D&D 5E Balancing Mummy Lord fight with CR

[DurrandDurr]

I have a party of 4, level 13 players. One is a Paladin who has an aura that prevents being frightened as well as a +1 Sword. Two characters can do fire damage. The rest of the party is a Druid, Sorcerer, and Bard. They wipe out solo monsters quickly; and use Banishment. The Paladin did about 80 points of damage in one attack on a nat. 20, and two of the party members can cast fire-based attacks. I think the Mummy Lord wouldn't last more than 2 rounds solo.

I'm thinking of giving the Mummy gold-plate armor that is fused to the mummy's body that grants fire resistance (removing the fire vulnerability), but adds vulnerability to lightning (gold is conductive) to counter meta-gaming knowledge. That might let it last a couple more rounds.

Adding more monsters to this fight seems best, but not sure how many to add or what type Thematically I was considering regular mummies, an Air Elemental or a couple undead constrictor snakes (looking like Bone Naga but without the lore). Would 2-4 more mummies do it, or is that overkill?

 

[Flamestrike]

So i was curious and took a look at the CR calculator. If you assume players have magic weapons.....the defensive CR is only 6, 7 if it has shield of faith already up. No wonder this thing drops so quickly.

The math does not account for Magic items, so those need to be taken into account by the DM when doing his encounters and figuring difficulty (like everything else).

 

[Stalker0]

The math does not account for Magic items, so those need to be taken into account by the DM when doing his encounters and figuring difficulty (like everything else).

Agreed. I just think that WOTC underestimated how many groups are going to have access to at least basic +1 weapons at the 10+ level range, and how it just completely changes the durability of the monster when they do. Or maybe I am the special snowflake and most groups really do not have magic swords and such by 10th level, but even looking at their own treasure tables that doesn't seem to be the default assumption. As a consequence I think many of their monsters are completely over CRed compared to the "default" party in actual play.

Aka, I really think CR's should just assume magic weapons past a certain CR, and then give special notes if you don't have them. Similar to how flying + ranged damage is no longer a CR booster at CR10+, because its assumed a party of those levels has enough "stuffs and things" to handle it.

 

[Flamestrike]

Agreed. I just think that WOTC underestimated how many groups are going to have access to at least basic +1 weapons at the 10+ level range, and how it just completely changes the durability of the monster when they do.

There is still scope in the Encounter building rules to factor that in though.

Even as simple as the PCs counting themselves as having 'favorable circumstances' based on their magical gear:

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.

Building Combat Encounters

Using that rule alone, a 'stock' Mummy Lord turns from a Medium encounter (4 x 13th level PCs with no magic items) to an Easy encounter (4 x 13th level PCs with magic items) which at an eyeball, also feels about right.

My gut tells me that the OP however is using CR as his guide for encounter difficulty overall, which is likely what is causing him problems.

 

[Stalker0]

There is still scope in the Encounter building rules to factor that in though.

Even as simple as the PCs counting themselves as having 'favorable circumstances' based on their magical gear:


Building Combat Encounters

That gets a little trickier when your dealing with x2 or more deadly encounters, or just trying to figure out the appropriate XP.

It works, I just think it takes too much work. Its personal preference of course, but I would rather it have worked where the baseline is "assume magic weapons past X level", and then if you don't have them, bump up the difficulty 1 based on the guidelines. There are a lot of monsters that have resistance to nonmagic weapons, especially in the higher CR range....so having to do that adjustment time and time and time again is tedious.

 

[Flamestrike]

Also using that rule, a 'tooled up' Mummy Lord WITH magic items, is still only a Medium encounter for PCs who also have them (the rules assume the PCs would defeat it with zero casualties, and only minor use of healing resources after wards).

 

[Flamestrike]

That gets a little trickier when your dealing with x2 or more deadly encounters, or just trying to figure out the appropriate XP.

I tend to agree; personally I just use the 'eyeball' method for my encounters.

I look at the level of the PCs and (roughly knowing my encounter budgets pretty well off my head) can then just quickly knock up half a dozen or so encounters (for a standard adventuring day) off my head.

A 10th level party (for example) would need a roughly CR15 Solo (legendary for solos is always best) and a mix of encounters of 2-3 x CR 6-8's, 4-6 CR 3-5's an encounter of a CR 10 or so critter with several low CR mook types etc.

Thats for a single adventuring day.

I tend to find after doing such an adventuring day, the math tends to come pretty close to the adventuring day budget (slightly over most of the time, but due to the presence of magic items in my groups, I dont worry about that in most cases).

If Im designing a rarer solo encounter adventuring day, I can really dial it up to Deadly+ and chuck in a solo CR 20 for them to deal with, or 4 x CR 8-10's for the same party.

It's as much of an art as it is an exercise in maths.

 

[Quartz]

Rather than spending so much effort trying to nerf the players, why not let them be awesome and just give the mummy lots of extra HP?

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Mummy Lords are basically undead clerics, so have it cast Summon Celestial Spirit as a body guard.

Also you could use the Mummy Lord as a base to build a Mythic Mummy Lord in the style of MOoT's mythic creatures.