D&D 5E Help with 5E Monster Effectiveness

[Mondaynightgamer]

Help with monsters! My group and I have been playing 5E since its release. The biggest problem I am encountering as the DM is that monsters can't keep pace with PC progress. Example: +4 to hit, 1d6+2 damage versus a 18 AC. That's about a 35% chance to hit, and about 5 points of damage on average. Against a melee type, this is little to no damage as the monster almost never hits and does very little damage. The players on the other hand have about +5-7 to hit and deal a substantially better amount of damage. I'm looking for advice on how to make the monsters more effective. I'm using Kobold Fight Club, and am shooting for "hard" each time. But, the end result is more of a slaughter than a challenging combat. Advice?

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Mistwell]

Stop giving the party so many opportunities for short and long rests...monsters hitting 1/3rd of the time for 5 damage becomes very meaningful when your hit points become a real limited resources as opposes to essentially infinite.

 

[Mondaynightgamer]

Thanks lowkey! Good ideas. Especially #6.

 

[Jaelommiss]

I found my fights were far too easy when facing nothing but melee monsters. Adding ranged attackers helped, but the biggest change I found was adding in a spellcaster to support a few weaker creatures.

First level Faerie Fire can help overcome high AC characters. Fog Cloud can force ranged PCs to get closer to the fighting. Web is 2nd level. Slow and Hypnotic Pattern are 3rd. Either of those will wreck the PCs if there are weaker enemies to take advantage of the chaos and keep the party from striking the caster. Hold Person and Heat Metal, both 2nd level, can make the front line collapse in moments. Bless and Bane, both first level, will help allies or weaken enemies. Moonbeam and Flaming Sphere can shut down portions of the battlefield. Spells of level 1-3 are generally found on the spell lists of CR 2 creatures, and you can freely substitute spells known without changing CR.


If you feel exceptionally cruel, the spellcaster can flee after putting up a Concentration spell and then be used in the next fight. Caster drops Slow on the party and runs, then does the same thing in the next fight. In the third fight a Fog Cloud can be used to force the party squishies to the front where they will be targeted. In the fourth fight he'll Web them while archers fill them with holes. Giving him Shield should be enough to keep him alive while retreating. When the party finally catches up they should be exceptionally fed up with him. Your players will feel extremely accomplished when they finally kill him.

 

[pukunui]

Take a look at the mob rules in the DMG.

 

[hejtmane]

You can up the challenge level on the monsters you pick;add a NPC you create; add +tohit,damage buff the monsters; add more of them mix different types of monsters. Lots of options

As a DM two weeks ago I had to add extra Trolls (+7hit) on the fly when my best layed plans went sideways because I rolled so bad as the GM. I had the advantage on a round and still rolled nothing higher than a 7. I had hit 4 roles in a row with anything higher than a 7 freaking ridiculous and yes that was 4 rounds of combat with multiple trolls it was down right freaking unlucky.

 

[Celtavian]

Fights in 5E are very easy and lopsided. The most dangerous fights don't usually require attack rolls. Attacking saves makes fights quite a bit more dangerous or fighting creatures that give advantage when attacking in groups. Once the party gets plate armor and AoE spells, you have to count with similar effects to make fights dangerous and definitely attack saves or use ambush tactics. Straight attack rolls are one of the weakest forms of attack against the PCs. If you're allowing feats, Heavy Armor Mastery can make physical attacks like fly bites.

 

[Grakarg]

Also consider some of the tactics that don't require a to hit roll but are an opposed str or dex check instead. Grappling/making a PC prone can give the rest of the opposition advantage.

Or push an opponent into a campfire/off a cliff/into a pit trap, etc instead of bopping the PC with your mace.
This will also help force you to incorporate the environment into the encounter design, making the combats more interesting and diverse.

Use the optional flanking rules in the DMG to help give the monsters advantage from tactical positioning. Your PCs will want to use this too, but really it helps the monsters more since they're having such a hard time hitting them.

Make sure you review the monsters special abilities. Many of them have something that helps them when they approach combat a certain way. Like hobgoblins will spike up their damage a little if a friendly is in combat with their target, so maybe while the PC's are busy with the owlbear in their midst, its hobgoblin handlers shoot the PCs near it with their bows. Or goblins use their ability to strike from ambush and retreat/regroup, etc.

Maybe someone brought a net or other unusual weapon the PCs weren't prepared to face.

Maybe some of them are wearing better than normal armor making them harder for the PCs to hit, so they last longer in a fight (and have more of a chance to get off more then a single swing of their weapon before they die).

Equip a few of them with healing potions, so they stop and heal themselves when wounded. This will make them last longer, giving their compatriots a chance to last longer and have more of an opportunity to dish damage.

Look for things that can be area of effect attacks or auto-hits to give the players pause. Flaming flasks of oil, trapped defenses, potions of dragon fire, someone has a wand of Magic Missles. Hey maybe that bandit thug is a dragonborn instead of a generic human! Or if you're really evil, maybe all the bandits are dragonborn with the half-dragon template added. (extra dragon breath attacks could be scary)

Generally speaking though, most of the time I think you should do nothing. The game is slanted for the PC's to be heroes so as long as the fights are exciting and fun, you're doing your job. (But nobody says you can't spice up an encounter or two with some strangeness, just don't overuse it.)

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Help with monsters! My group and I have been playing 5E since its release. The biggest problem I am encountering as the DM is that monsters can't keep pace with PC progress. Example: +4 to hit, 1d6+2 damage versus a 18 AC. That's about a 35% chance to hit, and about 5 points of damage on average. Against a melee type, this is little to no damage as the monster almost never hits and does very little damage. The players on the other hand have about +5-7 to hit and deal a substantially better amount of damage. I'm looking for advice on how to make the monsters more effective. I'm using Kobold Fight Club, and am shooting for "hard" each time. But, the end result is more of a slaughter than a challenging combat. Advice?

Three comments:

1.) Check with your players. Maybe they like slaughters. Many players do and 5E is calibrated to be easy.

2.) You're correct that Hard encounters from Kobold.com tend to be easy for an optimized party. There's nothing wrong with turning up the difficulty. My game is combat-light, but when combats do occur I find that 200% to 300% of Deadly is about the right level for a challenging encounter, one that makes me think, "Hey, I'd want to play a PC in this fight" instead of "I'm tempted to handwave this and just say, 'You won. What do you do next?'"

I don't usually go over about 130% of the "XP per adventuring day" DMG chart though, not so much because of difficulty as for story reasons--it's rare to do that much fighting in a day.

3.) What makes a combat boring is not so much whether it's easy on the DMG scale as whether it's predictable for the players. I've had fights that looked under control for the party using regular tactics, until at the end of the fight something fails a morale check, decides to charge instead of running away, and overruns the front line heading for the back line spellcasters. At no time during that fight was the party in any danger of TPK or even PC death, but they were in danger of having their nice predictable game plan shredded by a monster doing something unexpected. They managed to pull things back together without spending any unplanned HP or resources (thanks to the Paladin choosing to charge and grapple) and got it back on track, but the player's goals (beat this Hard encounter without losing any HP or spell slots above 1st level) were threatened, and they had to make decisions to get things back on track.

So, use monsters who Hide before combat and don't reveal themselves immediately on the first round of combat; use monsters who are willing to retreat behind cover and wait with readied actions instead of immediately charging; use monsters who will occasionally find reason to ignore the tasty fighter on the front-line in favor of something unexpected; use unusual terrains like vertical cliffs, and monsters who take advantage of those terrains to harass the PCs.

It doesn't matter if they come close to dying as long as the players are forced to make decisions.