I have been playing d&d since childhood, mostly PC. switched to tabletop 6y ago and thoroughly enjoying it. So last year I started being a DM for quite an experienced party of 4 players who have been doing TTRPG since childhood.
So my hook is they are evil, drow, underdark and I've been having a lot of fun creating the campaign line and adventures. They are thoroughly enjoying it, but I need some advice on building challenging encounters for them.
So they are L8 now (made em start at L4). Decided to make it fun for them so they find more magical items and started out quite well too. But the encounters I throw at em are just weak, I use dndbeyond as it's super easy but they are clearly finding it way too easy and it's slightly bothering me too.
Any advice you guys can give me to build more challenging encounters that don't necessarily take 2 hours for an encounter fight wise ? I feel like I'm not creating any damage either due to their high AC and variety of creative spells etc
Just throwing numbers at them isn't solving it either.
How many encounters are you doing per day? Upping that can help, as it drains the PCs of limited resources.
But, if you were a bit over generous with magic items, that can also change things. Consider a +1sword means a melee character will hit as reliably as some multiple levels higher (the next proficiency bonus tier). So account for those items when you build an encounter.
Balancing encounters is one of the hardest parts of DMing. Every single party is different--a highly optimized party with a tank, healing, and strong strikers can fight well above their level, for example. Challenge rating, the tool Wizards provides for estimating what monsters your players should be fighting, is notoriously unreliable due to its inability to account for individual parties, its failure to account for items, and its basis on a fictionalized version of an "adventuring day" no one actually follows.
Generally speaking, if you are using the DDB encounter builder, you do not want to throw anything less than "deadly" at your party, unless you are trying to make the fight easy. You do not want to be too far past the deadly marker (unless it is something like a boss fight), but you should pay attention to how much each monster adds at a time, and try and make something that pushes it a bit past that "deadly" cap.
Beyond that, fights in 5e are designed to be very, very quick--3 rounds or so--and monster HP is set accordingly. This again is based on the fictional view that you are doing something like 8 encounters per day. That is not how most people play, which means these 3-round fights do not put a sufficient tax on player resources. Doubling (or more) monster's HP allows you to make the fights last a bit longer and therefore be more resource intensive, forcing your players to be a bit more cautious with their spell slots and abilities, and thus making the fights a bit more challenging than "launch everything at them and watch it die quickly."
You can also adjust the fights mid combat--though doing so on D&D Beyond's encounter system is not the most user-friendly of experiences. Adding new monsters. Having the monsters get "enraged" and get a +2 to accuracy and an additional damage die, etc. Adjustments on the fly can help you learn what does and does not work against your particular party, and give you a general idea of what accuracy boosts and damage outputs you should be looking at for future monsters. You can also adjust downward if it looks like you might have gone too far in increasing the power level.
All told, you will get there eventually--it just takes a bit of trial and error and a fair amount of willingness to mess it up a couple of times before you get that gut feeling of "here is what might be right for my party."
One thing I do is I include a "Handicap" character in my encounter calculations, who represents the party's synergy, magic items, and general power. Currently he's making up for a pile of magic items (dragon horde), lycanthropy, and a lovely mix of half-casters and melee builds. The party is well balanced for dealing with combat, so Handy the Cap is level 6, whilst they are all level 11.
The effect this has is to make the encounter calculator I use bump the difficulties up - it thinks it's for a party of 6, one of which is low level, rather than a party of 5.
I adjust Handy's level on the fly, based on how the party does with combats. The last few they just scraped through, so I am going to leave him be for a while!
One thing I do is I include a "Handicap" character in my encounter calculations, who represents the party's synergy, magic items, and general power. Currently he's making up for a pile of magic items (dragon horde), lycanthropy, and a lovely mix of half-casters and melee builds. The party is well balanced for dealing with combat, so Handy the Cap is level 6, whilst they are all level 11.
The effect this has is to make the encounter calculator I use bump the difficulties up - it thinks it's for a party of 6, one of which is low level, rather than a party of 5.
I adjust Handy's level on the fly, based on how the party does with combats. The last few they just scraped through, so I am going to leave him be for a while!
If you want encounters to be scarier but not longer, the best thing to do is to increase damage significantly. If the party is only getting hit once or twice per round, it can still be scary if that hit takes a third to a half of their hit points. When you read off that first damage instance, everyone suddenly sits up a little straighter in their seats.
If you want encounters to be more challenging but maybe a bit longer, the best thing to do is adjust the action economy. Either have special "elite" monsters who get two turns per round, or just add more enemies. The latter does tend to extend combat, but you can combine this with shortening the "mop-up" phase of the fight where enemies surrender or flee when they see they are losing the battle.
The other common problem that often shows up when a DM is struggling to challenge their characters is that they are doing one or two encounters per day. A big part of 5e's intended design is to provide challenge through resource management. When you only have two fights in a day, you can blow all your biggest spells and features and still end the day with gas in the tank. Every now and then you need to really wear down the party so they need to fall back on alternate strategies.
I handle the "adventuring day" problem by restricting long rests. If the party is camping out in the wilderness, they can set up camp and sleep but they do not get the benefits of a long rest. I'll throw one or two encounters at them while traveling to their destination, and then three or four at the destination. Only then do they get to rest. This also allows you to vary the difficulty quite a bit and encourages the party to find alternate solutions to problems besides just fighting everyone.
these are all excellent suggestions, thank you so much and I will definitely incorporate some of these ideas next time
a resume of all your great thoughts for future players
* add a handicap character for dndbeyond encounters to balance things out of half party level for instance * restrict long rests, balance adventure day properly * wear out their resources * add 2 rounds or special effects such as enrage * adjust HP and some stats of monsters on the fly * make encounters at least deadly , slightly more (I Agree that anything less I have thrown at my party they obliterated) * add extra monsters during or from the start, they can flee if they are loosing the battle for instance
These are all fantastic suggestions. Another thing you might consider is making the encounter not about defeating all of the enemies, but about fulfilling a different objective: Stopping the bad guys from breaking a damn, disarming a magical bomb, rescuing a wagon cart of kids that is hanging over a cliff. Giving somewhat timed win-scenarios will help encounters include more strategy of how to complete the goal vs just killing everything in sight. It adds tension and makes the encounters far more memorable than just another slog-fest.
Adding interesting things to your environment works well to up the stakes, too. An encounter doesn't have to include a legendary creature to have lair actions. If you attack the thieves' guild at their hideout, there are likely to be different traps and effects that the members of the guild could activate to give the party an extra challenge.
In addition to previous suggestions, I suggest creative environmental hazards, especially for boss fights. Encounters along the way can be relatively easy if they dare to spare the resources, but doing so they fight the final battle with fewer resources but maybe more HP.
Then put enviro hazards. A great way to avoid having too many enemies and making it draggy.
For example a friend of mine made a boss. Boss was pretty straight forward, but had a "magnetic" wall of liquid iron, which moved us closer every turn (no save) and pulling distance increased by 5ft more every turn. So in addition to fighting the boss, we had to constantly use our movement to avoid the instakill wall and kill the boss quickly too. Made the fight strategically a lot more difficult without adding any dmg or hp. We barely survived the wall and had to make some pretty risky attacks in the end because a party member couldn't avoid the wall another round. So I ended up incapacitated, but luckily survived. 😄
Let any at least semi-intelligent foe use combat tactics and strategic "troop" placement. Let your creatures grapple, shove, disarm and try to trip your Pcs, use the "ready" action - all well within D&D standard rules. Also, provide and use cover.
Ranged Units use hit and run, and focus fire/snipe on spellcasters or ranged Pcs. Have one or two heavy hitters among your melees with heavy/reach weapons while other creatures shield them from direct access... There are plenty of tactics and creature combos, that make fights challenging (to outright deadly) for the PCs.
Also, most of the time, enemies will know the terrain better that the PCs, and might have nasty surprises ready. Have your heard of Tucker's Kobolds? >:)))
Thank you for all the additional tips. I concur that tension is great for gameplay. I learned this by DM’ing for Alien RPG. I rarely give the PC’s relaxing moments in the game. As in, they almost defeated a bunch of spiders , when down the tunnel they hear a massive amount of them suddenly coming their way.m - They have to escape and find a way to maybe collapse the tunnel/cave to not die .
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Smiley day to ya, friends.
I have been playing d&d since childhood, mostly PC. switched to tabletop 6y ago and thoroughly enjoying it.
So last year I started being a DM for quite an experienced party of 4 players who have been doing TTRPG since childhood.
So my hook is they are evil, drow, underdark and I've been having a lot of fun creating the campaign line and adventures.
They are thoroughly enjoying it, but I need some advice on building challenging encounters for them.
So they are L8 now (made em start at L4). Decided to make it fun for them so they find more magical items and started out quite well too.
But the encounters I throw at em are just weak, I use dndbeyond as it's super easy but they are clearly finding it way too easy and it's slightly bothering me too.
Any advice you guys can give me to build more challenging encounters that don't necessarily take 2 hours for an encounter fight wise ?
I feel like I'm not creating any damage either due to their high AC and variety of creative spells etc
Just throwing numbers at them isn't solving it either.
would appreciate some advice
cheers
How many encounters are you doing per day? Upping that can help, as it drains the PCs of limited resources.
But, if you were a bit over generous with magic items, that can also change things. Consider a +1sword means a melee character will hit as reliably as some multiple levels higher (the next proficiency bonus tier). So account for those items when you build an encounter.
Balancing encounters is one of the hardest parts of DMing. Every single party is different--a highly optimized party with a tank, healing, and strong strikers can fight well above their level, for example. Challenge rating, the tool Wizards provides for estimating what monsters your players should be fighting, is notoriously unreliable due to its inability to account for individual parties, its failure to account for items, and its basis on a fictionalized version of an "adventuring day" no one actually follows.
Generally speaking, if you are using the DDB encounter builder, you do not want to throw anything less than "deadly" at your party, unless you are trying to make the fight easy. You do not want to be too far past the deadly marker (unless it is something like a boss fight), but you should pay attention to how much each monster adds at a time, and try and make something that pushes it a bit past that "deadly" cap.
Beyond that, fights in 5e are designed to be very, very quick--3 rounds or so--and monster HP is set accordingly. This again is based on the fictional view that you are doing something like 8 encounters per day. That is not how most people play, which means these 3-round fights do not put a sufficient tax on player resources. Doubling (or more) monster's HP allows you to make the fights last a bit longer and therefore be more resource intensive, forcing your players to be a bit more cautious with their spell slots and abilities, and thus making the fights a bit more challenging than "launch everything at them and watch it die quickly."
You can also adjust the fights mid combat--though doing so on D&D Beyond's encounter system is not the most user-friendly of experiences. Adding new monsters. Having the monsters get "enraged" and get a +2 to accuracy and an additional damage die, etc. Adjustments on the fly can help you learn what does and does not work against your particular party, and give you a general idea of what accuracy boosts and damage outputs you should be looking at for future monsters. You can also adjust downward if it looks like you might have gone too far in increasing the power level.
All told, you will get there eventually--it just takes a bit of trial and error and a fair amount of willingness to mess it up a couple of times before you get that gut feeling of "here is what might be right for my party."
One thing I do is I include a "Handicap" character in my encounter calculations, who represents the party's synergy, magic items, and general power. Currently he's making up for a pile of magic items (dragon horde), lycanthropy, and a lovely mix of half-casters and melee builds. The party is well balanced for dealing with combat, so Handy the Cap is level 6, whilst they are all level 11.
The effect this has is to make the encounter calculator I use bump the difficulties up - it thinks it's for a party of 6, one of which is low level, rather than a party of 5.
I adjust Handy's level on the fly, based on how the party does with combats. The last few they just scraped through, so I am going to leave him be for a while!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
Clever. Really clever.
If you want encounters to be scarier but not longer, the best thing to do is to increase damage significantly. If the party is only getting hit once or twice per round, it can still be scary if that hit takes a third to a half of their hit points. When you read off that first damage instance, everyone suddenly sits up a little straighter in their seats.
If you want encounters to be more challenging but maybe a bit longer, the best thing to do is adjust the action economy. Either have special "elite" monsters who get two turns per round, or just add more enemies. The latter does tend to extend combat, but you can combine this with shortening the "mop-up" phase of the fight where enemies surrender or flee when they see they are losing the battle.
The other common problem that often shows up when a DM is struggling to challenge their characters is that they are doing one or two encounters per day. A big part of 5e's intended design is to provide challenge through resource management. When you only have two fights in a day, you can blow all your biggest spells and features and still end the day with gas in the tank. Every now and then you need to really wear down the party so they need to fall back on alternate strategies.
I handle the "adventuring day" problem by restricting long rests. If the party is camping out in the wilderness, they can set up camp and sleep but they do not get the benefits of a long rest. I'll throw one or two encounters at them while traveling to their destination, and then three or four at the destination. Only then do they get to rest. This also allows you to vary the difficulty quite a bit and encourages the party to find alternate solutions to problems besides just fighting everyone.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
these are all excellent suggestions, thank you so much and I will definitely incorporate some of these ideas next time
a resume of all your great thoughts for future players
* add a handicap character for dndbeyond encounters to balance things out of half party level for instance
* restrict long rests, balance adventure day properly
* wear out their resources
* add 2 rounds or special effects such as enrage
* adjust HP and some stats of monsters on the fly
* make encounters at least deadly , slightly more (I Agree that anything less I have thrown at my party they obliterated)
* add extra monsters during or from the start, they can flee if they are loosing the battle for instance
These are all fantastic suggestions. Another thing you might consider is making the encounter not about defeating all of the enemies, but about fulfilling a different objective: Stopping the bad guys from breaking a damn, disarming a magical bomb, rescuing a wagon cart of kids that is hanging over a cliff. Giving somewhat timed win-scenarios will help encounters include more strategy of how to complete the goal vs just killing everything in sight. It adds tension and makes the encounters far more memorable than just another slog-fest.
Adding interesting things to your environment works well to up the stakes, too. An encounter doesn't have to include a legendary creature to have lair actions. If you attack the thieves' guild at their hideout, there are likely to be different traps and effects that the members of the guild could activate to give the party an extra challenge.
In addition to previous suggestions, I suggest creative environmental hazards, especially for boss fights. Encounters along the way can be relatively easy if they dare to spare the resources, but doing so they fight the final battle with fewer resources but maybe more HP.
Then put enviro hazards. A great way to avoid having too many enemies and making it draggy.
For example a friend of mine made a boss. Boss was pretty straight forward, but had a "magnetic" wall of liquid iron, which moved us closer every turn (no save) and pulling distance increased by 5ft more every turn. So in addition to fighting the boss, we had to constantly use our movement to avoid the instakill wall and kill the boss quickly too. Made the fight strategically a lot more difficult without adding any dmg or hp. We barely survived the wall and had to make some pretty risky attacks in the end because a party member couldn't avoid the wall another round. So I ended up incapacitated, but luckily survived. 😄
Finland GMT/UTC +2
Let any at least semi-intelligent foe use combat tactics and strategic "troop" placement. Let your creatures grapple, shove, disarm and try to trip your Pcs, use the "ready" action - all well within D&D standard rules. Also, provide and use cover.
Ranged Units use hit and run, and focus fire/snipe on spellcasters or ranged Pcs. Have one or two heavy hitters among your melees with heavy/reach weapons while other creatures shield them from direct access... There are plenty of tactics and creature combos, that make fights challenging (to outright deadly) for the PCs.
Also, most of the time, enemies will know the terrain better that the PCs, and might have nasty surprises ready. Have your heard of Tucker's Kobolds? >:)))
Thank you for all the additional tips. I concur that tension is great for gameplay. I learned this by DM’ing for Alien RPG. I rarely give the PC’s relaxing moments in the game. As in, they almost defeated a bunch of spiders , when down the tunnel they hear a massive amount of them suddenly coming their way.m - They have to escape and find a way to maybe collapse the tunnel/cave to not die .