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

[S'mon]

Okay. Yes, that tactic works. But notice that you are now expecting the DM to look at two different special attacks (grapple and shove), plus the detailed "being prone" rules (which specify you can't stand from prone when your speed is 0), and put all these together to achieve a soft lock.

That goes well beyond "look at the strategies in the book."

I kind of agree, given that this tactic only occurred to me a couple days ago and I've been running 5e since late 2014!

Also it won't work in my high level game since most of the 5 PCs are high level Barbarians - one of them can't roll an Athletics check under 28, and the weakest of them is rolling with +10 at advantage.
Of the two non Barbarians, one is a 19th level Moon Druid, so that's out too. So that leaves the 17th level Rogue who can't get less than 24 on Stealth - he is vulnerable though if a monster can ever catch him...

 

[Oofta]

I kind of agree, given that this tactic only occurred to me a couple days ago and I've been running 5e since late 2014!

Also it won't work in my high level game since most of the 5 PCs are high level Barbarians - one of them can't roll an Athletics check under 28, and the weakest of them is rolling with +10 at advantage.
Of the two non Barbarians, one is a 19th level Moon Druid, so that's out too. So that leaves the 17th level Rogue who can't get less than 24 on Stealth - he is vulnerable though if a monster can ever catch him...

That can be tough ... my wife played a barbarian in my last campaign up to 20th and at higher levels, let's just say weapon damage didn't phase her much. On the other hand, acid, fire, lightning, psychic damage worked just fine. Dominate type spells and effects genuinely terrified the rest of the group. A lot of times she just whomped the bad guys (which is fine) but there was always a way to challenge her and the rest of the group if I really needed to.

One other option of course is to cheat to win strategically adjust the bad guys so that they can be a threat. I prefer limiting access to AC boosting items or finding alternative damage avenues, but I also customize monsters on a pretty regular basis. Whether that's giving that dragon levels of sorcerer (and spells like shield because what goes around comes around), giving the bad guys (evil) magic weapons or simply upping their chance to hit.

There are a lot of options for a DM if the group is bored. Don't make it DM vs PC, but sooner or later playing on "easy" mode is not fun for most people. As always though, do what makes sense for your group.

 

[Argyle King]

My PCs are currently level 4 with ACs ranging from 14 (the sorcerer) to 20 (the BM fighter with plate and shield).

I haven't found to much problem in monsters hitting them.

Early on I would use more monsters that had stuff like pack tactics (Kobalds +4 to hit with advantage - challenged even the fighter).

As they go up in levels and monsters start getting +5 or more to hit - it's becoming even less of a concern.

Admittedly, my group isn't a very min-max bunch so maybe I'm just lucky. But I suspect if they were - I wouldn't have to try too hard to challenge them.

1. Athletics check to grapple, can't move.
2. Athletics check to knock prone - grant advtg & disad to hit.
3. Profit.

#3 Assumes the GM rules the prone target cannot stand while grappled (unless they first win a grapple roll), which is certainly how I'd run it.

Okay. Yes, that tactic works. But notice that you are now expecting the DM to look at two different special attacks (grapple and shove), plus the detailed "being prone" rules (which specify you can't stand from prone when your speed is 0), and put all these together to achieve a soft lock.

That goes well beyond "look at the strategies in the book."

Quick side question: Any suggestions for how to stop quoting Mort? I don't understand what is going on. Every time I try to reply to this thread, that same post is automatically included in my response.


In regards to the speed 0 idea: Something similar is currently part of what the party does. My character is a Battlemaster Fighter; one of the paladins is a Paladin of Conquest. (In the campaign world we're in, conquest isn't necessarily strictly evil... fluffwise, he's more like a paladin of the crown in service to a militaristic empire.) I'm away from books, but the general tactic we're considering, once it becomes available, is for me to use tripping attack after he activates an aura which causes a frightened opponent to have a speed of 0.

Getting back to high AC convo: Sometimes enemy spells and things which trigger saves pokes holes in defense, but that's been mostly mitigated as well. The two paladins have a good balance of physical (ST) and mental (CHA) stats on top of giving bonuses to saves based upon charisma. The heavier armored of the two (using sword and shield) also picked up a feat which means he takes no damage after making a dex save -even if an attack normally stills does half.

Thus far, our two toughest fights were one which included some type of Beholder (and the DM giving it alternate eye rays) which still did a lot of damage even when a save was made, and one which included a pack of Gnolls and the DM having miraculous rolling for the majority of the fight. Though, it should be noted that the more heavily armored PCs were unavailable during the latter; it was somewhat surprising how drastic the difference in fight outcome was without a particular class being available to the party.

On the +1 for flanking idea: It's a pretty rough idea at the moment. When I've run games in the past, I'm lenient during the first few sessions and while people are still learning, but, eventually, my general rule is that it's too late to go back and add things back in once the next turn has started involving die rolls. I'll give a little more leeway to newer players and/or if the situation is one in which character death might result from an outcome, but I also like to operate under at least some minimal expectation of keeping the game moving forward. I'll take another look at the horde rules.

Currently, my basic concept is +1 to attacks for flanking, but I'm considering allowing higher bonuses for dogpiling on an opponent. What I had in mind was something like [Flanking bonus = N/2], with N equaling the number of creatures flanking a target and rounding down fractions.

So, it would operate something like this...

nEn = n & n have a +1 bonus versus E

..n..
nEn
..n.. = +2

nnn
nEn
nnn = +4

Again, it's just a rough idea. The +1 is the basic concept. I may or may not use the growing scale, but, on some level, it makes sense to me that completely surrounding a target would make it more difficult to defend against attacks. Advantage/Disadvantage is a mechanic which works in most situations, but sometimes the binary nature of it causes what I perceive to be weird interactions in actual play. On the other hand, I can appreciate that it's easy to apply and not fiddly.

 

[5ekyu]

Because one monster attacking with advantage is less effective than two monsters attacking without. This tactic is only useful in a "minions and boss" scenario.


What do you accomplish by grappling the tanky fighter-type? Making them stay next to you until you're dead? That's probably what they were planning to do anyway.


I'm going to assume that by "trip," you mean "shove."

This can work, but you need a very large group. Assuming that you have about a 50% chance to succeed on a shove, you're burning 2 attacks each round to grant advantage to the others. You need at least 5 monsters mobbing the target for that to have any payoff at all, and you need 7+ monsters for the payoff to be significant.


Sometimes they do. Often they don't, because spellcasters are not all that common. You can't just walk down to the corner store and buy one. Besides, PCs focus fire on spellcasters like nobody's business. They can fight intelligently, too.

Re including casters as enemies...

"Sometimes they do. Often they don't, because spellcasters are not all that common. You can't just walk down to the corner store and buy one. Besides, PCs focus fire on spellcasters like nobody's business. They can fight intelligently, too"

Bypassing the generic scope of "sometimes" I think something worth figuring in is "what kind of combat scenario are we talking about?"

By say 5th lvl, when ACs become more readily scaled upwards with the more expensive armors, I tend to find that magic and other type of highly unusual effects are almost always gonna be in a **tough** challenge. It's more rare for their to be a real challenge in opponents of the brute or beast type by then, due to the growth in the PC team options - especially magic.

In that regard, I find the high AC vs brute/beast to be a feature, a sign that the PCs have advanced, that former threats are less a task now, etc. Those are now more warm-ups, showing their heroism maybe draining resources.

But then for real challenges, the "encounters that matter" the presence of magic or similar threats is typical in the vast majority of those. That doesnt mean these are typical in the world, or sold st corner store, but that to get to that threat level and power magic and it's like was needed.

So, to me, those scenes where the AC Carrie's its weight are great - just like the scenes where those Dex saves and Wiz saves come home to roost are too.

 

[Immortal Sun]

That depends on what you're comparing "low" and "high" to. 3rd edition monsters were supposed to hit pretty easily, but go down quickly (high attack and damage, low HP) 4E monsters were supposed to hit pretty rarely, but take a long time to go down (hence why 4E combat is typically a slog). 5E does a fair job of splitting the baby, with players landing hits more often than monsters, but I wouldn't say, IME, much more. I'd say the 5E ratio of monster hits to player hits is probably 40/60.

 

[Imaculata]

For one of my dungeons, I first made sure to deplete the players of most of their resources, before throwing them into a boss fight with two powerful opponents and all their minions. The players had to improvize a lot, and use all those left over 1st level spells, and what ever disposable items they still had on them. It was a pretty close fight. I had never seen my players that stressed before, but they loved every second of it.

 

[Nebulous]

I kind of agree, given that this tactic only occurred to me a couple days ago and I've been running 5e since late 2014!

Also it won't work in my high level game since most of the 5 PCs are high level Barbarians - one of them can't roll an Athletics check under 28, and the weakest of them is rolling with +10 at advantage.
Of the two non Barbarians, one is a 19th level Moon Druid, so that's out too. So that leaves the 17th level Rogue who can't get less than 24 on Stealth - he is vulnerable though if a monster can ever catch him...

Ugh. This is why I typically end my D&D games around 10th level, I just can't stand how it turns into a superhero game and as DM I find myself futilely fighting the numbers.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Ugh. This is why I typically end my D&D games around 10th level, I just can't stand how it turns into a superhero game and as DM I find myself futilely fighting the numbers.

I found grab tactics vs our magically boosted eldritch knight working great...
... admittedly it was a Roc who could then fly up and just let the character drop...

Also it helped to pressure the spell slots more. One very important thing to remember are optional healing rules. You should try to find one that allows for more than a single encounter per day. In dungeons the current rule works great. Overland not so much. My take is that if you are travelling for days, you need a whole day of rest to benefit from a long rest. That makes every shield spell really cost something and AC suddenly drops by 5 points.

 

[snickersnax]

I feel like monster attack bonuses, at least in the original MM, are maybe 2 points lower than they should be.

I completely agree with this

Like the OP I find the monster to hit ability too low especially at mid to high levels. My solution is to adjust the proficiency bonus by challenge rating up by +1 for all monsters with a challenge rating of 1 or higher.

This especially helps bring NPCs that I am using to oppose the PCs up a bit. If you look at the current charts, NPCs with a challenge rating of 2-4 are typically level 5-9 and still only have a proficiency bonus of +2. An 18th level archmage (challenge rating 12) has a proficiency bonus of +4, while 18th level PCs have a proficiency bonus of +6.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I completely agree with this

Like the OP I find the monster to hit ability too low especially at mid to high levels. My solution is to adjust the proficiency bonus by challenge rating up by +1 for all monsters with a challenge rating of 1 or higher.

This especially helps bring NPCs that I am using to oppose the PCs up a bit. If you look at the current charts, NPCs with a challenge rating of 2-4 are typically level 5-9 and still only have a proficiency bonus of +2. An 18th level archmage (challenge rating 12) has a proficiency bonus of +4, while 18th level PCs have a proficiency bonus of +6.

I must say, at the beginning that rubbed me a bit the wrong way... Now I think it is a feature not a bug, because nowadays I don´t actually give out many magic items that increase numbers and having the odds in the players favour helps a lot. On the other hand, I see no problem giving a level 18 spellcaster +6 proficiency bonus, becasue that is what he would get if you built him as a PC and I think it is easy to justify that.