D&D 5E actual encounter [high-level play]

[CapnZapp]

At last the holidays are done and over with, so D&D season can start again!

Let me describe the latest encounter and I'll have a few questions.

questions in this post

As a reminder, my players have the following party:

• Eldritch Knight dualwielder female human (Fighter 14/Barbarian 1)
• Shadow Monk male elf (Monk 11/Battlemaster 4)
• Tempest Cleric male human (Cleric 15)
• Fiend Chain Warlock female tiefling (Warlock 15)
• "Ranger" sharpshooter crossbow expert male halfling (Battlemaster 11/Hunter 4)

They've just arrived on Pazunia, the first layer of the Abyss. I had the Cleric roll an imprompu spellcasting check for his Plane Shift to see how close to the caravan stop of Broken Reach they got (since the spell itself is rather openended). Total of 24, just one point short of bullseye.

I had actually made up a short list of encounters on the way, anticipating a lower result so the travel would take a few days at least. No such luck, and I had them make a single random encounter roll.

That was Tarnstaff the Shepherd and his gang of slavers, with a collection of various slaves. Tarnstaff and his men are all Molydei "prison guard" demons disguised as swarthy nomad humans. There are ten of them in total.

Now, 5E doesn't provide nearly enough variation in demon statistics, and I imagine the Molydeus type is quite obscure and thus low on the list, so here's my own take and I'll let you eyeball a Challenge Rating and an encounter difficulty. But first, a picture to... well, give you a picture of what we're dealing with:



Molydeus
Large fiend
Armor Class 17
Hit Points ~200 (I randomized each as 180+2d20; Tarnstaff gets 240 hp)
Speed 40
Saving Throws Str, Con +9 the rest +5 (magic resistance)
Resistances and Immunities the usual
Spells DC 17 Forcecage (1/day) Tarnstaff only; Hold Monster (1/day) Tarnstaff and four of his men; Scorched Ray; Alter Self (or what you need to illusion your true appearance)
Multiattack Two greataxe, one dog bite and one snake bite attacks
Greataxe +9 for 2d12+6 dmg (counts as magical)
Dog Bite +9 for 1d6+3 dmg
Snake Bite +9 no dmg but Manes Poison: DC 13 Wis save or one level of exhaustion - three failed saves and you are reduced to a Manes demon

 

[CapnZapp]

As the slave caravan approached the Warlock's Imp (acutely aware she's now playing on away ground, as it were) checked them out. The slavers seemed ordinary enough (for the Outer Planes anyway) with just a red glimmer in their eyes. Their prisoners mostly humanoid but a couple of chained Barlguras and a Vrock pulling the supply wagon.

They made a half-hearted attempt at skirting the caravan, but immediately gave up evasion as they changed course to intercept. If there's anything I've failed at, it's instilling respect for monsters in my players minds.

Anyway, when they met Tarnstaff welcomed them to his care, and more or less assumed they would yield. The Warlock could now see his men's true nature. The halfling made an attempt at intimidating them to move on and let the party pass, rolling low (total 10 doesn't impress).

And so my idea died quickly that Tarnstaff, if suitably impressed, would agree to a one-on-one deathmatch between one of his men and the party's champion for the right to them as property. Tarnstaff wins, the rest accept slavery; party champion wins, they're allowed to go free.

Instead initiative. The half of Tarnstaff's men further away (collecting chains from the wagon) were caught off-guard by this, and didn't get to act the first round.

Warlock casts Forcecage at Tarnstaff and one of his men (the bigger version). Tarnstaff casts Hold Monster at the Warlock, his closest lieutenant at the Cleric. Both lock. I probably forgot to tell you their spell save above: DC 17, just like their AC. Everybody else move or charge. Tarnstaff arrogantly says if they yield now they'll still be spared, just as they let him out of the cage.

Next round, Warlock makes her save, Cleric fails (which is quite unlucky). Monk runs around stunning demons (two or three not sure), but spends Ki points quickly since the +9 Con save makes the Stuns quite far from automatic. I believe all three martials use Action Surges at this point. The rear demons run forward to catch up. Tarnstaff Forcecages the Cleric, Monk and Eldritch Knight (also using the big box version).

The martials are astoundingly resilient even against these quite beefy melee demons, but attacking the Warlock is quite another matter. Especially the two fighters - they each have a resource of Shield spells that sends their AC into the stratosphere where they become functionally immune to martial violence (especially considering how sturdy they are even if an attack were to hit).

Next round, Warlock sends one close demon "through hell", and attempts to escape into darkness cast halfway outside the cage by the Monk (who needs it to teleport outside the Forcecage). The Eldritch Knight also passes the Charisma save to escape (using Misty Step). The Cleric fails his Hold Monster save yet again The halfling seems impressed by the savage and brutal fight (finally! ) and blows their Horn of Nidavellir (a custom horn of valhalla given to them for the final demon showdown fight): twelve spectral dwarf Berserkers appear to help.

Next round a couple of demons chase the Warlock into the darkness (she can herself see just fine). Getting OAs from dwarfs, but pushing through and eventually finding her (wasting some attacks). The last two Hold Monsters were shrugged off by the halfling and EK, respectively.

Demons trying to attack the other party members have very little luck, although one luckily rolled a 19 on his snake attack, making Eldritch Knight player freak out, since she needs to roll 15 to make a DC Wisdom save (talk about having strengths and weaknesses... ). But, no exhaustion - there's always one more ability, one more reroll or one more bonus die to help out...

Demons attacking Nidavellir have an easier time (obviously) but I'm running them as combat vets, so they are acutely aware of the futility in attacking summoned beings (compared to killing the summoner, I mean).

By this time, we are up to 25+ combatants, so the fight takes quite some time, and we're breaking for the day. Three demons are down, the Warlock is on her final Death Save; but Tarnstaff and his mate are effectively out of the combat, and the rest of the Molydei are all approaching bloodied state, while the Cleric and Monk are unharmed and the two fighters have only lost ~40 hp between them (apart from the 20 temporary hp Inspired Leader grants everybody).

I offered to wrap up the fight, but since one of theirs is close to needing a Raise Dead, they all wanted to finish it off properly next time (especially the Cleric player who got to do diddly squat for six hours ).

Questions in next post. Later dudes /Zapp

 

[UnknownDyson]

I don't know how familiar you are with demons (tan'ari) but the Molydeus is supposed to be a greater demon and historically has been on par or somewhat weaker than a balor. I have some suggested changes to the demon that you don't have to follow but, I feel they are relevant so I'm posting them. So first, the save DC for the snake bite should be higher, DC 17 at least. Also the Molydeus should have the teleport action (120 ft) that most high level demons have. Bumping it's armor class up to 18 also makes sense. As for it's actions, the spells are fine but I don't see the Molydeus's floating axe mentioned anywhere. The Molydeus's axe is magic and previously (past editions) they had a feature that allowed them to animate their axes and have them make floating attacks on a target while they attacked with the heads and claws.

To simulate the floating axe effect you could give the Molydeus a claw attack which it would be allowed to make when it wasn't two handing the axe. When the axe is floating over a party member, one axe, one claw, and the two bites. You can reduce the axe attacks to one to prevent it from being too much DPR. The snake head turning a target into a manes after three failed saves is interesting. However the Snake and wolf heads do not do damage equivalent to a high level demon, they should do something like 2d8 +5. The claw attack can be 2d6 +5. As for stats, strength needs to be at least 20, Con can be in 18-20 range, Dex is typically ignored by demons 10-14 is pretty standard for the higher level ones. Wisdom can be lower 12 or 14. Int is a question of how smart you want the demon to be, most high level demons are typically very intelligent, so I would probably go with a 16. Charisma is really what ever you want but keep in mind that demons rely on their ability to make saving throws with their magic resistance trait.

 

[CapnZapp]

I don't know how familiar you are with demons (tan'ari) but the Molydeus is supposed to be a greater demon and historically has been on par or somewhat weaker than a balor.

Well, I didn't know. I gunned for something like a Type 4 or 5 demon (although that comparison is halting since I believe Nalfeshnees are wimps).

Certainly I didn't aim for Balor-kind of power level, since this was meant as a quick and dirty random encounter, not an elaborate end-game encounter. If Tarnstaff had that kind of power, I would have had to make his men lesser, and having to run multiple stat blocks wasn't what I was looking for here - the adventure features enough demons with no official 5e stats already.

Besides, I have trouble imagining Balor-quality demons wasting their time on simple caravan duty, so I would probably not have aimed for top of the line stats even if I knew.

But thanks for your suggestions - I'm sure somebody else will find them useful

BTW, what would you say is the CR and ECL of my encounter, Dyson? (Just curious)

 

[CapnZapp]

However the Snake and wolf heads do not do damage equivalent to a high level demon

The stat block I found online had the Dog be wimply compared to axe swings. I played the Dog bite up for comedy - that is, "now comes the really deadly attack" and making a big deal of each such attack, even though we all know it's almost useless comparing.

Not giving Snake Head damage was just a convenience, to not have players have to make a small hp adjustment.

Not fond of dancing weapons, so I simplified away that part. Already having issues about picking up monster weaponry: does it count as magical because it is magical or because it's held by a fancy demon?

Making two attacks I found appropriate since everybody and their mother gets Extra Attack at level 5...

Thanks

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

I offered to wrap up the fight, but since one of theirs is close to needing a Raise Dead, they all wanted to finish it off properly next time (especially the Cleric player who got to do diddly squat for six hours ).

Is 6 hours an exaggeration or do high level combats actually last that long? I've experienced the rare encounter that's lasted an entire session (our sessions are typically 3 hours) but such things are typically the exception to the rule.

 

[CapnZapp]

Is 6 hours an exaggeration or do high level combats actually last that long? I've experienced the rare encounter that's lasted an entire session (our sessions are typically 3 hours) but such things are typically the exception to the rule.

Based on what I've read here at the forum, you should probably assume I'm playing 50% slower than you. (For whatever that's worth, that is)

We met at 1 pm and ended at 10 pm, but the two first hours were off-topic talk, and this also includes a coffee break (with fastlagsbullar) and dinner (chinese greasy spoon).

 

[UnknownDyson]

BTW, what would you say is the CR and ECL of my encounter, Dyson? (Just curious)

It's funny that you say that, because this version of the Molydeus is somewhat similar to the Nalfeshnee as far as CR goes, hold monster makes them more difficult to deal with though. With that in mind I treated the encounter as if it was 9 Nalfeshnees and a CR 14 variant. It's a deadly encounter going by the DMs guide, but that system is incredibly flawed, so I want to say that it will probably be a trying fight. I noticed many of your martial PCS are multi classed. They seem to enjoy battlemaster, so I know people will be proned and disarmed. They have a lot of battle field crowd control abilities. Things like this significantly reduce the difficulty of monsters who heavily favor melee.

 

[Blue]

With the exception of the spells and increased HPs these seem to be a touch better than Stone Giants which are CR 7. AC 17, two attacks at +9 averaging 19.5 each on hits vs. +9 & average hit of 19 and then a touch more from the dog's head But Stone Giants are only 120 HPs vs. 200, don't have the spells nor the snake bite. On the other hand, Frost Giants at CR 8 have higher damage than either - considering the enhanced HPs, snake bite, and slightly better saves, CR 8 or maybe 9 seems appropriate for the ones without combat spells.

On the other hand five of them had Hold Monster, a 5th level spell, and one Forcecage which is 7th level. Definitely a decent boost, especially considering that each of the party's actions lost will be a lot more valuable then the action to cast. Hold Monster, with it's saves every round unlike lower AoEs like Hypnotic Pattern, is not a paragon of 5th level spells, but still can be very effective.

For all of that, the numbers make a huge difference in the encounter toughness. The *cough* chart in the DMG has x2.5 for each in a group of 10. Which fudging a little for spells would make this around a 100,000xp encounter, or about 4x the Deadly range.

My personal judgement is more like matching up foes to PCs. So each level 15 is fighting a CR 8 and a CR 9. (Estimating 1 use of hold monster to put them in the higher CR and just spread them out.)

Sounds like a good, tough fight where you can't let them focus fire too much on a single PCs. Looking at it, the warlock got pounded, the cleric got held long past expectations, but no one else is particularly impacted in terms of HPs or other resources lost.

Is this the type of evaluation you were asking about?

 

[CapnZapp]

Yep, thanks.

As for AC and DC, I gave the Glabrezu a quick peek, and that's CR 9 (I think). My recollection of using a Glabrezu makes me want to outright switch its type rating with than the ineffectual Nalfeshnees I've used.

The point of the fight was to impress upon the characters that sometimes fighting is perhaps not the best solution (or at the very least not the quickest... in real-world play hours... :-/ ), now that they've graduated to big boy league.

We will see if they'll take the hint. There are some rather nasty upcoming opponents that might be best avoided. (Since this is based on 3E-era Dungeon adventures, the difficulty level is sharply different from 5E and OotA)

(Of course, all this is is theory - since there isn't much of a time pressure, all difficulty can be dialed down to minimum by just resting, but I'm doing all I can given what I have to work with)