So I'm DMing my first campaign. I'm very proud of what I've written: I came up with a custom setting with aspects of Spelljammer, Planescape and Eberron, and as I've gotten to know my two players, I've been able to write some character hooks that they've both taken enthusiastically.
Unfortunately, I've had a hard time making the combat fun. See, I have two players, with others intermittently. They are both much more experienced players and DM's than me, and both seem to really like my campaign, but writing encounters has been difficult. Their characters are level six right now:
A Goliath Oath of Devotion Paladin-- this guy is powerful. He won't kill any sentient being on purpose, so he only uses melee. He has a maul--I think it might be +1. With his high strength, healthy prof bonus, and multi-attack, he's dealing a lot of damage. For bosses, he uses Smite and ends up rolling a ton of dice and killing some powerful creatures in a couple of turns--for regular combat he doesn't use it. His AC is 17--he wants it to be higher, but I haven't given the party a chance to buy magical armor yet.
A Changeling Wizard (I forget what subclass) -- very squishy. Low max HP, obvi low AC, generally a ranged/utility build, depending what situation she thinks she's going into. She has a broom of flying.
So this is a great pair for non-combat. Their characters interact delightfully and they have a great dynamic when dealing with NPC's. HOWEVER, I've been unable to write a balanced encounter that's not just a bunch of melee fighters swarming them or a big monster that the Pal can hammer on while the Wiz deals ranged damage.
So what's a good strategy to challenge them? We all want to do combat and occasional dungeon crawls. I have thrown the following at them: small blue dragon (custom stats, midway between wyrmling and young), bunches and bunches of elf soldiers, Otyugh (they split the party and the Pal killed the Otyugh in a couple of turns on his own), and most lately, a bunch of cultists who were some clerics and some soldiers. They were pretty handy at defeating all of them. The last one was the only one that challenged them, and it was also where the Wiz began to shine for the first time, using flaming sphere on the cultists to great effect.
So does anyone have tips for writing encounters for this party? I want to do some custom Warforged enemies next.
(James, Kiley, if you read this, don't read the responses lol.)
The best thing I can suggest is to make combat nonlinear. What you've described so far is pretty much any combat encounter - big boss, little minions, enemies of various shapes and sizes, those all come down to just rolling dice at each other.
But what if there was someone that the party wanted to protect or rescue, who the big boss or the little minions wanted to hurt/ abduct? Give the party options for different ways that combat can be applied in D&D; chase scenes where they may not be attacking every turn but rather attempting to outrun/outsmart someone, bar fights with a lot of innocents that need to be protected, perhaps an item that the party wants to steal from someone or otherwise acquire that the bad guys also want.
By adding elements other than "more enemies", you can create dynamic situations where they will be thinking (and rolling!) outside the box.
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I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
One thing that I do, which I don't think will be enough for your two PC's, is I double the damage bonus on my monsters when I have a full table of 6 PC's. So instead of 2d6+3 damage the monsters do 2d6+6 damage. Another thing that you can do that will definitely help is instead of using the average HP for your monsters you can use the max HP. I suspect that in your case giving the monsters their max HP is a better option than increasing the amount of damage that they do because one of the two PC's is squishy.
One thing that I do, which I don't think will be enough for your two PC's, is I double the damage bonus on my monsters when I have a full table of 6 PC's. So instead of 2d6+3 damage the monsters do 2d6+6 damage. Another thing that you can do that will definitely help is instead of using the average HP for your monsters you can use the max HP. I suspect that in your case giving the monsters their max HP is a better option than increasing the amount of damage that they do because one of the two PC's is squishy.
Yeah, enemy HP is the one thing I will fudge while the actual combat is happening. My first boss was going to be a blue dragon wyrmling with some custom stats, and then the Pal took it down to 1 digit of HP with 2 melee attacks + 2 divine smites in one turn, so I regained my composure and gave it 200-something HP. It was still a quick battle.
Bump the power level of the monsters up more then. It’s a balancing act, sooner or later you’ll figure out the right balance to challenge them, make the sessions fun, and have fun yourself.
A lot of weaker monsters are much more dangerous that a couple of stronger monsters due to 5e’s action economy. One effective tactic that you can use is give your BBEG a horde of helpers. That blue dragon wyrmling you used would have been much more dangerous with a pack of 4-5 kobold archers as it’s guards and worshipers, especially if they were in alcoves above ground level and out of reach of the Paladin for example. This is despite how weak kobolds are,
Most of us learn that by making mistakes of course.
This isn't really the sort of issue you solve with statblocks. or at least not just statblocks. Like Van said, you're going to need to start changing up the rules of the encounter to get these folks thinking. Funky terrain or effects, objectives beyond 'murder everything in this room', nonstandard tactics on the parts of your critters.
One encounter I ran (if for a significantly larger group) that seemed to work well was when my party was chasing down a large mining golem stolen by a band of duergar. When they found the golem, it was being studied in a fairly cramped workshop space, in which a line of duergar grunts held the entranceway against the party while the Duergar Scientist used his invisibility to scamper around the room whilst invisibly controlling the (very powerful, but rather clumsy) mining golem.
The party couldn't just scrag the golem; on top of it being very well armored with a grip of hit points, their objective was specifically to bring it back to the surface. They couldn't maneuver well within the confines of the room, when they could even get in it past the line of blocking, grapple and trip-happy duergar, and anyone who caught the mining golem's attacks took huge damage. That one encounter ran two-thirds of that night's session and my players were pretty jazzed about it for most of the week afterwards because they'd had to come up with some crazy shit to try and find the scientist controlling the thing before the golem jacked them all up, as well as figuring out how to prevent the golem from ******* their lives up without unduly damaging it.
Not every encounter needs to be as layered as that one was, but if your two players are starting to feel bored or unchallenged? An encounter thatt asks them with something other than "hit it until it works" is probably the ticket.
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Please do not contact or message me.
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So I'm DMing my first campaign. I'm very proud of what I've written: I came up with a custom setting with aspects of Spelljammer, Planescape and Eberron, and as I've gotten to know my two players, I've been able to write some character hooks that they've both taken enthusiastically.
Unfortunately, I've had a hard time making the combat fun. See, I have two players, with others intermittently. They are both much more experienced players and DM's than me, and both seem to really like my campaign, but writing encounters has been difficult. Their characters are level six right now:
So this is a great pair for non-combat. Their characters interact delightfully and they have a great dynamic when dealing with NPC's. HOWEVER, I've been unable to write a balanced encounter that's not just a bunch of melee fighters swarming them or a big monster that the Pal can hammer on while the Wiz deals ranged damage.
So what's a good strategy to challenge them? We all want to do combat and occasional dungeon crawls. I have thrown the following at them: small blue dragon (custom stats, midway between wyrmling and young), bunches and bunches of elf soldiers, Otyugh (they split the party and the Pal killed the Otyugh in a couple of turns on his own), and most lately, a bunch of cultists who were some clerics and some soldiers. They were pretty handy at defeating all of them. The last one was the only one that challenged them, and it was also where the Wiz began to shine for the first time, using flaming sphere on the cultists to great effect.
So does anyone have tips for writing encounters for this party? I want to do some custom Warforged enemies next.
(James, Kiley, if you read this, don't read the responses lol.)
The best thing I can suggest is to make combat nonlinear. What you've described so far is pretty much any combat encounter - big boss, little minions, enemies of various shapes and sizes, those all come down to just rolling dice at each other.
But what if there was someone that the party wanted to protect or rescue, who the big boss or the little minions wanted to hurt/ abduct? Give the party options for different ways that combat can be applied in D&D; chase scenes where they may not be attacking every turn but rather attempting to outrun/outsmart someone, bar fights with a lot of innocents that need to be protected, perhaps an item that the party wants to steal from someone or otherwise acquire that the bad guys also want.
By adding elements other than "more enemies", you can create dynamic situations where they will be thinking (and rolling!) outside the box.
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
One thing that I do, which I don't think will be enough for your two PC's, is I double the damage bonus on my monsters when I have a full table of 6 PC's. So instead of 2d6+3 damage the monsters do 2d6+6 damage. Another thing that you can do that will definitely help is instead of using the average HP for your monsters you can use the max HP. I suspect that in your case giving the monsters their max HP is a better option than increasing the amount of damage that they do because one of the two PC's is squishy.
Professional computer geek
Yeah, enemy HP is the one thing I will fudge while the actual combat is happening. My first boss was going to be a blue dragon wyrmling with some custom stats, and then the Pal took it down to 1 digit of HP with 2 melee attacks + 2 divine smites in one turn, so I regained my composure and gave it 200-something HP. It was still a quick battle.
Bump the power level of the monsters up more then. It’s a balancing act, sooner or later you’ll figure out the right balance to challenge them, make the sessions fun, and have fun yourself.
A lot of weaker monsters are much more dangerous that a couple of stronger monsters due to 5e’s action economy. One effective tactic that you can use is give your BBEG a horde of helpers. That blue dragon wyrmling you used would have been much more dangerous with a pack of 4-5 kobold archers as it’s guards and worshipers, especially if they were in alcoves above ground level and out of reach of the Paladin for example. This is despite how weak kobolds are,
Most of us learn that by making mistakes of course.
Professional computer geek
This isn't really the sort of issue you solve with statblocks. or at least not just statblocks. Like Van said, you're going to need to start changing up the rules of the encounter to get these folks thinking. Funky terrain or effects, objectives beyond 'murder everything in this room', nonstandard tactics on the parts of your critters.
One encounter I ran (if for a significantly larger group) that seemed to work well was when my party was chasing down a large mining golem stolen by a band of duergar. When they found the golem, it was being studied in a fairly cramped workshop space, in which a line of duergar grunts held the entranceway against the party while the Duergar Scientist used his invisibility to scamper around the room whilst invisibly controlling the (very powerful, but rather clumsy) mining golem.
The party couldn't just scrag the golem; on top of it being very well armored with a grip of hit points, their objective was specifically to bring it back to the surface. They couldn't maneuver well within the confines of the room, when they could even get in it past the line of blocking, grapple and trip-happy duergar, and anyone who caught the mining golem's attacks took huge damage. That one encounter ran two-thirds of that night's session and my players were pretty jazzed about it for most of the week afterwards because they'd had to come up with some crazy shit to try and find the scientist controlling the thing before the golem jacked them all up, as well as figuring out how to prevent the golem from ******* their lives up without unduly damaging it.
Not every encounter needs to be as layered as that one was, but if your two players are starting to feel bored or unchallenged? An encounter thatt asks them with something other than "hit it until it works" is probably the ticket.
Please do not contact or message me.