D&D 5E (2014) Urban Campaigns and Challenge Rating

[grislyeye]

I'm running an urban campaign and I'm finding my players aren't finding my encounters too tricky.

In an urban campaign, where resources and opportunities for rest are plentiful, should I up the challenge rating for encounters?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

You could certainly increase the challenge rating a bit, if your group is just going back home and resting immediately after every encounter.

Another trick is to make the adventures time-dependent. Sure, they could go back home to rest after that encounter, but by then the McGuffin will be securely in that guarded vault, or the enemies will have time for back-up. Or heck, some other adventuring group comes in and saves the day. Make it clear that they have limited time to deal with whatever threat they're facing.

 

[grislyeye]

You could certainly increase the challenge rating a bit

How much do you think should I raise it? 2 CR?

 

[bedir than]

I wouldn't make large moves up the dial. Maybe add an additional opponent so a 1on1 contest becomes 5on4 or such. Make slow shifts to see how your players are reacting to things.

I know I only do hard, deadly or very easy (usually random to provide setting flavor) encounters. That leads to a different resource use rate than the standard assumption. Your players will adjust.

 

[akr71]

How about removing the opportunity for rests? Make objectives time sensitive or have the baddies bring the fight to them before they can complete their rest and replenish health, spells and resources.

 

[Saarith]

One of the tricks I used was to have a part of the adventure occur in the sewers. The players need to find something there and the sewer collapses behind them, forcing them to go forth and complete the "Dungeon" before resting.

Another trick is to have the objectives time dependent. They must find "insert-item" before dawn or the curse can never be broken, they must find proof of innocence before the execution or perhaps the gates of hell open at sunset unless they manage to find and stop the evil cult leader are examples.

Third trick is to constantly disturb the players if they rest, have them hunted by a group of thieves or something

Increasing the CR can kick back as you might have a premature fatality.

Hope this helps.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

To add to the advice already given by the others above, which I agree with all of (assuming no one posts between akr71 and myself), there is one other thing that I find helps in keeping each encounter that takes place at my table more entertaining from a challenge point of view:

Never let your players be certain that they know how many encounters are happening before their next long rest. Mix up days, have some with next to nothing to spend resources on, and some with tons of stuff to spend resources on, and do so with as unpredictable a pattern as you can manage.

Eventually the players will start to limit their resources expenditure in any given encounter, making it more likely that each encounter feels like a challenge, just so that they can be sure that if today is a busy day for their characters they aren't going to face an encounter without any limited resources remaining to help them overcome it.

 

[CAFRedblade]

With urban campaigns, all of the above is good.
As an example, from TV, the series 24 could be used as a template, where things all take place in the span of 1 day, revealing new leads but accumulating in a definite end for this particular event. Background info
they come across however are tie ins for further single day events several days away.
Or, yes, they fight, find out the MacGuffin is being moved after a tough battle and give em the choice, track it down now, or start looking the next morning, but it's out of the city (locked away) and they need to track down those who know where it was headed. ...

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I'd agree with this estimate. Slowly ratchet up the difficulty, rather than just jumping ahead to Dark Souls levels of challenge. That way you can find the sweet spot without TPK'ing the group.

I wouldn't make large moves up the dial. Maybe add an additional opponent so a 1on1 contest becomes 5on4 or such. Make slow shifts to see how your players are reacting to things.

I know I only do hard, deadly or very easy (usually random to provide setting flavor) encounters. That leads to a different resource use rate than the standard assumption. Your players will adjust.

 

[GM Lent]

My campaign is currently based in a city, so urban encounters are something I deal with fairly often.

One method I've found works is to up the deadliness of the encounters (as others have suggested). My logic here, though, is as follows: the time players spend recuperating after each fight means fewer encounters in a given adventuring day. Since the encounter guidelines assume a level of resource depletion across the course of a day, what might count as "deadly" after three earlier fights might only rate as "mildly bothersome" to a full-strength party.

Could you be more specific about why your encounters aren't too tricky? Is it a resource thing (as it seems most of us have assumed) or something else?