D&D 5E (2014) Best way to balance an encounter against a level 10 5 player party?

Stalker0 · Tuesday at 9:00 PM

If you are willing to fudge things a bit (which is not for everyone I respect). You can setup "phatom follow-ups".

If the encounter you setup is just a breeze, send in a secondary group mid fight to take it up a notch. If the fight is a nail-biter, than those secondary just never show up.

What makes it great is that it lets you tailor your encounter in the actual after you see how its going, rather than relying on theoreticals. But it does require a little DM duplicity so depends on your comfort with that.

aco175 · Wednesday at 12:03 AM

Stalker0 said:
If you are willing to fudge things a bit (which is not for everyone I respect). You can setup "phatom follow-ups".

I'll do this myself and have 5 more grell show up in a couple rounds if I think the fight needs it.

I also agree that terrain helps combats a lot. A 20ft chasm with a narrow rope bridge. There is risk of falling or hiding more grell in the depths. People can teleport around and surprise people thinking they were safe. Boulders can provide AC boost or allow to hide.

Zardnaar · Wednesday at 8:27 AM

They will destroy that encounter.

Xp Budget is 11500 for a medium encounter.

A mage is CR 6. 9th level caster. 2300xp. 5th level mage CR 2 or 3 depending on spells.
Mind flayers 2900xp.

Grell is irrelevant.
Warrior commander is CR 10 5900 probably to much. 11100xp. Try a pair of gladiators (cr5) elite guards 3600. 8800xp

Rooms really small. Add more bodies.2700 xp is 6 CR 2. Cult fanatics for more spellcasters and some CR 2 beats sticks.

Distracted DM · Wednesday at 1:34 PM

Waiting to hear back from OP

One of the better suggestions to spice things up was terrain. To make it easy on the GM, some patches of dangerous terrain (literally, not just slowing speed) that the baddies are immune to.

SpellObjectEnthusiast · Wednesday at 1:47 PM

Your original encounter design should be fine, provided that you also include 2-3 other encounters of similar difficulty in the same adventuring day.

17,400XP* will give you a Deadly encounter for your party size - which means the party will probably win unless they play stupid or get super unlucky - but they'll have to spend a lot of resources to do so. If you don't make that resource drain matter, it will be trivial in the grand scheme of the adventure.

*In my opinion, you should follow the following guideline for 5 player parties as well as for 6 player parties: "If the party contains six or more characters, use the next lowest multiplier on the table. Use a multiplier of 0.5 for a single monster". Even one extra PC gives them a huge boost over a 4 player party that isn't accommodated by the multiplier table

Not a Decepticon · Wednesday at 2:01 PM

Stormonu said:
Ugh? Featureless room? Throw in some elements the players can use or have it used against them. Grells hiding in fog in the air above. A pool of mildly acidic/entangling goo that heals the Mind Flayer. A concealed door the spellcaster can duck through and leave a harmful area of effect behind.

Put the players off-balance as I don't think the monsters themselves will be much of a challenge otherwise.

Mind Flayer just makes the floor explode under the PCs with HIS AWESOME MIND POWERS

In fact, this is the idea I have for this fight: Set up a lit of Lair Actions that go off at each round of combat at initiative 20. Floor explodes, chandelier falls of the celling, nets are lanuched at PCs, part of the room is covered in acid, another part catches fire. Make sure the situation changes every round worse for the PCs.

Jaiken · Thursday at 2:29 AM

Distracted DM said:
Waiting to hear back from OP
One of the better suggestions to spice things up was terrain. To make it easy on the GM, some patches of dangerous terrain (literally, not just slowing speed) that the baddies are immune to.

The terrain ideas and what everyone has said really helps. Thank you all.