Chellenging my 5E players

[Finarvyn]

When I started running 5E in my home campaign, I told my players to forget "everything you think you know" about older D&D -- monsters are different, bonuses are different, the scale is different. Now I'm finding I have to heed my own advice and rebuild my own "scale intuition" for the new edition.

In my Wednesday evening 5E sessions at the local game store, I'm running into some issues with scale and how to challenge my players. After a dozen or so sessions they have finally reached 5th level and I'm discovering that they can do a lot of things. (In my defense, I hardly ever run adventures higher than 3rd or 4th even in my OD&D games, so this may be an issue for any edition and not just 5th. )

Anyway, I'm finding that when I toss an encounter at them which seems to be a real tough challenge, sometimes they just wade their way through without much difficulty. The wizard has a key spell or the monk has some ki power or the fighter has a high enough AC that the monsters never seem to hit or there's always something.

I know there is a section about "balance" in the DMG and I'll probably have to read it because there is probably a rule as to how many monsters to throw at the party based on their level. I'm trying to run HOARD OF THE DRAGON QUEEN by the book, however, and hate to extrapolate too much or deviate too much from the numbers given in the module.

Anyway, I'm not sure if there is a question here or if I'm just having a mini-rant. If others have encountered similar situations, I'd like to hear what solutions you found for them.

[Fearghus]

I have only played a few sessions of 5e, and it was a home-brew FR setting (Border kingdoms/princes or something like that. Dapplegate comes to mind). This was about a year before the official release of the system.

When your players plow through the encounter, you mentioned that there is a key feature of a character that trivializes the entire encounter? Could you elaborate?

3.0, 3.5, 4.0, and Pathfinder are very peculiar in building encounters. Average Party Level (APL) is compared against a Challenge Rating (CR) of a monster or monsters, and assumes that there are four characters. APL = CR is standard, CR-1 is easy, +1 is hard and +2 is epic. Something to keep in mind is that if you have a 3rd level party, and pit them against a single CR5 dragon, you will likely TPK. If you pit them against four CR3 creatures (i think the scale is one CR3 is a CR3 encounter, two CR3 is CR4 encounter, four CR3 is CR5 encounter) they will likely succeed without a TPK and only 1-2 deaths, but depleted in resources (scrolls, potions, spells, <n>/<t> abilities). The balance here is that newer additions of D&D assume particular gear scores at particular levels and the monsters scale with that expectation.

Anyway, the above is in order to ask: have you had a chance to try different encounter types (multiple creatures each same HD as party, one big baddy, a tough baddy with a slightly weaker buddy). How many player characters are in the party? Are you able to scale the encounters up or down to account for that number of players?

I played in some 4th ed campaigns and I remember reading through the MM thinking how amazing the monsters were and wondered how they could be beaten. A buddy of mine that lives out in Virginia played in a few 4th ed games a week and said the power of the PC classes was ridiculous and could keep the boss monsters chain-stunned and kill them without much of an issue.

[Finarvyn]

Dec 11, 2014 7:36:33 GMT -6 Fearghus said:

When your players plow through the encounter, you mentioned that there is a key feature of a character that trivializes the entire encounter? Could you elaborate?

It's not always the same character or same feature, so it's not easy to answer.

One example -- the party fought a troll, an ogre, and 4 orcs. The monk ran up and used a ki point to stun the troll, which meant each attack the group made on it was at advantage and the troll couldn't attack. Every time the troll shook it off, the monk stunned him again. A wizard kept hitting the troll with fire so it wouldn't regenerate. The troll ended up dying after several rounds, having never actually gotten to attack the party. At the same time, the bard cast fairy fire to confuse the ogre, which also meant that the group got to attack it with advantage. Meanwhile, the ranger did a sharpshoot attack which added ten points of damage to her usual damage, and got to attack twice per round doing it. The group had fun, but it wasn't much fun to GM the encounter.

Another time the group got ambushed by a bunch of bandits. The bandits got first attack and inflicted a lot of damage to the party, then the wizard dropped a fireball in and ended the encounter very abruptly. Again, not much fun to GM.

I guess my frustration is that I look at an encounter and think "this seems to be the kind of thing to challenge the group" only to be surprised when it all ends abruptly. My best guess is that when you put 6 characters of level 4-5 in a party, those 24-30 party levels really can kick serious butt. I'm not used to running such high level adventures and think it'll really bother me when those same characters hit 10th level or higher.

I think it's me, and not the system.

[fitz]

I'm having similar issues predicting what will or won't be a challenging encounter, though so far I think I've lucked out — the last couple of sessions have both ALMOST killed everybody but NOT QUITE killed anybody, which I think is the sweet spot for the evening's Big Encounter. The trouble is, that's been pure fluke — I've just gone with a gut feeling, which has worked, but it's not always going to work and I know that some time I'm going to get myself a wholly accidental TPK.

My DMG won't arrive for another couple of weeks, probably not until after Xmas, and I am hanging out for it

[Fearghus]

Dec 11, 2014 13:46:03 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

The group had fun, but ...

In that case I'd say you gauged it perfectly. Not every session needs a horrific near-death experience. Keep tinkering with the encounters for that sweet-spot.

I ran a solo PF game for several years and the PC was a cleric. It was a tailored story-game, much like a novel, instead of a classic fantasy game. Part of the technical fun was tinkering with encounters with only one character. Throwing hordes of weak CR createures at him, and different builds of other encounters. Then one day I throw an Aarumvorax (sp?) at him, and I think it was an even CR, and he was destroyed. This is after soloing other equal CR encounters. Anyway, it was odd and I felt sort of stupid to accidentally drop a character like that. The biggest PitA for killing a character in a campaign like that is that I have spent years writing material for a character and now he is dead I have dozens of pages of notes that will likely never get play. /whineOff

Keep at it. Equal level encounters are not equally challenging. They can burn through a troll, how about wraiths and wights and spectres? Or does a single cleric trivialize that encounter?

[Vile Traveller]

Yes there are such rules in the DMG although I haven't read them yet. But in the end I think there is no substitute for experience, so i currebtly treat every game as a playtest - I don't expect to get it exactly right but I try to note what worked and what didn't. If I find characters having to easy a time of it I normally throw them a curve ball like an unexpected trap or encounter to keep them on their toes. Sometimes an unexpectedly easy encounter or two can pt them off their guard, too, which all adds to everyone's fun when they are brought back down off their cloud with a bump.

Sounds like it's working out fine for you, Finarvyn.

[Finarvyn]

Thanks for the positive vibe, guys!

I like the "every session a playtest" philosophy. A few weeks ago I nearly killed the whole group, last week they hardly broke a sweat. I suppose it all evens out in the end and they are having fun.

[jeffb]

Dec 12, 2014 5:28:35 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

they are having fun.

Then you are doing it right.

[robertsconley]

Dec 11, 2014 5:19:35 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

When I started running 5E in my home campaign, I told my players to forget "everything you think you know" about older D&D -- monsters are different, bonuses are different, the scale is different. Now I'm finding I have to heed my own advice and rebuild my own "scale intuition" for the new edition.

How many players are we talking about?

[robertsconley]

My assessment of 5e combat.
batintheattic.blogspot.com/2014/12/comments-on-5e-combat.html

The Party

• Elven Wizard
• Human Rogue
• Human Wizard
• Human Fighter

The Fight
Four hours outside of Phandelver the party ran into an ambush set by four goblins.

The party roll perception rolls. The goblins rolled various 20s for their stealth check. The Goblins got a surprise round.

In the surprise round, the goblins shot arrows taking out both the human wizard and the elven wizard.

The Goblins win initiative over everybody except for the downed wizards. They shout a NPC Wagon Driver and the Human Fighter who remain standing.

The human rogue starts running towards the goblin shooting his short bow. The human fighter dashes toward the nearest goblin.

The Human Wizard rolls a natural 20 on his death check. The Elven Wizards get a successful death check.

The next round the goblins focuses on the charging Human Fighter but his high armor class prevents him from being hit.

The Human Rogue closes in and kills a goblin with his short bow. The Human Fighter reaches a goblin.

The Human Wizard hides. The Elven Wizards continue to roll death checks.

The next round the Human Wizard cast sleep causing one more goblin to fall.

The remaining two goblins start running away

The Human Rogue shot down one goblin, and the Human Fighter kill the last goblin.

The fight is over with all goblins down. The Elven Wizard is stabilized.

Comments
Surprise is important and goblins are good at creating a surprise round due to their high stealth.
In general low CR 5e monsters have one special ability they are good at. This can be decisive under the right circumstances.

Quantity is also a decisive advantage. For another group with 8 PCs I ran this encounter with 8 goblins. The goblins were completely outclassed even with surprise. It is my opinion that the multiplier for number of opponents needs to be used for the party size as well. In subsequent session it is obvious that doubling the monster does not provide the same challenge if you double of the number of PCs. It wasn't until I increase the difficultly to four times the original I was able to get comparable results for the eight PC group as I did for the four PC group.

5e combat is highly situational. Different plans, different terrains, different initial conditions can produce widely varying results. The result is that small differences in CR don't mean much. Only when the numbers are increased from 50% or 100% on either side the differences become decisive.
5e rewards system mastery but there is less to master. And because of 5e combat sensitivity to circumstances, there is no combinations of abilities that make for an instant win.

The use of a d20 and the flat probability curve means that a run of bad or inferior dice rolls can and will happen. The same with a run of superior dice roll. In combination with 5e's sensitivity to situational factors this means results can vary wildly from group to group even when using the same PCs.

In general the book values work great for four man parties. Try running a few encounters with a four man party, Phandelver is good for this. Do this to get a feel of how 5e combat is supposed to be like. Then for a larger group, increase your encounter size by 25% increments until you get the same feel as the smaller group.

[TheObligatorySQL]

It is my opinion that the multiplier for number of opponents needs to be used for the party size as well.

It is taken into account.

From DMG pg. 83 and DM's Basic Rules pg. 57:

"The preceding guidelines assume that you have a party consisting of three to five adventurers. If the party contains fewer than three characters, apply the next highest multiplier on the Encounter Multipliers table. For example, apply a multiplier of 1.5 when the characters fight a single monster, and a multiplier of 5 for groups of fifteen or more monsters. If the party contains six or more characters, use the next lowest multiplier on the table. Use a multiplier of 0.5 for a single monster."

Not exactly what you might have been thinking of, but it's pretty close, and works really well for the math I've been doing recently.

But on the subject of challenge: the division of advancement into tiers really makes a difference in what the party is capable of. Finarvyn said his characters just achieved 5th level, and that's a big change. At that point, they go from being "local heroes" to being "heroes of the realm" (to use the terms of the DMG), and begin to gain access to the features and spells that make them real heroes.

In doing the math, the fight with the troll, ogre, and orcs would have been a hard encounter for a group of 4, but if I read correctly that the party was six strong, using the quote from the DMG actually makes the encounter difficulty medium. Here's how the math played out:

Troll: 1,800 XP
Ogre: 450 XP
Orcs: 100 XP each, 400 total
Total Encounter XP: 2,650 XP

Party Size: 6
Encounter Thresholds (Easy/Medium/Hard/Deadly): 1,500/3,000/4,500/6,600
XP Multiplier for Party of 6: x1.5 (This would have been a x2 multiplier if the party was 4)
Difficulty XP: 3,975 XP (This total would have been 5,300 XP if the party was 4)

Not only can the number of characters can make a pretty big difference in the difficulty of an encounter, their capabilities make an even bigger difference. With the party of 6, they essentially have two extra attack per round depending on the characters: if some characters were fighters and still had access to their Action Surge feature, this could be an extra three attacks in one round per fighter in the group. The average damage per attack could be anywhere from 7 (assuming average stats armed with a one-handed weapon) to 11 (same assumptions armed with a two-hander), and that just assumes that the actual ability score advancements were taken: if the Great Weapon Master feat was taken instead, the high end average damage could jump to 20 (the -5 penalty to get this is pretty much negated with advantage). Even with 84 hit points, a troll won't last long if the fighter scores an average of 60 points of damage in three attacks and the wizard is casting fire bolt to supress regeneration, and that's not including every one else in the group focusing fire on the troll.

[TheObligatorySQL]

I dunno if this helps with the understanding of party strength, but I remembered seeing a table for gauging party strength in one of the Expeditions adventures.

You first determine the Average Party Level (adding up all levels, dividing by number of characters; round fractions greater than 0.5 up and lower than 0.5 down)

You then looked at the table, which showed the party's strength based on how many characters are in the party and whether their APL was equivalent or greater than the level the adventure was optimized for.

Looking at the table, a party of 6-7 PCs with an APL equal to the optimized level is still a strong party; very strong if they're above the optimized level.