Hello everyone, 

I am new to the forum but would really appreciate some opinions on a problem that I am facing. So in a homebrew campaign of mine, my players decided to go with a party composition of only clerics and paladins. 3 Clerics and 3 Paladins in total. 

The combined healing from the clerics, heavy damage and tanking from the paladins and the cumulative auras of protection (+11 to all saves when in formation) can make it hard to make interesting and challenging encounters for the party.  

Therefore, I am interested, and would appreciate some advice on how to make the game interesting and fun for this full divine party that seems to pretty much be able to face anything I throw at them. 

I tried focusing more on non-combat encounters but there is so much of the same I can have they go through. 

Thanks, 

Plus, with all of those Paladins, social encounters are fairly well addressed as well because of the high Cha.

Maybe try setting up some missions where a priority is on getting in and out without combat. Think Hitman.

Try spells and powers that push Int or Dex saves.

Give them a moral dilemma where “the right thing to do” isn’t obviously smash.

How's that saying go, "Avoid talking about politics and religion..." 

Well, you get the jist, all of those divine casters are likely to follow different gods who will have agendas that will conflict with different oaths. Emphasize some of those aspects throughout the game to introduce some roll playing tension. Have some social skill checks done with advantage or disadvantage based on where those loyalties lie. The skill checks don't need to be critical for overall success or progression but could affect the degree of success that a party has with a certain encounter or increase or decrease rewards. Healing and high AC will be rough, but saves can be targetted and Chill Touch is a thing. Bane and Bless can help your NPCs, particularly Bane against the Paladins. Ways to grant advantage, to impose vulnerability, and such will be great helps. Further, shear numbers will be useful. You can use swarms and the rules for large scale encounters (might have been an old UA, I don't remember where I saw that specifically) as guides to help keep the pacing in battle up with larger numbers. 

Finally, not all traps have to be of the take damage route. Create some encounters where the goal is to trap the players in an area where they take small amounts of persistent damage while they try to figure out a solution. Perhaps an encounter with undead in overwhelming amounts. When someone inevitably does turn undead, a BBEG locks down the room and fills it with gas. The undead block the access to the switch that will let the party escape as they attempt to flee. 

Hey everyone, thanks for the suggestions, the moral dilemas and traps can help, but even the dex and int checks still get a +11 bonus to saves, so it makes it really hard for them to fail any save at all. 

I searched around and aparently, according to Jeremy Crawford tweet, the auras do stack, it also seems to be a general consensus from what I searched, that they do stack. 

Indeed, the heat metal spell might provide an interesting, though I am pretty confident that it will be quickly dispeled by one of the 3 clerics haha. 

Thanks, I think the persistant damage is a good option indeed, perhaps focus more on the enviroment and less on the creatures themselves. 

Try throwing them in morally grey scenarios that challenge their characters' ideals, where there's not necessarily a right or wrong answer. 

You could also set up a situation, depending on how your gods work in your world, in which the clerics and paladins are forced to work together with some divine folks who are from the opposing deity. For example, a Paladin of Thor might have to work with a Cleric of Loki to get something accomplished. How's he going to handle that? Could make for some interesting RP.

Quote from MoernerKlub >>

Hey everyone, thanks for the suggestions, the moral dilemas and traps can help, but even the dex and int checks still get a +11 bonus to saves, so it makes it really hard for them to fail any save at all. 

I searched around and aparently, according to Jeremy Crawford tweet, the auras do stack, it also seems to be a general consensus from what I searched, that they do stack. 

 

 Those tweets were from 5 years ago. Since then they put out an errata for the DMG which included the following:

Chapter 8 Combining Game Effects (p. 252). This is a new subsection at the end of the “Combat” section: Different game features can affect a target at the same time. But when two or more game features have the same name, only the effects of one of them—the most potent one—apply while the durations of the effects overlap. For example, if a target is ignited by a fire elemental's Fire Form trait, the ongoing fire damage doesn't increase if the burning target is subjected to that trait again. Game features include spells, class features, feats, racial traits, monster abilities, and magic items. See the related rule in the “Combining Magical Effects” section of chapter 10 in the Player's Handbook.

I‘m pretty sure that would have to apply to Aura of Protection as well.

The auras have limited range. Put them into a situation in which they cannot all stand together next to each other to benefit from an aura.

Simple example: To advance in the dungeon you need to pull down 6 levers simultaneously. Each lever is 50' from the other levers. Good luck stacking auras in that configuration.

Oohh yeah! I ran an encounter before pandemic with a Minotaur Skeleton backed by three waves of skeletons, and then a custom, legendary Mummy and a Bone Golem (my homebrew) came towards end and the mummy started recreating the skeletons....

The party got super lucky and managed to bring up a Magic Circle from a scroll just in the nick of time and were able to bargain their way out of the temple.....