Challenge Levels

[Ryan Henry]

My group has recently retreated from two back-to-back modules after the first encounter proved too difficult ("Zenith Trajectory" of The Shackled City Campaign and "Sons of Gruumsh"). The characters are all supposedly the correct levels (even a couple higher than Sons of Gruumsh suggests, but the players can never seem to make any headway.

As the DM, it's incredibly frustrating for me. I have been through every 1st level adventure I own trying to come up with decent challenges for this group. They are properly equipped, have good ability scores, a well-balanced party, and there are 6 players. They still cannot handle 4th level adventures at 6th level.

The point of all this is to voice my frustration with the difficulty of recent adventures. It's like each one attempts to be as difficult as possible, trying to encourage DMs and players to purchase the latest supplements to give their characters a fighting chance at survival.

Do you have any modules to recommend?

1. Cannot have a city, urban environment, village, hamlet, thorp, etc. We have role-played so much that half of all sessions don't have a single die roll.
2. Has a reasonable difficulty level.
3. Is suitable for 4 players.

Thanks,
RH

 

[Huw]

I've had experiences both ways. I played in "City of the Spider Queen" at the "correct" level and got slaughtered, but on the other hand I'm now playing in an adventure where our 6th level party demolished a CR10 encounter in 3 rounds with minimal resource expenditure (fighter at half hit points, rest slightly battered).

Sometimes both happen in the same adventure. I ran "Hall of the Rainbow mage". The CR11 sub-boss of one level was a push-over, but the CR9 golem just before it killed a party member, and the CR8 "minor encounter" on the same level took half the session to resolve due to two key characters failing a save.

My best advice is to take the adventure you have, and look out for bits which might cause problems knowing your party - CR's are too subjective, IMHO. Look out for encounters which are designed to challenge a missing character archetype - there might be a combat encounter for the party tank, or an undead encounter which the cleric is expected to turn to even the odds.

 

[Odysseus]

I found myself, both playing and DMing. That around 4th and 10th level, party tactics have to change. And what was working before at lower levels, doesn't work.
So if your giving your players lots of low level games, their tactical thinking may be stuck on low level.
To try and help them. Try and use encounters where the monsters have a poor offence and a good defence. That way you'll probably have a longer combat. And the players can try and work on their tactics, without too much risk.