D&D 5E [DM problem] Is the group I am leading too strong? Is the 5E system unbalanced?

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=6872180]bbrown12[/MENTION] I always recommend tweaking encounter design first (before changing number/composition of monster or customizing stat blocks) to increase the challenge. A few thoughts for your party. Use at your discretion...

Un-defeatable Barbarian:

• Consider including situations where melee attacks are hard or costly. Archers on an elevated rise requiring a treacherous climb to reach. A monster with a flame aura. Etc.
• Consider including more damage types like acid, lightning, force, or psychic.
• Consider introducing situations which impose disadvantage to the barbarian's attacks – fighting while climbing, fighting while squeezing, fighting underwater, fighting in the dark, etc.
• Remember that Rage ends prematurely if the barbarian's turn ends and he hasn't attacked a hostile creature since his last turn or taken damage since then. What about a hold person, entangle, paralysis, or even quicksand/hunting trap? What if a fellow PC charms all hostile creatures within reach to be temporarily friendly? What if the creatures fall back upon seeing the wild-eyed frothing barbarian fell one of their number?

Fire-balling Sorcerer/Warlock:

• Have some monsters use guerilla tactics. Stay spread out, employ snipping techniques.
• Introduce "mob" monsters in waves. For example 12 orcs on round #1, then 12 more on round #3. Many players will expend fireballs when they think they're facing brunt of the attack, so having some of the monsters "off camera" is a good way to mitigate that. Of course, fair play says that the players should have some way to learn that the monsters are going to come in waves.
• What about monsters with their own fire resistance/immunity and/or Dexterity saves? Or even Fire Absorption?
• What about conditions which make self-targeting with fireball a bad proposition? For example, traveling with pack animals or henchmen / protecting a NPC?
• What if an enemy caster debuffs the rogue's Dexterity saving throw (e.g. hex or restraining spells)? Might that discourage self-targeting?

Un-hittable Heal-bot Cleric:

• Dang, that's some nice defensive treasure your cleric is rocking. Either he got lucky or had a generous DM. Too bad the plate and shield don't apply to any saving throws, eh? Hint, hint.
• Give a monsters advantage to hit the cleric by having one monster take the Help action to grant its ally advantage. Or blind, knock prone, stun, or restrain the cleric - same effect.
• Area effects, whether from a spell or simply environmental, can forgo any roll to hit (and sometimes even forgo a saving throw). For example: getting pushed off a roof.
• Monster can cast Dispel magic too. Or the kobolds can herd rust monsters toward the cleric's position.
• Tax the cleric's spellcasting more. The choice to expend most slots on spells should feel a like a meaningful choice – in other words, that the cleric is giving something up in order to benefit from all that healing. This means either more encounters or harder encounters...or writing in special uses for cleric's spell slots into your adventure (e.g. expend a spell slot to re-sanctify a shrine within a fallen temple inhabited by monsters).
• Charm another PC and have them attack the cleric. Or vice versa.
• Use monsters like wraiths which deal damage that doesn't heal (until a rest). Since many of these are undead, not only does this genuinely threaten the party, but it also gives the cleric a chance to use Turn Undead and be more than the "un-hittable heal-bot."

Because the whole adventure is very "sandbox" I often need to adjust encounters. Therefore, I often use encouter builders like Kobold Fight Club to fit the characters current level. I always use "hard encounters", but it still seems not enought. Might that also be a problem?

Depending on many factors (player skill, how DM plays the monsters, whether magic items & feats are in the game, how fresh the party is, etc.), a "Hard" encounter could actually be "Medium" or "Deadly" or even "Easy."

Also consider how the DMG defines a "Hard" encounter...

[SECTION]A hard encounter could go badly for the adventurers. Weaker characters might get taken out of the fight, and there's a slim chance that one or more characters might die.[/SECTION]

...and consider whether that meets the definition of "Hard" that you are looking for.

 

[devincutler]

POTA SPOILERS:

Several things (some already iterated above, but I am reiterating them).

First, PoTA is generally too easy as written IMO. I played through it and have read it through afterwards. There is not a lot of magic or spell power thrown at the PCs, and this makes a barbarian (I played a Battlerager in it) shine in this AP.

Second, when PoTA does introduce spells, it is usually the boss or miniboss, and you HAVE to use them well. If you cannot use spells, the barbarian will rule the roost. Monsters cannot go toe-to-toe with a barbarian. The half damage is just too much, especially when combined with massive hp, high Con, and the fact that healing is twice as effective on a raging barbarian (because it takes half damage). You must use spells to take out a barbarian. And not Dex save spells, because of Danger Sense. Wisdom saves are the best.

Third, HARD encounters are not hard...especially if the PCs are not having the 6-8 encounters per day that the system expects. There are many areas in PoTA where a lot of creature can come to a combat and the whole complex can be alerted. Are you running those parts well? PoTA also does a half decent job of reinforcing areas when the PCs retreat from a complex to rest. Take advantage of this and beef it up if necessary. Most well designed parties run by experienced players can handle multiple encounters at the lower end of the DEADLY spectrum.

 

[BoldItalic]

From one point of view, the purpose of most encounters is wear down the PCs' resources: healing potions, spell slots, once/rest features and so on, so that they go into the boss fight nearly spent. This only hurts if you stop them taking rests. Harry them so that they can't. Think up some creative ways of preventing resting. For example:

• An unlimited supply of kobolds who appear every half-hour during rests, laughably attempt to negotiate the surrender of the PCs and don't give up until they provoke combat, whereupon they run away having successfully ruined the rest.
• Any room they try to rest in, gets slowly filled with poison gas which requires saving throws to be made with increasing DC every 10 minutes until they give up trying to rest there and move on.

 

[CapnZapp]

5e is by far the least dangerous version IME

Thank you.

(Of course every change is liked by some, that's not the point. Shortened your statement to focus on the actual facts)



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[schnee]

There is already some excellent advice up-thread here.

I can offer a quick hack since it seems like your PCs are fully-magic item equipped.
Remove Damage Resistance bludgeoning, piercing, slashing from nonmagic weapons on all monster that have it. Increase the monster's hit point total by 1.5x. So a monster with 80 hp would now have 120 hp and no damage resistance to bludgeoning/piercing/slashing.

So you inadvertently changed it from 'resistant to weapons' to 'resistance to magic spells that cause hit point damage'?

 

[CapnZapp]

I was giving monsters max HP and it made little difference.

If you want to reapply a higher difficulty, making monsters even beefier is probably not the best way.

It merely makes combat take longer. You might think it tips the scales, but what it really does (in touch and go cases) is force players to expend more limited resources - they still win.

Instead, either reduce the hit points of PCs or increase monster damage.

There's no need to formally give monsters feats and such. Just add, say, the monster's proficiency bonus to every roll it makes: attacks, damage rolls and saves.

Instant jump in difficulty level.



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[CapnZapp]

I moved away from published adventures, continued to hand out interesting magic items instead of +x ones, and have not run into an issue. The players are feeling challenged by the fights that are intended to feel as such.

They don't always play particularly smart, but when the do, it is more about avoiding combat entirely, and less about making combat too easy.

Yes the complaint is naturally centered around published scenarios.

That you have no problems has little relevance on that issue.

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[CapnZapp]

Yes.
5e does not assume magic items. So they are a bonus that outright makes characters stronger. As you can see with the cleric.
Numerical bonuses to AC are the big one, because it means all monsters cannot hit and you need to rely on other methods of damage (i.e. spells).


This is another hurdle. The big equaliser to AC is relying on spell saves.
Really, not knowing how spells work is always going to be problematic. Because you can't anticipate the spells your players will use and don't know how to counter them. And you thus don't know the best play to play and run a spellcaster character. Knowing what the best spell to use against certain characters, such as dominating the barbarian or hitting the sorcerer or cleric with feeblemind.

NPC spellcasters really need to hang back. Preferably behind tougher monsters. Having spells like counterspell handy are also useful. They should also use the terrain, having barriers between them and the player characters, or traps.

But this is going to be a big hurdle. If you're mentally a rogue/fighter player, then as a DM it's going to be hard for you to challenge and counter the entire party. Not every DM has a tactical brain, which makes composing fights just that much harder.



More enemies can work, but more enemies at once isn't always the best plan.

Waves of enemies can be more effective. As can reinforcements, possibly ones coming from a different direction.
Terrain is also a big equaliser. Cover and difficult terrain that slows down the PCs can be used to great effect. As can ambushes or traps.

It still is a failure of communication.

WotC certainly doesn't get to both eat the cake (here! Lots of cool items!) and have it still (why you didn't think the game could handle actually using the 100+ pages of magic items!? We just wrote them, if you use them that's on you!)

In other words WotC shouldn't get away with not taking responsibility for making a game that cannot handle it's constituent parts.

They do not say "don't use feats and magic items unless you're okay with all our adventures becoming way too easy" on the label. In fact, they say next to nothing, hoping that apologists like you will deflect and shift the blame away.

Many DMs fall into this "trap". The blame for this should squarely rest in the lap of the designers.

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[CapnZapp]

The game gets easier and easier at high levels with every edition, especially when using material released close to the launch. High level play in D&D has never worked perfectly...

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't expect each edition getting better at it.



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[CapnZapp]

Huh. I must be doing something wrong then because I just about TPKed a high level party a while back.

Sigh. Anecdote <> data


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