D&D 5E DM HELP! My players killed Strahd too easily!

[CapnZapp]

The monsters have plenty of "oomph" when you have players that are playing characters "right out the box".

Where things break down is when the players know how to squeeze extra potency out of their characters, and you assume their DM doesn't know how to squeeze extra potency out of the monsters to match them - or, more foolishly, that the DM shouldn't have to do that even if they've enabled more potent characters than the norm through optional- or house-rules if they don't want the characters to be just flat-out more potent relative to the challenges they face than normally assumed by the game.

It makes sense to do what 5th edition has done and make the only assumption about player and DM skill that it will be roughly equal, so that a new DM and new players are on equal footing to sort out how to play, and experienced players can squeeze more juice out of the game but an experienced DM can handle that, and (hopefully) groups of mis-matched skill will cooperate rather than compete, so the more experienced members will help the less experienced members get their bearings rather than the more experienced side intentionally using that fact to keep the game skewed in their favor while others grow frustrated.

The game material has made efforts to help DMs do what is right for their group - but the truth is that their efforts aren't infallible. DMs will make mistakes, experience surprises because of those mistakes, and learn as they play on. Trashing the game and suggesting the DM can't also improve is just as unhelpful as would be (the thing that didn't actually happen in this thread) trashing the DM and suggesting the game couldn't also improve. So let's do something else, shall we? Let's talk about what the game could actually do better in specific terms:

What could Curse of Strahd say instead of, or in addition to, the paragraphs describing Strahd's tactics that would help a DM not have the kind of unexpected result and minor mistakes that the OP describes experiencing? How can the game teach a DM to do it "right" in such a way that no portion of the reason for things going "wrong" can be said to be the DM's completely understandable, entirely not condemning, human error?

I am a very experienced DM. I still need the monsters to be harder.

Your acceptance of WotC's decision to make newbie players the baseline is baffling.

It lets WotC get away with the easiest and laziest possible monster design.

Not only does this defaitist attitude allow WotC to lower the bar significantly compared to previous editions (3rd and 4th), it also completely ignores the much better option to design for (at least) intermediate players, but perhaps designate one or two of the more tactical abilities as "advanced" to let newbie DMs (or DMs running games for newbie players) know they can safely be ignored.

After all, it is much easier to take away complexity than to add it.

If enough players are as understanding as you, I will have to design my own monsters if I want to even hope to entertain my players. And I don't want that. I want to be able to pay WotC money to do that for me.

The only way to achieve that is to raise awareness this edition has erred too far in the carebear direction. Make it known the monsters (especially at double-digit CR) are not up to the task.

You interfering each and every time is not a welcome intrusion.

You're diluting the message: We need more high-CR foes with tactical abilities that resist trivial takedown strategies. The simplification of monster ability lists has gone too far.

Monster design need to take the real DPR of high-revved heroes into account: like has been said above, if a level-appropriate hero is capable of 50 DPR, a Solo monster can't be given a mere 250 hit points. That just invites a one-round wipeout.

 

[CapnZapp]

Small suggestion:
If you ambush the heroes again with wolves don't have them bunch up.
Wolves don't attack prey en masse from one direction. They key in on the weak(wizard) and attack from multiple/all sides.

Instead of
'A line of wolves charge you from the forest'
-fireball

Maybe
'Eyes appear in the forest all around you, wolves burst out of the trees from all around you'
'Crap! What do I do? Magic missile?? Fireball? WHY ARE THEY ALL ATTACKING MEEEEEEEEE!!'

-splat.

And when the wizard gripes about the wolves picking on him... welcome to the forest dude.


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A nice fantasy, but the rules on perception and stealth make it almost impossible for any natural creature to succeed at anything against a well-rounded party.

The harsh reality is that a high-Wisdom character with Perception proficiency is supernaturally observant. Almost every party will have at least one character whose passive perception sets a Stealth DC of 15, which can easily rise to DC 18 as early as fifth level. Monsters are simply not equipped to beat that. The rules effectively gives this character the nose of a bloodhound, the eyes of an eagle and owl combined, and hearing good enough to pinpoint invisible ghosts!

In real life, this situation would be frightening and exciting, and your way of running the wolves would be a good call.

In D&D, it just allows the party to pick off the wolves one by one: unless the wolves all rush in to melee ASAP they just give the party time. All the time they need.

Whether this is broken is a discussion for another time. I happen to strongly believe the decision to drop penalties for distance breaks this aspect of the game - the monsters need to be able to target a specific character's (poor) passive perception, and there needs to be quite hefty penalties for trying to detect animals sneaking around in a forest that can be dark, well camouflaged and noisy.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

The harsh reality is that a high-Wisdom character with Perception proficiency is supernaturally observant. Almost every party will have at least one character whose passive perception sets a Stealth DC of 15, which can easily rise to DC 18 as early as fifth level. Monsters are simply not equipped to beat that. The rules effectively gives this character the nose of a bloodhound, the eyes of an eagle and owl combined, and hearing good enough to pinpoint invisible ghosts!

Strahd has a +14 stealth mod. And by default in the castle a passive perception of 19 is required to detect him.

 

[marcelvdpol]

What i liked about 4th edition was that playing a monster according to his strengths almost automatically succeeded in playing a monster according to it fluff.

Playing strahd effectively is a skill that the dm needs. If there are dms struggling with it then the book doesn't do enough to help them. There should at the very least be several example encounters in the book with descriptions of how strahd would behave and what tactics should be employed for that encounter. This allows springing some encounters with strahd on the party. And the section on strahd should contain a description on how to insert strahd into an encounter effectively (this is separate from the "how to roleplay strahd"). I haven't read the book myself (i'm a player in the campaign) so i don't know if this section is there.

The dm has a much harder task compared to the players; players grow with their character and will learn the best tactics to use for their character but the dm has to know the best tactics for lots of different monsters just from reading a stat block. There should be a description of tactics with every monster otherwise a dm might fail to play the monster in such a way that the monster poses the challenge its challenge rating / xp promised.

 

[HawaiiSteveO]

I was worried about this the whole time I was running CoS.

As it turned out my concerns were accurate, although the fight was . . . ok.

It had to more with story elements than mechanics, although I did decide to use Sly Flourish's Ancient One rather than Strahd as presented in the book. I'm glad I did.

http://slyflourish.com/sly_flourishs_vampires.html

First off, I was hoping to have the finale with Strahd be in a complete uninterrupted session and despite my best efforts it just didn't work out that way. We had to stop more than 1/2 way through due to time constraints. We lost some of the momentum & excitement and the game suffered.

5 PC 8th level party was/is pretty hardcore and had the sun blade and holy symbol, although the PC's wielding these didn't last long as Strahd took them out first. It was a great strategic move for Strahd and made perfect sense game wise, although 2 players missed a good part of the fight as their PC's were dead.

Strahd can't regenerate the round after being exposed to sunlight and I felt having him leave the battle for 2-3 rounds was boring, and kind of turned the fight into a grind. Strahd leaves, comes back, leaves, comes back . . .

In the end the remaining PC's wore Strahd down to 0 HP with a few lucky lighting bolts and a fluke monk stunning strike. He turned to mist and escaped, and permitted the surviving PCs to leave his domain.

Part of it was DM fatigue on my part as we've been playing (almost) weekly session for the last 6 months. In any case, overall we had a blast although I'm glad it's over.

Boss fights are tough as there is so much to consider, not just stats of boss. Players cooperate with each other, and sometimes the DM is out in the tall weeds . . .

 

[cmad1977]

A nice fantasy, but the rules on perception and stealth make it almost impossible for any natural creature to succeed at anything against a well-rounded party.

The harsh reality is that a high-Wisdom character with Perception proficiency is supernaturally observant. Almost every party will have at least one character whose passive perception sets a Stealth DC of 15, which can easily rise to DC 18 as early as fifth level. Monsters are simply not equipped to beat that. The rules effectively gives this character the nose of a bloodhound, the eyes of an eagle and owl combined, and hearing good enough to pinpoint invisible ghosts!

In real life, this situation would be frightening and exciting, and your way of running the wolves would be a good call.

In D&D, it just allows the party to pick off the wolves one by one: unless the wolves all rush in to melee ASAP they just give the party time. All the time they need.

Whether this is broken is a discussion for another time. I happen to strongly believe the decision to drop penalties for distance breaks this aspect of the game - the monsters need to be able to target a specific character's (poor) passive perception, and there needs to be quite hefty penalties for trying to detect animals sneaking around in a forest that can be dark, well camouflaged and noisy.

Yes. The party as a whole will make shortish work of the wolves. Instead of a single party member, the entire party can handle the wolves that turn or two.
Leaving Strahd time and space to do his nefarious thing. Which was kind of the point of the OP.

You're suggestion is to let the wolves clump up and be wiped with one spell? Or simply not have them act as natural predators would?

Edit: after retreading your post I realize you have no suggestion or advice for the OP. I'm sure he appreciates the feedback.


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[hawkeyefan]

I am a very experienced DM. I still need the monsters to be harder.

Your acceptance of WotC's decision to make newbie players the baseline is baffling.

It lets WotC get away with the easiest and laziest possible monster design.

Not only does this defaitist attitude allow WotC to lower the bar significantly compared to previous editions (3rd and 4th), it also completely ignores the much better option to design for (at least) intermediate players, but perhaps designate one or two of the more tactical abilities as "advanced" to let newbie DMs (or DMs running games for newbie players) know they can safely be ignored.

After all, it is much easier to take away complexity than to add it.

If enough players are as understanding as you, I will have to design my own monsters if I want to even hope to entertain my players. And I don't want that. I want to be able to pay WotC money to do that for me.

The only way to achieve that is to raise awareness this edition has erred too far in the carebear direction. Make it known the monsters (especially at double-digit CR) are not up to the task.

You interfering each and every time is not a welcome intrusion.

You're diluting the message: We need more high-CR foes with tactical abilities that resist trivial takedown strategies. The simplification of monster ability lists has gone too far.

Monster design need to take the real DPR of high-revved heroes into account: like has been said above, if a level-appropriate hero is capable of 50 DPR, a Solo monster can't be given a mere 250 hit points. That just invites a one-round wipeout.

I think offering a solution to the OP's problem would actually be useful, rather than going on about CR and the failings of 5E in general. You talked about how the game lets down new DMs...so what advice would you give about Strahd? Calling for a change to how the rules are set up doesn't help this specific case...which is, I think, the point [MENTION=6701872]AaronOfBarbaria[/MENTION] was making at the end of his post.

To the OP:
I personally find Strahd to be quite capable, and my players are experienced players. They aren't pure min-max types, but they know how to build effective characters. They've only just arrived at the Castle, but they have had one altercation with Strahd prior to obtaining any of the artifacts. I set things up so that the PCs were engaged with other foes, and then Strahd shows up during that fight, so it was far from convenient for the PCs. They'd already taken a bit of damage, used some resources, and were spread out. Strahd was able to take down one PC and one of their antagonists (also enemies of Strahd) because they were isolated. Then he used his mobility to wreak havoc on the rest of them. He avoided the party cleric who had spirit guardians up, so he was able to avoid any radiant damage, and keep his regeneration going. So any damage the party did to him was minimal. He finally was driven off by a story element I had written in to the adventure myself.

I think the key to his success is maintaining his mobility, avoiding radiant damage, and not going toe to toe with the party. He should always escape as soon as he's in danger, and his legendary actions make that pretty easy to do. Bolster him with minions...make them capable as well; as others have said, a pack of wolves grouped up for one fireball isn't going to do a whole lot. But a couple of vampire spawn and Rahadin acting in concert to take out the party member holding the Sunsword? Yeah, that'smore effective.

Play Strahd with your full knowledge at hand. Don't try and limit what he knows about the party or anything like that. He knows who's the cleric and who's the fighter and so on. Have him and his minions act on that.

What I would do at this point is treat the battle you have already ha don't as a case of Strahd "testing" them. Then see what you can do to make the next fight more memorable. You know what the party did that worked, and you know what you did that didn't work. So just do your best to correct both of those am deathly you should be in decent shape. Keep him moving, have him run from any situation that is not advantageous to him. Make them fight on his terms.

 

[HawaiiSteveO]

I totally agree with previous post, although sooner or later the adventure has to end.

Put another way, the finale with Strahd (IMO) shouldn't take multiple sessions to finish and turn into an exhausting grind. In my case (and in retrospect) a more narrative approach would perhaps have been helpful.

Sooner or later Strahd is going to close with the remaining characters and try to kill them dead! I'm not sure I would use a hit & run villain as a finale again.

 

[DEFCON 1]

If enough players are as understanding as you, I will have to design my own monsters if I want to even hope to entertain my players. And I don't want that. I want to be able to pay WotC money to do that for me.

Too bad they don't feel like doing it for you, huh? Guess they don't need your money that badly.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Your acceptance of WotC's decision to make newbie players the baseline is baffling.

To you, perhaps. To a majority of the gaming community? I don't think so.

...it also completely ignores the much better option to design for (at least) intermediate players, but perhaps designate one or two of the more tactical abilities as "advanced" to let newbie DMs (or DMs running games for newbie players) know they can safely be ignored.

I don't see how you aren't aware of the inconsistency in your opinions you've expressed.

In one post you decry how little help there is for new DMs to actually run things "right" - which I still would love to see your answers to my questions regarding exactly what you think could be done better than the advice WotC is already making sure to include - and say that it's the game's "fault" if things don't go according to plan.

In the next, you seem to believe that new players and DMs wouldn't be completely left in the dust by a game that expects them to be players of intermediate or greater skill by being designed for such a degree of players.

Where as I think it makes perfect sense to aim at the lowest skill players so that no one feels like they are staring down a "must be this tall to ride" sign suggesting they bugger off to some other game, and then assume that with play experience comes the ability to elevate the game on your own - which is working out for so many of the rest of us that I can't help but feel that you, just like us, have the ability to do the same, but refuse to actually do it.

After all, it is much easier to take away complexity than to add it.

That runs reverse of everything I've experienced or been told on the matter.

The only way to achieve that is to raise awareness this edition has erred too far in the carebear direction. Make it known the monsters (especially at double-digit CR) are not up to the task.

...and if WotC gave you the super-charged monsters you'd like, I'd have to run them as if they were mentally deficient in order not to slaughter the PCs at my table.

I much prefer the monsters as-is, which I can use to challenge my players without any difficulty by virtue of being an experienced DM - and with you and I being equals, or you being the superior DM, that means you could do it too, if you wanted to, of course.

You interfering each and every time is not a welcome intrusion.

I am not "interfering" by sharing my opinion in a public forum. If you really feel like any disagreement with you is an "intrusion", you should not be posting on a forum - a blog with no comment section is a more appropriate place to share your thoughts if you aren't willing to treat other's opinions with the respect you demand of your own.

Monster design need to take the real DPR of high-revved heroes into account:

If monster design does that, it forces players to play their character in a specific way or fail - forcing everyone to be an optimizer is not a preferable state.

Especially not when the DM of optimizing players can accommodate the higher difficulty challenges such characters can handle through use of the tools already available - if they stop complaining that the game has decided to support other play-styles and skill levels and just do it.

So I'll close with asking again: What could Curse of Strahd say instead of, or in addition to, the paragraphs describing Strahd's tactics that would help a DM not have the kind of unexpected result and minor mistakes that the OP describes experiencing? How can the game teach a DM to do it "right" in such a way that no portion of the reason for things going "wrong" can be said to be the DM's completely understandable, entirely not condemning, human error?
[MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] gave an answer, though it's not one I can really respond to yet, as I am still rolling around the ideas presented in my head so I can determine what I think about what was said.