"Realistic" Waterdeep adventuring with 9th-10th party

I'm thinking about running some some of the old 4E Living Forgotten Realms adventures taking place in Waterdeep. The party will be on the trail of a cult of Asmodeus.

My problem is, the party will be around lvl 9 to 10. Which means city guards, ruffians, cultists, thugs and everone else will be curb stomped by the party. On the other hand, having everyone be elites and veterans, gladiators and so on will strain the suspension of disbelief, I fear.

Any advice on how you handle urban adventuring for anything other than relatively low level parties? Thanks.

Surely the answer is to allow them to regularly curb-stomp the run of the mill ruffians, cultists, thugs and everyone else. That's something to embrace, not something to fight against.

They don't need to always be meeting elites and veterans, gladiators and so on - keep those back for the more challenging encounters.

If in doubt, look to Batman - he faces plenty of people that he can outclass often enough, but then the 'real' adventure starts and features much more powerful opponents (those being the ones that only the Batman can cope with).

There are multiple ways to apply pressure to a higher level group. Not all encounters need to be "deadly" to apply pressure. Put them on the clock and force them through multiple smaller encounters to drain resources. Put innocent civilians in harm's way. Make sure they have to worry about not burning the city down with their errant fireballs. Also, the flat math of 5e should work in your favor here. ACs shouldn't be too hard to hit. A couple of nice sneak attacks will keep the casters humble. Hit them from multiple directions. Sniper rogues with bows.

I also 100% agree with [MENTION=22424]delericho[/MENTION] here: Embrace the PCs as heroes who get to stomp on some lower-level baddies!

My low level party is having enough trouble dealing with adventures and not committing crimes in Waterdeep that would get them exiles or imprisoned (if not killed) by the justice system.

If they start killing guards, then they will have trouble. But having them face human minions they cannot kill should be a sufficient challenge.

Never underestimate the power of mobs in 5e. 10-15 ruffians can be a challenge for batman and 9th level PCs. Throw in a leader that is a bit tougher and you are all set.

A foe does not need to threaten your life to pose a challenge. Guards that you can't kill pose a different type of challnge. Sure, murdering a bunch of thieves as they flee the robbery can be pretty easy - but what is one of them has an explosive and is running through crowds?

Tell a good story and don't worry if every challenge is going to be a deadly challenge.

According to Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, the City Watch are all veterans (officers are knights, apparently) and can call on mages from the Watchful Order of Mages and Protectors. Then there’s Force Gray - composed of PC-quality adventurers - for when the Watch can’t handle things.

Thanks all. That more or less settles my worries for the authorities, so to speak.
But what about the opposition? Surely they can't all be grand master assassins, high priests and elite warriors. How to do this without it being a slog because only low level enemies, or far stretched because apparently the best of the best all happen to be members of this cult?

aco175 said:

Never underestimate the power of mobs in 5e. 10-15 ruffians can be a challenge for batman and 9th level PCs. Throw in a leader that is a bit tougher and you are all set.

Click to expand...

Nah.

Batman idk but level 9 heroes? Nope.

Matrix Sorcica said:

Thanks all. That more or less settles my worries for the authorities, so to speak.
But what about the opposition? Surely they can't all be grand master assassins, high priests and elite warriors. How to do this without it being a slog because only low level enemies, or far stretched because apparently the best of the best all happen to be members of this cult?

Click to expand...

Mob Rules from the DMG.

Not only will combat speed up significantly, but the automatic hits will make the squishier members of the party feel the pressure.
For example, lets take the CR 1/2 Thug!

For starters, they get two attacks per round (with clubs), and Pack Tactics, which is amazing for Mobs. Unfortunately, we are going to start out using their crossbow attack.
Lets generously assume that one of the back row [-]targets[/-]PCs has an AC of 16.
This means one of our thugs needs a 14 to hit them normally .
But wait, because we are using a passive check instead of a roll due to the Mob Rules, we can use those rules to our advantage as well. Using Advantage as a +5 bonus, a la passive checks, means they would only need a 9 to hit provided they can leverage Pack Tactics.

So using the mob rules, this means that one out of every two attacks launched by our mob of thugs will automatically hit the PC. Even if the PC manages to take up half-cover behind one of their party members! Using the average damage of 5 per hit landed, a mob of 15 thugs will deal 35 damage per round (or 40 damage on the second round).

Now, It's worth noting that mobs can be tweaked and still keep the same CR, just so long as they don't up their optimal DPR. This means our Thugs will take a page from the PCs, and be utterly scummy crossbow experts that use hand crossbows to get two attacks per round at range, at a +4 attack bonus (because experts!) for 1d6+2 damage (again expert bonus, so as not to change any other stats) each.

Against the same 16 AC, they now only need a 12 ( a Pity we couldn't get it two points lower), and don't even need Pack Tactics to land one out of every two attacks thanks to the Mob Rules (However, using Pack Tactics lets this work against targets that have 18 and half-cover, or 21 ac without cover!) Also, they are all doing two attacks, which means one of their attacks hits per round. With 10 of these crossbow thugs, that poor PC is looking at eating 55 damage to start with. And 15 crossbow thugs deal an absolutely deadly 82 points of damage per round.