Just ran a session today in my dnd game, an I use a lot of homebrew because I can find basic dnd stuff boring at times. Here’s the issue, my party of level 16’s were up against a boss I had to last minute prepare, but I felt it was an appropriate level of play. It only hit once, maybe twice a turn on occasion, but dealt heavy damage. I thought it would last a few turns whilst also being able to deal some good damage to the party, and I had a second phase in case of emergency… wrong. 2 turns including the second phase, 176 hp for the first phase, 213 for the second. 3 turns is all it took, it hit one of its attacks once. I ended the session right after as I was very frustrated, I don’t really know what to do now. If I try to take away their stuff that feels rude, give their enemy’s too high ac and damage it feels unfair. I dunno I just wanted to share my inner turmoil and frustration at mostly myself, even if I’m mad at my players for also laughing and saying how easy the fight was.
Remember always that your players (I'm assuming) do not know the monster's HP. If your players think its too easy, amp those numbers up a bit! Or, if you over-correct and your players start losing, lower it.
It only hit once, maybe twice a turn on occasion, but dealt heavy damage.
If the above is a window into your logic, then lasting 3 turns sounds about correct to be destroyed from a party of 4. Realize you set up a monster/Boss that has one hit and receives 4 hits. That is not good odds at all. Very few can survive that 1:4 ratio. If the monster had excellent AOE type spells that hit all the PCs, it might be a bit different as you are hitting all the PCs with one attack.
I use a lot of homebrew because I can find basic dnd stuff boring at times.
Sorry you feel that way, but homebrew does have a downside. That downside is a complete lack of balance. One needs to really understand what exists, to have Homebrew balanced. By allowing your PCs to get "too powerful" is not an issue, if you make the Boss et. al. equal in power to the PCs. However, it sounds like you are having trouble to balance. Personally, I find that having multiple "lieutenants" with a boss can help with balance issues. Instead of all of the PCs concentrating on a single target, there are multiple targets to worry about. That dilutes the PCs damage. If the Boss & lieutenants are winning, you can have some run away, or do the opposite, if the PCs seem to be having the upper hand, then add more lieutenants.
Additional lieutenants (aka reinforcements) are a instant fix to help balance.
I ended the session right after as I was very frustrated,
Unfortunately that is a very immature action, that has a lot of long term effects.
If I try to take away their stuff that feels rude, give their enemy’s too high ac and damage it feels unfair.
...even if I’m mad at my players for also laughing and saying how easy the fight was.
Revenge is never the proper reaction. The above is a short term effect. You need to find a way to overcome it, and remember, this is not about the DM versus the players.
Next battle, try having multiple bad guys and see how that works. It can be an eyeopener how a dilution of damage can extend a combat round and actually make it more difficult. Along those same methods, have a second combat soon after the 1st one, that can really deplete the mages spells.
If your homebrew is making players really strong, buffing the enemies is the exact opposite of unfair. Never be afraid to fudge rolls (as long as the players don't know), or adjust HP to make the fight more cinematic.
My first instinct, as some of the above posters, is to blame the homebrew, because as they point out, most people’s homebrew is unbalanced one way or another. But I haven’t seen yours, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.
The issue could well be that they’re level 16. T4 characters can do crazy stuff, and it can be hard to balance encounters even using only published materials. It’s one of the reasons so few campaigns play at those levels. Party size matters, too. My group at level 13 (with 7 characters) regularly beats CR 23 enemies, if there were 4 of us, we would not.
Could be it’s just time to wrap up the campaign and start a new one back at good old level 1 or 3.
I’d also point to the homebrew and house rules forum here if you ever want a second opinion about something you plan to introduce.
I will say that it’s better to undershoot than overshoot (in my opinion). While you want a balanced challenge, getting a TPK is virtually never fun.
Are you against using any homebrew content? You can always Frankenstein a monster from others that exist or simply use monsters from a book in your own custom setting. Just a thought.
Finally, don’t beat yourself up too much about it. You are a good DM simply because you obviously care. Plus it sounds like this was a one time thing.
I'm guessing you started the game at high level, because while I don't know the rest of the monster's stat block, the hit points you mention seem rather low for something expected to be a credible boss fight at level 16, and I would expect someone who had run the game over multiple levels to have experience with just how powerful tier 3 characters can be.
Also,if it has only two attacks a turn... it should be doing 70-100 damage a hit.
Finally, the players laughing about how easy it was were being pretty rude.
My first instinct, as some of the above posters, is to blame the homebrew, because as they point out, most people’s homebrew is unbalanced one way or another. But I haven’t seen yours, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.
The issue could well be that they’re level 16. T4 characters can do crazy stuff, and it can be hard to balance encounters even using only published materials. It’s one of the reasons so few campaigns play at those levels. Party size matters, too. My group at level 13 (with 7 characters) regularly beats CR 23 enemies, if there were 4 of us, we would not.
This, and also the problem is exacerbated if you're not making the PCs conserve resources. That boss fight might've always been too easy, but it still would've felt rougher if it were the fifth encounter of the day, when the players had burned a lot of their juice already.
(I also suspect you're underusing legendary actions. Singleton bosses in particular need defensive legendary actions.)
I'm going to skate past the homebrew stuff - others have already said it, if you're homebrewing that's likely your core problem.
That said, at level 16 D&D player characters do just steamroll most encounters. By that level they've got abundant magic items, plentiful gold, lots of equipment. Add that to the very high level or power the characters have access to at that level the player characters are generally going to be successful unless swamped by greater numbers. Past level 15, the idea that a party can struggle would be laughable. D&D is inherently not a balanced game. Or rather, it's set up that players will succeed more than half the time. The balance then is in the player favour (as it ought to be).
Here's the question I have though - what was the purpose of the enemy you sent them up against?
Encounters are fun and all, but so very many of them are absolutely unnecessary or without underlying reason to exist. Don't misunderstand random encounters can be fun from time to time, but overall an encounter ought to be there for a reason (unless running a grindy, hack and slash adventure). Short of running your game like a level of doom the number of rounds it takes to down an enemy is largely irrelevant as long as the reason for the encounter is dealt with. Monster has been sent by the BBEG to hunt down the player characters? The encounter shouldn't be a full on confrontation...you want the players to feel like their characters are being followed, being watched, then spring an ambush on the lone PC who goes off into the woods to collect firewood (or use the toilet). Once the monster has sprung their ambush, or the party realise they're being followed it's almost irrelevant how long the monster lasts. Sure it's fun to get the cool powers out, but beyond that a monster is largely just a bag of HP and XP (unless you've given said monster a piece of vital information or magic item key to the quest.
So, why is it a problem that the enemy went down so quickly?
Remember always that your players (I'm assuming) do not know the monster's HP. If your players think its too easy, amp those numbers up a bit! Or, if you over-correct and your players start losing, lower it.
You should have added minions to the encounter when you saw it going south. That would have balanced out the situation.
OP, I'm going to give you some advice that deviates from the usual "your homebrew probably sucks", "Just lie to your players", or "Just quit the game and start over".
You gotta get strategic, my man. So we have 4 characters at level 16 (going to assume 4 of them). The encounter builder says that means we have a cap of 80,000 exp worth of monsters to throw at them. And that is just a baseline. If they are skilled tactical gamers, or have a bunch of busted homebrew magic items, pump that up even more.
Ok, lets get our force of 80,000 exp worth of monsters ready for these chumps.
Bruisers: we need a couple of meatbags to box out their melee characters, and while jockeying for a chance to get in and pound the wizard into a pancake if they make a mistake and don't position well. For this we will take 2 Ice Devils.
Skirmisher: we need a monster that can effectively bypass the melee threats and pound on their squishies, forcing the Fighter into a tough situation of "oh shoot, do I run back and help or try to get to their spellcaster". For this lets use a Marilith.
Spellcaster: Now lets get a spellcaster in the mix. Good only fashion Archmage should work fine.
Now lets get a strategy together. The Ice devils are the archmage's body gaurds. They use their icewalls to split the party in half, bodying them in the process then moving in to beat anyone on the wrong side of it to a pulp. The Marilith can use her teleport to pop back and forth over the ice wall at will, hacking the wizard to ribbons then teleporting back over the ice wall to help on defense, unloading her 7 attacks on someone preoccupied by the ice devils. Meanwhile, the archmage is free to spam his cone of cold at them without fear of injuring the ice devils, and can cast fly to peek over the wall and fire lightning bolts or counterspell their casters, or try deleting their low charisma barbarian from the fight all together with a banishment, and has one get-out-of-jail free time stop if threatened which he should bait them into to pull them out of position.
That said, at level 16 D&D player characters do just steamroll most encounters.
Like any level, they steamroller any encounter that isn't powerful enough to challenge them. The problem with high levels is that the encounter balancing rules become increasingly dubious at higher levels, particularly for solo monsters (I mean, I'd probably use around a CR 25 for a solo challenge for 4 x level 16).
You gotta get strategic, my man. So we have 4 characters at level 16 (going to assume 4 of them). The encounter builder says that means we have a cap of 80,000 exp worth of monsters to throw at them.
Uh...no it doesn't. In 2014 you have a daily limit of 80,000 (though Deadly starts at 28,800), but that's adjusted xp, so with 4 monsters (x2 modifier) it's actually a limit of 40,000 (and anything above 14,400 is Deadly). In 2024 you have a limit of 39,200 (but no multiple monster adjustment).
You gotta get strategic, my man. So we have 4 characters at level 16 (going to assume 4 of them). The encounter builder says that means we have a cap of 80,000 exp worth of monsters to throw at them.
Uh...no it doesn't. In 2014 you have a daily limit of 80,000 (though Deadly starts at 28,800), but that's adjusted xp, so with 4 monsters (x2 modifier) it's actually a limit of 40,000 (and anything above 14,400 is Deadly). In 2024 you have a limit of 39,200 (but no multiple monster adjustment).
Exactly. I stand uncorrected, Pantagruel.
Now, if there were a few deadly fights along the way through the dungeon, then of course you subtract that exp. balance from the total for the boss fight. If they are fully rested and ready though, which I will assume is the case with OP, then that's what they get.
Your example is an adjusted xp total of (15,000 + 11,500*2 + 8,400)*2 for a total of 93,600. And it's clear that they don't actually expect you to spend the entire budget on one fight in 2014.
Your example is an adjusted xp total of (15,000 + 11,500*2 + 8,400)*2 for a total of 93,600. And it's clear that they don't actually expect you to spend the entire budget on one fight in 2014.
Meh. Then they can add a button to the encounter builder that knocks a monster's CR down a peg with a click. Ain't no DM got time for getting it at exactly at what they say it should be.
Says who? Is it better to just have your monster poof in 2 rounds at the players laugh at you? If I had to guess, 4 freshly rested lvl 16's would still be the heavy favorite in this fight.
Says who? Is it better to just have your monster poof in 2 rounds? If I had to guess, 4 freshly rested lvl 16's would still be the heavy favorite in this fight.
If true (it might be) it's just more evidence for how dysfunctional encounter building is.
Your example is an adjusted xp total of (15,000 + 11,500*2 + 8,400)*2 for a total of 93,600. And it's clear that they don't actually expect you to spend the entire budget on one fight in 2014.
Meh. Then they can add a button to the encounter builder that knocks a monster's CR down a peg with a click. Ain't no DM got time for getting it at exactly at what they say it should be.
Says who? Is it better to just have your monster poof in 2 rounds at the players laugh at you? If I had to guess, 4 freshly rested lvl 16's would still be the heavy favorite in this fight.
I feel like you've fundamentally misunderstood the point of the XP daily budgets.
RAW in 5e (2014) expect 6-8 medium to hard encounters per adventuring day. The assumption being that with two or three short rests the party are going at some point to run low on resources. As they run low on resources those medium encounters actually become challenging. Effectively the idea is that the adventuring day becomes a matter of attrition and resource management.
Take, as an example, Wave Echo Cave from Lost Mine of Phandelver. If the party attempt to clear that dungeon in a single adventuring day they're going to find it rough going. By the time they get to the final boss of the location, they are likely running on zero of their available resources (spell slots, superiority die, HP etc). the dungeon simply can't be completed without taking a couple of short rests and at least one long rest (depending on if you allow level ups to instantly heal and return all resources to the PCs). Even then there is a high likelihood of the player characters having spent all their hit dice by the time the clear around two-thirds of the dungeon.
Let's examine this to help us understand shall we?
The first five fights (going in order) for Wave Echo Cave total 6900xp for a party of four level 4 adventurers. This 'breaks' our daily budget by 100xp. - Jelly Fight (easy) - 450xp - Stirge (Easy) - 625xp - Skeletons (Medium) - 1125xp - Ghouls (Medium, I think) - 1200xp - Ghouls (Hard) - 3500xp
The point then of the adventuring day budget is to signal what a party working rules as written (and remember this adventure assumes no multiclass, and no feats) should be able to handle. As a DM then you can go into the adventure knowing that the party are likely going to need a short rest after the Skeletons, another after the first few Ghouls, and likely a long rest after the second lot of Ghouls. There is a wrinkle here too that, by the time of the first Ghoul fight the party may have enough XP to hit level 5 - though likely they need that second ghoul fight to achieve that.
Of course this is where I kinda get frustrated when people hold up some of the staff at WotC, because those who had charge over the 2014 rules did a dreadful job of actually explaining this to DMs. They made us work hard to understand these mechanics. In my opinion it's why Crawford, Perkins and Wyatt don't deserve half the credit they get...they took the lead on the 2014 DMG according to the credits and the result is a bit of a mess...though perhaps no-one at the time could have done better, who's to say?
Personally, I think the idea of Easy, Medium, Hard, and Deadly is somewhat of a mislead in labelling. I tend to think of them in terms of how many resources are the party going to expend here? That after all is the point.
If you really, and I mean really want to challenge a party - set up 6-8 medium to hard encounters in an adventuring day and allow the party only 2 short rests, no long rests. I guarantee that they'll start to change their tune quickly. I recognise however, that this simply isn't the way most tables appear to be playing D&D however. From what I've seen there are DMs out there encouraging parties to short rest after every encounter, who set up just one big combat encounter per adventuring day. If that's what you as a DM are doing then yeah, we can't be surprised when the party have enough spell slots and enough abilities to handle any real threat. The solution for the OP is going to come down to what is appropriate for their table however.
If you really, and I mean really want to challenge a party - set up 6-8 medium to hard encounters in an adventuring day and allow the party only 2 short rests, no long rests.
Your daily budget is typically only sufficient for 6-8 easy to medium encounters, and after tier 1 it will be long boring slog because those trash fights still take something like a third as much time to resolve as the giant fight that eats the entire budget.
Your daily budget is typically only sufficient for 6-8 easy to medium encounters, and after tier 1 it will be long boring slog because those trash fights still take something like a third as much time to resolve as the giant fight that eats the entire budget.
You say that, but it is possible to get around 5 medium and 2 hard encounters per day out on the field. I have a notebook somewhere with a full set of Level 1-20 encounters fit into adventuring days. I don't quite know where it is, but I know I managed to get it to work. The main thing was to limit the numbers and group sizings. The larger the group, the harder the task in getting the budgets right. If I remember correctly, I managed 10 variations of fully budgeted medium to hard encounters that did fit. I'd dig up the notebook but since 2024 ditched the adventuring day, and I don't personally work to XP at my tables I'm not sure it's worth it.
Just ran a session today in my dnd game, an I use a lot of homebrew because I can find basic dnd stuff boring at times. Here’s the issue, my party of level 16’s were up against a boss I had to last minute prepare, but I felt it was an appropriate level of play. It only hit once, maybe twice a turn on occasion, but dealt heavy damage. I thought it would last a few turns whilst also being able to deal some good damage to the party, and I had a second phase in case of emergency… wrong. 2 turns including the second phase, 176 hp for the first phase, 213 for the second. 3 turns is all it took, it hit one of its attacks once. I ended the session right after as I was very frustrated, I don’t really know what to do now. If I try to take away their stuff that feels rude, give their enemy’s too high ac and damage it feels unfair. I dunno I just wanted to share my inner turmoil and frustration at mostly myself, even if I’m mad at my players for also laughing and saying how easy the fight was.
Remember always that your players (I'm assuming) do not know the monster's HP. If your players think its too easy, amp those numbers up a bit! Or, if you over-correct and your players start losing, lower it.
If the above is a window into your logic, then lasting 3 turns sounds about correct to be destroyed from a party of 4. Realize you set up a monster/Boss that has one hit and receives 4 hits. That is not good odds at all. Very few can survive that 1:4 ratio. If the monster had excellent AOE type spells that hit all the PCs, it might be a bit different as you are hitting all the PCs with one attack.
Sorry you feel that way, but homebrew does have a downside. That downside is a complete lack of balance. One needs to really understand what exists, to have Homebrew balanced. By allowing your PCs to get "too powerful" is not an issue, if you make the Boss et. al. equal in power to the PCs. However, it sounds like you are having trouble to balance. Personally, I find that having multiple "lieutenants" with a boss can help with balance issues. Instead of all of the PCs concentrating on a single target, there are multiple targets to worry about. That dilutes the PCs damage. If the Boss & lieutenants are winning, you can have some run away, or do the opposite, if the PCs seem to be having the upper hand, then add more lieutenants.
Additional lieutenants (aka reinforcements) are a instant fix to help balance.
Unfortunately that is a very immature action, that has a lot of long term effects.
Revenge is never the proper reaction. The above is a short term effect. You need to find a way to overcome it, and remember, this is not about the DM versus the players.
Next battle, try having multiple bad guys and see how that works. It can be an eyeopener how a dilution of damage can extend a combat round and actually make it more difficult. Along those same methods, have a second combat soon after the 1st one, that can really deplete the mages spells.
If your homebrew is making players really strong, buffing the enemies is the exact opposite of unfair. Never be afraid to fudge rolls (as long as the players don't know), or adjust HP to make the fight more cinematic.
My first instinct, as some of the above posters, is to blame the homebrew, because as they point out, most people’s homebrew is unbalanced one way or another. But I haven’t seen yours, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.
The issue could well be that they’re level 16. T4 characters can do crazy stuff, and it can be hard to balance encounters even using only published materials. It’s one of the reasons so few campaigns play at those levels. Party size matters, too. My group at level 13 (with 7 characters) regularly beats CR 23 enemies, if there were 4 of us, we would not.
Could be it’s just time to wrap up the campaign and start a new one back at good old level 1 or 3.
I’d also point to the homebrew and house rules forum here if you ever want a second opinion about something you plan to introduce.
I will say that it’s better to undershoot than overshoot (in my opinion). While you want a balanced challenge, getting a TPK is virtually never fun.
Are you against using any homebrew content? You can always Frankenstein a monster from others that exist or simply use monsters from a book in your own custom setting. Just a thought.
Finally, don’t beat yourself up too much about it. You are a good DM simply because you obviously care. Plus it sounds like this was a one time thing.
I'm guessing you started the game at high level, because while I don't know the rest of the monster's stat block, the hit points you mention seem rather low for something expected to be a credible boss fight at level 16, and I would expect someone who had run the game over multiple levels to have experience with just how powerful tier 3 characters can be.
Also,if it has only two attacks a turn... it should be doing 70-100 damage a hit.
Finally, the players laughing about how easy it was were being pretty rude.
This, and also the problem is exacerbated if you're not making the PCs conserve resources. That boss fight might've always been too easy, but it still would've felt rougher if it were the fifth encounter of the day, when the players had burned a lot of their juice already.
(I also suspect you're underusing legendary actions. Singleton bosses in particular need defensive legendary actions.)
I'm going to skate past the homebrew stuff - others have already said it, if you're homebrewing that's likely your core problem.
That said, at level 16 D&D player characters do just steamroll most encounters. By that level they've got abundant magic items, plentiful gold, lots of equipment. Add that to the very high level or power the characters have access to at that level the player characters are generally going to be successful unless swamped by greater numbers. Past level 15, the idea that a party can struggle would be laughable. D&D is inherently not a balanced game. Or rather, it's set up that players will succeed more than half the time. The balance then is in the player favour (as it ought to be).
Here's the question I have though - what was the purpose of the enemy you sent them up against?
Encounters are fun and all, but so very many of them are absolutely unnecessary or without underlying reason to exist. Don't misunderstand random encounters can be fun from time to time, but overall an encounter ought to be there for a reason (unless running a grindy, hack and slash adventure). Short of running your game like a level of doom the number of rounds it takes to down an enemy is largely irrelevant as long as the reason for the encounter is dealt with. Monster has been sent by the BBEG to hunt down the player characters? The encounter shouldn't be a full on confrontation...you want the players to feel like their characters are being followed, being watched, then spring an ambush on the lone PC who goes off into the woods to collect firewood (or use the toilet). Once the monster has sprung their ambush, or the party realise they're being followed it's almost irrelevant how long the monster lasts. Sure it's fun to get the cool powers out, but beyond that a monster is largely just a bag of HP and XP (unless you've given said monster a piece of vital information or magic item key to the quest.
So, why is it a problem that the enemy went down so quickly?
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
You should have added minions to the encounter when you saw it going south. That would have balanced out the situation.
OP, I'm going to give you some advice that deviates from the usual "your homebrew probably sucks", "Just lie to your players", or "Just quit the game and start over".
You gotta get strategic, my man. So we have 4 characters at level 16 (going to assume 4 of them). The encounter builder says that means we have a cap of 80,000 exp worth of monsters to throw at them. And that is just a baseline. If they are skilled tactical gamers, or have a bunch of busted homebrew magic items, pump that up even more.
Ok, lets get our force of 80,000 exp worth of monsters ready for these chumps.
Bruisers: we need a couple of meatbags to box out their melee characters, and while jockeying for a chance to get in and pound the wizard into a pancake if they make a mistake and don't position well. For this we will take 2 Ice Devils.
Skirmisher: we need a monster that can effectively bypass the melee threats and pound on their squishies, forcing the Fighter into a tough situation of "oh shoot, do I run back and help or try to get to their spellcaster". For this lets use a Marilith.
Spellcaster: Now lets get a spellcaster in the mix. Good only fashion Archmage should work fine.
Now lets get a strategy together. The Ice devils are the archmage's body gaurds. They use their icewalls to split the party in half, bodying them in the process then moving in to beat anyone on the wrong side of it to a pulp. The Marilith can use her teleport to pop back and forth over the ice wall at will, hacking the wizard to ribbons then teleporting back over the ice wall to help on defense, unloading her 7 attacks on someone preoccupied by the ice devils. Meanwhile, the archmage is free to spam his cone of cold at them without fear of injuring the ice devils, and can cast fly to peek over the wall and fire lightning bolts or counterspell their casters, or try deleting their low charisma barbarian from the fight all together with a banishment, and has one get-out-of-jail free time stop if threatened which he should bait them into to pull them out of position.
I guarantee the laugher will quiet very quickly.
Like any level, they steamroller any encounter that isn't powerful enough to challenge them. The problem with high levels is that the encounter balancing rules become increasingly dubious at higher levels, particularly for solo monsters (I mean, I'd probably use around a CR 25 for a solo challenge for 4 x level 16).
Uh...no it doesn't. In 2014 you have a daily limit of 80,000 (though Deadly starts at 28,800), but that's adjusted xp, so with 4 monsters (x2 modifier) it's actually a limit of 40,000 (and anything above 14,400 is Deadly). In 2024 you have a limit of 39,200 (but no multiple monster adjustment).
Exactly. I stand uncorrected, Pantagruel.
Now, if there were a few deadly fights along the way through the dungeon, then of course you subtract that exp. balance from the total for the boss fight. If they are fully rested and ready though, which I will assume is the case with OP, then that's what they get.
Your example is an adjusted xp total of (15,000 + 11,500*2 + 8,400)*2 for a total of 93,600. And it's clear that they don't actually expect you to spend the entire budget on one fight in 2014.
Meh. Then they can add a button to the encounter builder that knocks a monster's CR down a peg with a click. Ain't no DM got time for getting it at exactly at what they say it should be.
Says who? Is it better to just have your monster poof in 2 rounds at the players laugh at you? If I had to guess, 4 freshly rested lvl 16's would still be the heavy favorite in this fight.
If true (it might be) it's just more evidence for how dysfunctional encounter building is.
I feel like you've fundamentally misunderstood the point of the XP daily budgets.
RAW in 5e (2014) expect 6-8 medium to hard encounters per adventuring day. The assumption being that with two or three short rests the party are going at some point to run low on resources. As they run low on resources those medium encounters actually become challenging. Effectively the idea is that the adventuring day becomes a matter of attrition and resource management.
Take, as an example, Wave Echo Cave from Lost Mine of Phandelver. If the party attempt to clear that dungeon in a single adventuring day they're going to find it rough going. By the time they get to the final boss of the location, they are likely running on zero of their available resources (spell slots, superiority die, HP etc). the dungeon simply can't be completed without taking a couple of short rests and at least one long rest (depending on if you allow level ups to instantly heal and return all resources to the PCs). Even then there is a high likelihood of the player characters having spent all their hit dice by the time the clear around two-thirds of the dungeon.
Let's examine this to help us understand shall we?
The first five fights (going in order) for Wave Echo Cave total 6900xp for a party of four level 4 adventurers. This 'breaks' our daily budget by 100xp.
- Jelly Fight (easy) - 450xp
- Stirge (Easy) - 625xp
- Skeletons (Medium) - 1125xp
- Ghouls (Medium, I think) - 1200xp
- Ghouls (Hard) - 3500xp
The point then of the adventuring day budget is to signal what a party working rules as written (and remember this adventure assumes no multiclass, and no feats) should be able to handle. As a DM then you can go into the adventure knowing that the party are likely going to need a short rest after the Skeletons, another after the first few Ghouls, and likely a long rest after the second lot of Ghouls. There is a wrinkle here too that, by the time of the first Ghoul fight the party may have enough XP to hit level 5 - though likely they need that second ghoul fight to achieve that.
Of course this is where I kinda get frustrated when people hold up some of the staff at WotC, because those who had charge over the 2014 rules did a dreadful job of actually explaining this to DMs. They made us work hard to understand these mechanics. In my opinion it's why Crawford, Perkins and Wyatt don't deserve half the credit they get...they took the lead on the 2014 DMG according to the credits and the result is a bit of a mess...though perhaps no-one at the time could have done better, who's to say?
Personally, I think the idea of Easy, Medium, Hard, and Deadly is somewhat of a mislead in labelling. I tend to think of them in terms of how many resources are the party going to expend here? That after all is the point.
If you really, and I mean really want to challenge a party - set up 6-8 medium to hard encounters in an adventuring day and allow the party only 2 short rests, no long rests. I guarantee that they'll start to change their tune quickly. I recognise however, that this simply isn't the way most tables appear to be playing D&D however. From what I've seen there are DMs out there encouraging parties to short rest after every encounter, who set up just one big combat encounter per adventuring day. If that's what you as a DM are doing then yeah, we can't be surprised when the party have enough spell slots and enough abilities to handle any real threat. The solution for the OP is going to come down to what is appropriate for their table however.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
Your daily budget is typically only sufficient for 6-8 easy to medium encounters, and after tier 1 it will be long boring slog because those trash fights still take something like a third as much time to resolve as the giant fight that eats the entire budget.
You say that, but it is possible to get around 5 medium and 2 hard encounters per day out on the field. I have a notebook somewhere with a full set of Level 1-20 encounters fit into adventuring days. I don't quite know where it is, but I know I managed to get it to work. The main thing was to limit the numbers and group sizings. The larger the group, the harder the task in getting the budgets right. If I remember correctly, I managed 10 variations of fully budgeted medium to hard encounters that did fit. I'd dig up the notebook but since 2024 ditched the adventuring day, and I don't personally work to XP at my tables I'm not sure it's worth it.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.