D&D 5E [DM problem] Is the group I am leading too strong? Is the 5E system unbalanced?

[Hussar]

The other stuff thing to remember which I think was alluded to earlier is the modules have to be playable by a group using only the Basic rules. THAT'S the baseline.

Which goes a long way to explaining why some groups are having issues.

 

[Saeviomagy]

How do you know when you have placed enough orcs on the battle map? Keep adding mini's until you hear an audible gasp from one of the players.

On a similar note: if you want a knock-down drag-out fight, then just keep adding encounters to a day until you start hearing players saying they're running out of resources.

 

[Morrus]

I DID explain my alternative, I stated it doesn't work and gave you a solution.

Not bothering to read a post and then making an idiotic comment about it makes you look like you should be Trump's Twitter account content advisor...

You've been here three years. You know better than to make political insults. And you know better than to call people names.

 

[clearstream]

Hey guys,

I am having a problem with the group I am DMing.

We are currently playing the 5E adventure "Princes of the Apocalypse". The party consists of 4x level 12 charactes: Barbarian (Berserker); Ranged Rogue (Arcane Trickster); Cleric and a Sorcerer/Warlock.

Actually, since they hit level 8 they seem weigh too strong for the encounters of the adventure, so I started increasing the encounters strength by adding more creatures. The problem is: Nothing really changed. The fights are still not challenging, but only seem to take longer.

• The Barbarian is hitting very hard, but has resistance too slashing/piercing/bludgeoning/fire/frost. He attacks with advantage all the time and I still hardly get him down.
• In hard fights the Sorcerer fireballs half my mobs. And he can also do that within the whole party, because the barbarian has fire resistance and the rogue hardly fails his DEX saving throw (getting no damage at all).
• The Cleric has AC 24 (Ring of Protection, Dwarven Plate +2, Shield +1) and I can hardly hit him. He also heals more damage per round than I can deal to the front liners (barb/cleric).

So, I was thinking about what I could do wrong, because my players also mentioned that fights aren't fun anymore.


I have three suppositions:

1.) Magic Items:
I might have handed some items to my players that are too strong. E.g. Dwarven Plate (+2), Shield +1, Armor +1, Wings of Flying ... I heard that +armor items would be game breaking, because the 5E system is not able to compensate them. Is that true?

2.) Spells:
To be honest, I have never spend much time to spells. It's not that I am never casting, but most of the damage I deal with my monsters is through melee/ranged damage. I always felt a bit overtaxed by the richness of spells. Another problem is that most of the casters I use are almost one hit by the rogue/barbarian or sorcerer.

3.) Wrong encounters:
Because the whole adventure is very "sandbox" I often need to adjust encounters. Therefore, I often use encouter builders like Kobold Fight Club to fit the characters current level. I always use "hard encounters", but it still seems not enought. Might that also be a problem?


I would be very interested in tipps and answers.

Thanks in advance!

Fights for my party playing through OOTA vary from easy to deadly, and from a pushover to extremely tense. I'll try and capture why in some tips for you

1. Focus on means and motivations over difficulty rating. By this I mean that if it makes sense for a foe to bring more to the fight than would be fair, nevertheless allow them to bring more to the fight. Your PCs will need to learn when to disengage. A concrete example of this in OOTA is the drow pursuit. If a low-level party dallies foolishly, then they could have a very, very tough fight on their hands.
2. Anticipate possible fights prior to your session and look at your participants. Look at Ilvara. Her spell selection is fine for downtime in Velkynvelve, but nonsense for a pursuit that she expects to result in battle. Consider swapping out irrelevant spells for useful ones. Think about things like Death Ward. Another example is the the Chamberlain and Bridesmaid fight in Neverlight Grove. With a bit of reflection you can see that the job of those bridesmaids is to lock-up some characters while chamberlains gang up on the others.
3. Be vicious. Don't use bridesmaids on the character with the best save, use them on the character with the worst save. You obviously must be reasonable with this: don't give the NPCs information there's no way they could have, but do concede them skill and experience with their abilities. When dealing with elites, like the drow, concede them excellent combat choices much of the time. They'll milk their innate spells for maximum effect. Darkness on casters. Floating out of reach and snapping poison bolts off at low AC targets. Make sure the goblin boss is always next to another goblin so that she can use her special ability. Where it makes sense, don't waste attacks on characters that can't be harmed by them. Drow won't attempt to take down the plated, shielded dwarf, when squishy casters are better targets.
4. Be flavourful. Think about NPC motives and nature. Does an evil NPC take time to stab an already dead PC one more time, wasting an action? Certainly. Will overpowered goblins flee, hide stupidly, etc? Certainly. Don't be afraid to throw away resources. You're the DM. You can always make more. Drow won't hesitate to call upon PCs to surrender, or see their mage with the drow's sword at their throat die... or their dead mage have a sword shoved into their brain making them nigh unresurrectable (organ destroyed).
5. Consequences! Make sure you have a sense of what resources your NPCs can call on, and what other parties might be interested in their fates. Escalate where escalation seems reasonable. Don't flinch from PC death (and relatedly, I would advise playing straight - let the dice fall as they may).
6. The number of enemies table is useful for reminding that small groups and solo foes will be more easily overwhelmed, but the multipliers for larger groups of foes are too generous.
7. A three-sided fight is frequently more interesting than a two-sided one. Betrayal, double-crossing, triple-crossing... these spice things up. Especially when it isn't clear how far an "ally" can be trusted. Jorlan is a good example of that in OOTA.
8. Make sure that rests are applied meaningfully, otherwise you'll end up in an all-alpha-strike, all-trivial or all-deadly cycle. I'd suggest making your long rests long enough that they need a pause that matters, and easy enough to disrupt that they need safety. For OOTA I'm using 24 hour long rests and 3 hour short rests, and any fight or cast interrupts them. I can post those suggestions if you are interested. The fact is, if you let players use their abilities over too few encounters, they'll find those encounters much easier than the encounter guidelines expect.
9. Ultimately, the most interesting foes are going to have character-class-equivalence or at least be given a decent number of additional options. For example, I've taken a drow priestess, switched her from Lolth to Vhaeraun, given her trickery domain abilities, added a couple of levels of rogue (assassin), bought her some Wyvern poison and now have an NPC capable of giving the PCs a run for their money. OTOH her brother - Jorlan - is crippled and must take a cautious approach to any fight due to his disadvantages. Sacks of hit points straight out of the MM become far more interesting when you bring them to life as a variant, and this can't usually be done on the fly but needs work before the game so that it feels fair and consistent with your world. Another example I have is an elite cohort of orcs using polearms with polearm mastery and carrying bags of caltrops.
10. Learn spells. As you guessed, spells are important. Ilvara can precast Aid. She can be Death Warded. She and Ash can walk around bringing multiple PCs into their 15' of Spirit Guardians and forcing those PCs to make another save when they start their turn. They can both take Healing Word and bring their elites back into the fight from range.

It's a mix of playing it imaginatively, but very straight at the same time. You can't so easily in clear conscience kill characters if you're fudging it all the time (a DM who fudges a roll to kill a PC? is that really a thing!?) 5e difficulty ratings are set to "easy" so you generally will need to add something into the mix, but that something could be a series of easy encounters that burn PC resources before the critical encounter. I'd suggest strengthening foes a touch with additional options, without usually increasing their XP value or at least making any increase conservative. Think about their society, think about their desire to not die, and what resources they can call upon to that end. For me motives are very key. My NPCs usually don't want to die. They may be greedy, bold or cowardly. They may be vicious or merciful.

The foes of your characters will be thinking about their weak points. What is the cleric's worst save? What are the barbarian's movement options? Can he keep up with a mobile, flying or swimming opponent? Why are your casters anywhere the Barbarian can reach them? How well does your Sorcerer deal with a poison bolt from ambush? What about a "shield" of halfling slaves? Who do your PCs threaten and what resources might they dedicate to dealing with them?

 

[Caliburn101]

Yowza. So I'm an idiot because I didn't read every single post on every previous pages?

I'm still not convinced people are really playing with minimal/baseline requirements when they hyperventilate about how the whole thing is broken beyond repair. It works reasonably well for one group I DM (mix of new and experienced players) who are not optimized. Another group I have to adjust upwards. It takes all of an extra 30 seconds to increase the PC's level or number before I do calculations.

Then again I use things like "tactics" and "6-8 encounters between long rests" and "27 point buy".

Anyway, I'm outta here since I've effectively been called a Hitler wanna-be.

No - you didn't look at the post I directly referred to in the very post that YOU quoted and then, having not bothered to read what I wrote, you insulted me as a 'whiner', for something I hadn't actually said, merely something you assumed due to lack of attention to the post you quoted.

That's 100% on you.

As is accusing me of that last line in your post. I absolutely insist that you retract it immediately.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

...

That, and high level play is inherently broken. Because the variability of character synergies and player knowledge simply provides too much variance. The range of effectiveness varies greatly from group to group and even during the adventuring day.
There's not really a way around that without simplifying epic.

High level play is somewhat broken from a published adventure point of view for the reasons you state. If you are running your own game for a group of players you are familiar with, it is very easy to create effective challenges at high level.

 

[Oofta]

No - you didn't look at the post I directly referred to in the very post that YOU quoted and then, having not bothered to read what I wrote, you insulted me as a 'whiner', for something I hadn't actually said, merely something you assumed due to lack of attention to the post you quoted.

That's 100% on you.

As is accusing me of that last line in your post. I absolutely insist that you retract it immediately.

Heaven's to Betsy dude! I think it's time to take a chill pill. This wasn't a personal attack on you. I may not have studied the entire thread carefully enough or correctly interpreted what you were saying. It happens.

I was merely commenting on the state of the thread - that many people are only coming here to complain about things that simply cannot be solved by the writers of the book. That DMs have always and will always need to adjust difficulty based on their style and group.

 

[Oofta]

High level play is somewhat broken from a published adventure point of view for the reasons you state. If you are running your own game for a group of players you are familiar with, it is very easy to create effective challenges at high level.

I used to judge pretty regularly in living campaigns and the same mod for different tables could have greatly different outcomes. For tough groups I would focus fire on the squishiest character first (depending on options/weaknesses) and for weaker groups I'd spread out damage and so on.

I think some of the simplest suggestions on this thread that other people have pointed out for published adventures to make them more difficult
- Add +n to attack modifiers (in most cases even a +2 from an averaged off-screen Bless spell would be enough).
- Increase damage. An easy way would be to add n% or max out the variable portion of the damage. Be careful though with the big hitters like breath weapons, you don't want to accidentally TPK.
- Max out hit points of the monsters.
- Limit rest options.
- Ignore the numerical limits on number of monsters. If the mod says there are 5 ogres, make it 10. If the group wipes out all the monsters in round 1, have reinforcements drawn to the sound of battle show up in round 2 or 3. Have them show up behind the party so they attack the wizard that always hides in the back first.
- Add ambushes and traps.

Mix and match the above so you have a variety of types of fights.

 

[cooperjer]

I also am running PotA for a higher level group. Keep in mind the story is designed for levels 1 - 15, with the ground level keeps being level 3 - 6. The below ground temples are levels 7-10. The Fane of the Eye is about level 11 or 12. The dungeons where the archomentals are being summoned is between 13 - 15. These are from memory and I'm AFB. This is not to say that those dungeons are appropriately challenging to your players or PCs.

What works for me is to build encounters based on daily XP values rather than the Easy, Medium, Hard, Deadly scale provided. I try to keep the number of NPCs in an encounter to be within the number of PCs +/- 2. That means a NPC group ranges between two and six for a four player group. The minimum value for any encounter is 9% of the daily XP for the group. The maximum value is not set, but I get weary if the encounter looks like 40% or more.

I also added traps to the dungeon. These are things that do not necessarily target AC.

Keep in mind that this is a game of resource management. Any one encounter may not feel like much after a long rest, but after the characters have gone through 40% of their resources (HP, spell slots, rages, BM dice, etc.) then they will be looking for a long rest. This usually occurs because one character over spends resources on an encounter and drops back on damage relying on other PCs to make up the difference. If the PCs have expended more than 50% of their resources before lunch (in game) and the players say they want to take a long rest, you should remind them that it's not even lunch time. It's up to you if you would let them take a long rest, or if a wondering monster happens by. You may not need a roll for this monster; why let the dice control the story?

If after you try to build encounters based on daily XP and the players are still feeling like they're not challenged, then adjust the encounter build by adding one character to the math. In my mind the barbarian counts as two characters for these calcs. The calculations also do not account for magic items. You may want to set a lower limit of an encounter to 12% of daily XP because of the magic items.

Good luck.

 

[Gwarok]

I'd be very wary of adding more resilience to monsters (increase AC, hp etc), as you found when adding larger numbers, that will just add to the grind i.e. prolong the agony. Personally, I find that the 'monster maths' is off in 5e, as monsters get proficiency bonus based on their CR not their HD, which means your typical fight has monsters that are hitting WAY LESS than the PC's are hitting. Add to that, typical monsters don't have enough damage output (mostly due to higher-level PC's ability to 'nova' through extra abilities).

Couldn't agree more with that, especially the gimped Prof bonus by CR. A CR X monster is supposed to be an average challenge for a party of Level X, not a deadly one but still should content with them a bit. I'm not sure how to fix it, but I was thinking something like adding some variable to the CR to arrive at the appropriate Prof bonus, like +3 or 4. So at +3, a CR2 monster gets a +3 Prof bonus instead of +2, etc.. but having it be just like character levels when CR is clearly something more seems not just functionally off, but also in spirit.

As to the advice for the OP, I have a few suggestions. Bear in mind I don't know what your fights are actually like and some more precise examples would be nice, but here goes.

1) Give the important bad guys some magic items. Doesn't have to be much, but make sure they don't go in geared no better than some schmuck who just went down to ye olde weapon shoppe and bought everything off the rack. If your PC's have some nice items making them tough, stands to reason the bad guys can get their mitts on some as well. And since you've already stated you feel you might have gone a bit overboard with your players, you don't need to give them much more than what the PC's already have. I had 2 x Lvl 14 players run rough shod over a Death Knight I put in their way. Well, they are going to run into another one, and it's going to have magic armor and weapons too. Kind of absurd they don't in the DMG, but easily fixable.

2) Really need to get over being overwhelmed by spells. If your bad guys aren't using them and your players are, you, the DM who can raise and lower continents in your campaign world, have defaulted to all your bad guys playing with a severe handicap against PC's. Probably wouldn't even need much tweeking. If you have a lot of direct monsters in your fights, if at all possible just have them backed up by a few low level casters. A few 5th level priest types can bless and all sorts of things to make the rest a lot tougher. And don't be afraid to have a few dispels and counterspells ready to go. Have the big bad slugger of the bad guys come in swaddled in spells. Greater invis, bless, Shield of Faith, Fire Resistance, haste, all from a little posse of support casters, low enough level it would make sense that they would be working for your guy. Again, you're the DM so sky is the limit as long as you make it plausible.

3) High AC is tough, but doesn't help them vs. grapple. I had a similar issue when the paladin in my campaign finished a quest to retrieve the armor of an ancient hero of his order. I figured the armor and shield would each be +2, since +1 for such a legend seemed a bit weak. And even though I was mentally prepared for having an AC 24 pally to deal with going forward, still was annoying that NOTHING CR4 and below withtout a crazy high STR or DEX had a chance of doing much to him. So I made an 18 STR, high DEX and CON 10th level Barbarian/Rogue combo that grappled. Brawler and Grapple feats, with expertise on Athletics, raging to get advantage on the grapple and then advantage on attacks while grappled, buck naked Bully boy gave the paladin far more trouble than the aforementioned Death Knight. Almost beat him. Actually hurled him thru a 2nd story window to continue the fight in the streets. Fun times.

Anyways, those are my suggestions. But yea, don't just add HP or even more monsters as that will only make the fights take longer, and I don't think shortness of the fights is the issue. Good luck!