Hi I have a major issue with encounters being too easy.

I use the recommended XP method of determining monster "budget."

I have tried everything from sending whole armies of dudes (eg like 20-40 hobgoblins supported by giants or 50+ thugs/veterans to doing a monster killing grind with mixes of various sized monsters om several linked encounters to single big beasts).

None of them even scratch the party and all are dispatched with ease.

Party currently consists of 3 lvl 8  (barbarian, rogue, thief) and a level 7 ranger.  There is often a fifth player as well.

Last night my party faced a vampire and vampire spawn.  Paladin kept  shutting down regeneration of vampire with radiant attacks.  

It was all over in 5 turns.

The vampire was smashed on 1st turn losing half of his hit points.  The vampire spawn also lost half of hers (her regen ability was also shut down).

Vampire never got a single bite off and never managed to charm (didn't know bezerker was immune and everyone else passed saves).  I did use legendary movement to try to stay out of reach but it didn't work given terrain.

It was very disappointing given it was meant to be an epic boss fight. 

So what can I do to improve the encounters to make then more challenging and not a turkey shoot.

How many encounters are you running per day? While a martial party is less overpowered than a caster party if you’re only running one or two, D&D is still meant to be a war of attrition, and if the characters are almost always fresh off a long rest they’ll steamroll anything no matter how hard. Grind them down with at least 3 encounters a day (and if it’s 3, they should all be Deadly), so they have to short rest and head into the final fight missing key spell slots, hit points, etc. And remember, the monsters are smart: many will happily target the squishiest party members, and bosses will focus attacks on one character at a time. If you’re already doing that I’m not sure what to do to be honest.

I never use those recommendations..If you plan to follow their recommendations, then you need to throw 6-8 fights at them between every Long Rest, and you shouldn’t give them any Magic Items since those recommendations were written assuming no Magic Items at all. (I assume it was easier to write the guesstimates that way and then suggested DMs up the difficulty of their fights. 🤷‍♂️)

I make every fight Hard+ usually Deadly, and I only do 3-4 per Adventuring Day, and then I have non-combat days in between just to mix it up a bit. I expected someone will be along in a bit to tell you to not do what I do because it won’t work. (Folks often do.) I personally rely on my experience to adjust combats partway through if it turns out I made things a bit extra. If you’re not comfortable “hot fixing” encounters, then maybe listen to those folks instead of me. 🤷‍♂️) I will admit however that I rarely need to make my fights easier, in fact I end up needing to make things a little harder* partway through.One suggestion if you do need to make them easier though, when the Party focuses down one (or all) of the “bosses,” have the rest of the monsters retreat.

* (If I want the fight to take much longer I add waves of minions, if I just want it to be more challenging I’ll add HP to the boss monsters. There are folks who consider that a mortal sin. I say horse poopy to that. I can be assured that I will give my players challenging combats and not accidentally TPK. Isn’t that the goal after all?)

I knew about the 4-6 a day and tried it but it did nothing (they literally trashed every single encounter and never broke a sweat).

I an thonking every encounter is going to have to be Deadly +.

One idea I have had is to use the Player Character creation system to create humanoid enemies.  So they will be fighting their equivalents.

Anyone else do this?  Does it work?

Lyxen, they didn't take any rests in that particular adventure.  Short rests are taken in others though, usually to recharge the berzerker barbarian and for paladin to do a speech.

Ok so I will scrap the NPC PCs.  

I might just have to live with the Players slaughtering through everything.

I have been been using ambushes.  Eg In that Vampire story they got ambushed by a small herd of ghouls (10 of them).  Only 1 character got paralysed (eventually) and all 10 were dispatched without much worry. 

Yeah, try to make encounters that involve fewer, higher CR creatures rather than lots of minions. While 20 goblins or whatever might be the same encounter rating as an adult dragon, the party will have a much harder time fighting the dragon because of the goblins' low AC, hit points, and to hit bonuses.

One way I tested my parties abilities is by throwing a very deadly encounter at them, but giving them a lifeline during the battle (Such as having an NPC ally turning up if it looks like their about to die), the first time I did this 3 of the party members had single digit health and one of them was downed 4 times during the fight (I never had to use the lifeline in the end). If you have a lot of time to prepare you can also run a mock battle (assuming you have your players Character Sheet's) and see for yourself just how effective they can be. Use the environment to your advantage, put enemies with ranged attacks in environment full of sticky mud that acts as difficult terrain. Have ranged enemies pop in and out of cover. Have enemies with blindsight fight in areas of heavy fog. 

I notice you're using a lot of undead in your encounter's, undead's CR tend to come from the fact they are tanky (Mostly from resistances) rather than the damage they deal (With a few exceptions like Banshee's). If your party have magical weapons and are capable of dealing radiant damage, the CR of a vampire spawn isn't 5, it actually becomes 2 as their resistance's and regeneration becomes useless. If you only have access to monsters from the monster manual, some better undead grunt enemies might be Wraith's, Flameskull's, Mummy's and Wight's. If you have access to Volo's and Mordenkainen's you have access to Bodak's (Very good strong against melee attackers), Allip and Deathlock's. For more higher level encounters you have Boneclaws (these guys are devastating in combat), Devourer's (Technically a demon, but they produce lots of undead), and Maurezhi (Stronger Ghoul).

Different monsters challenge different styles of parties differently. I'm currently D'ming a party of similar classes and levels to your (lvl 7 Fighter, Ranger, Monk & Warlock) and their last encounter was against 2 Rot Troll's. Instead of regeneration they have an aura that deal's damage to creatures within 5ft. of them, which makes it particularly devastating against martial melee groups. They barely survived (Started the battle at almost full strength) but thought it was a very challenging encounter where they realised they had to adapt away from just melee. Sometimes the right monsters make a difference, my friend put 3 Scarecrow's against a party of lvl 8's and they got TPK'd, despite the fact it should've been a medium encounter.

Quote from DenisK >>

I knew about the 4-6 a day and tried it but it did nothing (they literally trashed every single encounter and never broke a sweat).

I an thonking every encounter is going to have to be Deadly +.

One idea I have had is to use the Player Character creation system to create humanoid enemies.  So they will be fighting their equivalents.

Anyone else do this?  Does it work?

 I basically always do Deadly+. I have been told by outside observers that my encounters are “mean” to my players sometimes. I politely (well, politely for me) thanked them for their input and went about my business.

I actually had a player come up to me once and suggest that not every fight needs to be that hard. Of course, through my practice of Hot Fixing encounters, they have the appearance and feeling of being skin-of-the-teeth ridonculous, but they never get overwhelmed. That’s what I aim for, to make them feel like their backs are against it the whole day, so that by the end they are so grateful to hear there won’t be another encounter before their long rest.

Some tips:

1. The  key to running combat in 5e is all about the Action Economy. If the Party has more Actions than whatever they’re fighting, the Party has the advantage in that fight.
2. if your monsters are Intelligent, run them as such.
3. It isn’t all about straight damage, battlefield control is way more effective than one might think.
4. The players have absolutely no idea how hard a fight you planned is at the beginning of the fight, they only know how tough it was at the end.
5. Don’t let your players metagame the fight.
6. Stack the deck against the Party.

Keeping that in mind:

I regularly design imported NPCs as PCs and spec them out as such, I feel it helps me get into their heads better. There are pros and cons to that approach.

• When it comes to DDB’s system, they cannot be used in the Encounter Builder and automatically show as friendlies in the Combat Tracker.
• They have waayyy more ”stuff” than they will ever possibly use in a 5-10 round encounter. (The vast majority of combat encounters last less than 5 Rounds.) All of that extraneous “stuff” actually makes them harder to run, which is why monster/NPC statblocks are designed the way they are.
• They are glass cannons. They will drop like flies unless there is one of them for each PC, and there are reasons that’s not preferable, like potential TPKs for instance.
  (As an example, the current BBE the party is investigating popped in for some foreshadowing. He is a 16th-Level Sorcerer with Homebrewed Race and Feats. I also stacked additional Feats on just because. I also gave him Magic Items galore. I mean, if he was a PC it would be stupid OP. The party of four 11th-level Characters did, like, over 130 damage to him in the first round. That’s enough damage to him in one round of combat to overkill him. He would have gotten off a Spell and a Cantrip and died within 6 seconds of rolling Initiative had that been the whole fight. Instead he laughed and mocked them by saying “that tickled” and then he teleported away to fight again another day.)

When I actually intend for that NPC to fight the party later in the story, he will have a stripped down NPC statblock (because he won’t be using tools and such during combat), he will have somewhere around 400-500 HP, and he will also have a cult of minions to act as distractions and meatshields for him.

I hope some of that helps.

IamSposta,

 - Outnumbering - yes my foes usually outnumber the party by anywhere to 4:1 or even more.  In a recent encounter they fought a force of 20 bad guys who surrounded them and flanked them yet who all died sad little deaths without having much impact.

Did your PCs roll their stats? Do they have a significant number of magic items? Either one can cause their power level to be significantly off.

Quote from DenisK >>

IamSposta,

Thanks for some suprb tips.

 

 

Just on some of your points -

- Yes I do use spellcasters reasonably often.  None has lasted more than a turn or two - they usually get combo killed by Paladin using Misty Step and Rogue sniping them using Sneak Attack (thus stealing kills off the Paladin).  Occasionally the Tabaxi berzerker has used its mega speed (80 feet) to get in touch with a spell caster and tear them a new one in a single turn.  Yes, I do hide them behind other baddies out of the way - but misty step and arrows bypasses all that.  

- As for vampire, yes they researched it and found out sunlight hurt the vampire.  

 - Outnumbering - yes my foes usually outnumber the party by anywhere to 4:1 or even more.  In a recent encounter they fought a force of 20 bad guys who surrounded them and flanked them yet who all died sad little deaths without having much impact.

 A caster in the air will cause more trouble, because Misty Step will be less useful to try and get a melee attack against a flying caster.

The other consideration is terrain. Have enemies spread out so the party needs to split up and can’t all be in the pally’s aura. Have some people with ranged weapons up in trees or on a mezzanine level indoors while tanky types are on the ground. Or on the far side of a chasm with a narrow bridge so they get peppered with arrows while something big blocks their way. Find ways to counter their mobility. Have enemies with burrow speeds that can go around and behind them easily.

At level 8, it would be reasonable to have some flying enemies - removes the pally being able to smite, no one is adjacent so rogues will have a hard time getting sneak attack. 

On thing I have noticed is if you want to actually challenge them, you need to use an equal number of monsters of CR roughly equivalent to the party level.  So in this case try throwing 4 CR 8's at them.  Throw in one more if the 5th player is there.  

This can of course vary a little, such as a CR 10 with 3 CR 7 lackeys.  But if you are honestly trying to give them a tough challenge, assuming tactically competent players, this is what I have found does it.  Period.  

Actually terrain is something I've really tried to incorporate into the game - LOS blockers, obstacles, cover etc .  However the players completely ignore it and it hasn't done the bad guys much good either as all it does is prolong the fight, not make it more challenging.

A big problem is the daft grid system that I hate.  Problem with grids is they give players a bird eye view of the whole thing which then gives them all the approaches.  All of a sudden it's degenerated into counting squares for advantage.  You have to literally micromanage every square  if you want it to act as a hinderance.  Stuff like Misty Step or 80 foot movement just makes even more of a mockery of the efforts to place terrain.

I have also added environmental terrain and features to promote players engaging in different ways with  the combat encounter (and more swashbuckling goodness!).  Again ignored in favour of basic chop/shoot/magic carnage.  They don't even use cover when provided.

As such I am actually thinking of scrapping terrain features simply because it's  been a waste time - literally every single combat encounter's going to be effectively an empty room from now on because that's how they effectively play it.

I have found 2 tools that really help me challenge my players are smart NPCs and NPCs that use readied actions. An NPC that thinks and is careful can cause a lot of players to be surprised and an NPC that anticipates their next move and acts preemptively will downright shock them.  Let's say the Paladin tries to misty step but the NPC casts counterspell and the two hidden snipers use their readied actions to fire on the first person to cast (Paladin) with advantage.  This will force the players to consider that NPCs may not just react but be proactive.

I am a little confused how the vampires didnt get a single attack in? Do your enemies never go first? 

Vampire rolled extremely low for initiative (grand total of 9).  All but the ranger went before him. 

 He did get several attacks but never managed to roll AC for grapple and then tried charming only for players to pass charm tests.

He did use Legendary Move to get away several times and a couple of times to try to attack.  Note he lost 60+ HP in first turn, and then averaged 30-40 HP loss a turn without regen (he was being hit by radiant spells and holy water).    So no regen and his attacks never went through.  

The Vampire Spawn was in a similar boat - she hit the Paladin once and did a bit of damage but was butchered by arrow fire and radiant damage.

I had both of them crawling on the walls and ceilings trying to get into a better position but the arrow fire, spells and bottles of holy water did their work regardless.

I did disengage each one once for self preservation purposes (to avoid the AC23 Paladin and the AC20 Berzerker who were doing massive amounts of damage)  and to get into a better position.  

Quote from DenisK >>

I did disengage each one once for self preservation purposes (to avoid the AC23 Paladin and the AC20 Berzerker who were doing massive amounts of damage)  and to get into a better position.  

I think I see the source of some problems...that's about two points higher than I'd really expect at that level.

I’m glad to know some of that was helpful. Hopefully some of this might be too:

Remember when I mentioned that Control is often more valuable than straight damage? Have the enemies hit them with effects that inflict conditions on the PCs. If the Tabaxi Berzerker is Restrained or Paralyzed, where they gonna run? If the Rogue is Blinded, how they gonna Sneak Attack? If the Paladin is somehow Frightened of a spellcaster, how they gonna move closer to that enemy, or if they are in an area of Silence, how they gonna cast Misty Step with its Verbal component? Silence would also shut down Magic Items with Command Words too by the way. Or maybe that band of ne’er do wells (or that Hobgoblin Legion) has a lunatic with a Shield of Missile Attraction as a sort of mascot. (Kinda like the guy in the gimpsuit who was strapped to the front of the truck in that last Road Warrior movie.)
I have to ask, when your “hostile spellcasters” have their turns, why don’t they use part of their Movement to pop out from total cover to take their Action(s), and then use the rest of their Movement to get back behind total cover? (Even if the PCs might technically be able to see those NPCs, “total cover” means they cannot be targeted at all. All they would have to worry about would be AoEs, and since Total Cover includes Half Cover, they would also benefit from a +5 to saves.)

The PCs may have learned about the Vampire’s issues with sunlight and radiant damage, but I guarantee that they wouldn’t have any idea if that particular Vampire has an AC boost from a simple shield. Perhaps it Also has a Necromancer stashed away somewhere providing support of some kind in exchange for the promise of immortality. Or maybe the Vampire is a Necromancer, or better yet a Diviner. That way it could have decided to patron a “Warlock of the Undead”* as a servant. Another thing worth noting is that adding the Spellcasting, Spells, and other ability (Portent/Grim Harvest) from either of those monsters to a Vampire should affect the Vamp enough to change its CR, so the fight can be more challenging, but the XP can stay the same.
*(Along the lines of Warlocks of the Fiend, Archfey, and GOO, only with a spiffy new UA smell!)

Also, don’t forget that if it would be dramatically advantageous to do so, have the Vampire’s servant(s) and some undead minions arrive at an opportune time towards the end of the fight to assault and distract the party, giving the Vampire an opportunity to use its [Tooltip Not Found] of [Tooltip Not Found] to GTFO. Or perhaps the Vampire has a poor hostage somewhere wearing a platinum ring, one half of a pair that carries a permanent Warding Bond enchantment. And everything the Party does to the Vampire, half of it will be killing a poor innocent, and when the Vampire reveals this the feel compelled to let it go to fight another day. Remember, the trick is to make the Players feel the level of difficulty and tension, so ratchet up the difficulty and the tension. Innocent civilians being at risk is a time honored way to pull that off. (Heck, if it worked in Speed, it could potentially work for anyone.)

As for using grids and/or terrain, etc., I also don’t use any of that. The usually get a basic line drawing of an overhead view of any locations where I plan for a fight to happen. That’s just to give them a general idea of the area’s layout, but that’s as far as I’ma go. They can feel free to use M&Ms as proxies, and then as a bonus they get to eat what they kill.
(Besides, minis and such are expensive, and I have better things to spend my money on, like food and my mortgage.)