D&D 5E Monsters struggling to hit players? Common?

[S'mon]

What I've noticed is that, when we do face an enemy who can hit them, the same enemy is quite deadly to the members of the party who do not have similar defenses -especially when multiattack comes into play.

This is definitely true IME. When one PC has AC 24 and can cast Shield as a Reaction, and another PC has AC 16, the monsters will naturally gravitate to wailing on the squishy.

 

[Mort]

S'mon's post touches upon what I've noticed.

The current campaign is level 6.

One or two of the characters can pretty easily have AC in the 20+ range, with capabilities to drive it higher when need be.

What I've noticed is that, when we do face an enemy who can hit them, the same enemy is quite deadly to the members of the party who do not have similar defenses -especially when multiattack comes into play.

Well D&D is a team game so the trick is protecting the ones that can be hit (which seems to be what you allude to below).

Counter-intuitively, having a great AC does not usually make a good tank. Monsters will figure out your not worth attacking and go for the squishy targets you're trying to protect. It's why IMO Barbarians often make the best tanks - they're not that hard to hit so make externally attractive targets - but they just don't go down.

For what it's worth, the party currently contains two paladins played by two players who are pretty good about spreading their abilities out to the rest of the party and working together.

Paladin's are great - I can certainly see this happening. Seems to be a feature not a bug of this party. The way to challenge a paladin is to increase the encounters per day - resource management is particularly tough for paladins.

 

[Argyle King]

I think, for the most part, I'm a little surprised by how binary (for a lack of better words) the monsters appear to be in 5e.

Either they can hit (and nearly kill a PC) or they can't and the DM rolling is something of a formality. I suppose I expected a bit more of a sliding scale in the context of "bounded accuracy." I vaguely remember doing the Strahd campaign as part of a different group; the fight with Strahd was cake, but a fight with some sort of jackal-headed demon would have killed the entire party without the DM pulling punches. (On the flipside of things, monsters appear to be surprisingly easy to hit most of the time, but that's partially a different conversation.)

In the end, I'm just trying to make some mental notes about how I may want to run the game differently than how the current campaign is going.

 

[Kurotowa]

If the party is funneling enemy attacks at their most heavily armored members while keeping the squishies out of harm's way, they're doing their job right. Small unit tactics like disciplined formation and coordinated target priority have been a part of D&D since the earliest days. A party that can master those skills will increase their power in ways that never show on a character sheet.

What can you do as a DM to increase the challenge? Well, first off, let the players have their wins a lot of the time. If they're playing smart they should be rewarded for it. But if you sometimes want to throw a squad of hobgoblins at them, who execute their own small unit tactics and have archers circle around to the flank and pepper the casters with arrows? That's a memorable encounter, as long as it's not every encounter, if you get what I mean.

 

[Mort]

Impressive right? It doesn't really matter though, what I've quickly found out about the upper limits of tier 3 play is that armor class ceases to matter because the enemies of equivalent CR have high modifiers and hit really hard. Just last session I got two shot by a nabassu demon (CR 15) who did over 120 damage in two attacks on a crit. Nothing I could do.

Adamantine armour is your friend!

 

[Radaceus]

I find it only an issue for early levels, and even then only if a PC ran-genned really well on stats, and min/maxed for high AC, and even then again generally a thing of chance ( crit successes vs crit fails). Early in the peice bothered me, 2014, but having leveled and DM'd into the upper tiers, I know that the early game is just a lure of complacency; The PC's soon learn that they are indeed mortal no matter their AC and HP by about level 6ish, and sometimes sooner thanks to things like nimble escape, martial advantage, pack tactics and Tucker's Kobolds scenarios... oh and drow and their spiders...with poison!....egads!

 

[Argyle King]

I've been considering the idea of using the flanking rules, but having them give a to-hit bonus rather than advantage.

I know that's somewhat against the design philosophy of 5e, but I feel as though it may be an option which would make battlefield position important without it getting lost in the other options for advantage/disadvantage. I've also started to notice that using flank to determine advantage (and thus cancelling disadvantage) leads to some weird in-play behaviors.

The rough idea I have at the moment is +1 for flanking.

I'm debating whether to allow potential for a higher bonus if a large group completely surrounds a target. Ideally, I'd like for this to allow groups of lower-level foes to still remain relevant. I'm unsure on if the change makes a group of PCs too strong against big solo creatures, but -if so- that might allow for using tougher "boss" monsters.

 

[Oofta]

A lot of this is going to depend on campaign, resource management and level. If your level 5 fighter has defensive style, plate and a shield that puts them at AC 21, which is assuming of course that you've gotten enough gold to buy that plate armor which may not be true based on the campaign. CR 5 monsters have around +7 or 8 to hit so they should hit around a third of the time (give or take). Hardly "hoping for a 20".

On the other hand, if there are enough magic items running around it can get quite a bit higher. Not sure how many spells/abilities add to AC (I'm not much of a min/maxer myself) but that's also heavily dependent on only having a handful of encounters between rests.

But if it is an issue, it's also fairly easy to deal with. Ignore the tanks with the super high AC. Have 1 creature trip or grapple the tank so the others can dog-pile. Target things other than AC. Or just up the chance to hit for the enemy by giving them reckless attack or an NPC cleric that blesses them as they go into battle.

In my experience, D&D is only as easy (or hard) as the DM and the group want it to be.

 

[guachi]

My experience at running 5e is admittedly low.

However, I've been a player in several campaigns. I've started to notice that monsters appear to struggle to land attacks on players, in some instances needing to roll extremely high to even touch a PC. In some cases, if a paladin, eldritch knight, or similar such characters are in a group, it appears that CR-appropriate creatures are often just praying for a critical so as to be able to do anything.

Last campaign I DMed there was a paladin PC that took defensive fighting style and used a sword and shield. As soon as she could (5th level) she bought plate armor. She wanted a defensive PC and got it with AC 21 in this case.

Another PC in the party was, for a time before deciding Gloom Stalker was more her style, an Eldritch Knight with Half Plate, 14 Dex, and a shield. AC 19 or AC 24 with shield spell.

The enemies are just praying to hit. I'm fine with this as the players intentionally chose this for their PCs.

It's not all smooth sailing. A fear spell and some bad saves laid the EK low for an entire battle versus the BBEG.

 

[ad_hoc]

1. Don't use flanking
2. Use standard array (or point buy)

3. It's easy for creatures to move around. There just aren't enough PCs to stop them. The monsters should be attacking the weaker PCs. The Fighter may be the last one alive, but they're still going to die.