D&D 5E Curse of Strahd (and limitations on 1st level play)

[dave2008]

I have trouble challenging my PC's in 5e. CR as an effective measure of "threat" is useless overall. Every time I draw up an encounter, I either have a cakewalk by the PC's, or a TPK. There doesn't seem to be a comfortable middle ground without mucking behind the scenes during the encounter to either shave enemy HPs, not use abilities, or make the enemy last a little bit longer for dramatic effect, or throw in some more enemies after the party crushed the BBEG.

Now, that being said, I run for a party that are fairly decent optimizers, and go square by square to fight enemies to maximize. every. single. ability or point of damage. So, of course, tables will vary.

I gave up on 5e.

I know some people have trouble and that Retreater is not the only one. I personally don't understand why, but as you say...tables vary.

I find 5e very flexible and easy to dial up or down the challenge. Others don't, I can't really explain why.

 

[MGibster]

I have trouble challenging my PC's in 5e. CR as an effective measure of "threat" is useless overall. Every time I draw up an encounter, I either have a cakewalk by the PC's, or a TPK. There doesn't seem to be a comfortable middle ground without mucking behind the scenes during the encounter to either shave enemy HPs, not use abilities, or make the enemy last a little bit longer for dramatic effect, or throw in some more enemies after the party crushed the BBEG.

I experienced a great deal of difficulty balancing encounters as well, especially when 5th edition first came out. I tried to use the Challenge Ratings but quickly discovered they were worse than useless as the party would either ROFL curb stomp the opposition or suffer a near TPK. It took me a while before I was able to eyeball it and set the encounters at a more reasonable level.

 

[Retreater]

Perhaps if I provide a very specific example?

Party composition (all 5th level):
Ranger
Cleric
Rogue
Paladin
Artificer (Artillerist specialization)

The party knows from talking to a group of survivors that the Winery has been overrun with druids and their plant-like minions. Ranger has cast Pass Without Trace so the group can enter the building - basically undetected. They stealth into a room that is packed with 24 twig blights and a druid overseeing everything on scaffolding.
Initiative is rolled when the party breaks into the fermentation room. Each twig blight has 4 HP and AC 13. The Paladin is killing two a round with his multiattack. The Artificer drops a shatter spell in the midst of the creatures - and even if they save for half damage, they die anyway (that's one third of them dead). Rogue is killing one a round with Sneak Attack. Cleric is killing one a round with Sacred Flame. The paladin has a 19 AC, so I am rarely hitting him.
The Ranger gets the drop on the druid on the scaffolding. One shot, second shot with colossus slayer. Dead druid before she got a chance to even cast a middling produce flame spell.
And that's basically a typical encounter. All of the enemies are dead - usually before we go around the table.

 

[Cruentus]

Perhaps if I provide a very specific example?

Party composition (all 5th level):
Ranger
Cleric
Rogue
Paladin
Artificer (Artillerist specialization)

The party knows from talking to a group of survivors that the Winery has been overrun with druids and their plant-like minions. Ranger has cast Pass Without Trace so the group can enter the building - basically undetected. They stealth into a room that is packed with 24 twig blights and a druid overseeing everything on scaffolding.
Initiative is rolled when the party breaks into the fermentation room. Each twig blight has 4 HP and AC 13. The Paladin is killing two a round with his multiattack. The Artificer drops a shatter spell in the midst of the creatures - and even if they save for half damage, they die anyway (that's one third of them dead). Rogue is killing one a round with Sneak Attack. Cleric is killing one a round with Sacred Flame. The paladin has a 19 AC, so I am rarely hitting him.
The Ranger gets the drop on the druid on the scaffolding. One shot, second shot with colossus slayer. Dead druid before she got a chance to even cast a middling produce flame spell.
And that's basically a typical encounter. All of the enemies are dead - usually before we go around the table.

Sounds about right. The campaign I ran was up to 6th level, and there was a Twilight Cleric/sorcerer, a rogue/warlock (devil sight, darkness, invisible scouting familiar), evoker fire wizard, cleric of something (sacred flame/spirit guardians/spiritual hammer), and an arcane archer. i had to ramp up to Cr19 or so, and then had to throttle back. It definitely didn’t work in my “session 0” low magic moonshaes campaign, where low numbers of encounters were the norm. Nova everywhere. Terribly unfun to DM for me.

In the last 5e game I played, we were 12th or 14th, and the DM created a party of the Lords Alliance using the Pc creation rules to combat us, gave them gauntlets of ogre powe/magic dwarf hammer, magic items out the wazoo, etc., and we wiped em out in two rounds, only their wizard was able to teleport out to escape.

Could be we’re all just bad at running games (we’ve been playing a looong time), but I also think some of it is on the system. I mean, sure, a DM can crush a party, but that’s obvious when it’s being done. But the fact that I’ve run and played in many games where the party is very rarely ever threatened, and crushes everything in the adventure (particularly purchased products) makes me wonder.

 

[mamba]

Upon reaching 5th level, the party of 5 characters steamrolled through the Winery. I managed to shave off a couple of temporary hit points, but otherwise, it was a slaughter: druids dying before they could take a single action, dozens of twig blights being destroyed in two rounds.

A twig blight is CR 1/8, so you can essentially discount those for your CR at level 5. Not sure why you expected them to put up a fight. Depending on placement a fireball (which is a thing by level 5) can do them all in.
A Druid is CR 2, so I sure hope there was more than one when you want the fight to be any kind of challenge (given your example there was one only... so yeah, not a tough fight, to say the least).

According to Xanathar's guidelines you should have 2 or 3 Druids and 24 or 36 twig blights. Personally I'd say you can probably go with the higher number for either and be fine...

If the encounter is too easy for your group, feel free to make it harder. Consensus is that CR works decently at low levels, but to a degree you have to account for party size and magic items. At your level there should not be too much magic yet, so this leaves party size as the main focus. At 5 chars you probably need to buff the enemies somewhat however.

Since this seems to be a consistent issue for you, I do wonder if you play the monsters effectively or whether this contributes to the problem (eg placing them too close together so more than expected get hit by AoE).
At these levels encounter balance should be pretty ok still, so it should not just be due to ‘how bad’ 5e encounter math is

 

[Retreater]

I find 5e very flexible and easy to dial up or down the challenge. Others don't, I can't really explain why.

I'm delving into some theory crafting, just to get the kind of feel that I would want.

I'm looking at average damage per round from my characters is 18 hp each. That means that a solo monster that should be able to "stand up" to them for 4 rounds needs 408 hp. I could probably divide that HP as an overall budget, but that's a start.

I have characters with 19 AC. For a basic monster it needs to hit close to 50% of the time. It should have between +7-9 to hit. Also with the characters having an average of 34 HP, we're looking at average damage of around 9 HP from a monster.

5e thinks +3 to hit and 4 damage (against a 5th level party) is fine. It's not. It's not even a speedbump.

This is something I threw together 15 minutes on a break at work. Already better design than 5e has.

 

[Retreater]

A twig blight is CR 1/8, so you can essentially discount those for your CR at level 5. Not sure why you expected them to put up a fight. Depending on placement a fireball (which is a thing by level 5) can do them all in.

Because it's in the adventure that I paid $40 to run. And it's the highest reviewed adventure of the 5e era.
And I trust the designers of the system to know how to create adventures.
(They apparently don't.)

 

[Mort]

A twig blight is CR 1/8, so you can essentially discount those for your CR at level 5. Not sure why you expected them to put up a fight. Depending on placement a fireball (which is a thing by level 5) can do them all in.
A Druid is CR 2, so I sure hope there was more than one when you want the fight to be any kind of challenge.

Yeah, I ran this through the encounter calculator and even it lists it as an easy encounter. This encounter SHOULD have minimum danger/resource drain for the group.

 

[Retreater]

Since this seems to be a consistent issue for you, I do wonder if you play the monsters effectively or whether this contributes to the problem (eg placing them too close together so more than expected get hit by AoE).

When you are told by the adventure that 24 twig blights are in a 30 ft. room (or whatever) they gotta fit where they fit.

 

[Retreater]

Yeah, I ran this through the encounter calculator and even it lists it as an easy encounter. This encounter SHOULD have minimum danger/resource drain for the group.

Take it up with Chris Perkins.