So my husband and I have 2 kids under the age of 3 so we don't get to get out a whole lot. So we've created a campaign at home with just the two of us playing 3 characters a piece with 2 of them being home-brewed characters. At the moment I'm the DM and I feel like we're leveling up way too fast. I throw extra stuff in there from time to time because I feel like my husbands home-brewed character is WAY too overpowering and we literally never have a good challenge. How do you guys keep it difficult but not make people feel like they're being targeted, especially where there's only two of us.
Remember to divide the monsters XP by the number of PCs present. If that still is resulting in leveling up too fast then alter the xp gains to a lower amount and slow progression down to where you would like it.
One of the biggest issues is you running the monsters while fighting against them. This alone eliminates a lot of the surprise and strategy involved in the game especially if you know what is coming up and what not to do.
Surprise situations, traps, the environment are all ways to make an encounter more difficult without adding more monsters.
If need be, increase monster hp, give them an extra attack (two weapon fighting monsters!) or a level in a pc class.
Remember that D&D is built on something like four encounters before a long rest. Not every encounter should be tough, those easy encounters still take up spells and such and do slight damage to the PCs to make the final battle a bit harder without being that much more deadly.
if the encounters are too easy, put the monsters' hit point to the maximum value, and maybe, give the monster the possibility to use some potion (healing, heroism...if they can drink a potion of course).
I've found the most interesting conflicts are ones where the character's weaknesses are challenged, and/or the monsters are engaging the characters in an unfair way. For example, the monsters have Darkvision and the players don't, so they fight in pitch blackness, plus something keeps putting out whatever light the players create. Alternatively, the monsters have Blindsight and the players don't, and they use magical darkness that no light can pierce. Fighting at disadvantage, while the opponent also has advantage on you, is a huge boon that can make even mild monsters much more vicious.
Also, don't play so many characters. It gives you too many options. Restrictions breed creativity. If the players are going "but I don't have anything to handle that!" then that's perfect. It'll get them to start stretching their imaginations to figure out how they can beat it.
This reminds me of Super Dungeon Explore, and therein may lie a partial solution to your problem - when playing cooperatively in SDE, the players assume the roles of a hero or two (I echo the other posters and recommend no more than two characters for each of you), and the dungeon denizens are "automated" via a deck of cards. As heroes go through the dungeon, killing and maiming everything they see, they accumulate points (wrath) that dictate what the monsters do. In your deck, you could have a card that says "all monsters make one attack against the closest enemy" or "all monsters dash toward the player with the most wrath points" and another that says "the monsters fall back and use range attacks" for example. You could create cards that say they target whoever is a spellcaster or whoever has the most hit points. There's no limit to how you do your cards, and you can shuffle the deck before every encounter to ensure the fights are different and it randomizes who gets targeted. You could do this on 3.5" cards, or use regular playing cards, or perhaps even generate a table that you can roll dice on to see what the monsters do. Just brainstorming - but it'd be a way to make fights more unpredictable.
I would really cut down the number of characters to 4. And nothing home brewed, at least not for a while. It takes a lot of getting into the system to understand where it breaks, especially as you introduce material that has not been playtested.
Especially with the way that you are doing it. It'd actually be more fun to run a solo type game, which is somewhat more challenging (both for player and DM) but rewarding.
So I kind of do all of your suggestions already. I double the dice on hit points and even when coming into monsters and traps and stuff I stay silent and let him lead. I really think it's his character (A hellsworn paladin teefling who can use his tail to weild a damn great ax) that alone kills everything without the ability to wield fire and all of his other "add ons" that he's came up with (mashing multiple other homebrews he's found online together). I literally turned an adult dragon into an OP ancient an he obliterated it :/
it's because of "his armor and this ability and that ability and blah blah blah" I've tried confronting him a few times about it and he gives me the same crap. :l
At least with all the classes in the Players Handbook I'm pretty sure most massive AC granting abilities require you to be wearing no armor. There are maybe a few options that might give you +1 or +2 but this very much seems like its just his own class that he made to be awesome at everything. I'm not sure there is much you can do as it seems he enjoys walking all over everything and not having a challenge.
24 AC should be REALLY tough to attain, especially at Lvl 10. It would require Legendary level Plate armor, or a combination of many rare magic items, such as ring of protection, cloak of protection, magic shield, and magic armor. If his AC is from items, I would dial back how much treasure you give out. If he says he is getting the AC from abilities, have him cite references and look them up to see what limitations they have, and if he is abiding by those limits.
His Hitpoints seem VERY high for a 10th level player... even with a 20 CON (+5 bonus)... from CON he gets 50hp, and from a fighter's Hit Dice he should have a d10. To have 140hp he would have had to roll an average of a 9 on a d10... ten times in a row. The odds of that being possible are VERY slim even with a Barbarian's hit die of a d12 (which he could not have with that high AC, because he couldn't use armor).
His Attributes are WAY too high. A 10th level character should just be getting their first stat to 20, and the rest will average 10-15. The fact that he already has THREE attributes that are a 20 is unheard of, especially when you consider his others are two 18s and a 15. He would have had to roll 18 (the maximum die roll) FIVE times out of six rolls. Again, the odds that he actually rolled that are nearly impossible. Then he would have had to use every one of his stat increases from leveling to make the three stats go to 20.
Also, the wielding a greataxe with his tail is ridiculously overpowered homebrewing. As far as I know there is nothing in the tiefling race that shows their tails are even prehensile, more or less dextrous enough to wield a weapon, nor strong enough to swing it with any force, especially a weapon that typically requires two hands just to wield ! If you want fun adventures, I would tell him to cut out all the homebrewing. if he can't find it in a licensed WotC book, it doesn't exist. If he doesn't like it, he can DM.
As for the levelling too quick issue, I think you may simply be giving everyone the full XP for the monsters. It is supposed to be divided by the number of party members who participated in the fight, so a monster that gives 300xp, which is killed by a six-player party, should give 50xp to each party member (300/6=50).
From my understanding it was a homebrew class not something from the players handbook. Hence his numbers are right... Lol.
The fast leveling might be because of having only two players and the fact he is basically a walking tank. So might be better to divide the xp by 4 even though there are only two players.
Okay so I'm feeling a lot of you not reading the above conversation and now treating me like an idiot. I DO divide it and as NightsLastHero said it's all homebrew.
So my husband and I have 2 kids under the age of 3 so we don't get to get out a whole lot. So we've created a campaign at home with just the two of us playing 3 characters a piece with 2 of them being home-brewed characters. At the moment I'm the DM and I feel like we're leveling up way too fast. I throw extra stuff in there from time to time because I feel like my husbands home-brewed character is WAY too overpowering and we literally never have a good challenge. How do you guys keep it difficult but not make people feel like they're being targeted, especially where there's only two of us.
-Mom
Play two characters each. And don't use homebrew. Most written adventures assume 4 players, and a lot of homebrew content is not balanced.
Who runs the monsters?
Remember to divide the monsters XP by the number of PCs present. If that still is resulting in leveling up too fast then alter the xp gains to a lower amount and slow progression down to where you would like it.
One of the biggest issues is you running the monsters while fighting against them. This alone eliminates a lot of the surprise and strategy involved in the game especially if you know what is coming up and what not to do.
Surprise situations, traps, the environment are all ways to make an encounter more difficult without adding more monsters.
If need be, increase monster hp, give them an extra attack (two weapon fighting monsters!) or a level in a pc class.
Remember that D&D is built on something like four encounters before a long rest. Not every encounter should be tough, those easy encounters still take up spells and such and do slight damage to the PCs to make the final battle a bit harder without being that much more deadly.
A lot depends on what he is playing though.
if the encounters are too easy, put the monsters' hit point to the maximum value, and maybe, give the monster the possibility to use some potion (healing, heroism...if they can drink a potion of course).
I've found the most interesting conflicts are ones where the character's weaknesses are challenged, and/or the monsters are engaging the characters in an unfair way. For example, the monsters have Darkvision and the players don't, so they fight in pitch blackness, plus something keeps putting out whatever light the players create. Alternatively, the monsters have Blindsight and the players don't, and they use magical darkness that no light can pierce. Fighting at disadvantage, while the opponent also has advantage on you, is a huge boon that can make even mild monsters much more vicious.
Also, don't play so many characters. It gives you too many options. Restrictions breed creativity. If the players are going "but I don't have anything to handle that!" then that's perfect. It'll get them to start stretching their imaginations to figure out how they can beat it.
This reminds me of Super Dungeon Explore, and therein may lie a partial solution to your problem - when playing cooperatively in SDE, the players assume the roles of a hero or two (I echo the other posters and recommend no more than two characters for each of you), and the dungeon denizens are "automated" via a deck of cards. As heroes go through the dungeon, killing and maiming everything they see, they accumulate points (wrath) that dictate what the monsters do. In your deck, you could have a card that says "all monsters make one attack against the closest enemy" or "all monsters dash toward the player with the most wrath points" and another that says "the monsters fall back and use range attacks" for example. You could create cards that say they target whoever is a spellcaster or whoever has the most hit points. There's no limit to how you do your cards, and you can shuffle the deck before every encounter to ensure the fights are different and it randomizes who gets targeted. You could do this on 3.5" cards, or use regular playing cards, or perhaps even generate a table that you can roll dice on to see what the monsters do. Just brainstorming - but it'd be a way to make fights more unpredictable.
I do
-Mom
I would really cut down the number of characters to 4. And nothing home brewed, at least not for a while. It takes a lot of getting into the system to understand where it breaks, especially as you introduce material that has not been playtested.
Especially with the way that you are doing it. It'd actually be more fun to run a solo type game, which is somewhat more challenging (both for player and DM) but rewarding.
So I kind of do all of your suggestions already. I double the dice on hit points and even when coming into monsters and traps and stuff I stay silent and let him lead. I really think it's his character (A hellsworn paladin teefling who can use his tail to weild a damn great ax) that alone kills everything without the ability to wield fire and all of his other "add ons" that he's came up with (mashing multiple other homebrews he's found online together). I literally turned an adult dragon into an OP ancient an he obliterated it :/
-Mom
Problem is probably with him. I wouldn't say much to the tail great axe as long as he isn't wielding two shields in his hands to add to his AC.
Any chance you can post his pc? And what level are you guys?
He's a level Level 10 AC 24 HP 140 ST 20 DX 20 Con 20 Int 18 Wis 15 Cha18
-Mom
There is no way without cheating that his character should have 18-20 in everything. Even an insanely good roll should not have allowed that.
how did he get an ac of 24?
His HP also appear to be on the level of Barbarian.
If your current CR doesn't seem a challenge, increase the CR and # of monsters you use until you reach a challenging level.
it's because of "his armor and this ability and that ability and blah blah blah" I've tried confronting him a few times about it and he gives me the same crap. :l
-Mom
At least with all the classes in the Players Handbook I'm pretty sure most massive AC granting abilities require you to be wearing no armor. There are maybe a few options that might give you +1 or +2 but this very much seems like its just his own class that he made to be awesome at everything. I'm not sure there is much you can do as it seems he enjoys walking all over everything and not having a challenge.
Lol right? I mean, I love him, but games aren't meant to be walk throughs :l
-Mom
So any idea when Phase2 hits?
-Mom
Sounds to me like he is fudging a LOT of numbers.
24 AC should be REALLY tough to attain, especially at Lvl 10. It would require Legendary level Plate armor, or a combination of many rare magic items, such as ring of protection, cloak of protection, magic shield, and magic armor. If his AC is from items, I would dial back how much treasure you give out. If he says he is getting the AC from abilities, have him cite references and look them up to see what limitations they have, and if he is abiding by those limits.
His Hitpoints seem VERY high for a 10th level player... even with a 20 CON (+5 bonus)... from CON he gets 50hp, and from a fighter's Hit Dice he should have a d10. To have 140hp he would have had to roll an average of a 9 on a d10... ten times in a row. The odds of that being possible are VERY slim even with a Barbarian's hit die of a d12 (which he could not have with that high AC, because he couldn't use armor).
His Attributes are WAY too high. A 10th level character should just be getting their first stat to 20, and the rest will average 10-15. The fact that he already has THREE attributes that are a 20 is unheard of, especially when you consider his others are two 18s and a 15. He would have had to roll 18 (the maximum die roll) FIVE times out of six rolls. Again, the odds that he actually rolled that are nearly impossible. Then he would have had to use every one of his stat increases from leveling to make the three stats go to 20.
Also, the wielding a greataxe with his tail is ridiculously overpowered homebrewing. As far as I know there is nothing in the tiefling race that shows their tails are even prehensile, more or less dextrous enough to wield a weapon, nor strong enough to swing it with any force, especially a weapon that typically requires two hands just to wield ! If you want fun adventures, I would tell him to cut out all the homebrewing. if he can't find it in a licensed WotC book, it doesn't exist. If he doesn't like it, he can DM.
As for the levelling too quick issue, I think you may simply be giving everyone the full XP for the monsters. It is supposed to be divided by the number of party members who participated in the fight, so a monster that gives 300xp, which is killed by a six-player party, should give 50xp to each party member (300/6=50).
From my understanding it was a homebrew class not something from the players handbook. Hence his numbers are right... Lol.
The fast leveling might be because of having only two players and the fact he is basically a walking tank. So might be better to divide the xp by 4 even though there are only two players.
Okay so I'm feeling a lot of you not reading the above conversation and now treating me like an idiot. I DO divide it and as NightsLastHero said it's all homebrew.
-Mom
There's actually 6 characters we're dividing it into.
-Mom