Hey all. Currently I'm in the midst of running 'Death House' as the prologue mini adventure for 'Curse of Strahd,' with a party of five adventurers. The most dangerous encounter they've so far had has been with a pack of 4 ghouls and 1 grick that took advantage of the characters momentary distraction to try and sneak attack them ... without the sneak attack, naturally. At the end of things the party wiped out the monsters, taking less than 15 damage spread out between them.
I was honestly pretty disappointed with the combat, myself. Admittedly the party had a lot of good rolls, but there was never to me a real sense of excitement, dynamic action, or any hint of danger. And I can't help but feel the problem comes down to me and how I ran things. Some of it is certainly a lack of familiarity with the rules, though I also suspect my own limited imagination for dramatic narrative action was at fault (thinking of combat within the narrow confines of a game systems rules rather than how I would imagine the ghoul or grick might actually engage or attempt to engage). A very weak defense for myself here is that it's been 3 years since I last played - and then within the 4e system - but that's not a solid defense when I personally am chewing it over mentally.
'Death House' has been described as something of a meat grinder, and I can see the potential for that still in some of the fights and definitely in the problem with escaping the house (I sincerely doubt any of them will consider sacrificing a teammate, and I made the point of not including something like a stray dog to serve as their goat). But I also have a strong interest in really selling both the tension of the exploration along with the excitement and danger of the action.
Understanding there may be some bits I'm leaving out or just not conveying quite right, I wanted to know if there were any good articles, forum / Reddit posts, etc. that people could offer in terms of really selling every inch of this module and the greater adventure, as well as just running strong Scenes within D&D and 5th Edition in general. I have to admit I've got a chip on my shoulder I'm having difficulty shaking loose in terms of the differences between 5e and prior editions where I just felt there was more you could do, so that's on me. I also appreciate any replies that have their own recommendations naturally, please and massive thank you's in advance. (Small note: I prefer to read recommendations and ideas on how to accomplish something right now, as for D&D it feels more helpful than watching a video (a personal thing))
Edit: Another issue I'm running into is that the enemies currently feel like a very plain and boring collection of stats, with the main part being they have X hit points and maybe 1 or 2 attacks that deal some damage and have an attached effect with a saving throw to negate that's so low it will all but assuredly be resisted for the one or two times it comes up before the party mulches the sad health bar of the ugly in question. It's very frustrating and makes me concerned about how much of this continues through the levels. Are the players heroes or aren't they?
Typed out on my Android, so I blame that for the worst parts of my failed attempt at language shown above. ;P
What level were the PCs? What resources did they use up? D&D is generally rather reliant on the DM forcing the pace, if you let them rest after every encounter they'll always whomp on things. It's also important to remember that opportunity attack rules in 5e are much more lenient than in 3e or 4e, which makes it pretty hard to protect the squishier characters. The only thing that will obviously turn that fight easy turn undead, which does seem a bit problematic in any case where the undead can't just run away for a minute.
The only tactical mistake I believe I made was having the ghouls swipe at the mage's scouting owl, killing it, rather than just laying low until the party was right on top of their ambush location and so could be forcibly split rather than having the option of falling back to a defensible spot. The party is 2nd level and maybe used up 2 non-cantrip spells between the mage & cleric. So under 15 hit points total party damage, 1 familiar (temp), and two 1st level spells. Being that they are in a Haunted House, I am allowing them 2 short rests before bad things can pop up. And Death House does not feature any wandering monsters, so what will interrupt them will be a feeling of great unease / nightmares if they attempt a long rest. Now, one other thing.
What level were the PCs? What resources did they use up? D&D is generally rather reliant on the DM forcing the pace, if you let them rest after every encounter they'll always whomp on things. It's also important to remember that opportunity attack rules in 5e are much more lenient than in 3e or 4e, which makes it pretty hard to protect the squishier characters. The only thing that will obviously turn that fight easy turn undead, which does seem a bit problematic in any case where the undead can't just run away for a minute.
My question really came down to a request for suggestions on how to make D&D 5e combat more exciting, dynamic, and dangerous (or at least more engaging). I grant you requested more info on what happened which made me consider other mistakes I may have made, but could you please try and answer the question itself? I think I've already done a solid job on owning up to at the very least feeling inept, I could use some answers on how to become adept rather than dwell on the suck.
Not 100% sure what the question is; what to you makes a combat more engaging? To make it more dangerous, it sounds like you have players who use good tactics, which means to challenge them you'll need to use equally good tactics for the bad guys or just make them more powerful (or otherwise give them extra advantages, such as combining encounters, though you already did that it with grick+ghouls). It's also possible there was a luck factor in there, but honestly, for a level 2 party burning off 3 spells (counting a dead familiar as a burnt spell) and 15 hit points is significant damage (ghouls are also a tad gimpy for CR 1, DC 10 paralysis isn't enough to make up for CR 1/2 defenses and CR 1/4 damage output).
D&D in every edition has tried for a scheme of multiple encounters that are mostly intended to consume resources before reaching the boss fight, which means most individual fights are fairly easy (a 'deadly' fight by DMG standards is... one where the PCs have to pay attention to what they're doing). If you don't like that play style, you'll probably need to rework encounters in published adventures.
Totally fair, and maybe I have to make an appeal to someone like Matt Colville to get a better answer. As aside, I hope I didn't come off as rude or insulting, it's more that I'm just frustrated, with the system and myself. :(
There's a fundamental conflict at the heart of dungeon crawls: you can't run a campaign with a large number of fights unless either (a) the fights are easy so the PCs always win, or (b) the fights are structured so the PCs losing doesn't end the campaign. D&D tries to get around this by making consequences that are less than losing seem still important (using up spells, etc), but it's hard to be convincing with that unless you vastly limit the ability to rest, and then you run into the risk of game stalls because the PCs don't feel strong enough to go on but can't rest either.
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Hey all. Currently I'm in the midst of running 'Death House' as the prologue mini adventure for 'Curse of Strahd,' with a party of five adventurers. The most dangerous encounter they've so far had has been with a pack of 4 ghouls and 1 grick that took advantage of the characters momentary distraction to try and sneak attack them ... without the sneak attack, naturally. At the end of things the party wiped out the monsters, taking less than 15 damage spread out between them.
I was honestly pretty disappointed with the combat, myself. Admittedly the party had a lot of good rolls, but there was never to me a real sense of excitement, dynamic action, or any hint of danger. And I can't help but feel the problem comes down to me and how I ran things. Some of it is certainly a lack of familiarity with the rules, though I also suspect my own limited imagination for dramatic narrative action was at fault (thinking of combat within the narrow confines of a game systems rules rather than how I would imagine the ghoul or grick might actually engage or attempt to engage). A very weak defense for myself here is that it's been 3 years since I last played - and then within the 4e system - but that's not a solid defense when I personally am chewing it over mentally.
'Death House' has been described as something of a meat grinder, and I can see the potential for that still in some of the fights and definitely in the problem with escaping the house (I sincerely doubt any of them will consider sacrificing a teammate, and I made the point of not including something like a stray dog to serve as their goat). But I also have a strong interest in really selling both the tension of the exploration along with the excitement and danger of the action.
Understanding there may be some bits I'm leaving out or just not conveying quite right, I wanted to know if there were any good articles, forum / Reddit posts, etc. that people could offer in terms of really selling every inch of this module and the greater adventure, as well as just running strong Scenes within D&D and 5th Edition in general. I have to admit I've got a chip on my shoulder I'm having difficulty shaking loose in terms of the differences between 5e and prior editions where I just felt there was more you could do, so that's on me. I also appreciate any replies that have their own recommendations naturally, please and massive thank you's in advance. (Small note: I prefer to read recommendations and ideas on how to accomplish something right now, as for D&D it feels more helpful than watching a video (a personal thing))
Edit: Another issue I'm running into is that the enemies currently feel like a very plain and boring collection of stats, with the main part being they have X hit points and maybe 1 or 2 attacks that deal some damage and have an attached effect with a saving throw to negate that's so low it will all but assuredly be resisted for the one or two times it comes up before the party mulches the sad health bar of the ugly in question. It's very frustrating and makes me concerned about how much of this continues through the levels. Are the players heroes or aren't they?
Typed out on my Android, so I blame that for the worst parts of my failed attempt at language shown above. ;P
What level were the PCs? What resources did they use up? D&D is generally rather reliant on the DM forcing the pace, if you let them rest after every encounter they'll always whomp on things. It's also important to remember that opportunity attack rules in 5e are much more lenient than in 3e or 4e, which makes it pretty hard to protect the squishier characters. The only thing that will obviously turn that fight easy turn undead, which does seem a bit problematic in any case where the undead can't just run away for a minute.
The only tactical mistake I believe I made was having the ghouls swipe at the mage's scouting owl, killing it, rather than just laying low until the party was right on top of their ambush location and so could be forcibly split rather than having the option of falling back to a defensible spot. The party is 2nd level and maybe used up 2 non-cantrip spells between the mage & cleric. So under 15 hit points total party damage, 1 familiar (temp), and two 1st level spells. Being that they are in a Haunted House, I am allowing them 2 short rests before bad things can pop up. And Death House does not feature any wandering monsters, so what will interrupt them will be a feeling of great unease / nightmares if they attempt a long rest. Now, one other thing.
My question really came down to a request for suggestions on how to make D&D 5e combat more exciting, dynamic, and dangerous (or at least more engaging). I grant you requested more info on what happened which made me consider other mistakes I may have made, but could you please try and answer the question itself? I think I've already done a solid job on owning up to at the very least feeling inept, I could use some answers on how to become adept rather than dwell on the suck.
Not 100% sure what the question is; what to you makes a combat more engaging? To make it more dangerous, it sounds like you have players who use good tactics, which means to challenge them you'll need to use equally good tactics for the bad guys or just make them more powerful (or otherwise give them extra advantages, such as combining encounters, though you already did that it with grick+ghouls). It's also possible there was a luck factor in there, but honestly, for a level 2 party burning off 3 spells (counting a dead familiar as a burnt spell) and 15 hit points is significant damage (ghouls are also a tad gimpy for CR 1, DC 10 paralysis isn't enough to make up for CR 1/2 defenses and CR 1/4 damage output).
D&D in every edition has tried for a scheme of multiple encounters that are mostly intended to consume resources before reaching the boss fight, which means most individual fights are fairly easy (a 'deadly' fight by DMG standards is... one where the PCs have to pay attention to what they're doing). If you don't like that play style, you'll probably need to rework encounters in published adventures.
Totally fair, and maybe I have to make an appeal to someone like Matt Colville to get a better answer. As aside, I hope I didn't come off as rude or insulting, it's more that I'm just frustrated, with the system and myself. :(
There's a fundamental conflict at the heart of dungeon crawls: you can't run a campaign with a large number of fights unless either (a) the fights are easy so the PCs always win, or (b) the fights are structured so the PCs losing doesn't end the campaign. D&D tries to get around this by making consequences that are less than losing seem still important (using up spells, etc), but it's hard to be convincing with that unless you vastly limit the ability to rest, and then you run into the risk of game stalls because the PCs don't feel strong enough to go on but can't rest either.