Help with balancing my party

[Glomb175]

Yes. For most of LMoP they're supposed to fight a handful of goblins in each encounter with one bigger goblin with double HP. Even the weaker characters could crush that, so I've been improvising. They've fought owlbears, doppelgangers, bandits, their last encounter was 12 goblins with improvised health and damage and a drow with a few level 3 spells.

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[Hillsy7]

Yes. For most of LMoP they're supposed to fight a handful of goblins in each encounter with one bigger goblin with double HP. Even the weaker characters could crush that, so I've been improvising. They've fought owlbears, doppelgangers, bandits, their last encounter was 12 goblins with improvised health and damage and a drow with a few level 3 spells.

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The reason I ask is because when you plug the numbers into kobald fight Club, the difficulty drops massively when:
A) you hit level 5 (two attacks) and
B) you have more than five players (in 5e because of bounded accuracy it's actually attack rolls being made more than hp that starts to affect the difficulty of encounters - see Matt coleville gm tips #4 (I think) where he talks about it)

Using kobald fight Club, the north barracks fight which is supposed to be hard for 5 level 4 players, becomes easy for 6 level 5 players. I suspect that's where your problems lie - you've accidentally hit a perfect storm of power jump mixed with one too many players.

For and giggles, punch in a young green dragon versus 4 and 6 level 4 players.....it is a massive swing. Because: 1 vs 6.....

 

[Charles Rampant]

Level 5, completed cragmaw hideout, cragmaw castle, old owl well, rebrand ruffians, currently doing thundertree, then they'll do wave echo cave. It's worth mentioning that they used to have a different DM who started them at level 1 on CoS so took them through the death house and gave out random amounts of XP which is why they levelled up so quickly, then the DM got bored of CoS and moved them over to LMoP for one session, then got bored and quit, that's when I took over. So before the cragmaw hideout they were already level 3 or 4.

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It seems that your real problem is that your party is critically overlevelled for the module. I suggest that you bring the LMoP storyline to an end, and move onto either Princes of the Apocalypse or Storm King's Thunder, both of which will be much more appropriately difficult for your party.

 

[jasper]

Glomb175 let me see if I got this right.
1. Combat monster assassin. Drops baddie in first round. And swings first.
2. The rest of group don’t care about role playing the social encounters, or exploring.
Never mind you answered the questions. Ok new group who loves combat. Using Adventure League rules you group is strong or very strong. So add a few extra bodies and extra hp.
In the future add extra bodies and max hp to all monsters. Get comfortable with the hack and slash style of your group or become a player and let another player take the chair.

 

[Glomb175]

It seems that your real problem is that your party is critically overlevelled for the module. I suggest that you bring the LMoP storyline to an end, and move onto either Princes of the Apocalypse or Storm King's Thunder, both of which will be much more appropriately difficult for your party.

I'm going to do wave echo cave then move on to my homebrew

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[Hillsy7]

I'm going to do wave echo cave then move on to my homebrew

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I can't suggest using Kobald fight club to adjust the encounter difficulty enough.

A prime example is the Collapsed Cavern fight. It appears to have 5 bugbears and 1 Doppleganger. When pitted against the party it's intended for (5 x level 4) it's ranked as Deadly! Change that to 6 level 5 characters - Ta-da! - it's now ranked as Easy.......

This I suspect will fix a few of your issues around Echo Wave cave because of the Power hike at level 5, and the large party.....

 

[ArwensDaughter]

Only now noticed I apparently inadvertently clicked laugh on your post, Hillsy7. My apologies!