I want to pit my party of seven L6 characters against some type of undead boss, and the CR 15 In-Lair Death Tyrant fits nicely. According to the D&D beyond encounter builder, this would be a medium difficulty encounter if the Death Tyrant is out of its lair, but there was no In-Lair option, so I substituted other CR15 creatures at which point it became a hard encounter. Seeing as this is a boss battle, a hard encounter seems fine to me.
However, according to the Solo Monster Challange Rating table in XGtE, a party of six L6 characters would be well-matched against a CR 10 creature, and one can assume that adding 1 more player would bump that to CR11 or 12, not 15.
So my questions are, which encounter builder is more accurate? Is there something I'm missing? Is a CR 15 Death Tyrant gonna mop the floor with my party? What if I power down its damage a little?
They might be alright but it's also the kind of fight that can turn on the party in a split second. Beholders are strange because the randomness of the rolls means there might be a lot of time spent with non-damaging eye rays, but all of a sudden you roll a string of the damaging ones and the enervation/disintegration/death rays can stack up really quickly. Additionally, these monsters are probably smart enough to take good guesses as to which characters to target with which rays, so the disintegration/death rays could realistically one-shot one of your players with a decent roll. I recently ran a beholder against my party of 6 level 10 characters and they handled it really well, but I still killed the Paladin with the last eye-ray before they killed it, a death ray that hit for 65 damage.
If you want it to be a difficult encounter with a reasonable chance of PC death, I'd say go for it. Characters die in D&D and if the Death Tyrant drops one or two of them then maybe they need to run. If you want to be cautious, you can nerf the damage and keep a few minions waiting in the wings of the lair that the Death Tyrant can call in if you realize mid-combat that you nerfed it too much.
Yeah, I was kinda worried about the one-shot potential of its damaging beams. I do want the threat of death to be real, but I not so overwhelming that they don't think they can beat it and just give up. I might tone down the damage a bit, or maybe have him use things like the disintegration ray to affect them in other ways (causing chunks of ceiling to fall on them or opening pit traps, etc.) Anyway, I appreciate the input!
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Hey yall, fairly new DM here.
I want to pit my party of seven L6 characters against some type of undead boss, and the CR 15 In-Lair Death Tyrant fits nicely. According to the D&D beyond encounter builder, this would be a medium difficulty encounter if the Death Tyrant is out of its lair, but there was no In-Lair option, so I substituted other CR15 creatures at which point it became a hard encounter. Seeing as this is a boss battle, a hard encounter seems fine to me.
However, according to the Solo Monster Challange Rating table in XGtE, a party of six L6 characters would be well-matched against a CR 10 creature, and one can assume that adding 1 more player would bump that to CR11 or 12, not 15.
So my questions are, which encounter builder is more accurate? Is there something I'm missing? Is a CR 15 Death Tyrant gonna mop the floor with my party? What if I power down its damage a little?
Thanks in advance :)
This seems to be balanced, this should work out
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They might be alright but it's also the kind of fight that can turn on the party in a split second. Beholders are strange because the randomness of the rolls means there might be a lot of time spent with non-damaging eye rays, but all of a sudden you roll a string of the damaging ones and the enervation/disintegration/death rays can stack up really quickly. Additionally, these monsters are probably smart enough to take good guesses as to which characters to target with which rays, so the disintegration/death rays could realistically one-shot one of your players with a decent roll. I recently ran a beholder against my party of 6 level 10 characters and they handled it really well, but I still killed the Paladin with the last eye-ray before they killed it, a death ray that hit for 65 damage.
If you want it to be a difficult encounter with a reasonable chance of PC death, I'd say go for it. Characters die in D&D and if the Death Tyrant drops one or two of them then maybe they need to run. If you want to be cautious, you can nerf the damage and keep a few minions waiting in the wings of the lair that the Death Tyrant can call in if you realize mid-combat that you nerfed it too much.
"To die would be an awfully big adventure"
Yeah, I was kinda worried about the one-shot potential of its damaging beams. I do want the threat of death to be real, but I not so overwhelming that they don't think they can beat it and just give up. I might tone down the damage a bit, or maybe have him use things like the disintegration ray to affect them in other ways (causing chunks of ceiling to fall on them or opening pit traps, etc.) Anyway, I appreciate the input!