D&D 5E Damn paladins, you scary!

[randrak]

I was playing a one-shot campaign with a few other friends (some of them being part of the group I normally DM) when one of them created a level 10 paladin. So far, my group had little interest in paladins but after seeing this paladin in action they now love it.
In one turn, this dual wielding paladin (has the feat so he could use two longswords) did around 50 damage to a creature. He used divine smite at a 3rd level, hunter's mark and hit with all three attacks for 7d8+10+1d6 damage (+5 Strength).
How come paladins get to deal such massive damage while still having high AC and HP?

Now one of my players is making one and I'm worried about how to make encounters that won't die with just a few hits...this was already a very high damage party (Hunter Ranger with Colossus Slayer, Battlerager Barbarian and Storm Sorcerer).

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

How come paladins get to deal such massive damage while still having high AC and HP?

Because sharply limited resources are required to do that, and they don't deal all that much damage without spending said sharply limited resources.

...I'm worried about how to make encounters that won't die with just a few hits...

Don't be. Don't try to out-do the party's heavy damage with big hit-point totals - they've likely picked out high-damage options because they want to tear up monsters, just let them have it. In my experience, if you try to match pace so that they up their damage and you just up the damage needed, the end result is a never-ending "arms race" in which they keep looking for the thing you keep denying them and you end up with them eventually forgetting that you ramped-up the opposition so far to match their characters so they feel like they are required to optimize or face defeat because you use ramped-up foes.

 

[Ath'kethin]

The general solution to a situation like yours is challenges that can't be resolved by killing things. You cans till have those - if the players made characters to be lawnmowers it's kind of a crap thing to avoid letting them do it - but intersperse it with stuff like traps, political negotiations, mazes, and stuff like that.

Sometimes that will work.

 

[iserith]

The 10th-level paladin in my Summer at the Lake campaign did some nice damage as well, especially considering he eventually got his hands on a holy avenger and the most frequently-encountered enemies were fiends and undead.

An easy way to challenge characters that do a lot of damage is to make winning a matter of something other than or in addition to whittling hit points down to zero.

 

[GX.Sigma]

Now one of my players is making one and I'm worried about how to make encounters that won't die with just a few hits...this was already a very high damage party (Hunter Ranger with Colossus Slayer, Battlerager Barbarian and Storm Sorcerer).

Sounds like your players are minmaxers. This is an out of game problem. As I said to one of my players: "If you try to break the game, the game will break. I don't want to play a broken game."

But, for what it's worth, pretty much all encounters in 5e die with just a few hits. That's how the system is designed. Any single encounter with the players at full resources is either a decisive victory or a TPK. You need to have lots of encounters to drain their resources. In other words, PCs will always wreck the first encounter. But what about the eighth encounter?

 

[mellored]

I
In one turn, this dual wielding paladin (has the feat so he could use two longswords) did around 50 damage to a creature. He used divine smite at a 3rd level, hunter's mark and hit with all three attacks for 7d8+10+1d6 damage (+5 Strength).
How come paladins get to deal such massive damage while still having high AC and HP?

Hunter's mark takes a bonus action. Dual wielding also takes a bonus action. You can't do both on the same turn.

Plus, he used about 1/3 of his spells to do that.
He also gave up his shield and used his fighting style. So his AC isn't too high.
He also used all his ABI on damage, so his HP isn't too high.
And simply got lucky with all 3 attacks hitting.

Compared to a 2-handed fighter who can deal (2d6+5) * 2 attacks * 2 action surge + 4d8 battlemaster dice = 66.
Not including Great Weapon Style or the extra feat.

Now one of my players is making one and I'm worried about how to make encounters that won't die with just a few hits

All encounters die in a few hits. But, so do PC's.

 

[Ryuujin]

There is also the question of why there was only a single d6 on all that damage. That said 50 damage? At level 10? That doesn't seem all that impressive.

 

[Grakarg]

Paladins can be very fun. But its very much a 'nova' class with a big explosion (usually at the best time for the party and worst for the monsters). Rogues and Rangers seem to do more damage consistently over time, but that is to be expected.

I wouldn't really worry about it too much, just revel in the fact that your players are having fun, and throw a mob of 50 goblins at the lvl 10 PC's for them to chew through.

One thing about Paladins- They can trigger their smite AFTER they roll their die to hit, so when they roll a 20 and know they've got a crit... Ka-Booooom! Nova time!

 

[jaelis]

Hunter's mark takes a bonus action. Dual wielding also takes a bonus action. You can't do both on the same turn.

He could have cast HM on a previous turn, I guess.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I was playing a one-shot campaign with a few other friends (some of them being part of the group I normally DM) when one of them created a level 10 paladin. So far, my group had little interest in paladins but after seeing this paladin in action they now love it.
In one turn, this dual wielding paladin (has the feat so he could use two longswords) did around 50 damage to a creature. He used divine smite at a 3rd level, hunter's mark and hit with all three attacks for 7d8+10+1d6 damage (+5 Strength).
How come paladins get to deal such massive damage while still having high AC and HP?

Now one of my players is making one and I'm worried about how to make encounters that won't die with just a few hits...this was already a very high damage party (Hunter Ranger with Colossus Slayer, Battlerager Barbarian and Storm Sorcerer).

Yep, paladins are borderline OP out the gate. With optimising, and not following the 6-8 encounters guideline, they are very broken...

edit: part of the trouble comes from not requiring a bonus action to smite, so with multiple attacks, and the ability to choose to smite after seeing the attack roll (inc crits) - the nova can easily get out of hand.