I'm going to use this evening's example to illustrate the concerns and questions I have.
The party is comprised of a level 6 Bard, Fighter, Barbarian, Warlock, and Druid. They're in relatively appropriate gear with a smattering of magical weapons and relatively useful builds. They're dispatched to handle an Young White Dragon that's been roosting in some haunted frozen ruins.
At the ruins, the Barbarian persistently fails his saves versus paralysis against Ghouls/a Revenant. The fighter steps in to bail him out, and the Revenant sends him to zero on a pair of criticals. After some commotion, the party is able to defeat the foe, rest and recuperate.
The commotion they make means the white dragon is aware of their presence, but doesn't barrel in outright in the interest of fair challenge. The party steps in to fight the dragon. The dragon's initiative roll is better than the party's, and he breaths his frost breath, rolling 67 damage on three players, two of which fail their saving throws. This is enough to outright permanently kill them, which I had to intercede on, as this would reduce the party to three members who were in no position to take down the dragon.
Is there any elegant way to handle situations like this? Am I doing the party a disservice by not allowing them to be instantly killed? They aren't playing stupidly or taking brazen risks, the dice just have a dread habit of spiking against them. I always pull my screen to show crits, so there's definitely no concerns on the PCs side of any DM impropriety, but at what point do I do the party a disservice by never allowing anyone to actually die off?
Conversely, is there any way to incorporate less spike damage, and have things move more smoothly? I always feel like combat encounters can become quick-draw contests; can the Bard/Warlock launch a pair of fireballs with a Druid call lightning to cut the monster's HP in half before it goes, or does the monster go first, barrel into someone with his claws and teeth, and reduce them to 0 right away.
How do you handle situations where you as the DM ostensibly keep dicing your players. This campaign has been running about 3ish months now, and I've had to prevent permadeath ostensibly a half dozen times.
Sometimes you just have to work it into the story somehow.
Over the weekend I was playing with a mixed group of new players and experienced players. One of my more experienced players decided she was going to be stubborn when they went up against three rates.
We are playing through the test material of dragonspear Castle and in The Second Adventure there's a place where the party is trapped in the dungeon and enters a room with three CR5 wraiths inside and all the characters at this point are usually level three or four.
For some reason she decided to be stubborn and try to stick out the fight instead of realizing what the puzzle was was just a step out of the room everyone else figured it out and hightail it except for her she stood her ground and probably died.
The first wraith hit her and lowered her Max hit points down to seven the second-rate hit her and lowered Herm exit points down to zero necrotic damage and she's dead.
At that point she basically started looking in the player's guide on ideas for a new character.
Not traditionally in this adventure there is a crypt above ground that they did not search, which had an abjuration majic... and theY were trapped below grounder in a series or crypts. Adjecent to the 3 wraith crypt, was one they had been in already, described as a room free of dust and debris.
I decided I was going to merge these two cribs together as the same Crypt in hopes they would stumble upon the idea of maybe moving her into that Crypt and coming to the conclusion that the room was somehow not affected by time.
And sure enough one of my other experienced players eventually came to that conclusion on his own so there she was dead but she was no longer decayed and in the state of preservation which gave her a little bit of hope all though they all knew they couldn't leave the dungeon to get her resurrected and none of them had a resurrection spell or a resurrection scroll at the time.
They did however still have a conversation to do with one of the lingering benevolent spirits in the crypt and in an effort to free him as a last gift to them he moved over and resurrected her and when they looted the treasure out of his crypt I went ahead and included an item that wasn't originally there before and it was a scroll of Resurrection but only the title remained as they opened it up the letters disappeared as if it had just been used implying that the spirit as as last action on Earth use the scroll of Resurrection to bring her back.
Also perma-death I think is something that players agree is a real possibility from the start, but one I would not really enforce until about lvl 10.... and even then. Permanent death could always just by instant death until you as the DM re-invent the rules surrounding it too.
When it comes to "fair challenge", the main determining factor is not how challenges are established or enacted, but in how accurately the participants in the challenges (by which I mean the players in this case) are informed of the type and intensity of challenges to be faced. So most of what you are asking is really a subjective thing that you would have the best results by consulting your play group as to how difficult they would like challenges to be and how they feel about character death.
There are a few specific things you mention or ask that I can share some thoughts on, though:
First, you have a party of 6th level characters going up against a monster that is rated as probably not killing any characters if they are 13th level, well equipped, and well rested. That's the first choice you made that has "some characters ended up dead" as an outcome.
Secondly, if you don't want as much potential for spike damage, the game includes an option you can use that greatly smooths out the predictability of damage results; use the numbers listed, rather than the parenthetical dice+modifiers that follow them (example, an adult white dragon's breath weapon does 54 cold damage, save for half, rather than 12d8). It isn't as good at keeping critical hits from spiking, but it still helps some, since when using that option you only roll the dice added by the critical (so an adult white dragon's bite would deal 2d10+15 piercing, and 1d8+4 cold on a critical, rather than 4d10+4 piercing, and 2d8 cold, resulting in 13 less potential damage from the critical hit).
As for how I handle when my dice run hot and the PCs end up dead/dying; I use the optional damage rules I mentioned, and I don't make recovery any harder to come by than the rules make it (i.e. potions of healing can be bought, spells that bring the dead back to life aren't artificially restricted, and so on), and my players and I are on the same page about difficult level of the game play and that I will not be altering any die roll results.
Conversely, is there any way to incorporate less spike damage, and have things move more smoothly? I always feel like combat encounters can become quick-draw contests; can the Bard/Warlock launch a pair of fireballs with a Druid call lightning to cut the monster's HP in half before it goes, or does the monster go first, barrel into someone with his claws and teeth, and reduce them to 0 right away.
This sounds like you're probably running a lot of encounters with a single high-CR creature. Instead, consider running a powered-down or lower CR "main threat" with some really weak but thematically appropriate trash mobs to even out the odds. This is what I've started doing for almost all my combats, and things have gone a lot smoother. If you absolutely need/want to have a single monster, try to use a legendary one.
However, I'm DMing a group about the same level and unfortunately there just aren't any level appropriate legendary creatures in the books I have. What you could do is look at legendary monsters and compare them to a monster of the same CR and see if you can figure out what legendary actions to add or changes to make to the monster you want to use. Full disclosure: I've never done this because I'm lazy and my story hasn't required it yet. If I had to guess, I'd say you'll want to increase the HP so it doesn't die instantly, and then lower it's damage per attack since it'll be making more attacks per round.
The breath weapon damage you rolled wasn't really that high for an Adult White Dragon which has a 12d8 breath weapon with a maximum of 96 damage.
Dragons are dangerous.
In this case, CR 13 level of dangerous, for a 6th level party is almost a guaranteed kill of that party, even if they are careful and sneaky.
For a 6th level party, an encounter that awards 1,400 xp is considered Deadly. The CR 13 dragon yields 10,000 xp and is WAY too powerful a foe for you to expect them to have a chance against.
Is there any elegant way to handle situations like this? Am I doing the party a disservice by not allowing them to be instantly killed? They aren't playing stupidly or taking brazen risks, the dice just have a dread habit of spiking against them. I always pull my screen to show crits, so there's definitely no concerns on the PCs side of any DM impropriety, but at what point do I do the party a disservice by never allowing anyone to actually die off?
I strongly recommend having a read through the sections in the DMG and/or Monster Manual about Challenge Ratings and encounter difficulty.
Simply put - you chose to have your players face an encounter that was almost guaranteed to kill them all.
I misspoke in the opening post. Young White Dragon, which is CR6, so all you folk callin' me murderous can reevaluate your comments accordingly. I've edited the aforementioned post to reflect this.
Another factor that makes damage scaling a somewhat trickier task for me is the Barbarian having Damage Resistance so often as a result of Rage. So I end up in situations where most enemies bounce off of him.
I misspoke in the opening post. Young White Dragon, which is CR6, so all you folk callin' me murderous can reevaluate your comments accordingly. I've edited the aforementioned post to reflect this.
Another factor that makes damage scaling a somewhat trickier task for me is the Barbarian having Damage Resistance so often as a result of Rage. So I end up in situations where most enemies bounce off of him.
The Young White Dragon is still strong enough to be very likely to kill some of your party.
I still recommend re-reading the section in the rules on encounter difficulty.
For a 6th level party, an encounter that awards 1,400 xp is considered Deadly. The CR 13 dragon yields 10,000 xp and is WAY too powerful a foe for you to expect them to have a chance against.
The numbers you used in your sentence could be misleading if people aren't careful when reading them. That's 1,400 XP per character, so a total of 7,000 XP for the five person party in this scenario.
Another factor that makes damage scaling a somewhat trickier task for me is the Barbarian having Damage Resistance so often as a result of Rage. So I end up in situations where most enemies bounce off of him.
Here's my advice on that specific thing: Don't try to scale the damage coming at the party to make it leave the barbarian hurting - doing that will only make it more likely that someone else's character dies, and/or that the barbarian player feels less than thrilled about playing a barbarian because the class features don't do in practice what they appear to do on reading (which is make the barbarian noticeably difficult to put down) or have the player try even harder to be hard to kill which would likely mean having to further step-up the damage coming at the party, and this kind of "arms race" is never any good for the game.
So just pick out monsters because they fit the story and aren't wildly outside what your players are expecting challenge-wise, instead of trying to specifically compensate for, or worse thwart, any particular character's abilities.
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I'm going to use this evening's example to illustrate the concerns and questions I have.
The party is comprised of a level 6 Bard, Fighter, Barbarian, Warlock, and Druid. They're in relatively appropriate gear with a smattering of magical weapons and relatively useful builds. They're dispatched to handle an Young White Dragon that's been roosting in some haunted frozen ruins.
At the ruins, the Barbarian persistently fails his saves versus paralysis against Ghouls/a Revenant. The fighter steps in to bail him out, and the Revenant sends him to zero on a pair of criticals. After some commotion, the party is able to defeat the foe, rest and recuperate.
The commotion they make means the white dragon is aware of their presence, but doesn't barrel in outright in the interest of fair challenge. The party steps in to fight the dragon. The dragon's initiative roll is better than the party's, and he breaths his frost breath, rolling 67 damage on three players, two of which fail their saving throws. This is enough to outright permanently kill them, which I had to intercede on, as this would reduce the party to three members who were in no position to take down the dragon.
Is there any elegant way to handle situations like this? Am I doing the party a disservice by not allowing them to be instantly killed? They aren't playing stupidly or taking brazen risks, the dice just have a dread habit of spiking against them. I always pull my screen to show crits, so there's definitely no concerns on the PCs side of any DM impropriety, but at what point do I do the party a disservice by never allowing anyone to actually die off?
Conversely, is there any way to incorporate less spike damage, and have things move more smoothly? I always feel like combat encounters can become quick-draw contests; can the Bard/Warlock launch a pair of fireballs with a Druid call lightning to cut the monster's HP in half before it goes, or does the monster go first, barrel into someone with his claws and teeth, and reduce them to 0 right away.
How do you handle situations where you as the DM ostensibly keep dicing your players. This campaign has been running about 3ish months now, and I've had to prevent permadeath ostensibly a half dozen times.
Sometimes you just have to work it into the story somehow.
Over the weekend I was playing with a mixed group of new players and experienced players. One of my more experienced players decided she was going to be stubborn when they went up against three rates.
We are playing through the test material of dragonspear Castle and in The Second Adventure there's a place where the party is trapped in the dungeon and enters a room with three CR5 wraiths inside and all the characters at this point are usually level three or four.
For some reason she decided to be stubborn and try to stick out the fight instead of realizing what the puzzle was was just a step out of the room everyone else figured it out and hightail it except for her she stood her ground and probably died.
The first wraith hit her and lowered her Max hit points down to seven the second-rate hit her and lowered Herm exit points down to zero necrotic damage and she's dead.
At that point she basically started looking in the player's guide on ideas for a new character.
Not traditionally in this adventure there is a crypt above ground that they did not search, which had an abjuration majic... and theY were trapped below grounder in a series or crypts. Adjecent to the 3 wraith crypt, was one they had been in already, described as a room free of dust and debris.
I decided I was going to merge these two cribs together as the same Crypt in hopes they would stumble upon the idea of maybe moving her into that Crypt and coming to the conclusion that the room was somehow not affected by time.
And sure enough one of my other experienced players eventually came to that conclusion on his own so there she was dead but she was no longer decayed and in the state of preservation which gave her a little bit of hope all though they all knew they couldn't leave the dungeon to get her resurrected and none of them had a resurrection spell or a resurrection scroll at the time.
They did however still have a conversation to do with one of the lingering benevolent spirits in the crypt and in an effort to free him as a last gift to them he moved over and resurrected her and when they looted the treasure out of his crypt I went ahead and included an item that wasn't originally there before and it was a scroll of Resurrection but only the title remained as they opened it up the letters disappeared as if it had just been used implying that the spirit as as last action on Earth use the scroll of Resurrection to bring her back.
Also perma-death I think is something that players agree is a real possibility from the start, but one I would not really enforce until about lvl 10.... and even then. Permanent death could always just by instant death until you as the DM re-invent the rules surrounding it too.
When it comes to "fair challenge", the main determining factor is not how challenges are established or enacted, but in how accurately the participants in the challenges (by which I mean the players in this case) are informed of the type and intensity of challenges to be faced. So most of what you are asking is really a subjective thing that you would have the best results by consulting your play group as to how difficult they would like challenges to be and how they feel about character death.
There are a few specific things you mention or ask that I can share some thoughts on, though:
First, you have a party of 6th level characters going up against a monster that is rated as probably not killing any characters if they are 13th level, well equipped, and well rested. That's the first choice you made that has "some characters ended up dead" as an outcome.
Secondly, if you don't want as much potential for spike damage, the game includes an option you can use that greatly smooths out the predictability of damage results; use the numbers listed, rather than the parenthetical dice+modifiers that follow them (example, an adult white dragon's breath weapon does 54 cold damage, save for half, rather than 12d8). It isn't as good at keeping critical hits from spiking, but it still helps some, since when using that option you only roll the dice added by the critical (so an adult white dragon's bite would deal 2d10+15 piercing, and 1d8+4 cold on a critical, rather than 4d10+4 piercing, and 2d8 cold, resulting in 13 less potential damage from the critical hit).
As for how I handle when my dice run hot and the PCs end up dead/dying; I use the optional damage rules I mentioned, and I don't make recovery any harder to come by than the rules make it (i.e. potions of healing can be bought, spells that bring the dead back to life aren't artificially restricted, and so on), and my players and I are on the same page about difficult level of the game play and that I will not be altering any die roll results.
This sounds like you're probably running a lot of encounters with a single high-CR creature. Instead, consider running a powered-down or lower CR "main threat" with some really weak but thematically appropriate trash mobs to even out the odds. This is what I've started doing for almost all my combats, and things have gone a lot smoother. If you absolutely need/want to have a single monster, try to use a legendary one.
However, I'm DMing a group about the same level and unfortunately there just aren't any level appropriate legendary creatures in the books I have. What you could do is look at legendary monsters and compare them to a monster of the same CR and see if you can figure out what legendary actions to add or changes to make to the monster you want to use. Full disclosure: I've never done this because I'm lazy and my story hasn't required it yet. If I had to guess, I'd say you'll want to increase the HP so it doesn't die instantly, and then lower it's damage per attack since it'll be making more attacks per round.
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D&D Beyond FoundersThe breath weapon damage you rolled wasn't really that high for an Adult White Dragon which has a 12d8 breath weapon with a maximum of 96 damage.
Dragons are dangerous.
In this case, CR 13 level of dangerous, for a 6th level party is almost a guaranteed kill of that party, even if they are careful and sneaky.
For a 6th level party, an encounter that awards 1,400 xp is considered Deadly. The CR 13 dragon yields 10,000 xp and is WAY too powerful a foe for you to expect them to have a chance against.
I strongly recommend having a read through the sections in the DMG and/or Monster Manual about Challenge Ratings and encounter difficulty.
Simply put - you chose to have your players face an encounter that was almost guaranteed to kill them all.
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
I misspoke in the opening post. Young White Dragon, which is CR6, so all you folk callin' me murderous can reevaluate your comments accordingly. I've edited the aforementioned post to reflect this.
Another factor that makes damage scaling a somewhat trickier task for me is the Barbarian having Damage Resistance so often as a result of Rage. So I end up in situations where most enemies bounce off of him.
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D&D Beyond FoundersPun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊