Help with balancing my party

[Glomb175]

I've posted about my OP rogue before and I've been trying different ways of combating it for a few sessions now.

It's fair play that he's OP, he spent a lot of time making his character and optimised it perfectly whereas the other players didn't.

The problem is two fold:
1) He has a high initiative modifier so he is always (ALWAYS) top of the round
2) He has all these typical rogue feats like stealth, assassinate, crossbow expert, so he can deal like 50 damage in one turn.

So what was happening was he'd get the highest initiative and kill the big boss in one hit, then the rest of the group would mop up, and our cleric who always rolls lowest initiative doesn't get a turn.

So I tried three things.

First I tried one big boss so everyone got a turn, but the party would complain like "hang on, he dealt 10 damage, he dealt 15, he dealt 20, I dealt 50, how is this thing still alive"

So I tried lots of little enemies. This was the worst idea ever. Our party consists of 6 which is too big already. I pitted them against 12 goblins (two each), and a boss. On top of this I was also RP-ing an NPC, then our druid summoned 8 giant owls. So say our rogue was top of the round, he'd have to wait for 27 other people to take their turn before he could go again. That fight lasted way too long, which annoyed the party.

Thirdly I gave the party enchanted (cursed) items. Our rogue wanted cool enchanted daggers like Vax from critical role, but he's too strong as it is, and only level 5, I can't make him even more powerful at such an early level. So I looked up enchanted/cursed items and gave them out. (I posted another thread detailing them). This was mainly for fun and leads into the next campaign but also it allowed me to enhance the cleric's abilities and decrease the rogue's. The rogue was not happy about this. Understandably I guess, but he wasn't that hard done by.

So what now? I need to keep my players happy, but not punish them, but keep the combat fast paced, but not too powerful an enemy. So I'm turning to the excellent wisdom scores of the EN World forum.

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[kbrakke]

Do you have your rogue sheet because 50 consistent damage in a round seems absurd.

Surprise round hand x-bow with assassinate is at best 10d6+8 (Shot 1, auto crit from surprise and sneak attack (1d6+4 + 3d6 + 4d6 crit), Shot two auto crit for 2d6+4) for an average of 43 damage assuming he hits both shots. If you play the rules exactly as written, the Assassin is frankly the worst archetype. Assuming a human with the alert feat he gets +9 to init, which is great, but he still has to both surprise the creatures and get higher than them in initiative.
Every round after that, unless he gets a lucky crit he hits for 5d6+8 a respectable 25 damage, but that's about what Great Weapon Fighter can reach sans feats (2d6+4 with rerolls *2 is on average 25 damage a round) and that assumes the fighter uses literally no other abilities.

Suspicions that you're not playing assassinate properly aside you should just suck it up when they complain about boss HP. Or you should practice running monsters very quickly. Very recently (Literally Yesterday) my group of 5 level 6 characters encountered 43 Gnoll Hunters. I blazed through my gnoll turns. Always use average damage, and the specifics don't matter as much, E.G don't worry about exact movement unless you're in a specific environment, people can just move and attack as needed.

When it comes to solo monsters #1, never do it, #2 really, don't have a solo, #3 if you have a solo buff it insanely. At level 5 complaining about a solo having over 100 hp is laughable. I would expect (Based on what I posted earler for average damage ~25 per character at level 5) that you would want around 200 HP or so to provide a feasible challenge. My default technique is to make any solo monster actually just two monsters sharing the same body. So if they're level 5 and I wanted a challenging solo encounter I would just staple two CR 5 monsters together. Say they were fighting hill giants, and finally got to the hill giant chieftain, I would just run the encounter with what I say is one monster, but it acts like three hill giants. It gets three turns, and has thrice the HP. I would probably throw a single legendary resistance in there too to throw them for a loop.

In order.
1) Make sure you have all the assassin rules correct. If they both _surprise_ the enemy and _roll higher_ in initiative do they get auto crits, but they can still only sneak attack once.

2) Develop ways to run large mobs faster, bounded accuracy really does do as advised, so a hoard of lower CR characters is something to keep as an encounter option. Figure out how you want to do it, average damage, you can do average hit rates too if you want.

3) Even with bosses have minions around in a fight to keep them busy. If you want a higher powered feel I like having monsters that feel like Elite Soldiers be the lieutenant something that can distract a party member or two to keep the boss safe.
3b) If you insist on actual solo encounters, you should almost never use a monster in the MM straight up, give it something to smooth out the action economy imbalance. It can be making it functionally equal to multiple monsters, it can be legendary actions, lair actions or some other ability, but it always needs something.

 

[aco175]

When I have mobs attack the PCs I make them roll for them. I say something like "These skeletons have +4 to hit and deal 1d6+1." I trust the players enough to make the rolls and move things along. I tend to roll for the archers and one-offs.

 

[ccs]

Unless that NPC is important to the story, stop playing it.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

5E does a lot right, but it was a huge step backwards from 4E in terms of monster design. Basically if you want a "boss", it needs to have enough HP to stand up to the focus fire. I give mine at least 50 bonus hp per party level and a few action points to take extra turns/reroll. And that's assuming the boss has allies. If it's an actual solo encounter you need to beef it up even more.

The game by default is on easy mode with most fights just being a 2 round speedbumps at best. As near as I can tell the baseline is set for a party of 5 Champions with straight 12's for stats, hide armor, and a few daggers.

 

[Caliban]

Don't have the "big boss" be there in the first round. Either have it be an illusory projection, or an underling, or simply that they are in a different room and enter the fight until their turn. Bad guys don't all hang out in the same room, and aren't all deaf - sounds of combat will attract enemies from nearby areas.

Have enemies show up in waves, not all at once. Stop having them show up when you feel the fight is starting to drag. It doesn't have to be waves of little guys, it can be one or two medium to big opponents every round or so.

Have the big guy be visible, but behind a Wall of Force or a Wind Wall spell. Or have a bodyguard next them equipped with a Shield of Missile Attraction. (This works best if they are aware of the capabilities of the group and have a reason to prepare for them.)

If you want to be evil about it, have the Shield of Missile Attraction on an innocent bystander, preferably one the PC's know and care about. The person with the shield is tied to a post or otherwise bound, but the shield will still attract any ranged attacks. So the rogue may accidentally kill someone they like.

You can also get tricky with mirrors - have the big bad appear to be sitting in an alcove, but what they are actually looking at is a mirror reflecting the image of the big bad on his throne or whatever, and the big bad is actually around the corner. So the rogue shatters the mirror with their first attack. This could just be a really paranoid big bad.

 

[hastur_nz]

Some good advice here, the thing I'll add is try not to punish your rogue's player for actually caring enough to create an optimised character. If their PC is OP compared to the others, feel free to let your players sort that out, if indeed it might actually be a problem (which it probably is not). For example if a player feels their PC doesn't get enough limelight, sure as DM you should make sure that encounters are not just all about killing the BBEG in the first round, but players are all free to change something at their end, too. It's a shared responsibility, for everyone to try and make sure they can have fun together. But giving them a cursed item to 'even things out' is poor form.

 

[cbwjm]

What are the rogue's social skills like? That could definitely be an arena where he suffers due to over-optimisation on the combat side of things.

For combat encounters, things I would try would be:
- Mixing in a solo with minions. Have that boss with legendary actions also come with a few minions. There is also nothing wrong with having a tough opponent, could be that he just has more than 95 hit points. Don't start with the boss in the front lines, let the minions soak some damage.
- Cover bonuses should sort out crossbow expert. Have the enemies attack and move back into cover (full cover if needed, I can't recall the specifics of crossbow expert). It will make him have to ready an action to shoot.
- The rogue class has the uncanny dodge ability, using a reaction to reduce damage by half. No reason why NPCs can't have this.
- Environmental effects (effectively lair actions). Have environmental effects shoot out and cause complications or just straight damage.

Also, don't focus on stopping the rogue all of the time. Create encounters that challenge the party but if the rogue manages to smash the big guys from time to time then that's fine too, he is built that way. It can be pretty punishing for a player to have their DM focus on stopping their character all of the time.

 

[cmad1977]

Something smells fishy.


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[Hillsy7]

OK - So I generally echo the sentiment above that something, numerically, feels a bit wonky. Consistent 50-odd damage at level 5 seems waaaaay too high, even with assassinate.

1d6 Crossbow doubled for a Crit (7) + 3d6 sneak doubled for a crit, (21) + DEX (3-4), that's 32 ish average, which considering a 6-man party at level 5 should probably be up against CR 7-9, is a decent start but not a lot else (e.g. a Young Bronze Dragon has 140 HP, a chain devil has 82 HP but resistance to Phys damage)....and that's only the first round. Everything else should be half that save the occasional Crit. 16 damage average per successful sneak attack is decent, but it's hardly a game breaker.



Anyways, all that aside, a couple of things.

1) If your party is counting damage and ask "How is this thing still alive", the answer is "Because it is." If they want stuff that's easy to kill, they've got to accept the alpha strike master is going to ker-splat a lot of stuff on turn 1. This infers they want to play a specific type of game that's possibly different to the one your Rogue wants to play (optimisation tends towards tough combat, wanting lots of things to go Splat easily tends towards exploration and fast-paced dungeon crawls) - talk to them about it.
2) The Rogue is optimized to alpha strike, so tactically is doing 1 thing all the time. Most Big Bad Bosses have good narrative reasons to plan against this - someone mentioned the shield of missile attraction - great idea. Also you are the DM, invent an amulet that mitigates surprise and allow the party to loot it. I mean, how often do you sneak up on a party, really? And it can only be used by one character. The point being sometimes you Barbarian comes across flying monsters and has to throw javelins, sometimes your spell casters get silenced, sometimes Human's have to fight in total darkness: It's perfectly legitimate to occasionally nullify one character's abilities to let another shine.
3) If the party is suffering cos the Rogue is nicking all the combat limelight (and too be fair, Insane Alpha Strikes are the Rogue's Thing), bring in more social and skill orientated Combat.
4) Speak to the rest of the group and help up-skill their combat effectiveness, THEN toss upgraded Monsters at them.
5) Flat out Cheat. Have two 'Bosses' in the same room, let the Rogue waste his alpha strike on one,


Essentially this all comes down to 'deliberately mitigate the alpha strike', which is totally acceptable to do some of the time. And if the Rogue gets in a huff about it, your group isn't wanting to play the same game.

However, my primary thing would be to check the maths - the damage output seems too high...