D&D 5E Weak 5e monsters

[S'mon]

I'd been holding off on accepting 5e monsters were underpowered, but last night after my
group so easily dispatched a Tyrannosaurus Rex (CR 8) in the wilderness, I checked stats vs Classic BECMI - the Classic T-Rex has 20 hit dice. The 5e one has 12! No wonder it felt so easy. Compare young red dragons (CR 10 in 5e)
- 10 hit dice is standard for a Classic red; whereas the 5e young red has 17 hit dice.

Now my PCs are 9th-11th level (Barb-11 just levelled, Cleric 9, Rogue 9 just short of 10th)
it looks like challenging my PCs with solo monsters is going to be very hard - either I'd need a gang of Tyrannosaurs or at least double their hit dice & damage...

 

[Illithidbix]

I might be wrong, but don't 5E monsters often end up having more hitpoints due to CON modifers and bigger dice?
Monster Hitdice were D8 weren't they?

20 x D8 hit points averages to 90hp
T-Rex in 5E has 136 (13D12 + 52)

(The same could be said for players having more HP as well)

Otherwise yes, partially the problem seems to be the adventuring day often seems somewhat long.

Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day."

And Solo monsters are at quite a disadvantage if they don't have legendary actions to react to the players with.

 

[Celtavian]

I recently had party of seven level 4 characters battle four umber hulks. That was a reasonably tough battle. The same group took on four mummies, a CR 9 wraith I advanced with 130 hit points and double the damage of the wraith, and eight specters, they destroyed that encounter taking minimal damage.

A previous group started beating adult dragons easily around level 9. Undead have been a real pushover in this edition.

Judging what will be tough for groups in 5E has been difficult so far.

 

[dmnqwk]

A level 11 and 2 level 9 PCs should find a single Tyrannosaurus scraping into a medium encounter, but realistically very easy.

One problem with a lot of monsters in 5th edition is the lack of Armour Class attached - A Dex 20 Rogue getting to Assassinate is rolling advantage and only needing like a 4 to hit for up to 12d6 (shortsword plus 5d6 sneak) + 5 damage, or over 1/3rd of the monster's health in a surprise round of combat.

5th edition doesn't offer decent AC to monsters, keeping their AC in line with players instead, which cause difficulty to go out of the window in a lot of cases. If a Tyrannosaurus had an AC of 20 from it's insanely thick hide combat might feel completely different, and much more challenging, as the PCs move from hitting every time, to a 50% shot, allowing a lot more randomness to creep into the encounter.

With most groups, you need to tailor encounters to attack their weakest area to challenge them - in a group with a barbarian and rogue, find ways to deny sneak attack in combat by disabling the barbarian (psychic attacks or intelligence drains) if you want to challenge them. And realise any monster who is being hit on a 5+ is probably not going to challenge the group when the Rogue can do 25 points a round, the Barb can get in 20 (or 40 if they are GWM) and the Cleric can chip in 10-15 on top guaranteed.

 

[GameOgre]

Go by eight encounters between long rests and don't use feats. Do these two things and then take another look at it.

If you go under the eight encounter guideline the group fights become more trivial the lower you go.

Feats break the game rules in the pc's favor and are mostly combat oriented. The monsters do not get the same options to break the rules.

 

[wedgeski]

Simply put, I find the game as written to be pitched too easy. In a recent adventure, I dialled almost every encounter up one or two levels of lethality, and the standard 4-person party handled it just fine, and all that without a healer.

The design guidelines simply can't handle every possible combination of classes and player. They made the right decision pitching things at the easy end: it's much easier to ramp the game up than it would be to dial it back.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Feats break the game rules in the pc's favor and are mostly combat oriented. The monsters do not get the same options to break the rules.

Says who? No matter what edition I'm running the monsters always get an even break. Access to feats, the same healing rates as PCs, etc.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

I occasionally hear, what sounds to me at least like, cries to return to the grind. And I find that baffling.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

If you design encounters in a way that every one of should be deadly dangerous, yes it is too easy or swingy... if you design emcounters with a goal in mind other than murdering whoever you see, the game is a lot more interesting. Can PCs kill monsters if they pile on them... yes. Should they? Maybe. Should every monster try to take the PCs on their own? Maybe not. Actuall raising alarm should be hoghest priority usually. And preventing that makes it interesting. Because if they don't PCs may be the hunted soon.

There once was a thread about combat as sport or combat as war. 4e is especially good for the former while 5e is really good for the latter. LOW AC allows the assin to contribute meaningfully by eliminating a single guard before he can react. If you only have a 50% chance to hit, that mission would be much too risky.

 

[AriochQ]

I almost always have flunkies included in my encounters. Even the addition of 4 or 5 much weaker monsters makes a significant difference.

The issue I have with the 5e system is the concept that players are going to have an insane number of encounters between long rests. During a dungeon crawl, ya maybe. But most of my adventures are not dungeon crawls. If my players went 5 combat encounters every day they would probably be jailed as criminals! (they spend a lot of time in civilized areas).

I prefer to have less frequent, more meaningful, encounters. We probably average 2 combats per 6 hour session. Almost every combat is challenging and I think that adds to the characters enjoyment. Groups and DM's vary, so my style is not for all, but I do think it is a weakness of 5th ed. that they balance based on number of encounters per day and then set that number abnormally high for most circumstances.