D&D 5E Guidelines for fewer/tougher encounters?

[Sunseeker]

Cool man, its your game.

Not sure why you can'y simply give me that response.

'Nearly killing the party twice' in one session is not the game working fine. How many sessions does it take before one of those close calls finally kills them? One encounter of bad rolls, and its kaput.

Who cares if it's one session of 10 session? It's what we enjoy. My players had a blast Saturday night.

If every encounter has a 10 percent chance of a TPK, then your PCs are odds on not to reach 5th level. In fact, going by xp guidelines, they have a less than 1 percent chance to make it that far.

That's not how statistics work. If each encounter has a 10% chance of a TPK, then it doesn't matter if they engage in 2 fights or 18 fights. They still have a 10% chance of a TPK. Besides, at 1st level (which is where we were), the only resources you really have are your hit points. If they're not being burned over the course of the session, there are no other ways to drain the players. At higher levels I can make them waste spells, burn special abilities and so on before I even seriously touch their HP.

More encounters of lower difficulty creates an equal challenge, but also ameliorates the risk of a TPK and maintains the balance between the classes.

I'm not looking for an equal challenge, neither are they. I'm not intenting to avoid a TPK, neither are they. They want the challenge, they enjoy the challenge and we all have a good session. THAT is what matters. Not some weird encounter rules that I have employed, don't like, and don't function for my group.

5 x 4th level PCs have a deadly threshold of 2500xp. Some deadly encounters are:

1 Young black dragon (2900)
2 Flameskulls (3300)
4 Orogs (3600)
1 Hobgoblin captain and 8 Hobgoblins (3750)
2 Banshees (3300)
2 Helmed horrors (3300)

All of which would likely TPK a party of 5 x 4th level PCs (even PCs who are fully rested). And thats on the lower side of deadly.

You speak like I don't know this. I would appreciate it if you stopped that. I'm well aware of what does, or does not challenge my players. That's why I do what I do in order to challenge them.

Throwing encounters like that at PCs just encourages them to all avoid fighters, warlocks and monks, play full spellcasters or Paladins, and [smite/ high level spell] nova the encounter, before falling back to rest. The 5 minute adventuring day is reinforced, and initiative is the decicive factor in a combat.

Okay, so what? My players are more than welcome to determine how many fights they engage in, if such options are open to them. That aside, this current campaign has all full-magic-users banned due to it being a low-magic setting and the party is allowed one half-caster (Monk in this case). The other two are fighters, one great weapon and one sword-and-board.

Maybe thats the preferred style of your group, where certain classes are invalidated, nova tactics are preferred, and combats are rocket tag. If so, then more fun to you and feel free to ignore the advice.

You know, you could have just said "Hey, if you guys are enjoying what you do, great!" right from the bat instead of nit-picking, brow-beating and condescending to our playstyle. This campaign is gritty, it's an ultra-low-magic, post-apocalyptic setting. Life sucks and it doesn't get better.

I strongly suggest forcing six encounters on them before letting them long rest. How about making long rests key off a [six encounter] milestone and short rests off a [two encounter] milesetone, and un-link the benefits of a 'rest' [hit dice, healing and resource recovery] from actual resting. See how the game balances at that point. Your encounters will be much more tactical, spellcasting, smiting, raging, action surging etc will become much more of a meaningful player choice, and the rocket tag element will vanish. Your encounters will balance so much better too.

But I don't have any of the problems you think I do. The fact that my party, whose average HP is 10, all got down to 2 or 3 a couple times and one guy was KOed in one combat (not even killed, the bad-guys wanted to take prisoners) is a feature not a bug of this campaign.

 

[77IM]

Double all monster damage: fights will be deadlier and run faster, without any additional complexity.

 

[Flamestrike]

Not sure why you can'y simply give me that response.

I said, cool man, its your game. In other words, if it works for you then go for it. Something you seem to acknowledge:

Who cares if it's one session of 10 session? It's what we enjoy. My players had a blast Saturday night.

So go for it.

That's not how statistics work. If each encounter has a 10% chance of a TPK, then it doesn't matter if they engage in 2 fights or 18 fights.

Yes it does. If every encounter has a 10 percent chance of a TPK then after one encounter your players will all be rolling new characters 10 percent of the time after every encounter.

If you throw 10 encounters at them, each with a 10 percent chance of a TPK, then the chance of them surviving to the end of the 10th encounter is very small indeed.

Besides, at 1st level (which is where we were), the only resources you really have are your hit points.

Forgetting spells arent you?

Okay, so what? My players are more than welcome to determine how many fights they engage in, if such options are open to them. That aside, this current campaign has all full-magic-users banned due to it being a low-magic setting and the party is allowed one half-caster (Monk in this case). The other two are fighters, one great weapon and one sword-and-board.

A lack of full casters goes some way to ameliorate nova strikes and class balance problems that come about with less than the expected number of encounters per adventuring day.

You know, you could have just said "Hey, if you guys are enjoying what you do, great!" right from the bat instead of nit-picking, brow-beating and condescending to our playstyle.

I did. I literally told you 'cool and that it was your game to do with as you wanted.'

But I don't have any of the problems you think I do. The fact that my party, whose average HP is 10, all got down to 2 or 3 a couple times and one guy was KOed in one combat (not even killed, the bad-guys wanted to take prisoners) is a feature not a bug of this campaign.

Cool. I see youve altered other mechanics which make it work better for you [banning full spell casters].

 

[iserith]

So, this topic's come up a lot here and there, but I don't think I've seen a thread devoted to it.

I love 5E, but the whole attrition-based "6-8 encounters per day" model doesn't work for me. I vastly prefer one or two fights per adventuring day, but with each one being a lot tougher.

Thus far, I've been winging it, trying to run by feel, but I'm still finding myself struggling. I almost always wind up with either 1) a fight that's not as tough as I intend, or 2) a fight that has too many creatures and thus takes way too long to complete.

I'm hoping that some of you who might share this preference, but are more mathematically inclined than I am, have come up with some vague guidelines. I'm not looking for anything too specific, but more just like a "build an encounter that's X-times harder than 'deadly' for a group your size and level" sort of thing.

(I'm already familiar with techniques like waves of combatants and the like. But I really am just looking for better ways to estimate the challenge of a single fight. I want the group to come through it feeling like they've gone through the wringer, but not take so long or become so repetitive it gets boring.)

Since difficulty is something that is not reliably quantifiable by the numbers, I would suggest focusing instead on creating challenges that are engaging rather than just difficult. Certainly some measure of difficulty is required to make a challenge satisfying, but more satisfying in my view is a challenge that can be overcome by any number of means and has options for engaging with all three pillars of the game.

Difficulty is not just a measurement of how many hit points the PCs have to expend during the challenge after all and player engagement in my view comes from compelling stakes and a chance to freely exercise agency. If "Kill All Monsters" is the only way to win the "tough fights" you design, then naturally they'll get good at doing exactly that, making the fights easier than you intended. So instead, consider alternate goals for the monsters or PCs to achieve (or both) while maintaining deadly difficulty in terms of number and CR of monsters in the challenge.

Take, for example, a simple scenario like Monkey Business. By the numbers, it is 5x higher than Deadly - 10,200 XP (adjusted) for four 4th-level PCs. But the goal isn't to kill the monsters - it's to rescue Fey Ray before he dies while Ponga and the Terror Lizard fight each other. The PCs could, if they wish, attack the monsters. And they might even win that fight, but still fail in their goal if Fey Ray dies. What is the difficult rating of this challenge? I have no idea. I didn't focus on that and I don't think it's quantifiable by the tools given to us in the DMG. I instead focused on creating an interesting challenge that could be resolved any number of ways. In the doing, I am going for player engagement rather than creating a tough fight.

 

[CapnZapp]

You don't need to stick with the normal Goblin either, use the template from the MM to make new and improved Goblins:

Goblins, normal
Bandit Captain (Goblin chieftain)
Gladiator (lieutenant)
Guards (Guards for the chieftain)
Thugs (Guards for the lieutenant)
Acolyte
Assassin (special forces)
Bandit (special forces)

change the weapons and reduce the HP a little or increase allot (your choice)
modifier to fit the Goblin Race

True, but the NPC selection in the MM only takes you so far.

I don't want to reuse these stats TOO many times, and so I'm thinking we're ready for a MMII.

I especially would want beefier rank'n'file humanoids with cool special abilities. The Orc War Chief is a perfect example - it's a sturdier humanoid that isn't simply a reskinned NPC Guard.

Let me right away add I'm okay with certain humanoids only being available at low CR (below CR 1). Orcs for instance. If the orc hordes all suddenly have War Chief stats just because the heroes are level 10 that would be strange.

But I think ALL humanoids are presented at the lowest level, and that means a lack of variety. Why not switch it up, so, I don't know, perhaps Grimlocks or Troglodytes are introduced at CR 4 or so? We have Quaggoths at CR 2 but that's not enough. If you never saw any CR 1/2 Troglodytes, you wouldn't find it strange that they're all 50 hp critters, for instance.

What I need in Monster Manual II is CR 3 thru CR 9 versions of at least SOME humanoids. Let me give you an example where opportunity was squandered. In my mind, Out of the Abyss kind of blew it. It introduces no less than six new Duergar.

However, NONE of them are more than CR 2. The result is that it becomes incredibly hard to make them look and act different, since by mid-level, they're all trash mobs that go down easy. Their stats simply doesn't change all that much: their damage is uniformly low, none of them get any special ability that makes a high level hero take notice.

All the Duergar that needs to be a "high" CR use the standard NPC stats (like Veteran).

If a Xarrorn, say, or a Kavalarachi were both CR 5, then that would give enough leeway to truly make them look and feel different, since now they could access most abilities available to single-digit heroes.

I guess the posterchild of this new misdirected approach is the Drow. I really would have liked the weakest Drow (the "Drow" stat block) to be perhaps CR 2, bringing continuity with previous editions which reinforce that a Drow is much more than a darkskinned Elf - it's a superior Elf that simply isn't appropriate for a level 1 party.

 

[CapnZapp]

Yes, I know I can make all that work myself - I don't need any books to do it.

But no, I don't want to.

I would much rather have WotC sell me that work, and yes, that would be a MM2 kind of book.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yes, I know I can make all that work myself - I don't need any books to do it.

But no, I don't want to.

I would much rather have WotC sell me that work, and yes, that would be a MM2 kind of book.

In the absence of a MM2, you can get a 5E license for Hero Lab, which has all the SRD creatures and then some. Using those as a template, Hero Lab allows you to modify them very easily by adding class levels or boosting stats.

I actually just made a few custom NPCs...a ghoul with bard levels and an enhanced CHA score, and a diminished Balor (Glyphimhor, from "Dead Gods") with reduced stats and actions. This took me about 10 minutes for each character, and I then ported their star blocks to a PDF and printed them up. Nice and easy.

Also, with a bit more effort, I am currently constructing a custom version of a Worm That Walks. That's a work in progress that will take more time, but I think I'll be able to create a version I am happy with.

The program is pretty robust and allows for quick modification or more involved creation, whatever works for you. Just figured I'd mention that to you as an option since who knows when or if we get another monster book from WOTC.

 

[Luz]

This won't help with encounter math, but I recommend this guy's advice:

http://theangrygm.com/return-of-the-son-of-the-dd-boss-fight-now-in-5e/

I've tried this several times in my games and it works quite well. It doesn't necessarily apply to just boss/solo encounters either, it can be used with any enemy. It requires some prep, but well worth it.