As a relatively new DM I've been experimenting with encounters for my players, a group of four 6th level adventurers (a Warlock, Sorcerer/Warlock, Druid/Cleric, and Barbarian) and they recently started experimenting with the Druid's summon animals spell, which turned my chimera encounter into basically a joke. They just summoned 8 elk and charged it, resulting in it being surrounded then used a dissonant whispers to make it flee, procing several opportunity attacks from the elk and it died literally before it got a second turn. I applauded their creativity on that one to pin it down but moving forward I've now been wondering how to balance encounters.
The main issue being, if I scale them expecting the summons, but they don't use it, then I've now setup my players to get swarmed and almost force them to use the summons, or if concentration gets broken on it then they're pretty screwed. If I don't do something though, and single boss encounter the same strategy is likely going to be just as effective even with legendary actions. Any advice on how to keep combat challenging but without risking a TPK on the party?
Use balanced encounters with multiple enemies instead of one single enemy. In general, single enemies are much more vulnerable to swingy save-or-suck tactics and to being screwed by action economy. The sweet spot is probably 3-5 enemies. If you use a big swarm of enemies, they’re too vulnerable to AOE.
Vary up the enemies. An enemy with an AOE would make mincemeat out of a big animal swarm with one action.
Also remember to use multiple encounters per day. A caster using their single highest level spell slot probably SHOULD be a chance to swing an encounter pretty far in the players favor, if used right, but it should be just one of several that day, and then they’re out of that spell slot for they next one.
If you’re already running the number of encounters per day that you want and don’t want to raise that, then Raise the difficulty of encounters a bit. Not too much, but some. Trust that the players, now that they’ve got a few high level casters among them, will find a few more cool tricks besides that one, and should be able to handle tougher challenges!
You don't have to balance the encounters around their summons, just the players. 1 chimera is an easy encounter for 4 level 6 characters. I recommend using the encounter builder or kobold fight Club to gauge encounter difficulty.
Also, when they cast summon spells, they get to choose the number, but the DM chooses what gets summoned. You can ask what they want and accommodate it to some degree.
@Dx oouh I never thought to check those out and gauge the difficulty and I thought it was only woodland critters that followed that rule but demons and animals were up to the player? That changes things for sure, though without it seeming like I'm trying to handicap the player, should I ask them for like a list of each type of creature they'd like to summon and then roll to determine which of that list appear so that it's both random but not a group of things they may not have wanted or that didn't fit the encounter or how would you recommend handling that as a compromise?
@ftl Thanks for the suggestions! I usually try to keep higher CR creatures closer to the party's level as a single entity to avoid overwhelming them. I used a single fire elemental once and it almost TPKd them as 5th level, and a Bodak with them at 6th level but then yeah had the chimera encounter last 2 rounds. I don't want them feeling like I'm working against them but want them to feel like there's some sense of danger. I like your idea of enemies that have AoE or even a support caster with a low level spell for mopping up an animal mob but not decimating the PCs.
For encounter sweet spots I've found that creatures with neat gimmicks rather than brute strength end up performing much better, I had a darkling camp with 4 darklings, an elder, and 4 goblins that made short work of the barbarian when shrouded in darkness, and since that's out shadow sorcerer's main trick it kind of made him think on the fly of a way around it since they have blindsight. It was probably the most balanced encounter I've run so far and I think everyone enjoyed it, but also don't want so many enemies that it drags the combat too long since they already have a bit of an issue with time management to the point I've considered a turn timer and penalties for exceeding it.
Thanks for the suggestions though I'll give the 3-5 enemies a try since it does sound like a bit of a sweet spot and play around with the CRs and abilities of the enemies to try and make the encounters require some form of strategy to avoid wearing out PC resources.
Ok so this is an Easy encounter for 4 x Level 6 players to start with, and it was easy for them after they blew one of their 3rd level spell slots. That's not a great deal of resources spent, as a 6th level Druid has 3 of them.
The Chimera is quite vulnerable to this, because it has a low AC (only 14) and no resistances. Creatures with resistance to non-magical damage won't suffer nearly so much damage, and neither will higher AC creatures.
Only 5 of the elks should have been able to charge it, and on average 3 of them will hit it for 3d6+3 damage, which would be an average 67.5 damage. When they then make their opportunity attacks, they should on average deal a further 33 damage. That is a major amount of damage! But against a creature with Resistance to physical attacks, it would have taken only about 50 damage.
Remembering that the Chimera has a cone fire breath attack and might well target a big group of Elk, killing most of the ones that it hits outright, if it wins the roll for Initiative. The druid may well also lose Concentration if hit.
Options to avoid elk-stampedes auto-ending your fights:
Don't start the flying monster off standing on the ground!
Resistances
Higher AC
Multiple enemies on different initiative rolls
Harder encounters. I'd only expect the Chimera to last 1-2 rounds against a Level 6 party even if they weren't charging elk at it
This spell is one to watch for, though. Be wary of the druid managing to get up above an enemy then summoning 8 cows in the air directly above it and raining beef on them for colossal bludgeoning damage...
I want to reinforce Malagaz's, there is some really good analytics there to break down that specific fight and great advice in general.
I find it useful to every few levels go sit down and do some math on just how much damage my party could do in a round. Take the first three rounds and plot out just how much they could do if they unloaded their biggest damage dealers at average damage. This assume a lot in their favor such as always hitting, failed saving throws, etc. This helps me gauge just how badly will my baddy get his butt handed to him.
If the math shows they could kill it in 1 round then I feel like I could probably see 2 rounds in a real fight scenario. 3 mock rounds will get me maybe 5.
Sometimes it is just good to see just how crazy their damage can actually be.
Don't forget monsters are both intelligent and aware. Sometimes running for help is the most likely choice a creature would choose. I just had a simple warm up fight drag into the final encounter and turned the whole thing into an 8 round slobber knocker which left all but one person above 20 hps.
Don't forget about the environment. You mentioned a Bodak's darkness, maybe a whole room is shrouded like that, the floor shifts as people move around/at the top of the round, etc. The fight I mentioned happened underwater so most of my players were limited in movement and visibility.
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Hey community,
As a relatively new DM I've been experimenting with encounters for my players, a group of four 6th level adventurers (a Warlock, Sorcerer/Warlock, Druid/Cleric, and Barbarian) and they recently started experimenting with the Druid's summon animals spell, which turned my chimera encounter into basically a joke. They just summoned 8 elk and charged it, resulting in it being surrounded then used a dissonant whispers to make it flee, procing several opportunity attacks from the elk and it died literally before it got a second turn. I applauded their creativity on that one to pin it down but moving forward I've now been wondering how to balance encounters.
The main issue being, if I scale them expecting the summons, but they don't use it, then I've now setup my players to get swarmed and almost force them to use the summons, or if concentration gets broken on it then they're pretty screwed. If I don't do something though, and single boss encounter the same strategy is likely going to be just as effective even with legendary actions. Any advice on how to keep combat challenging but without risking a TPK on the party?
Use balanced encounters with multiple enemies instead of one single enemy. In general, single enemies are much more vulnerable to swingy save-or-suck tactics and to being screwed by action economy. The sweet spot is probably 3-5 enemies. If you use a big swarm of enemies, they’re too vulnerable to AOE.
Vary up the enemies. An enemy with an AOE would make mincemeat out of a big animal swarm with one action.
Also remember to use multiple encounters per day. A caster using their single highest level spell slot probably SHOULD be a chance to swing an encounter pretty far in the players favor, if used right, but it should be just one of several that day, and then they’re out of that spell slot for they next one.
If you’re already running the number of encounters per day that you want and don’t want to raise that, then Raise the difficulty of encounters a bit. Not too much, but some. Trust that the players, now that they’ve got a few high level casters among them, will find a few more cool tricks besides that one, and should be able to handle tougher challenges!
Oops double post
You don't have to balance the encounters around their summons, just the players. 1 chimera is an easy encounter for 4 level 6 characters. I recommend using the encounter builder or kobold fight Club to gauge encounter difficulty.
Also, when they cast summon spells, they get to choose the number, but the DM chooses what gets summoned. You can ask what they want and accommodate it to some degree.
@Dx oouh I never thought to check those out and gauge the difficulty and I thought it was only woodland critters that followed that rule but demons and animals were up to the player? That changes things for sure, though without it seeming like I'm trying to handicap the player, should I ask them for like a list of each type of creature they'd like to summon and then roll to determine which of that list appear so that it's both random but not a group of things they may not have wanted or that didn't fit the encounter or how would you recommend handling that as a compromise?
@ftl Thanks for the suggestions! I usually try to keep higher CR creatures closer to the party's level as a single entity to avoid overwhelming them. I used a single fire elemental once and it almost TPKd them as 5th level, and a Bodak with them at 6th level but then yeah had the chimera encounter last 2 rounds. I don't want them feeling like I'm working against them but want them to feel like there's some sense of danger. I like your idea of enemies that have AoE or even a support caster with a low level spell for mopping up an animal mob but not decimating the PCs.
For encounter sweet spots I've found that creatures with neat gimmicks rather than brute strength end up performing much better, I had a darkling camp with 4 darklings, an elder, and 4 goblins that made short work of the barbarian when shrouded in darkness, and since that's out shadow sorcerer's main trick it kind of made him think on the fly of a way around it since they have blindsight. It was probably the most balanced encounter I've run so far and I think everyone enjoyed it, but also don't want so many enemies that it drags the combat too long since they already have a bit of an issue with time management to the point I've considered a turn timer and penalties for exceeding it.
Thanks for the suggestions though I'll give the 3-5 enemies a try since it does sound like a bit of a sweet spot and play around with the CRs and abilities of the enemies to try and make the encounters require some form of strategy to avoid wearing out PC resources.
Ok so this is an Easy encounter for 4 x Level 6 players to start with, and it was easy for them after they blew one of their 3rd level spell slots. That's not a great deal of resources spent, as a 6th level Druid has 3 of them.
The Chimera is quite vulnerable to this, because it has a low AC (only 14) and no resistances. Creatures with resistance to non-magical damage won't suffer nearly so much damage, and neither will higher AC creatures.
Only 5 of the elks should have been able to charge it, and on average 3 of them will hit it for 3d6+3 damage, which would be an average 67.5 damage. When they then make their opportunity attacks, they should on average deal a further 33 damage. That is a major amount of damage! But against a creature with Resistance to physical attacks, it would have taken only about 50 damage.
Remembering that the Chimera has a cone fire breath attack and might well target a big group of Elk, killing most of the ones that it hits outright, if it wins the roll for Initiative. The druid may well also lose Concentration if hit.
Options to avoid elk-stampedes auto-ending your fights:
This spell is one to watch for, though. Be wary of the druid managing to get up above an enemy then summoning 8 cows in the air directly above it and raining beef on them for colossal bludgeoning damage...
If the math shows they could kill it in 1 round then I feel like I could probably see 2 rounds in a real fight scenario. 3 mock rounds will get me maybe 5.
Sometimes it is just good to see just how crazy their damage can actually be.