D&D 5E FeeFiFoFum *splat* goes the giants

[AtomicPope]

If you find that your group is routinely breezing through hard encounters, move the encounter difficult down a step (so hard becomes medium, medium becomes easy, etc.). Continue to adjust your encounter difficulty until it matches the abilities of your group.

Or something simple like that. I mean, that is essentially what worked for me (at least before I stopped caring about building encounters and figuring XP)

What we ended up doing was added "effective levels" for magic items. Each powerful magic item attuned added an effective level. So three attuned items is the equivalent as 3 levels higher. That worked a bit but even with that we would have to assume that the counters were still one lower in threat level, like a medium encounter was often easy in game play. After those adjustments the game got back to what it was at lower levels.

I really believe them when they say that magic items are not only not necessary, but they're not even factored in.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Did the three hill giants get a chance to each throw a rock at your PCs? That's their real damaging attack and is what is bumping their CR up. Because if the giants can get two rounds of throwing rocks at the group before the group can engage in melee, the odds of someone getting knocked to 0 HP become much greater, especially if the three giants then also focus their attacks on only one of the PCs. That's what can make the encounter Deadly. Throw in a crit or two and it's even worse. As the others above have said... there are so many variables for any one fight that the encounter building rules are just trying to guesstimate what the average table will experience, but any one particular table won't be average.

In that way, I almost think WotC did players a disservice in actually including encounter building rules in the DMG in the first place... because it gave players the unrealistic expectation that it was possible to actually make a single system that would apply to every single table. What I think they would have been better off doing is just stating in point of fact "Creating combat challenges for your players is more an art than a science. Because every table is different-- with variable numbers of characters, types of characters, optional rules being used, number of fights between rests, number of magic items available and so forth-- you will need to just experiment to find the sweet spot where fights can accomplish what you wish for combats to do in your game."

 

[Ancalagon]

No, sorry, it's not bad. You are using it in a very twisted fashion, experience.

Ok - if you are going to accuse me of doing something in "in a twisted fashion", I would appreciate if you elaborated on what I did "twisted".

 

[Ancalagon]

Did the three hill giants get a chance to each throw a rock at your PCs? That's their real damaging attack

Only 2 rocks were thrown. But this notion that their damage attack is their rock is incorrect. A hill giant can do one attack with a rock at 3d10+5 damage, or TWO club attacks at 3d8+5, per round. They are stronger in melee than at range.

 

[Lyxen]

I think you are misunderstanding what I am suggesting (and I really didn't explain it well I guess). I am not saying there should be a table that list these things out and how to adjust XP budgets in fine detail. What I am suggesting is a simple acknowledge that X, Y, & Z things can and do affect the challenge of an encounter. Then probably a suggesting to slide up an down the difficulty scale based on your experience. So it could say:

If you find that your group is routinely breezing through hard encounters, move the encounter difficult down a step (so hard becomes medium, medium becomes easy, etc.). Continue to adjust your encounter difficulty until it matches the abilities of your group.

Or something simple like that. I mean, that is essentially what worked for me (at least before I stopped caring about building encounters and figuring XP)

Honestly, although it's not exactly what you are mentioning, have you read the section called "modifying encounter difficulty" ? "Increase the difficulty of the encounter by one step (from easy to medium, for example) if the characters have a drawback that their enemies don’t. Reduce the difficulty by one step if the characters have a benefit that their enemies don’t. Any additional benefit or drawback pushes the encounter one step in the appropriate direction. If the characters have both a benefit and a drawback, the two cancel each other out."

The suggestions in there are mostly about the environment, and admittedly it could be enhanced about magic items and options like feats, but there are guidelines and clearly delineated options, if you choose to ignore the guidelines and include the options, as a designer I would say that you should know what you are doing and if you make the characters stronger, honestly you should know that you should also make the encounters stronger. Writing rules should not be like writing the specs of a microwave and include the fact that you should not put your cat in there...

 

[jmartkdr2]

The DMG uses the word "deadly" in a very different way than normal people. You might think it means "likely to cause TPK" - and you'd be both totally reasonable to think so and very wrong. They define deadly as a 1-in-4 chance that a single pc will fail three death saves. Not even "it's likely to happen" - just it wouldn't be crazy if it did happen. This, I think, is the root of your confusion.

 

[Lyxen]

Ok - if you are going to accuse me of doing something in "in a twisted fashion", I would appreciate if you elaborated on what I did "twisted".

Only one fight in a day and allowing the adventurers to go nova (burning all their high level spells) ? Not to mention stronger characters than what the standard rules allow.

That being said, my apologies for the word "twisted", I was in a hurry and did not find the right word. And I still can't, but you are clearly using a tool beyond the boundaries of its intended design.

 

[dave2008]

Honestly, although it's not exactly what you are mentioning, have you read the section called "modifying encounter difficulty" ? "Increase the difficulty of the encounter by one step (from easy to medium, for example) if the characters have a drawback that their enemies don’t. Reduce the difficulty by one step if the characters have a benefit that their enemies don’t. Any additional benefit or drawback pushes the encounter one step in the appropriate direction. If the characters have both a benefit and a drawback, the two cancel each other out."

Well it has been a long time since I looked at the encounter guidelines (about 6 years) and I completely forgot they had that advice in there - good on them (I must have internalized it because the is the basic approach I used). I guess all I would have liked to see is a bit of an expansion of that section that included bullet points about the party gear, tactics, number of fights, and then how to increase a challenge to be over "deadly."

 

[dave2008]

As and additional note, it would be helpful if they frame the difficulties differently. The goal of each difficulty is not to kill PCs, but make them use resources. So "deadly" should be defined in terms of HP, daily resources, etc.

 

[Lyxen]

Well it has been a long time since I looked at the encounter guidelines (about 6 years) and I completely forgot they had that advice in there - good on them (I must have internalized it because the is the basic approach I used). I guess all I would have liked to see is a bit of an expansion of that section that included bullet points about the party gear, tactics, number of fights, and then how to increase a challenge to be over "deadly."

Yes, it could have been useful to add a few details, but it's certainly not as bad as some people would make it. After that, it's not that hard to work on an effective character level rather than his actual level, if the challenges go over deadly. If your characters fight like one or two levels above what standard characters of that level would do, just use the one or two levels above.

As and additional note, it would be helpful if they frame the difficulties differently. The goal of each difficulty is not to kill PCs, but make them use resources. So "deadly" should be defined in terms of HP, daily resources, etc.

It is defined that way, if you can do 2-3 "deadly" encounters in a day, that means that each will take 33-50% of your daily resources. After that, the adversaries and situations are so varied that it's impossible to predict whether it will be consumed in HP, HD, spells, etc.