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

[FormerlyHemlock]

I'm not as skilled a DM as some here, but I'm also not a fan of layering PC levels on top of Monsters, for the most part. I remember certain previous edition's Dragons became, basically, spell casters in scales instead of robes to be challenging. That being said, Dragon's are innately magical creatures, and giving them appropriate abilities and powers, cribbed from spells and feats in the PHB, is certainly appropriate IMHO.

Because of the way spellcasting and concentration work in 5E, dragons will always be more than spellcasters. The base dragon chassis is really strong and that acts as a force multiplier. E.g. the dragon blindsight is key to efficient utilization of 2nd level Darkness or 1st level Fog Cloud. A regular Dragon Sorcerer who quickens Hold Person V has nothing really great to do with his main action after that, only Fire Bolt or Hide or maybe Dodge, but a dragon can quicken a Hold Person V and then target paralyzed PCs with six (!) high-damage auto-crits over the course of the next round.

For instance, that Ancient Red might have an innate Fire Shield (warm version) like ability due to the massive heat and flames it radiates. The dragon's gaze is dangerous, as it acts like Hypnotic Pattern to those who meet it. Those who fall under the effect of the Dragon Gaze are susceptible to the Dragon Sickness (Suggestion, Confusion, Crown of Madness: take your pick). He can use his wings and heat to manipulate the air currents (Wind Wall, with a larger area). "My Wings: A Hurricane!" At his command, the ground around the lair explodes into rock and magma (Erupting Earth). And of course, when he becomes really enraged (half hit points?), he flies into a frenzy of death (Haste).

That is just spit balling off the top of my head, but is more aesthetically pleasing to me. I probably wouldn't want to use all of those abilities, or at least tweak and refine them some, but that is the kernel of the idea.

De gustibus.

 

[Barolo]

(...)

I favor spellcasting over brute force (upping the stats to match Tiamat) because there's more room for counterplay. If the dragon is tough because it has ten thousand HP, there's not much the players can do in terms of counterplay to the stat inflation--they just have to chew through the HP the hard way. But if the dragon is tough due to Darkness/Greater Invisibility and Shield spells, then they can Dispel or True Seeing the Darkness, and then Counterspell the Shield, leading to a much softer dragon. It gives the dragon an interesting vulnerability that you don't get out of pure stat inflation, which always rewards planning and reconnaissance. I find that cool. I don't know how you and your players feel about play/counterplay, but it's something to think about anyway.

This also illustrates very well some of the issues I see with upping the stats of Strahd, or the fiends. Über stat monsters can be quite boring.

 

[Helldritch]

Again, boosting Strahd is not necessary but if I intended to use him as the only fight of the game. This is what I would do, using my own guidelines for a 5mwd in 5ed.

Single encounter big bad guys
Add 1 feat/ASI per 4 CR (save the first four, round up if necessary)
Add 1 legendary action per PC above 4.
Multiply HP by 1 +0.25 per PC above 4.
Add 1.5 AC (round up) per PC above 4.

So Strahd would now be (with 6 players)
AC: 19 (+3 from the number of players)
HP: 216 (x1.5 for 6 players)
He would now have 5 legendary actions to take ( 6 players)

For the ASI/Feat. The number of players is irrelevent. Strahd's stats are already high. I would simply increase his Strength to 20 (giving him +1 hit/dmg to his unharmed attacks) and I'd give him the tavern brawler and the mage slayer feat.

Combined with all his already numerous advantages he is now really dangerous. Move over to a caster. Attack grapple the caster, take a bite (or two if on haste on the caster and gain 10hp temporary hp in the process). The vampire would now use the grappled mage as shield. And he would use legendary action move to get him and the wizard away from the main party and remember he can now do that 5 times. With the map of Castle Ravenloft that means a lot of ground cover in only one round.

As the caster will surely want to cast misty step to escape this would require a concentration check. If the check is successful, Strahd would take an other bite on him (17 hp of dmg and +10 temporary hp or a bit more of healing depending on what had gone before and this attack would force an other concentration check at disadvantage or the spell would simply fail). Strahd could use legendary action after the wizard's turn to close in on the poor wizard.

The target could also be the party's cleric...

In one round (if he had time to prepare) Strahd could've done 48hp of dmg to the wizard and the wizard's total hp would have been reduced by 34! Assuming standard array and 14 constitution that means 60 hp for a 10th level wizard... He now has 24 hp left. As the party rushes to help their friend, Strahd could cast fireball doing 28hp on average. Unless the wizard succeed his save, he's toast. Strahd passes through a wall. Wait a few minutes for the players to raise and use ressources to bring back the wizard and he attacks again. The wizards hp max are still 24 (no rest) and I would now attack the cleric. Same tactics. The cleric might be forced to use his turn undead this time. But it would only delay the inevitable.

I think that doing that would be too dangerous. I'll keep Strahd as is. He is strong enough.

And now for the Ancient Red Dragon. Using the same guidelines would give you a lot more danger than expected.
(assuming 5 players this time)
AC: 24 (+1.5 rounded up)
HP: 738 ( 546 x1.25 + 56hp from the toughness feat)
+1 Legendary action
Added feats: Toughness, mage slayers, mobile, magic initiate (warlock, Eldritch blast and Hex), War caster.
Spell caster variant taken.
Spells: Haste, Dispel Magic, Counter Spell, Wall of force, Heal, Anti-Magic Field.

This dragon is, again, a killer. Depending on his hoard, his AC could go up to 26 and 28 with Haste! Anti-Magic field would prevent the wyrm from getting blasted away by a party heavy on spell magic. Keep at the limit of the spell, move your head out and breathe fire on the wormlings... Wall of force could be used to split the fighters/archer from the other. I would go in the air and use Breath weapon or Eldritch blast to "blast" enemies to smithereens. Hex could be used on an archer to force disadvantage on Dex check.

Somewhere else I have posted an augmented lich. No need to say that it is again a real killer.
So far, I know of 4 other DM that are using my methods. It works out pretty well but you have to keep the CR of the monster within 5 levels of the players. Strahd would be ok for a group of 11th level but for 10th it might be way overboard. In fact, my first group tried Strahd (as is in the book) at level 11 and almost died. The lich was defeated by them at level 19-20 if I remember correctly and that Dragon would be quite a challenge for a 19-20 group too.

The modifications took me about 3 minutes of my time. Not much as you can see and it can be done on the fly. I try not to use feats and powers meant to shut off only one type of group but I try to be as general as possible. I think a wee bit of what would be this boss's nightmare and what he'd do to counter his fear. (ok, a dragon fears nothing but yet, it is not stupid, it knows its weaknesses).

 

[Yardiff]

Every time I see this thread I read the first part as " When Friends Attack"

 

[Nebulous]

I'm probably having a balor come up in the next session, and after looking at the stats, I just thought it actually sounded like a very *boring* demon. It doesn't really do anything cool, except the triple damage crit, that's going to surprise a PC...but only IF it happens. Personally, I would give the balor a higher crit range and add one or two demon specific powers to make it creepier. True Seeing, it already has, that's useful, and telepathy and teleport, so one or two additional powers would really seal the deal. Someone mentioned Legendary; yes, that would help as well, but I also like surprising the players with abilities they don't know about and don't have spell equivalents.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

I'm probably having a balor come up in the next session, and after looking at the stats, I just thought it actually sounded like a very *boring* demon. It doesn't really do anything cool, except the triple damage crit, that's going to surprise a PC...but only IF it happens. Personally, I would give the balor a higher crit range and add one or two demon specific powers to make it creepier. True Seeing, it already has, that's useful, and telepathy and teleport, so one or two additional powers would really seal the deal. Someone mentioned Legendary; yes, that would help as well, but I also like surprising the players with abilities they don't know about and don't have spell equivalents.

If you really need something, then how about this:

Rage of the Abyss: If the balor successfully saves against a spell or magical effect, then it can use its reaction to inflict a rage similar to the barbarian's ability on the creature that attempted to use the spell or magical effect against the demon. The rage lasts until the end of the balor's next turn. Anyone with one or more levels of barbarian is not affected by this ability. If a being has class levels, treat the total levels as barbarian levels for purposes of calculating the rage damage.

This seems like a good deal for a PC, but they can't cast spells or maintain concentration while raging, so the squishy casters are in a lot of trouble if they get hit by this.

 

[Luce]

I would expect a Balor to play "The floor is Lava" with the PCs (or something on that level) if it is meant to be the B3 (Big Bad Boss)

 

[DaveDash]

I ran a Balor fight against a group of 15th level PCs.

It was basically a test from a high level NPC champion to see how tough they were - they were asking to ally with him.

It was summoned down into an arena to fight them to the death. Fire rained down from the sky into the arena causing mini fireballs to fall in areas at random and burn.

A tough fight you reckon? Nah.

The Wizard cast Maze on it, the Bard cast Fly on the Paladin then jumped into the portable hole or bag of holding (which you can live in for 10 minutes). The Paladin buffed himself up a bit while the Balor was in the maze, and then when ready the Wizard dismissed the maze.

The Paladins first attacks did something like 130 damage to it. The Wizard blinked out of existence into the ethereal plane. The Balor managed to catch the party Cleric in its whip and dragged her up into the sky, but the Paladin finished it off round #2. Yeah it exploded and did a bit of damage but they basically wasted it quite easily.

I don't really think it's the Balor's fault this fight was a cake walk. Most high level creatures in D&D 5e are a cake walk for a party that knows what they're doing if they're solo - Dragons as well. You really need to add "minions" to most fights to make them challenging. This fight would have been WAY harder if it had a bunch of low level demons in the mix causing problems.

Certain classes can burst a ridiculous amount of damage in a short period of time (such as Paladins) which make the whole CR scale quite wacky, depending on party resources.

 

[Barolo]

I ran a Balor fight against a group of 15th level PCs.

(...)

A tough fight you reckon? Nah.

(...)

The way I read the MM, it seems the devs sorta hint the readers to which monsters should make good solo fights, specially at higher levels. These are the ones with legendary and lair actions, legendary resistances and the like.

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.

 

[DaveDash]

The way I read the MM, it seems the devs sorta hint the readers to which monsters should make good solo fights, specially at higher levels. These are the ones with legendary and lair actions, legendary resistances and the like.

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.

My experience fighting a lot of Dragons from Tyranny of Dragons is they're pretty weak by themselves, even with legendary actions and lair actions.
There's one encounter that involved two Dragons and a bunch of lower level NPCs which was quite hard, we had one PC drop (mine) but made it through the fight without any deaths.
Some of the other Dragons have been "annoying" more than deadly. The solo Dragons in that module were a cake walk.
I feel like Dragons need to be spell caster variants to be a good challenge by themselves.

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.

I game I mentioned above in my early post was a conversion of the 3.0 adventure City of the Spider Queen, which was about level 10-19.
A lot of "strong" solo encounters from 3rd edition were not that strong in 5e due to the way the action economy and burst DPR works.
I found adding low level creatures (even CR1s) dramatically impacted the difficulty due to action economy.
I started doing that more as I progressed through that adventure, and the combats felt more challenging but also not overpowering against the players. They simply consumed more resources and actions in the groups action economy, without raising the lethality too much.

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.


Sent from my iPhone using EN World mobile app