D&D 5E [5e] Tales from the yawning portal too easy

[Johanus]

I have a party of 4 level 6 characters working through some of tales from the yawning portal, butthey are breezing through the encounters.

The party consists of a Halfling Rogue and Human fighter (twins!!) a human cleric and half-orc druid.

Their stats are on the high side as they rolled rather than used a standard array, but only slightly above average. They wanted to roll everything; stats, hp etc for this campaign and why not...

How would people recommend making the encounters more of a challenge?

Many thanks in advance....

 

[toucanbuzz]

If your players are having fun, don't change anything.

If it's just about a string of lucky die rolls, don't change anything.

If their higher stats make you feel like a CR appropriate situation is less challenging, boost monster HP from default, and/or add +2 damage. Simple effects.

If they're solving all the puzzles, could be they're good at those (or have read/played the adventures in another edition?)

If they're killing the "bosses" easily, add some low-level cannon fodder to the battles.

 

[Johanus]

If their higher stats make you feel like a CR appropriate situation is less challenging, boost monster HP from default, and/or add +2 damage. Simple effects.
.

I think it is more this, attacks rarely reach their AC and they hit the NPC/creature AC and beat it by 10-15 more

 

[Lidgar]

Go with max or near max HP for enemies, especially any leaders. It means longer battles, but also more wear and tear on party.

Could add additional foes, but be careful about this - it can get out of hand quickly.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think the very easiest thing to do is simply to add a few more creatures to an encounter. So if your PCs are beating the crap out of 4 drow, then see how 6 drow go. And so on. This increases the number of actions the enemies have, which will make things more difficult for the party.

See how that goes. If it doesn’t help a lot, then as others have suggested, I’d bump up the monsters’ to hit bonuses ir their damage output a bit.

 

[Rhenny]

Building on what others have said, decide the type of feel you want for each encounter and either add more foes (especially if they are weaker foes), or give the existing foe or foes max hit points. I wouldn't do it across the board though. Part of what makes D&D interesting and challenging (in my opinion) is when players don't know what to expect. Vary everything and don't make anything predictable. Play with patterns. Hard, hard, easy, medium.......Very hard, medium, hard, easy.....easy, easy, very hard, medium. The one thing I hate more than anything else is when players can predict when their PCs will be facing a "Boss" fight.

I've also added abilities/powers to some of the foes in my games and that can be a real surprise.

Here's a table I've created to modify monsters pretty quickly. http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=1375

Since many of the adventures in Yawning Portal are tomb based, it is probably best to give some of the monster groups max hit points and give some of the encounters with fewer monsters modified monsters that are more interesting and unpredictable.

 

[Johanus]

Thanks all,

I have bumped hp's, but there is the feeling of never missing at the moment, so may need to bump ACs too.

Adding foes is a choice too, even just as cannon fodder lol

 

[jaelis]

OK, the important question is, how are a halfling and a human twins???

 

[Fanaelialae]

Another option, if you want to make easy fights tougher but are worried about making fights too difficult, is to have the noise of battle draw reinforcements after 1-3 rounds. This also helps to give the area a more "living" feel.

 

[ccs]

OK, the important question is, how are a halfling and a human twins???

Magic I presume....