, or higher level ones, at your group isn't the way to go. This is something you do after taking other measures first.
1. Are you using flanking tactics?
2. Are you using disarming Tactics?
3. Are you using Grappling and knocking players prone tactics?
4. Are you having your monsters use AID?
5. Are you thinking about spells/attacks your monsters could have which would counter some things your players are accustomed of doing a lot?
6. Are you adding plenty of varied mind control/environmental hazards?
7. Are you combining those tactics?
I mean my players went through most encounters fairly easily. Until I introduced a new mechanic. Then when they're used to that I add the next one.
Devils often have strong psychic attacks. And I'm pretty sure not all of your players are spellcasters. Thus have lower int/wisdom... so they're easier to control and turn against your party. In my last boss fight I controlled half the party. Thinking it was an easy fight and suddenly they're killing each other. Even had 1 character die and that player has to remake one for next session. While another character was 1 save away from full death.
Alright, Thanks guys! it seems this was a right choice to make, i feel i have some new thoughts to base my future edits and writings on and i should be good to go. i am excited to see how this goes and i will of course be posting my final version of this major campaign upon completion if anyone ever finds themselves interested. I am really new to the site but my final goal is to drop the books and go fully electronic so i don't have to shuffle through papers and skim through books every encounter. Last question, i am sure there is a forum on is there somewhere but how do i see others campaigns? assuming they can be posted publicly.
Free the DMs
if youre using devils, mix it up and create a counter invasion of demons. also don't just add numbers or beef up the existing monsters, devils are lawful evil, theyre very structured and disciplined. if you have a pack of imps as a random encounter think about what would be controlling these imps, whose their commanding officer? if its goblins you would add hobgoblins too add more strategy to the group. add a tactician to the encounter and use him effectively basically.
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D&D Beyond StaffMore dynamic battlefields (things that would make use of cover would certainly make things difficult.
Charm/control your PCs (I somehow doubt that your barb would have the stats to resist a wis/cha save).
Exploit the flaws they have but don't exploit to the point of being unfun. Like, don't send hordes of creatures directly towards your Wizard/Warlock, but for example a more intelligent creature/enemy would recognizing and potentially strategize against the PCs.
On top of that create conditions that make life difficult for the PCs. For example, if the Devils have hostages, but there's also a few footsoldiers in front of them- have the devils kill a commoner every round while the party is dealing with trying to get to them. Another example is that a building may be in the process of collapsing and that they feel the effects and have to both deal with combatants and also escape with their lives.