Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Hmm... I started playing first or second edition, so I have definitely picked up a "vibe" for how to make encounters challenging, even if maybe I can't articulate it so well.
First of all, I'd say a campaign book is a suggestion. All of it. The world. The npc's. the bosses. the puzzles. the combats. all are suggestions. you should always adjust it to fit your party. If your players have in-world goals, you will want to tweak the campaign so that their goals are tied into campaign goals. Maybe pursuing a goal presents a hook to the next campaign challenge. Maybe the next campaign challenge reveals information about one of their goals. ALl of that you will have to homebrew because no campaign written by a third party is goign to know your party's goals.
same goes for combat encouters. I think a DM should adjust encounters to fit the party. If you have a monk, shoot the monk so they can deflect. If you have a caster with fireball, throw a horde at them when you can so they can cast fireball. None of thats going to be in the campaign either.
As for the thing you're pointing to in your party: I don't know that one well designed paladin is too much of an issue. My view is that even a pack of "dumb" animals can tell the big guy with the sword killing members of their pack is the biggest threat, adn will focus fire on them. You can send one of the pack after each of th eother members of the party, adn the rest of the pack will focus on the paladin.
If the paladin goes down, the pack will distribute among the remaining party. This will help you avoid a TPK, and give the party a chance to revive the paladin.
This is true for a pack of wolves or a den of thieves or a cave of kobolds. You can direct the pack to those doing the most damage, the most powerful builds, and then distribute and diffuse the pack when the most powerful player goes down to distribute the damage they can do. If you knock a player down to zero, have the enemy change targets to someone who's an active threat. This gives the players a chance to heal whoever went down, and helps avoid a TPK.
Your goal isn't to take a group of NPC's and run the most brutal combination of tactics to kill the party. To do that, you'd have to start metagaming that focus-fire on one player is most effective. Action economy is a meta concept. But its effective and deadly. You dont want to run the enemies that way.
As the party gets higher levels, you can keep an eye out for enemies that target the paladin's weaknesses now and then. Not all the time because you shouldn't be picking on a player for building a strong character. But once in a while, each player should run into an enemy that gives them a run for their money. For the paladin, its probably something that forces an INT save on them. Or something that has a powerful grapple. Or just a lot of low CR monsters beating on the paladin.
The other thing that can add pressure is a constraint to the battle. EIther a time constraint, or a constraint like an innocent civilian held prisoner in the middle of the battlefield. The best pressure is "impossible" pressure. Stop the cult ceremony that will bring about the end of the world OR save the prisoner who is the paladin's beloved. The cunundrum will put the players in a bind. And then they will come up with a solution, like split the party or something. ANd see if you, as DM, cant find a way to make it work. It might be a tough fight for a split party, but they might be able to pull it off anyway.
Give the other players things to do that align more with their strengths. Look at mobility, flying opponents, look at skills that the Pally doesn't have. Use Heat Metal, use obstacles that cannot be bashed. If he is a hammer, don't let the encounters all be nails.
As another solution, have you spoken with them? In 3.5 edition I had an Ultimate Magus, which was a crazy Prestige Class (doesn't really matter).
What mattered is that I had enough spell power that I never ran out of spells, and just mowed down the opposition. The DM spoke with me and we decided to change that character to a standard wizard, (we RP'ed it in dramatic faction with an unknown entity ripping my innate sorcerer abilities away) and off we went, problem solved.