D&D 5E Combat Encounter Difficulty

[Flamestrike]

No. I don't find it interesting. I don't need it. I design encounters that provide a deadly encounter difficulty.

Terrible idea and I wouldnt want to play in your campaign. Goes against the entire systems default pacing and internal rest and balance paradigm and throws the classes entirely out of whack. Full casters are kings of the hill barring some extreme houserules.

But if it works for you and yours, go for it.

Six to eight encounters a day is bunk and should have never been the standard.

Its cool if you think that, but what are you doing to both rebalance the classes and avoid TPKs?

Youre increasing encounter difficulty (exponentially it seems) but how are you rebalancing the classes?

Action surge is basically 1/ encounter in your campaigns. 2/ encounter at 17th level. Spell casting is 1 x 9th, 1 x 8th, 1 x 7th, 1 x 6th, 2 x 5th. 3 x 4th level spell etc etc per encounter.

Also - remind me to NEVER play a warlock in your campaigns. I bet you those that have complain about how 'crap' the class is.

I don't know about your PCs, but my PCs don't use resources unless the encounter requires it.

In a 'super deadly' encounter the are required to use resources. Your casters are surely leading with high level spell after high level spell, with your paladins smting every attack, and your barbarians raging on round 1.

Seriously man - just try a longer AD. Watch previously 'weak' classes (fighter, warlock and monk) come to the fore and long rest dependent classes (full casters, paladins and barbarians which I am sure will feature heavily in your campaign) take a back seat for a while.

 

[CapnZapp]

I read "just have more encounters per day" over and over again.

Never do I see any of acknowledge:
1) the game rules do not force the 6-8 encounter day in any way form or shape. There's nothing even close to formal aids to help the DM out. She is completely on her own in creating story based timers.
2) this is utterly incompatible with wilderness exploration adventures ("hexcrawls") or long distance travel adventures
3) no official adventure follows this guideline AT ALL

Sorry, but for me to even consider your advice, it needs to discuss these issues.

Not doing so amounts to sticking your head in the sand; stubbornly parroting the DMG calculations as if just repeating it enough times would make it happen.

And even so, nobody seem to be willing to touch the real elephant in the room:

Is a long string of individually trivial encounters (where the only challenge is to conserve resources) any fun?

Sorry, but the level of advice which basically says "do 6-8 encounters and all problems go away" is incredibly and frustratingly short on discussing the overall picture.

 

[AkaKageWarrior]

Too many easy encounters are so booooring, so in all our campaigns (D&D 5e, PF)
we prefer the big end fight, where PCs start at least with 80% of their firepower.
Maybe one or two easier encounters before the final battle.

Especially the 5e monsters with their low AC but many hp and mostly low damage output make
the encounters simply boring.
When DMing 5e it took me a few levels to find out I need to bring mostly "above-deadly"
opponents to make it any challenging.

The only problem I see with that is the balance between the classes, concerning the issue
who benefits from short or long rests.

 

[Flamestrike]

When DMing 5e it took me a few levels to find out I need to bring mostly "above-deadly"
opponents to make it any challenging.

The reason you need to use deadlier encounters is because youre having less of them. Long rest resources (rage, smite, spell slots) can be spammed every round, meaning you need to increase the difficulty of your encounters. This also devalues short rest resources even more.

1) the game rules do not force the 6-8 encounter day in any way form or shape. There's nothing even close to formal aids to help the DM out. She is completely on her own in creating story based timers.

The Dungeon Masters Guide. Its literally in there. Whole chapters on designing encounters, the 6-8 encounter/ 2 short rest expectation, timing them, policing the adventuring day. Its all there. Pick it up and give it a read.

There is also rest variants suggested as well.

2) this is utterly incompatible with wilderness exploration adventures ("hexcrawls") or long distance travel adventures

At NO stage is it suggested that you are supposed to pigeon hole the players into 6-8 encounters every. single. adventuring. day.

The general default is 6-8 with 2 short rests. Around 50 percent of the time (any cavern/ dungeon crawl, forest trail, module type affair). The other 50 percent of the time its single encounter adventuring days, 1-3 encounter days, or even the occasional longer adventuring day.

No-one is talking about repetively ramming 6-8 encounters into every adventuring day mate. Its setting a 6-8 encounter/ 2 short rest default so your players police resource mangaement accordingly.

If you routinely throw single encounter days at your players they'll react accordingly and nova the crap out of your encounters. Problems will ensue with class balance and encounter difficulties.

If you routinely (around half the time) throw 6-8 encounter days with 2 short rests at them, they'll police themselves accordingly - even on the shorter days.

no official adventure follows this guideline AT ALL

Thats not true. Literally every dungeon area follows this guideline. Bigger picture wilderness stuff might only get you one per day (if that).

Not doing so amounts to sticking your head in the sand; stubbornly parroting the DMG calculations as if just repeating it enough times would make it happen.

What? Im citing the DMG on encounter building (which youre suggesting above doesnt exist). Now your problem is that Its being said too much?

Do you want me to do a mathmatical breakdown of how the classes balance best at the 6-8 encounter/ 2 short rest mark?

I'll happily compare a Warlock 10 with a Wizard 10 and a BM Fighter 10 with a Paladin 10 over 6 encounters of around 5 rounds each with short rests every 2 encounters.

Is a long string of individually trivial encounters (where the only challenge is to conserve resources) any fun?

What are you talking about? Having more encounters between long rests takes no more time than having those exact same encounters with multiple long rests. Im not saying you need to cram more encounters into a play session. Im saying you need to get more encounters between long rests.

Theyre totally different things. Youre not having more combats at your table. Youre just allowing less long rests.

And Im sorry to be the one to tell you, but DnD is a resource management game mate. Always has been, always will be. HP, GP, XP, Spell slots, charges, powers, manouvers, HD, daily abilities etc etc.

Whats different this time to the last edition is that the classes use different resource recovery systems. Some classes benefit greatly from short rests (regaining all improtant class features), some gain virtually nothing from them. Some are almost entirely long rest dependent classes.

A single encounter day favors a Wizard over a Warlock to the nth degree. A day featuring 15 encounters with a short rest after every encounter favors the Warlock. Surely you can see this?

The issue is finding the balancing point. Its at the 6-8 encounter/ 2 short rest point.

Now no-one is saying that you have to force that encounter pacing on your players all the time. But you need to do it enough so that they pace themselves expecting this paradigm to be true. You need to have THEM police the adventuring day and resources, not force the 6-8 encounter day on them all the time.

Sorry, but the level of advice which basically says "do 6-8 encounters and all problems go away" is incredibly and frustratingly short on discussing the overall picture.

What is this 'overall picture' you want to discuss?

 

[Celtavian]

Terrible idea and I wouldnt want to play in your campaign. Goes against the entire systems default pacing and internal rest and balance paradigm and throws the classes entirely out of whack. Full casters are kings of the hill barring some extreme houserules.

But if it works for you and yours, go for it.

The way the game works none of that matters. Not sure why you believe that to be the case.

Its cool if you think that, but what are you doing to both rebalance the classes and avoid TPKs?

I don't need to rebalance the classes. Why would you think I would need to?

Youre increasing encounter difficulty (exponentially it seems) but how are you rebalancing the classes?

Action surge is basically 1/ encounter in your campaigns. 2/ encounter at 17th level. Spell casting is 1 x 9th, 1 x 8th, 1 x 7th, 1 x 6th, 2 x 5th. 3 x 4th level spell etc etc per encounter.

Also - remind me to NEVER play a warlock in your campaigns. I bet you those that have complain about how 'crap' the class is.

In a 'super deadly' encounter the are required to use resources. Your casters are surely leading with high level spell after high level spell, with your paladins smting every attack, and your barbarians raging on round 1.

Seriously man - just try a longer AD. Watch previously 'weak' classes (fighter, warlock and monk) come to the fore and long rest dependent classes (full casters, paladins and barbarians which I am sure will feature heavily in your campaign) take a back seat for a while.

No. 5E combat does not work as you think it works. Action economy does not allow a caster to dominate or a paladin. The paladin's defensive abilities are far more useful than their offense and that is what makes them OP. Their offense is average even with nova bursts. A high level fighter with action surge far exceeds a paladin's non-crit damage and their average damage once they get three attacks often matches paladin damage while smiting.

Eldritch Knight Archer Fighters are amongst the very best damage dealers in the game whether nova or round to round damage. As are eldritch blasting warlocks. The only time arcane casters shine with spells is when is AoE damage and 9th level spells, which they get one of per day. Otherwise, they are far better in support roles, especially against creatures with Legendary Resistance.

The monk is a weak damage dealer and it won't change regardless of the adventuring day. The fighter and warlock are far, far, far from weak, though not versatile like arcane casters. No one plays a barbarian and people tend to avoid melee because melee is easy to defeat. The paladin is desirable more because of the powerful defensive abilities and versatility of abilities, not their damage. Paladins are often left in the cold dealing with mobility issues using their abilities to defend rather than attack. Ranged weapon use and eldritch blast is king in 5E.

So there is no need to rebalance classes. If you have played the game to high level, you would understand how painful it is to be a caster when it comes to killing creatures, especially creatures with Legendary Resistance when combats are short and fast given the high damage output both ways.

5E works a certain way. The adventuring day with 6 to 8 encounters is a waste of time for well played, optimized parties. I would not be surprised if it was too easy for even average players playing average characters. It's a fast and furious game with no time for excessive novaing by spellcasters. In previous editions casters were overpowered due to the ability to stack spells and that does not work in 5E. So novaing really isn't possible. Even a 9th level slot fireball is 15d6 damage or an average of 53 points. A meteor swarm is 140 points, about two rounds of damage for an archer or great weapon user fighter or smiting paladin going all out. Even an eldritch blast warlock using hex is averaging 13 damage per hit and up to 52 per round. So he's reaching 9th level spell damage with three round of cantrip use. If he is a Sorlock, his nova is even higher using a bonus action to use double cantrips in a round. A sorlock using Quicken Spell with eldritch blast does a potential 208 damage in two rounds using a cantrip and four sorcery points which he can renew with short rests while a wizard using a 9th level does a potential 140 (though it is AoE damage if fighting multiple creatures).

Damage mechanics and spell capability work a certain way in 5E. 5E put very powerful limits on casters. Damage is not something full casters do well even at high level. All these spell slots that appear to be a problem can still only be cast once per round and they don't stack due to concentration, so you can't stack a bunch of buffs or summons like the casters of older editions.

I'll end this by saying you need to study the 5E math more than you have or get more experience playing high level campaigns. Casters are not king no matter how you design encounters. They have too many things to counter their capabilities from concentration to Legendary Resistance to general immunity or resistance to a lot of their damage types. A fighter does more damage than a caster save when doing AoE damage or using one true 9th level spell.

Your post is extremely odd. It would take forever to explain why it's wrong. The most popular classes in my campaigns are bards, warlocks (usually a multiclass), paladins, fighters, rangers, and some kind of cleric for buffing and healing. Those are the classes that see the most play. Arcane casters aren't as popular as they once were because 5E has so many limitations on them that make them weak in the strongest encounters that very few people want to play them to high level. It is absolutely no fun to use your single 8th or 9th level spell slot against a creature that automatically saves against it, while the paladin, fighter, or ranger are wailing away for truck tons damage the creature can't resist.

I'm quite fine doing things as I do them. I've never had problems making the game fun. I've never followed the guidelines for encounter building in any gaming system. If your math skills are good, you'll never have any problems designing encounters. It all comes down to capacity to do damage and capacity to take damage. Once you work that math out, you can get encounters where you want them to be on an encounter by encounter basis. There is zero need to rebalance classes. Arcane casters are not anywhere near as problematic as previous editions. 3E was a real problem balancing fights for casters. Fighters and warlocks are not weak. They have some very simple, but potent abilities. The fighters main problem is weak saves against some very dangerous abilities. The paladin protection aura is by and far the best ability a paladin has and it is in fact better than just about any other ability in the game. Protection aura saves lives big time. That's why people love paladins. That's why they're popular. Unless you intend to hand out protection aura to other classes, the paladin will remain popular in every type of campaign.

 

[Celtavian]

And you are the one saying that what counts as a deadly fight doesn't feel deadly enough all the while saying I refuse to use the DMG guidelines that those guidelines were based on?

Already tried using the DM guidelines. PCs steamrolled the encounters. Decided like every edition of D&D I've ever played that encounter guidelines are for new DMs and players and a waste of time for experienced DMs and players. Thus it has always been and likely will always be.

Experienced players know too well how to exploit the game to their advantage building combat monsters that steamroll the by the book encounters. So experienced DMs running such players must toss out the book guidelines and make stuff they know will stand up to their tactics.

If the guidelines work for your group, good for you. They haven't worked for my group for as long as I can remember. Then again you don't ever see groups like two rogues and a fighter with my players. It's always a carefully crafted group covering most aspects of the game. My players don't go, "Hmm. A dwarf rogue with an axe. That would be fun to play." It's more, "I'm the ranged striker" and "I'm the tank" and "I'm the healer" followed by optimized characters for each role usually mixed with a few optimized damage dealers.

I've seen some of the odd parties people build and I'm always left scratching my head. Someone building a party with three melees is always shocking to me. That group wants to die. It would be harder to keep that group alive as a DM than to kill them. My group of PCs look at me crazy if no one plays a healer character. All I see is uncomfortable expressions and hand wringing. "Oh man, no one made a cleric. No bless and no heals. We really need someone to make a cleric or bard or something." Someone goes, "Ok. I'll suck it up and make one."

If you want to look at party composition for our groups, check out my signature. That's a campaign I'm running right now. You'll note a lot of paladin multiclasses. I can explain the mechanical strategy behind each class choice if you want to know why they are building they way they are building.

 

[AkaKageWarrior]

The reason you need to use deadlier encounters is because youre having less of them. Long rest resources (rage, smite, spell slots) can be spammed every round, meaning you need to increase the difficulty of your encounters. This also devalues short rest resources even more.

Yeah, sure.
But as I said, these many lower level encounters are deadly, I mean deadly boring.

 

[mpwylie]

This argument kinda makes me laugh. I think it boils down to 2 things.

1) The DMG is written for new players. It gives a baseline for building encounters for people inexperienced with D&D. The second you have experienced players that know how to min/max and optimize, the guidelines fall apart a bit because that is not the group they are intended for. Think about it a minute, look at your players and their characters. Did they spend their ability points optimally? Did they pick the best feats and gear to maximize their power? How many magic items do they have? The guidelines are not broken, your group is likely just playing at a higher level then the guidelines were written for.

2) As Flamestrike has said, the guidelines are written based on certain principles, the main one being that there are 6-8 encounters between long rests. The minute you break from that, the guidelines no longer work as there is a finite amount of resources that the players have and the guidelines are written assuming your are bleeding off those resources. There is a VERY big difference in the difficulty of an encounter if your warriors are going in with Action surge and second wind up, your casters have all their spellslots available, if your pally has his LoH and spellslots for smites.

I think the original complaint and the ensuing argument are frankly silly. I threw the guidelines out the window long ago. My group is fairly optimized, I have given them more magic items than they are supposed to have, I am fairly lax with how I manage the monsters and what I let them do, and I generally only have 3-5 encounters per long rest so my players generally have a decent amount of resources per fight. I routinely throw encounters at them that are Deadly 5x+ and rarely does anyone go down. I generally build encounters that are close to impossible and then during the fight I manage the monsters in a way to make it a challenge without killing everyone. It won't work for everyone but it works for me and my party and I think that's fine. I am not sure anyone is saying you HAVE to have 6-8 encounters per long rest, what they are saying is, don't whine that the guidelines are broken when YOU are the one breaking them. It should not be surprising that the guidelines are wrong when you are not following the basic recipe they are based on. Run your game however you want, seriously it's fine, but it's not really fair to say WOTC messed up because you are not running things how they are telling you to.

Go find a group of newbies, then run the game the way you are actually supposed to. If at that point the guidelines are still way off, then by all means, come complain.

Just 2cp

 

[S'mon]

Now, you can cut through this (heh, cut) by starting to attack downed PC's. But, now it looks like you're actively trying to whack PC's and many groups have an issue with that. It's a play style thing but, I can see players getting very... shirty if I start making sure to kill every downed PC. It really depends on how the group wants to play. At a guess, I'd say this is something that gets set up very, very early in the campaign.

If the PCs are in the habit of popping downed PCs up again in the middle of combat with healing, can
they really object when the monsters notice this & start finishing off the fallen?

 

[FrogReaver]

Already tried using the DM guidelines. PCs steamrolled the encounters. Decided like every edition of D&D I've ever played that encounter guidelines are for new DMs and players and a waste of time for experienced DMs and players. Thus it has always been and likely will always be.

Experienced players know too well how to exploit the game to their advantage building combat monsters that steamroll the by the book encounters. So experienced DMs running such players must toss out the book guidelines and make stuff they know will stand up to their tactics.

If the guidelines work for your group, good for you. They haven't worked for my group for as long as I can remember. Then again you don't ever see groups like two rogues and a fighter with my players. It's always a carefully crafted group covering most aspects of the game. My players don't go, "Hmm. A dwarf rogue with an axe. That would be fun to play." It's more, "I'm the ranged striker" and "I'm the tank" and "I'm the healer" followed by optimized characters for each role usually mixed with a few optimized damage dealers.

I've seen some of the odd parties people build and I'm always left scratching my head. Someone building a party with three melees is always shocking to me. That group wants to die. It would be harder to keep that group alive as a DM than to kill them. My group of PCs look at me crazy if no one plays a healer character. All I see is uncomfortable expressions and hand wringing. "Oh man, no one made a cleric. No bless and no heals. We really need someone to make a cleric or bard or something." Someone goes, "Ok. I'll suck it up and make one."

If you want to look at party composition for our groups, check out my signature. That's a campaign I'm running right now. You'll note a lot of paladin multiclasses. I can explain the mechanical strategy behind each class choice if you want to know why they are building they way they are building.

I'm going to do a snap shot of "hard" encounters at level 1.

PC's are Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard.

Fighter HP = 12 hp
Rogue = 10 hp
Cleric = 10 hp
Wizard = 8 hp

If the fighter is at full hp there is a 33% chance he gets KO'ed on the first hit he takes.
If the Rogue and Cleric are at full hp there is a 50% chance they get KO'ed on the first hit they take.
If the Wizard is at full hp there is a 67% chance he gets KO'ed on the first hit he takes.

Assuming the ORC has approximately a 50% chance to hit on most of the PC's then and doesn't die before his turn begins. There is about a 6% chance that 2 PC's get downed on turn 1 in any encounter they fight 2 orcs. There's a much higher chance that a single PC gets downed on turn 1.

That's just one hard fight. There's still another before a short rest is even reached. Chances for KO on turn 1 increase drastically if the party is not at full hp.

Personally I don't see how a level 1 party could possibly:
1. Fighter 2 Orcs
2. Fight 2 Orcs
3. Short Rest
4. Fight 2 Orcs
5. Fight 2 Orcs
6. Short Rest
7. Fight 2 Orcs
8. Fight 2 Orcs

The only way I don't think the party die is if the party has access to either the healer feat, or the inspiring leader feat or both. The ultimate point is that 6 encounters at hard difficulty will actually be hard for most every level 1 party. Most would be lucky to make it through such a gauntlet alive.

I don't think hard means it will be hard every time despite how the dice fall, i think it means it could range anywhere from the low end of medium to the higher end of deadly.

Thoughts?