Hi everybody, I need some help for my campaign. The party is quite unusual, and it presents some unique challenges for me as a DM. The roleplaying part is fine, and everything is going well on that side. The problem is how the party composition influences the encounters. Here it is:
I've boldened the main problem here: every single member of the party has healing abilities, of which half (celestial, bard, cleric) can be used as a bonus action. Now, this means that the party is pretty much immortal. Unless enemies specifically target unconscious targets (which most of the time doesn't make sense, unless the enemy knows their tactics), the party can face pretty much everything, as long as they keep bringing people back to 1-5hp every time they go down. They won a fight with a witch coven (two night and a green) with some help from npcs, and went from *5 unconscious* to *all conscious* in a single turn, chaining their healing abilities down the initiative (at level 4). Considering 4 of them had been nightmare hauntinged, and most of them were either poisoned or exhausted, and the coven had also Lair Actions, that's pretty impressive. They beat a CR 16 creature at lvl 4 and got it to flee at 5hp, simply because it couldn't keep them unconscious on the ground, so even if it dealt 25dmg per attack, they just picked up to 5hp and were good to go.
These were all fights where they had just long rested, keep in mind, but still...
Also, they managed to get through an encounter against 2 assassins (CR 8), 10 spies (CR 1), 4 thugs (CR 1/2) and 25 bandits (CR 1/8) all armed with longbows or repeating crossbows (homebrew weapons that can atk as a bonus action) only with the help of a bunch of commoners... But that is another story because they planned well and got them all in one big room and blasted them with 4 fireballs, reducing the encounter to 5 enemies in 2 rounds.
The problem is, against a single powerful enemy without significant AoEs, the fight just doesn't feel right. Consider we are using the "gritty realism" rules from DMG, with slight modifications, so more often than not the problem is not that they didn't have eough encounters between rests. The thing simply is, whether they enter combat with 5hp each or with full health, it doesn't really matter because they can just keep reviving.
What do you recommend? Any suggestions or creatures that could challenge this particular party composition?
And keep in mind I don't want to kill them all, I just want the fights to feel more engaging...
Especially because, right now i can burn through these healing abilities pretty easily, but they are starting to get more and more uses, so a boss fight risks becoming a super long war of attrition, where they slowly burn through their uses of their healing abilities. For example, by level 10 they will have:
11 uses of healing light, 8 healing words (lv 1), 6 healing words (lv 2), 3 mass healing word, 3 healing word (lv3), 3 mass healing word (lv 4), 3 healing word (lv 4), 2 mass cure wounds, 3 cure wounds (level 5), 2 healing hands, 40 pts of lay on hands, plus potions etc...
A fight could go on for hours with them waking people up every turn while they wade through the hit points of whatever is in front of them.
*starchild is a homebrew race I made, but it doesn't have healing abilities so it's not important for this discussion
About all I can think of is making a kind of gauntlet scenario, where they won't get to rest as much, or make the challenge be - if they are the types to like to pack up and cart NPCs around with them for aid - that they will burn through their healing abilities a LOT faster if they also have reason to keep a group of 10-15 level clown-shoes commoner nobodies alive. Maybe even consider something that has a Beholder-like effect or a well-placed silence trap from a group with a grudge against mages, so they can't use magic or any spells that require verbal components.
Oh man, this is a tough bind you are in. However, I can see what some of the Players might have been thinking when you started: you introduced the Gritty Realism option. That may have scared them as they developed their PCs so much that they were afraid of not have enough healing to endure. 5e's approach to healing means that you are never going to approach the damage players are taking, so the best thing to do is toss around low HP effects that keep the PCs alive if not happy.
Since you have already started, I don't think that the solution I invoked on a prior game will work. I established that once a PC reached 0 HP, no matter how they recovered either from rolling a 20 on a Death Save or a Spell less potent than a Wish (or Divine Intervention) the PC in question remained unconscious for 1 minute. It made fights meaningfully brutal. To match this rule however, I had to find ways to up in combat Healing to compensate. Cure Wounds IIRC dealt like 4d6 HP as 1st level and upped the dice by 2d6 per spell level additional. I was not playing RAW, but it did make my players happy with my changes, especially the video game healer from his time on WoW.
Perhaps change up the nature of these combats. If the goal of a combat is just "don't die" this party sounds like they'll be able to handle it. If the goal becomes something different then things change. There is a corridor filling with lava from one end, a horde of creatures at the other end, the goal is to bust through the enemies to escape in time. There is a hostage or valuable thing in the centre, the goal is to not let a single enemy reach the centre and do the thing. And yes, a grueling gauntlet of no rest too drain their every resource and get the adrenalin flowing.
Then, consider other ways to disable a character beyond just 0hp. Get in some giant frogs to do some swallowing, some oozes or things to do some engulfing. Think paralysis, domination, petrification, blinding, fear and confusion. Get some exotic creatures into the fight. The party seem to be mostly other worldly, it's not fair they should face off against mundane bandits - bring on the fiends and aberrations loaded up with debilitating abilities.
My suggestion is to lean on monsters that tend to have effects that are separate from HP loss. Monsters like the Shadow that have the ability to drain Strength for a time, or monsters that hand out disease or poisoned conditions like a Bulezau.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
So I count around 25 spell slots and a few limited times per rest healing abilities. I assume less than half the party (2 or 3) deal significant amounts of weapon damage (average 10 or higher).
Considering any resource (action and spell slot) used healing is a resource used not dealing damage, I don't see what the problem was.
When they were fighting the tag coven, did you remember to have the have use their coven spells, because that is the difference between a hard and deadly encounter. Which CR 16 creature did they beat at level 4?
Try using tools like kobold fight club to calculate encounter challenges. A party this strong could easily fight a CR 11 creature, but struggle against 3 CR 4 creatures.
And remember a hard encounter us one that forces characters to use healing resources, it sounds like you are succeeding in that front.
Gritty Realism rules... does that include an Injury Table? It doesn't have to be a complex table, because that would just slow things down. Even with rests they can take care of most injuries making Injury Tables pretty pointless imo. However I have noticed that in between those rests the injuries can start to add up. I use it similar to HighRollers where only on 0HP you roll on the table. This makes it so that there is more incentive for players to heal before even reaching the 0hp threshold. Instead of going down, back up, going down, back up.... which is a massive flaw in 5e by default. Especially at higher levels when your situation will only get worse.
I don't care about CR's. As stated above there are enemies of 1/4 or 2 CR that can be quite challenging, while a CR 10 is a cake walk. Look for enemies that have certain abilities. Something like the Quasit which can call double its numbers in no time while also doing a relatively strong AoE, while also doing AoE damage upon its death. Modify enemies to have extra debilitating options as presented by others in this thread.
You can add additional environmental hazards to keep players occupied. Crystals that siphon certain type of divine/arcane energies when cast by enemies...making some of those healers ineffective in some fights. While maybe even making the enemy stronger instead. Healing from x sources heals the enemy. Also gives the group something extra objective based to figure out.
There are poisons for rogues. When a character is hit they're poisoned. After stabilizing/healed when they're at 0hp it means they're still paralyzed and such for a minute. Which can be a nice addition. There are also other status conditions you can apply to your players at crucial moments to prevent them from attacking. Look into which ones you find useful and figure out ways to apply them. Can't heal someone who is petrified. Can't heal when you are stunned. Or how do you plan to cast spells/healing words with verbal components when you're silenced?
Gritty Realism rules... does that include an Injury Table? I...
I had the idea of using a homebrewed Injury Table, but i kept forgetting to roll it, so I just let it go... As far as poisons go, quite a few enemies they faced and are gonna face use them (for example, one of the lair actions for the coven was two 10-foot cubes AoEs that dealt poison damage and poisoned condition).
I like the syphon crystal idea, I'll elaborate on that for some future fight.
About all I can think of is making a kind of gauntlet scenario...
The NPC commoners probably aren't going to help much, because they straight up die most of the time (4hp means 8 damage is instant death). They just saved a half-hag child, so that is going to be interesting to see how they deal with her being attacked. Both of you mentioned the Silence spell, and that is something I actually use: one of the criminal organization in my setting is called the Silent Assembly, and the highest-ranking members have magic tattoos that allow for a 1/short rest casting of the Silence spell.
Oh man, this is a tough bind you are in. However, I can see what some of the Players might have been thinking when you started: you introduced the Gritty Realism option...
I actually introduced it on the 3rd or 4th session, mainly because I'm not really that into dungeon grinds... Most of the game is above ground, dealing with humanoids and intrigues, or (later) will be often based off ship sailing, where having 6-7 encounters in a day is quite unlikely, while 6-7 in a week is more manageable.
Perhaps change up the nature of these combats. If the goal of a combat is just "don't die" this party sounds like they'll be able to handle it...
This is very good advice, I noticed that one of the best fights we had was a boss fight where there was a Portal to the Abyss lair action: every round it either expanded or spat out demons. The more it expanded, the more demons could come out per turn (it was a coin toss per 5-foot length). So, while they were fighting the giant demonic minotaur, they had to understand how to deal with the widening portal before having 10 demons per turn coming on them. I have some fights based off other ideas of this kind: Activate a portal to run away before the mass of ghouls gets to you is one I have already thought about... Also another one is gonna be with a split party, one half fighting a boss while the other part is defending a village, and see if they can kill the boss before the other half party gets overrun by shambling mounds and animated trees.
Also, many of you suggested using other condition-imposing monsters for stun, immobilize, charm, disease (this is not gonna cut it because they now have a Heartstone from a witch, so any disease is instantly cured with a touch), and yup I've gotta look up more of these. Also, targeting 1 or two instead of all at the same time is good. So I don't have to take everyone to 0hp, but if i focus on 2 while leaving others at full hp it can get more dangerous and tense. Good stuff guys.
So I count around 25 spell slots and a few limited times per rest healing abilities. I assume less than half the party (2 or 3) deal significant amounts of weapon damage (average 10 or higher...
Yeah, well two party members are straight up damage dealers (fiend warlock with Agonizing EB+Radiant form from Aasimar, and the Barbarian Paladin), while the others have control and AoEs and heals. I'm already using a calculator for encounter CR, they were not supposed to fight the CR 16 creature, but I was surprised when they actually won. As regards what creature it was, it's a homebrewed creature inspired very deliberately to Shrek. Large sized creature that can pick people up and throw them around dealing tons of damage, with high AC and incredible attack and damage rolls, fire resistance, legendary actions and resistances, and intimidating presence as a 5-6 recharge action. Mainly it doesn't do many attacks (4/round if all goes well), but each attack deals 3d12+8 damage (if it gets to use its best attack every time). If you want i can copy here its stats...
And yeah, i did use the coven spells in the fight (I also had a special rule that they could use the spells as long as they were in the house, even further than 30ft)... I changed eyebane to cloudkill, and that was the BOMB more or less... Cloudkill with a SUPER high roll on damage was what put 5/6 unconscious, and if they had failed the save it would have killed 2 of them outright (they obv had 3-6hp at that point, bc they were all at 1d4+4 or 1d6 healing from 0). I really enjoyed the desperate look on their face when I used counterspell to block one of the healing words :P
People are all telling you to stop their healing so I'm gonna say undead. Oh? People already said that too? Well I'll use that anyway. There are undeads, like wraiths that reduce your maximum hit points equal to the damage done. Try to heal that!
But! You can have an idea I've taken from PoE 2. Sigils. For every round you're within say, 30 ft of a sigil of death you cannot regain hit points. Or upgrade it at the boss fight to be that all healing does necrotic damage while necrotic damage either heals or has no effect. Putting them in situation where potions are the only thing able to heal them. A thing I have to be careful about with my players is the number of enemies, but you might benefit from them. Think about say, they are walking on a road and suddenly 8 kobolds spring out! Alright! They kill them with a few spells, or heal themselves. In the same day a band of goblins attack! say, 7 goblins. Where one of the goblins is a shaman. So if he can do some damage, forcing them to use actions and spells to heal. Remember, if there are 7 enemies that do 1-4 points of damage, they have to choose to either fix it, or let it stay. Or you could set them up against a few mages of your own design. There are perhaps 4 of them, and each of them has a reaction for counterspell. So when a player uses any healing spells they can be counterspelled, wasting actions and spell slots.
Or you could say to them that their healing is FAR too good and that you have to finish a long rest (or perhaps a short rest) before getting rid of failed death saving throws. But DON'T let them forget death. Because from what I get from this is that they haven't faced death, death. I dunno how experienced your players are but I try to always remind my players of death. Because it is important! A wolf, with a 1 or 2 intelligence wouldn't fight head on first of all, but they would be clever enough to grab what they have slain and RUN. A wolf wouldn't kill a deer, and run after the others that are escaping. It would take it's meal. So a low intelligent beast might just swip at a downed PC. A clever enemy will by ANY MEANS do it. A character with a 14 intelligence I my eyes after seeing them heal themselves constantly, bringing them back. They would try to finish of those they could. And after a while of dancing on the edge with never dying adventurers wouldn't they just try to escape? ^^ Remember that intelligent enemies will do clever shit. Like live to fight another day. However a raging barbarian would just slice at the downed enemy but never run before his rage runs out eh?
At this point, I would say to stop treating combats as main events and use them, instead, as puzzles. This is what I do. Fights should either show how amazing the characters are or they should be trying to teach the party something.
Tie them up with low-damage, high-HP critters while the enemy group leader is completing some additional task. So, the fight becomes “stop them before they finish” over “kill ‘em all and let Asmodeus sort ‘em out.”
(Asmodeus looks up from his desk. “Dammit Mark, stop sending me work!”)
Fight like a controller. Lock them down and refuse entire areas to them. Make them fight where you want, how you want. You know their tactics, so use those against them. When a fight has a goal over “kill monsters—take loot” or “it’s evil, kill it” then there is more thought put into it. Or not. I’m looking at you, IW party. Getting quagmire’d at the door (giggity).
Put the party on a time table so they can’t take long rests or even short rests. You’re using harsh realism, hold them to it. Rescuing prisoners from a sacrifice that must happen at specific time works pretty well, especially if you can tie them up until after that time. Then they’ve failed and have to live with the consequences. And if they succeed, then they’ve actually accomplished something.
The yo-yo strategy is really only effective if initiative lines up properly; if a monster gets to go and drops the newly revived character before they can act, the healing action is essentially wasted. With a lot of players that can bonus action heal, it's a lot easier to line up initiative, which appears to be mainly the issue.
This suggests then
1) Have a good sized group of enemies with differing initiatives. Play whack-a-mole to deny actions to newly healed PCs.
2) Have enemies ready actions for when the PCs heal. Readied actions occur immediately after the trigger, so you can just have a few enemies wait for the heals, then immediately drop the PC that got healed. This works for pretty much any encounter if there are enough (re)actions to go around.
3) Likewise, any kind of persistent damage at start of their turn makes this strategy a lot less effective; Spirit Guardians, Ensnaring Strike, Searing Strike are all potential options, as well as environmental effects.
4) Also, those healing abilities all require LOS to use - consider darkness, or for additional hilarity, invisibility. Or any kind of blinding ability. Any illusion that covers the targets could work, too, until they spend an action to try to disbelieve (minor illusion - wall isn't just for PCs any more). Or have a couple of minions start dragging the downed players away into cover.
Remember also that unconsciousness results in the player dropping anything they're holding. Any creature gets a free item interaction, so they should be downing->grabbing weapon/shield/whatever each time (taking the cleric's divine focus-shield or just their weapon can be effective). Or just have other creatures loot their stuff (probably an action). Or use something like manacles; Thieves can even potentially bonus action these onto casters to severely reduce their effectiveness (though ironically, the bonus action heals are one of the few things they can be doing).
Having monsters and villains behaving like they suddenly know of the healing abilities of the party (and adjusting their tactics to that) feels a little too meta for me. The players may feel cheated and could start to question the DM, asking/searching for explanations so much that it becomes a bore.
You seem to forget that there are many dangerous monsters and spells that could insta-kill a character at level 3-5. It doesn't end at those levels either. To me, the CR system does not mean that it is forbidden to use monsters and spells that could possibly one-shot a character. If there is no possibility of character death, the game becomes toothless. This has been discussed several times, I seem to remember even the DM of Critical Role spoke about it. Besides, resurrection and similar spells are there for a reason. Also, I fail to see the purpose of worrying what could happen at level 10 when they are at level 5.
People are all telling you to stop their healing so I'm gonna say undead. Oh? People already said that too? Well I'll use that anyway. There are undeads, like wraiths that reduce
I have used wraiths during this arc, and it was pretty cool... also, one player's character has died twice already (he was a sorcerer, then a rogue, now is the bard), but that's because he is suicidal :/
As a sorcerer he ran back and forth between two minotaurs to burn their reactions and allow better positioning for his allies... he got hit with a crit from a 2d12+4 axe and died straight up (they were lvl 2-3 at that point). As a rogue, he decided to disengage, move and shoot when he was isolated in melee with two trolls instead of running away (he also had 7hp)... the trolls chased him and slashed him 4 times, killing him.
The yo-yo strategy is really only effective if initiative lines up properly; if a monster gets to go and drops the newly revived character before they can act, the healing action is essentially waste...
good stuff here too. Yeah, I've noticed that the LoS is pretty important here, as well as initiative order. Haven't taken their weapons yet, but that wouldn't really matter cuz 5/6 are full casters so... Ofc there are arcane focuses, but those are not as easy for most enemies to think about. I have combined some damage over time with LoS problems with a couple of creatures of my design, and it worked amazingly (I've built a quicksand paraelemental that works kind of like a gelatinous cube, but is opaque). So, characters inside have to try and get out, or be blinded. Something I've noticed, is that characters that are unable to breathe are pretty much screwed if casters. Inside the elemental, they were blinded, restrained and unable to breathe, so they could only get one spell off before finishing air and starting to drown. ill put here the abilities of the creature if anyone is isnterested:
Quicksand Paraelemental
Large elemental, neutral
Armor class 13 (natural armor)
Hit Points 126 (12d10+48)
Speed 30ft., burrow 15ft., swim 50ft.
STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA
16(+3) 12(+1) 18(+4) 6 (-2) 10(+0) 5 (-3)
Damage Resistances Bludgeoning, Piercing and Slashing from Nonmagical Weapons
Viscous Form: The elemental’s partially solid form can move through a space as narrow as 1 foot wide without squeezing. If a creature hits the paraelemental with a weapon attack, it must make a DC 15 Strength saving throw or be Grappled by it. The creature can lose the grip on the weapon to end the grapple, but the weapon is stuck in the paraelemental’s form.
Dry: If the elemental takes fire damage, it partially dries up; it loses its Immunity to the Grappled and Restrained conditions, and is Petrified until the end of its next turn. While it is Petrified, its AC and the DC to escape from being engulfed increase to 20, as its surface is transformed into a rock-hard shell.
Actions
Multiattack: The elemental makes two slam attacks.
Slam:Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (2d8 + 3) bludgeoning damage and the target is grappled (escape DC 15).
Engulf: The paraelemental moves up to its speed. While doing so, it can enter Large or smaller creatures' spaces. Whenever the paraelemental enters a creature's space, the creature must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw. On a successful save, the creature can choose to be pushed 5 feet back or to the side of the paraelemental. A creature that chooses not to be pushed suffers the consequences of a failed saving throw.
On a failed save, the paraelemental enters the creature's space, and the creature takes 10 (3d6) bludgeoning damage and is engulfed. The engulfed creature can't breathe, is blinded and restrained, and takes 10 (3d6) bludgeoning damage and 10 (3d6) acid damage at the start of each of the paraelemental’s turns. When the paraelemental moves, the engulfed creature moves with it. An engulfed creature can try to escape by taking an action to make a DC 15 Strength check. On a success, the creature escapes and enters a space of its choice within 5 feet of the paraelemental.
I have a pretty good solution I use for the wack a mole PC down then up after.a heal.
So when a PC goes down and the gets a heal I use a rule I modified from 5e hard mode rules. I make the player roll a D6. The number is how many rounds it takes for their PC to get back up in the fight. In the true hard mode rules unconscious PC dont get up during a fight when healed. If you need someone who is down you must retreat if able. But this rule is very hard mode indeed si I just use the D6 rounds.
You know what I just saw: Giant Wasps! IF they put a character to 0hp, he is paralyzed :) That's fun!
Also, one fun thing about this party is, I'm gonna do a plant-based arc as the next thing, right? Thankfully I decided to do it now, because when they get level 7 fire damage is going to be uncontrollable. Both warlocks get wall of fire from their patron, the sorcerer gets it normally, and the cleric gets it from his domain! The battlefield control is gonna be amazing :=D
You know what I just saw: Giant Wasps! IF they put a character to 0hp, he is paralyzed :) That's fun!
Also, one fun thing about this party is, I'm gonna do a plant-based arc as the next thing, right? Thankfully I decided to do it now, because when they get level 7 fire damage is going to be uncontrollable. Both warlocks get wall of fire from their patron, the sorcerer gets it normally, and the cleric gets it from his domain! The battlefield control is gonna be amazing :=D
Curious what they do with it
The warlocks and the sorcerer still need to choose to take it. The cleric will always have it though.
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Hi everybody, I need some help for my campaign. The party is quite unusual, and it presents some unique challenges for me as a DM. The roleplaying part is fine, and everything is going well on that side. The problem is how the party composition influences the encounters. Here it is:
Aasimar sorcerer (dragon), Aasimar warlock (fiend), Starchild* warlock (celestial), Gnome bard (lore), Firbolg cleric (forge), Human barbarian/paladin (devotion)- all level 5
I've boldened the main problem here: every single member of the party has healing abilities, of which half (celestial, bard, cleric) can be used as a bonus action. Now, this means that the party is pretty much immortal. Unless enemies specifically target unconscious targets (which most of the time doesn't make sense, unless the enemy knows their tactics), the party can face pretty much everything, as long as they keep bringing people back to 1-5hp every time they go down. They won a fight with a witch coven (two night and a green) with some help from npcs, and went from *5 unconscious* to *all conscious* in a single turn, chaining their healing abilities down the initiative (at level 4). Considering 4 of them had been nightmare hauntinged, and most of them were either poisoned or exhausted, and the coven had also Lair Actions, that's pretty impressive. They beat a CR 16 creature at lvl 4 and got it to flee at 5hp, simply because it couldn't keep them unconscious on the ground, so even if it dealt 25dmg per attack, they just picked up to 5hp and were good to go.
These were all fights where they had just long rested, keep in mind, but still...
Also, they managed to get through an encounter against 2 assassins (CR 8), 10 spies (CR 1), 4 thugs (CR 1/2) and 25 bandits (CR 1/8) all armed with longbows or repeating crossbows (homebrew weapons that can atk as a bonus action) only with the help of a bunch of commoners... But that is another story because they planned well and got them all in one big room and blasted them with 4 fireballs, reducing the encounter to 5 enemies in 2 rounds.
The problem is, against a single powerful enemy without significant AoEs, the fight just doesn't feel right. Consider we are using the "gritty realism" rules from DMG, with slight modifications, so more often than not the problem is not that they didn't have eough encounters between rests. The thing simply is, whether they enter combat with 5hp each or with full health, it doesn't really matter because they can just keep reviving.
What do you recommend? Any suggestions or creatures that could challenge this particular party composition?
And keep in mind I don't want to kill them all, I just want the fights to feel more engaging...
Especially because, right now i can burn through these healing abilities pretty easily, but they are starting to get more and more uses, so a boss fight risks becoming a super long war of attrition, where they slowly burn through their uses of their healing abilities. For example, by level 10 they will have:
11 uses of healing light, 8 healing words (lv 1), 6 healing words (lv 2), 3 mass healing word, 3 healing word (lv3), 3 mass healing word (lv 4), 3 healing word (lv 4), 2 mass cure wounds, 3 cure wounds (level 5), 2 healing hands, 40 pts of lay on hands, plus potions etc...
A fight could go on for hours with them waking people up every turn while they wade through the hit points of whatever is in front of them.
*starchild is a homebrew race I made, but it doesn't have healing abilities so it's not important for this discussion
About all I can think of is making a kind of gauntlet scenario, where they won't get to rest as much, or make the challenge be - if they are the types to like to pack up and cart NPCs around with them for aid - that they will burn through their healing abilities a LOT faster if they also have reason to keep a group of 10-15 level clown-shoes commoner nobodies alive. Maybe even consider something that has a Beholder-like effect or a well-placed silence trap from a group with a grudge against mages, so they can't use magic or any spells that require verbal components.
Oh man, this is a tough bind you are in. However, I can see what some of the Players might have been thinking when you started: you introduced the Gritty Realism option. That may have scared them as they developed their PCs so much that they were afraid of not have enough healing to endure. 5e's approach to healing means that you are never going to approach the damage players are taking, so the best thing to do is toss around low HP effects that keep the PCs alive if not happy.
Since you have already started, I don't think that the solution I invoked on a prior game will work. I established that once a PC reached 0 HP, no matter how they recovered either from rolling a 20 on a Death Save or a Spell less potent than a Wish (or Divine Intervention) the PC in question remained unconscious for 1 minute. It made fights meaningfully brutal. To match this rule however, I had to find ways to up in combat Healing to compensate. Cure Wounds IIRC dealt like 4d6 HP as 1st level and upped the dice by 2d6 per spell level additional. I was not playing RAW, but it did make my players happy with my changes, especially the video game healer from his time on WoW.
Perhaps change up the nature of these combats. If the goal of a combat is just "don't die" this party sounds like they'll be able to handle it. If the goal becomes something different then things change. There is a corridor filling with lava from one end, a horde of creatures at the other end, the goal is to bust through the enemies to escape in time. There is a hostage or valuable thing in the centre, the goal is to not let a single enemy reach the centre and do the thing. And yes, a grueling gauntlet of no rest too drain their every resource and get the adrenalin flowing.
Then, consider other ways to disable a character beyond just 0hp. Get in some giant frogs to do some swallowing, some oozes or things to do some engulfing. Think paralysis, domination, petrification, blinding, fear and confusion. Get some exotic creatures into the fight. The party seem to be mostly other worldly, it's not fair they should face off against mundane bandits - bring on the fiends and aberrations loaded up with debilitating abilities.
1) enemies are allowed to be ruthless murderers who straight up kill. it can and does make sense.
1b) "all healers, hey? target them one by one"
1c) divide and conquer. create a battlefield where the party is split up and can't easily help each other
2) incapacitation effects
3) effects similar to anti-magic field
My suggestion is to lean on monsters that tend to have effects that are separate from HP loss. Monsters like the Shadow that have the ability to drain Strength for a time, or monsters that hand out disease or poisoned conditions like a Bulezau.
Chill Touch is an excellent cantrip for spellcasters.
I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.
So I count around 25 spell slots and a few limited times per rest healing abilities. I assume less than half the party (2 or 3) deal significant amounts of weapon damage (average 10 or higher).
Considering any resource (action and spell slot) used healing is a resource used not dealing damage, I don't see what the problem was.
When they were fighting the tag coven, did you remember to have the have use their coven spells, because that is the difference between a hard and deadly encounter. Which CR 16 creature did they beat at level 4?
Try using tools like kobold fight club to calculate encounter challenges. A party this strong could easily fight a CR 11 creature, but struggle against 3 CR 4 creatures.
And remember a hard encounter us one that forces characters to use healing resources, it sounds like you are succeeding in that front.
Gritty Realism rules... does that include an Injury Table? It doesn't have to be a complex table, because that would just slow things down. Even with rests they can take care of most injuries making Injury Tables pretty pointless imo. However I have noticed that in between those rests the injuries can start to add up. I use it similar to HighRollers where only on 0HP you roll on the table. This makes it so that there is more incentive for players to heal before even reaching the 0hp threshold. Instead of going down, back up, going down, back up.... which is a massive flaw in 5e by default. Especially at higher levels when your situation will only get worse.
I don't care about CR's. As stated above there are enemies of 1/4 or 2 CR that can be quite challenging, while a CR 10 is a cake walk. Look for enemies that have certain abilities. Something like the Quasit which can call double its numbers in no time while also doing a relatively strong AoE, while also doing AoE damage upon its death. Modify enemies to have extra debilitating options as presented by others in this thread.
You can add additional environmental hazards to keep players occupied. Crystals that siphon certain type of divine/arcane energies when cast by enemies...making some of those healers ineffective in some fights. While maybe even making the enemy stronger instead. Healing from x sources heals the enemy. Also gives the group something extra objective based to figure out.
There are poisons for rogues. When a character is hit they're poisoned. After stabilizing/healed when they're at 0hp it means they're still paralyzed and such for a minute. Which can be a nice addition. There are also other status conditions you can apply to your players at crucial moments to prevent them from attacking. Look into which ones you find useful and figure out ways to apply them. Can't heal someone who is petrified. Can't heal when you are stunned. Or how do you plan to cast spells/healing words with verbal components when you're silenced?
I had the idea of using a homebrewed Injury Table, but i kept forgetting to roll it, so I just let it go... As far as poisons go, quite a few enemies they faced and are gonna face use them (for example, one of the lair actions for the coven was two 10-foot cubes AoEs that dealt poison damage and poisoned condition).
I like the syphon crystal idea, I'll elaborate on that for some future fight.
I actually introduced it on the 3rd or 4th session, mainly because I'm not really that into dungeon grinds... Most of the game is above ground, dealing with humanoids and intrigues, or (later) will be often based off ship sailing, where having 6-7 encounters in a day is quite unlikely, while 6-7 in a week is more manageable.
This is very good advice, I noticed that one of the best fights we had was a boss fight where there was a Portal to the Abyss lair action: every round it either expanded or spat out demons. The more it expanded, the more demons could come out per turn (it was a coin toss per 5-foot length). So, while they were fighting the giant demonic minotaur, they had to understand how to deal with the widening portal before having 10 demons per turn coming on them. I have some fights based off other ideas of this kind: Activate a portal to run away before the mass of ghouls gets to you is one I have already thought about... Also another one is gonna be with a split party, one half fighting a boss while the other part is defending a village, and see if they can kill the boss before the other half party gets overrun by shambling mounds and animated trees.
Also, many of you suggested using other condition-imposing monsters for stun, immobilize, charm, disease (this is not gonna cut it because they now have a Heartstone from a witch, so any disease is instantly cured with a touch), and yup I've gotta look up more of these. Also, targeting 1 or two instead of all at the same time is good. So I don't have to take everyone to 0hp, but if i focus on 2 while leaving others at full hp it can get more dangerous and tense. Good stuff guys.
Yeah, well two party members are straight up damage dealers (fiend warlock with Agonizing EB+Radiant form from Aasimar, and the Barbarian Paladin), while the others have control and AoEs and heals. I'm already using a calculator for encounter CR, they were not supposed to fight the CR 16 creature, but I was surprised when they actually won. As regards what creature it was, it's a homebrewed creature inspired very deliberately to Shrek. Large sized creature that can pick people up and throw them around dealing tons of damage, with high AC and incredible attack and damage rolls, fire resistance, legendary actions and resistances, and intimidating presence as a 5-6 recharge action. Mainly it doesn't do many attacks (4/round if all goes well), but each attack deals 3d12+8 damage (if it gets to use its best attack every time). If you want i can copy here its stats...
And yeah, i did use the coven spells in the fight (I also had a special rule that they could use the spells as long as they were in the house, even further than 30ft)... I changed eyebane to cloudkill, and that was the BOMB more or less... Cloudkill with a SUPER high roll on damage was what put 5/6 unconscious, and if they had failed the save it would have killed 2 of them outright (they obv had 3-6hp at that point, bc they were all at 1d4+4 or 1d6 healing from 0). I really enjoyed the desperate look on their face when I used counterspell to block one of the healing words :P
People are all telling you to stop their healing so I'm gonna say undead. Oh? People already said that too? Well I'll use that anyway. There are undeads, like wraiths that reduce your maximum hit points equal to the damage done. Try to heal that!
But! You can have an idea I've taken from PoE 2. Sigils. For every round you're within say, 30 ft of a sigil of death you cannot regain hit points. Or upgrade it at the boss fight to be that all healing does necrotic damage while necrotic damage either heals or has no effect. Putting them in situation where potions are the only thing able to heal them. A thing I have to be careful about with my players is the number of enemies, but you might benefit from them. Think about say, they are walking on a road and suddenly 8 kobolds spring out! Alright! They kill them with a few spells, or heal themselves. In the same day a band of goblins attack! say, 7 goblins. Where one of the goblins is a shaman. So if he can do some damage, forcing them to use actions and spells to heal. Remember, if there are 7 enemies that do 1-4 points of damage, they have to choose to either fix it, or let it stay. Or you could set them up against a few mages of your own design. There are perhaps 4 of them, and each of them has a reaction for counterspell. So when a player uses any healing spells they can be counterspelled, wasting actions and spell slots.
Or you could say to them that their healing is FAR too good and that you have to finish a long rest (or perhaps a short rest) before getting rid of failed death saving throws. But DON'T let them forget death. Because from what I get from this is that they haven't faced death, death. I dunno how experienced your players are but I try to always remind my players of death. Because it is important! A wolf, with a 1 or 2 intelligence wouldn't fight head on first of all, but they would be clever enough to grab what they have slain and RUN. A wolf wouldn't kill a deer, and run after the others that are escaping. It would take it's meal. So a low intelligent beast might just swip at a downed PC. A clever enemy will by ANY MEANS do it. A character with a 14 intelligence I my eyes after seeing them heal themselves constantly, bringing them back. They would try to finish of those they could. And after a while of dancing on the edge with never dying adventurers wouldn't they just try to escape? ^^ Remember that intelligent enemies will do clever shit. Like live to fight another day. However a raging barbarian would just slice at the downed enemy but never run before his rage runs out eh?
Hope this helped! ^^
It isn't about applying poisoned status. There are different poisons that cause different status effects.
At this point, I would say to stop treating combats as main events and use them, instead, as puzzles. This is what I do. Fights should either show how amazing the characters are or they should be trying to teach the party something.
Tie them up with low-damage, high-HP critters while the enemy group leader is completing some additional task. So, the fight becomes “stop them before they finish” over “kill ‘em all and let Asmodeus sort ‘em out.”
(Asmodeus looks up from his desk. “Dammit Mark, stop sending me work!”)
Fight like a controller. Lock them down and refuse entire areas to them. Make them fight where you want, how you want. You know their tactics, so use those against them. When a fight has a goal over “kill monsters—take loot” or “it’s evil, kill it” then there is more thought put into it. Or not. I’m looking at you, IW party. Getting quagmire’d at the door (giggity).
Put the party on a time table so they can’t take long rests or even short rests. You’re using harsh realism, hold them to it. Rescuing prisoners from a sacrifice that must happen at specific time works pretty well, especially if you can tie them up until after that time. Then they’ve failed and have to live with the consequences. And if they succeed, then they’ve actually accomplished something.
Above all else, play dirty.
The yo-yo strategy is really only effective if initiative lines up properly; if a monster gets to go and drops the newly revived character before they can act, the healing action is essentially wasted. With a lot of players that can bonus action heal, it's a lot easier to line up initiative, which appears to be mainly the issue.
This suggests then
1) Have a good sized group of enemies with differing initiatives. Play whack-a-mole to deny actions to newly healed PCs.
2) Have enemies ready actions for when the PCs heal. Readied actions occur immediately after the trigger, so you can just have a few enemies wait for the heals, then immediately drop the PC that got healed. This works for pretty much any encounter if there are enough (re)actions to go around.
3) Likewise, any kind of persistent damage at start of their turn makes this strategy a lot less effective; Spirit Guardians, Ensnaring Strike, Searing Strike are all potential options, as well as environmental effects.
4) Also, those healing abilities all require LOS to use - consider darkness, or for additional hilarity, invisibility. Or any kind of blinding ability. Any illusion that covers the targets could work, too, until they spend an action to try to disbelieve (minor illusion - wall isn't just for PCs any more). Or have a couple of minions start dragging the downed players away into cover.
Remember also that unconsciousness results in the player dropping anything they're holding. Any creature gets a free item interaction, so they should be downing->grabbing weapon/shield/whatever each time (taking the cleric's divine focus-shield or just their weapon can be effective). Or just have other creatures loot their stuff (probably an action). Or use something like manacles; Thieves can even potentially bonus action these onto casters to severely reduce their effectiveness (though ironically, the bonus action heals are one of the few things they can be doing).
Having monsters and villains behaving like they suddenly know of the healing abilities of the party (and adjusting their tactics to that) feels a little too meta for me. The players may feel cheated and could start to question the DM, asking/searching for explanations so much that it becomes a bore.
You seem to forget that there are many dangerous monsters and spells that could insta-kill a character at level 3-5. It doesn't end at those levels either. To me, the CR system does not mean that it is forbidden to use monsters and spells that could possibly one-shot a character. If there is no possibility of character death, the game becomes toothless. This has been discussed several times, I seem to remember even the DM of Critical Role spoke about it. Besides, resurrection and similar spells are there for a reason. Also, I fail to see the purpose of worrying what could happen at level 10 when they are at level 5.
I have used wraiths during this arc, and it was pretty cool... also, one player's character has died twice already (he was a sorcerer, then a rogue, now is the bard), but that's because he is suicidal :/
As a sorcerer he ran back and forth between two minotaurs to burn their reactions and allow better positioning for his allies... he got hit with a crit from a 2d12+4 axe and died straight up (they were lvl 2-3 at that point). As a rogue, he decided to disengage, move and shoot when he was isolated in melee with two trolls instead of running away (he also had 7hp)... the trolls chased him and slashed him 4 times, killing him.
good stuff here too. Yeah, I've noticed that the LoS is pretty important here, as well as initiative order. Haven't taken their weapons yet, but that wouldn't really matter cuz 5/6 are full casters so... Ofc there are arcane focuses, but those are not as easy for most enemies to think about.
I have combined some damage over time with LoS problems with a couple of creatures of my design, and it worked amazingly (I've built a quicksand paraelemental that works kind of like a gelatinous cube, but is opaque). So, characters inside have to try and get out, or be blinded. Something I've noticed, is that characters that are unable to breathe are pretty much screwed if casters. Inside the elemental, they were blinded, restrained and unable to breathe, so they could only get one spell off before finishing air and starting to drown. ill put here the abilities of the creature if anyone is isnterested:
Quicksand Paraelemental
Large elemental, neutral
Armor class 13 (natural armor)
Hit Points 126 (12d10+48)
Speed 30ft., burrow 15ft., swim 50ft.
STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA
16(+3) 12(+1) 18(+4) 6 (-2) 10(+0) 5 (-3)
Damage Resistances Bludgeoning, Piercing and Slashing from Nonmagical Weapons
Damage Immunities Acid, Poison
Condition Immunities Exhaustion, Grappled, Paralyzed, Petrified, Poisoned, Prone, Restrained, Unconscious
Senses Darkvision 60ft., Tremorsense 30ft., passive Perception 10
Languages Auran, Ignan
Challenge 5 (1,800 XP)
Viscous Form: The elemental’s partially solid form can move through a space as narrow as 1 foot wide without squeezing. If a creature hits the paraelemental with a weapon attack, it must make a DC 15 Strength saving throw or be Grappled by it. The creature can lose the grip on the weapon to end the grapple, but the weapon is stuck in the paraelemental’s form.
Dry: If the elemental takes fire damage, it partially dries up; it loses its Immunity to the Grappled and Restrained conditions, and is Petrified until the end of its next turn. While it is Petrified, its AC and the DC to escape from being engulfed increase to 20, as its surface is transformed into a rock-hard shell.
Actions
Multiattack: The elemental makes two slam attacks.
Slam: Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (2d8 + 3) bludgeoning damage and the target is grappled (escape DC 15).
Engulf: The paraelemental moves up to its speed. While doing so, it can enter Large or smaller creatures' spaces. Whenever the paraelemental enters a creature's space, the creature must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw. On a successful save, the creature can choose to be pushed 5 feet back or to the side of the paraelemental. A creature that chooses not to be pushed suffers the consequences of a failed saving throw.
On a failed save, the paraelemental enters the creature's space, and the creature takes 10 (3d6) bludgeoning damage and is engulfed. The engulfed creature can't breathe, is blinded and restrained, and takes 10 (3d6) bludgeoning damage and 10 (3d6) acid damage at the start of each of the paraelemental’s turns. When the paraelemental moves, the engulfed creature moves with it. An engulfed creature can try to escape by taking an action to make a DC 15 Strength check. On a success, the creature escapes and enters a space of its choice within 5 feet of the paraelemental.
I have a pretty good solution I use for the wack a mole PC down then up after.a heal.
So when a PC goes down and the gets a heal I use a rule I modified from 5e hard mode rules. I make the player roll a D6. The number is how many rounds it takes for their PC to get back up in the fight. In the true hard mode rules unconscious PC dont get up during a fight when healed. If you need someone who is down you must retreat if able. But this rule is very hard mode indeed si I just use the D6 rounds.
You know what I just saw: Giant Wasps! IF they put a character to 0hp, he is paralyzed :) That's fun!
Also, one fun thing about this party is, I'm gonna do a plant-based arc as the next thing, right? Thankfully I decided to do it now, because when they get level 7 fire damage is going to be uncontrollable. Both warlocks get wall of fire from their patron, the sorcerer gets it normally, and the cleric gets it from his domain! The battlefield control is gonna be amazing :=D
Curious what they do with it
The warlocks and the sorcerer still need to choose to take it. The cleric will always have it though.