D&D 5E When Fiends Attack: Are Balors, Pit Fiends and Ultraloths too weak?

[Barolo]

The first real battle my players had against a dragon in ToD was at the last chapter of HotDQ. They had a pretty busy adventuring day which ended with a solo boss fight. At least this one I managed to make really thrilling for them. If you mean weak by relating to CR, then maybe you are right, as it was the biggest difference between CR and character level I ever recall.

To me it relates to a tangent matter. How do you feel a single combat-oriented character should perform against a monster of CR equal to its level? I have an opinion on that myself, but I am interested in other points-of-view.

 

[Helldritch]

My stance on this "one on one" thing.
CR equal to pc level? The player should win most of the time.
One CR above the player and the player should lose most of the time.

And in the previous example of Balor bashing... a Balor can.. fly.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Krakens are pretty tough but they're also CR23 and their difficultly is also a product of their environment (underwater plus their lightning ability). My players fear the Kraken.

In my experience, a party of level 16 characters can easily take on a mere Kraken, even if you double its hit points (as long as they have a swim speed, or encounter it outside of water).

My DM from the AD&D days had a general rule that you should increase monster HP by +100% for each size category it went above medium, so large creatures would have double HP and huge creatures would have triple HP. If you gave the Kraken four times its normal HP, then it might actually be a challenge to level 20 characters.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Recently, I have been thinking, for someone to be able to fight several adversaries at once and still have a chance, that someone should be significantly more powerful than each individual in the group of adversaries. And if this is true, than this someone must be extremely deadly against one of those adversaries alone. Then, what happens when we try to put that into the game, and still play this someone in a logical way? I guess the result is something on the lines of "this fight can go very very very wrong for a percentage of a party of heroes very very very easily". Even though I like the implication of this, for a lot of people playing nowadays it seems that it may not sound an entertaining endeavor.

On the one hand, some people like theme parks. You get a guided tour of all the attractions, but there's never any doubt that everyone is going to finish the tour and see the whole thing. On the other hand, some people like Jurassic Park, where all the monsters are off their leashes and some people (the lawyers and computer nerds) aren't likely to make it home at all.

On the gripping hand, 5E makes even death pretty easy and consequence-free, so as long as someone survives, there's a limited downside for even the guys who have things go very, very wrong. In the course of killing the dragon, maybe the wizard does take 150 HP of fire damage all in one round and gets insta-killed; but he can still be Revivified or Raised, and he doesn't even have to make a Resurrection Survival Roll or lose a point of Constitution like he would have in AD&D.

 

[DaveDash]

In my experience, a party of level 16 characters can easily take on a mere Kraken, even if you double its hit points (as long as they have a swim speed, or encounter it outside of water).

My DM from the AD&D days had a general rule that you should increase monster HP by +100% for each size category it went above medium, so large creatures would have double HP and huge creatures would have triple HP. If you gave the Kraken four times its normal HP, then it might actually be a challenge to level 20 characters.

Interesting.

I kicked the dodo out of my group when they hit level 17 with the Kraken. Yes they had swim speed, I think one of them was even a Shapechanged / Polymorphed Dragon that could breath and swim underwater.

It was a while ago so I can't remember the exact details, but I recall that legendary lightning action being quite nasty underwater.

Also the water was quite dark and murky making it hard for them to get LOS to the Kraken.


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[FormerlyHemlock]

To me it relates to a tangent matter. How do you feel a single combat-oriented character should perform against a monster of CR equal to its level? I have an opinion on that myself, but I am interested in other points-of-view.

My experience suggests that it should be approximately a fair fight, as in "it's hard to predict who will live or die".

Furthermore, if you compute the CR of a PC, a level X PC is often CR (X-1) or (X-2), and that of course neglects PC abilities which don't show up on the CR scale, like Expertise and various spells.

Conclusion: if you want a monster or monsters to act as a "gate" for content, which players cannot bypass until they level up, there should probably be as many monsters as PCs and they should be approximately as high level/CR as the PCs are. If you want a bank vault that four 11th level PCs will probably not be able to rob, try six to eight CR 10 Algoriths as bank guards. And even then it could still happen.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Furthermore, if you compute the CR of a PC, a level X PC is often CR (X-1) or (X-2), and that of course neglects PC abilities which don't show up on the CR scale, like Expertise and various spells.

From what I recall, when I was calculating the abilities of a level 16 party in preparation for the big clone fight, their individual CRs ranged between ~5 and ~9.

 

[Nebulous]

I have killed a few PCs, and had a near TPK as a DM in 5e, in Princes of the Apocalypse of all things, without even really trying or wanting to have difficult fights.
These PC death moments have come when the party has ran into too many of the Priest cultists who can cast a lot of spells like fireball and lightning bolts.
The air cultists that can cast improved invisibility and lightning bolt a couple of times a day ripped my group to shreds.


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Yeah, I'm running this now, and a room of "prepared" priests and spellcasters, with AOE spells, dispel magic and counterspell can rain pure hell down on a party. Since the heroes only have one cult left, the fire cult, and they KNOW the PCs are coming, it's going to be very difficult.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

From what I recall, when I was calculating the abilities of a level 16 party in preparation for the big clone fight, their individual CRs ranged between ~5 and ~9.

Hmmm. Let's spot check this with a 16th level pure Rogue, no subclass. I'll give him Con 14 and Dex 20 (after all he's had five ASIs at that point) which means 115 HP and AC 17ish with +10 to hit for 9d6+5, mostly from Sneak Attack. After Cunning Action that means he's effectively AC 21 with +14 to hit for 9d6+5, which comes to CR 8. If I count Uncanny Dodge as adding 50% to his HP (could be more, could be less) that makes him CR 10 instead. Lower than others I have spot-checked. He's still without his feats and subclass abilities (could be Booming Blade, or Assassinate, or Lucky, or Skulker), but it's unlikely those would be enough to boost him to the 200 HP/70 damage/AC 26 range that it would take for him to count as CR 14. He's probably going to land somewhere around CR 10-11.

A similarly-built Swashbuckler 5/Eldritch Knight 11 (archer) lands at CR 12, so it's not just Rogue-specific. Looks like my estimates were probably high, at least when applied to 16th level characters. I remember a 20th level GWM Barbarian clocking in at CR 19 but it's been a while since I did that math so you'd probably want to double-check it yourself.

 

[DaveDash]

Yeah, I'm running this now, and a room of "prepared" priests and spellcasters, with AOE spells, dispel magic and counterspell can rain pure hell down on a party. Since the heroes only have one cult left, the fire cult, and they KNOW the PCs are coming, it's going to be very difficult.

Those Fire Cult Priests are nasty with their fireballs.

At the burning wicker area, my group at level 7 charged up the hill to where the fire cultists were. They were warned off at first, but decided to try and barge their way in, so the cultists attacked them.

End result 1 dead PC, near TPK, some heroics and luck saved them from a wipe. They tumbled down the back side of the hill with their tails between their legs, and the cultists burned the body of the dead PC to ash on the wicker.




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