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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celtavian" data-source="post: 6862451" data-attributes="member: 5834">Travel encounters are by nature like this. One or two a day random encounters. I wanted to spice things up since Out of the Abyss is a lot of walking about.Half the party are drow with 120 foot darkvision and one has Devilsight. So yes, they can see in darkness quite well. The shadow demons didn't roll high enough to beat their Passive Perception with +7. They aren't invisible. So that would be a house rule on your part. I tend to run Passive Perception versus Stealth per the rules in the PHB. They have a ranger with Underdark terrain. He doesn't get minuses for moving too fast. And he's drow. Very hard to beat his passive Perception in the Underdark given he has good Wisdom as well.Give? I don't think you have a choice but to "give" a drow Underdark terrain ranger his bonuses in the Underdark. At least I don't see it as a choice. I let the players use their abilities per the rules.I had the shadow demons following them for a few days running when able. They didn't know precisely where the demonic horde was considering they were roving and raiding with no set base of operations. The party spotted them earlier, but didn't ambush them for a bit.What advantage? A roving band of demons is very easy to hear. Not sure what advantage you think they had. Neither side ambushed the other. They started 120 feet apart aware of each other. The demon horde thought they would crush the humanoids as they had been doing. The PCs fought them straight up and won.Why does it leave them less than a full move ahead? Quasits may be able to surprise the party, but not the demon horde. Why would the PCs walk into that? They just hang back and wait for them to move. I don't understand the idea that the PCs wouldn't know the demon horde was there. They have 120 foot darkvision or better in four of the six. They can easily wait for the demon horde to come their way. The demon horde has no way to hide from them given their number, lack of stealth, and weaker Perception. If the PCs hear the demon horde, and they will hear them way before the demon horde hears the PCs, they cast pass without trace and sneak on them. By starting it in a neutral area where neither had the means to ambush the other, I gave an advantage to the demons they otherwise would not have had. They have zero means to stealth as well as the PCs and lesser Perception abilities. I'm still not sure why you seem to think that isn't the case. There isn't a single person in the demon horde other than the shadow demons with even close to a high enough stealth or Perception modifier to match the PCs stealth and detection abilities.Really? You think a few shield spells cast by four characters with shield and 16 1st level slots with one guy with two short rest slots a big resource cost? A few shield spells is nothing to this group. It's nothing to any group with a high number casters. I have six casters in this group.A couple of spell slots in a round amongst six casters is a big deal to you?Never allowed? You don't get to disallow players from using their abilities. I do not DM like that. If I found out you were "disallowing" me from using my abilities, I don't think we would play together long. You get to use the abilities of a shadow demon. +7 Stealth and Hide as a bonus action in dim light and darkness. You must allow the players to use their double perception rolls and 120 foot darkvision and devilsight to spot them. Your steath roll is against their passive perception minus 5 for disadvantage due to dim light. The shadow demons missed the roll and got spotted. It happens and I don't disallow it because I don't like the outcome.Twig, tell me, are the tactics and character building options I've described common in your group? I've told you my real experience. What is your real experience? Not this second guessing, after the fact discussion we've been having. Do your players optimize like mine? I didn't say it was awesome. I just said they do it. The fact that you're thinking I'm saying "My players are awesome" is so off base that it is ridiculous. It's you personally believing something that is not true.I'm saying my players optimize all the time and it makes it harder to challenge them as a DM. You converting this into "I think my players are awesome" is strange. I don't think it's "awesome." In fact, I find it annoying. Just like I find it annoying having people tell me my assessments are wrong when I've been doing this as long as I have. Or telling me it's not the rules, when it very much is the rules.It's not "awesome" when the game designers insert so many ways to game the system. It's a pain in the behind is what it is. I have to do a bunch of extra work to challenge them because the base game has done such a poor job in some areas of making the player versus environment challenging.Please stop confusing my optimization discussion as a statement my players are "awesome." It's a criticism of the 5E system. People that like 5E don't like to hear criticisms of the 5E game system. When they get pointed out, there is always a group shouting down such concerns. That doesn't make my concerns invalid. Because my players are exploiting the cracks in the 5E system doesn't make them "awesome." It just means like every edition of D&D ever made, 5E has power combinations that allow the PCs to exploit the player versus the environment in their favor. I have to find ways to deal with this that satisfy me as a DM. Or you could admit that there are power combinations in 5E that need to be toned down and there are monsters that need to be powered up some. Is that such a hard thing to admit? Or do you think 5E is somehow perfect?I don't need suggestions. I've been DMing for a long time in multiple game systems. I use math to design challenges. I'm very good at it. In these discussions, I usually get a dismissive attitude towards my concerns with little or no mathematical argument to support the counterarguments. If I had someone proving the math of what I'm discussing using the Monster Manual and PHB, then maybe we would have a discussion. Instead I get miscommunication like "You consider your players awesome." Pretty far from what I'm looking to discuss. I'm far more concerned with all the optimization problems in the 5E rule set that makes creatures like mariliths or balors a fairly weak challenge. Seriously, the base balor and marilith have a Passive Perception of 13. Even a non-expertise Stealth character can beat that with ease. Now an expertise Stealth character or a party using pass without trace is going to ambush the balor or marilith by the level they face such creatures with trivial ease. Yet I point out this discrepancy in the game system and get told, "It's all about the environment you choose" or "Six to eight encounters per day will change that." Will it? Do either of those change the fact that a balor and marilith have a egregiously low Passive Perception? No, it doesn't.  A lot of creatures in 5E are designed in this fashion, lacking skills and abilities to counter what the players do by a margin that nearly guarantees PC success in these short combats.</blockquote>

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