D&D 5E (2024) High Level 5.5E: Building Encounter Chains

[Alas]

So, I did the math for this scenario with a party of 4 x 15th level PCs in mind, but it could theoretically scale up by 25% without too much adjusting. The tactics and philosophy behind the encounters remain the same-- just a matter of tweaking the number of foes until they match the party.

Further caveat: I'm not a regular optimizer, so I don't calculate DPR and hit probabilities and what-not beyond what I can eyeball and do in my head. But! I've got a lot of experience adjusting things at the table.

Thus...

The High Level Party Resource Attrition Challenge

Goals:

1. Stress out the party's resources
2. Give them a reason not to nova every encounter

The Party
Four level 15 adventurers, including 3 spellcasters (but no cleric) and a battlemaster fighter.

Resources

1. 15 HD each for recouping during a rest
2. probably around 86 Hit Points each (average, before Con modifiers)?
3. Fighter can make 3 attacks per round; spellcaster cantrips do 3dX BUT...
4. ... Spellcasters will have enough low-level slots to cast a 2nd - 4th level spell every round of every encounter (see below)
5. The real thing I need to watch out for are 6th, 7th, and 8th level slots, which the party probably has 2-3 of each (6-9 total) and the fighter's action surge

Strategy
To really wear down the party's resources, I need all the encounters to happen in one day. My personal taste is two encounters in a 1-2 punch, allow a short rest, and then hit them 1-2 again. Hopefully that allows the party to keep their hit points up, but steadily wear down high level spells and daily class features. The key to keeping the pressure on is making sure the monsters control the tempo. The party can't think they have all the time in the world to rest up-- the next wave is always coming. I have a couple strategies for that:

1. For each encounter, the monsters need a plan of attack and an exit strategy
2. Succeed or fail, the monsters retreat after 3-4 rounds
3. If the monsters succeeded in their goal, move on to next encounter
4. If the monsters fail, the same encounter group comes back 2 minutes later to attempt the same goal again

The "encounter - reprise" group can either be the same team healed back up to 1/2 or 3/4, or a fresh team at 100% (depending).

I haven't got a solid plot or setting to justify all the parts, but here's the first draft of what I'd do using just monsters out of the 2024 manual:

Encounter One: The Coven
The villainous archmage has set these hunters on the party to make later scrying and targeting easier.
Composed of: 4 x CR 12 vampires
Plan of attack: The vampires want blood and hair samples from every PC. They get this when every PC has been bitten at least twice.
Exit strategy: If they get what they're after, or the PCs are hitting back to hard, the vampires exit via mist, bat form, flight, climbing... vampires have lots of options for this, really.
Tweaking: Vampires are all the excuse I need to throw in as many wolves, bats, or stirges as I want to make things complicated.

Encounter Two: The Furies
Armed with sorcerous links to the party, winged avengers gate in and swoop down from the sky.
Composed of: 4 x CR 12 erinyes
Plan of attack: The erinyes have been tasked with branding the PCs. They accomplish this when every PC has been restrained and struck at least twice. They'll strategize with their ropes to restrain first at best possible range, then close to hit-hit-hit.
Exit strategy: If the erinyes brand the PCs, they fly off-- mission accomplished. Alternately, they could fight to the death and save themselves the trip back to the inferno.
Tweaking: They might be kinda vulnerable to banishing. I might have to mix in some ettercaps or ropers more mortal that can hold the party down for a little bit while the erinyes make their marks.

Encounter Three: Eyes of the Storm
The party have had a chance to rest, but the brands repel their allies and shine like a beacon for some very weird mercenaries.
Composed of: 3 x CR 13 beholders
Plan of attack: The beholders have been tasked with bringing the party to the archmage, hopefully softened up. Their goal is to get the whole party petrified or charmed at the same time, then signal that the villain's order is ready for pickup.
Exit strategy: If the beholders have to retreat, they'll lay down antimagic "suppressive fire" and make for prepared bolt holes until they can ambush again.
Tweaking: Choosing which ray the beholders use on whom, and removing the randomness, should keep this tough. The goal should be to have at least two rays hitting/threatening everybody every round.

Encounter Four: The Anti-Party
The archmage de-petrifies the party to gloat at their expense before the finishing blow.
Composed of: Archpriest, Archmage, Pirate Admiral, Questing Knight (all CR 12)
Plan of attack: Make the party suffer, and/or steal their stuff! The pirate and knight want to separate the characters from their magic items; the mage wants to humiliate the party further by beating them down (25% hp or less); the priest wants to keep the other three up and fighting.
Exit strategy: The wizard or priest can teleport the anti-party out if they have to.
Tweaking: If the encounter's proving too tough, the pirate or priest may bail early, especially if they get an item they want. If the party is still blowing through too easily, bring back any foe from the previous encounters for a rematch.

... and that's what I'd do. There's still a lot of work to cobble it together logically, and terrain will make a HUGE difference in strategy, but I'd feel comfortable approaching my table with these notes.

 

[tetrasodium]

So given that, what would you suggest in order to give this player what they want -- a reason not to nova every fight?

There's no particularly good solution, just a lot of bad ones the players will almost immediately retool to nullify if they see it.

The dual rest/recovery cycle will work against you, simply remove short rests entirely because the problem is the class design and ease of using them. Swapping short rest classes to something like the patreon Moldvey thing mearls is working on probably isn't a realistic option given other changes that would need to happen.

Neovancian and unlimited at will cantrips as solid attacks both works against your goals. Again you could probably swap to the cantrips in the Moldvey thing mearls is doing since they aren't really damage focused. Might as well go back to vancian prep and 3.x or 2e slot gain/progression too, but 5e spells are almost certain to still be an issue in ways you won't expect.

Sadly I never found a good solution other than "next week/after this last quest I'm starting a new campaign guys". Everything that could fix it requires MANY significant nerfs players are unlikely to give a good faith try

 

[Tigris]

There's no particularly good solution, just a lot of bad ones the players will almost immediately retool to nullify if they see it.

The dual rest/recovery cycle will work against you, simply remove short rests entirely because the problem is the class design and ease of using them. Swapping short rest classes to something like the patreon Moldvey thing mearls is working on probably isn't a realistic option given other changes that would need to happen.

Neovancian and unlimited at will cantrips as solid attacks both works against your goals. Again you could probably swap to the cantrips in the Moldvey thing mearls is doing since they aren't really damage focused. Might as well go back to vancian prep and 3.x or 2e slot gain/progression too, but 5e spells are almost certain to still be an issue in ways you won't expect.

Sadly I never found a good solution other than "next week/after this last quest I'm starting a new campaign guys". Everything that could fix it requires MANY significant nerfs players are unlikely to give a good faith try

Removing short rests really makes no sense, what should that help? The problems are the daily ressources and the classes which have them (casters), this just would make the non casters weaker.


Also several games which have stronger short rests (after each combat) have the "nova problem" a lot less. Best example of that is 13th age.


And there are a lot of small solutions which can help against nova, even without changing the rules of the game like the ones mentioned here: D&D 5E (2024) - High Level 5.5E: Building Encounter Chains


If you are fine with homebrewing, then you can add easily even more anti nova measures:

• A (stronger) escalation dice. Give all enemies +4 to all defenses (armor and saving throws), but each round of combat increase the DC and hit values of player characters by 2. (13th age does it by 1 but that one has longer combats so this needs more extreme measures).
  • This way using the strongest attacks turn 1 has a higher chance to waste them
• Have monsters which start the combat with a huge pool of temporary HP, but they lose temporary HP every turn.
  • This way its more efficient to only damage 1 monster turn 1 and try to Crowd control others
• Have monsters take only half damage, but they lose this at the beginning of their turn if they are flanked.
  • This way you want to first prepare monsters with positioning before the next turn you can burst them down.
• Give monsters double HP, but say the combat is over if each enemy is bloodied.
  • This way if you burst too much you lose damage, because you dont need to kill the enemies and enemies even if "defeated" still deal damage/ can do CC etc.

Sure many of these things can maybe be annoying for players, but escalation dice is in general a well liked mechanic, and having some monsters with cool different mechanics can also make combats more interesting. This feels a lot better than limiting players, just empowering enemies.

 

[Tessarael]

One other thing to consider is how often the PCs are running into encounters. For dungeoneering, long rest 1/day makes sense. However, if the encounters are more occasional, then you may want to consider limiting long rest to 1/week. We did that for one campaign where encounters were much less often, and it worked well.

 

[tetrasodium]

Removing short rests really makes no sense, what should that help? The problems are the daily ressources and the classes which have them (casters), this just would make the non casters weaker.
.

Yes, daily resources are the problem it solves. By having every PC on the same adventuring day cycle it removes a lot of problems that are created by bad scaling of short rest classes and returns the ability to wear down party resources without a couple PCs being able to do things like drop 15 points of ki or 3x 5th level slots each fight... With 6-8 expected combats for the day the class design puts L15 "daily resources" at 195-135 points of ki & 18-24 5th level spell slots.

Yes it does hit some classes pretty hard because their design is one of malicious compliance, but the system is literally designed to support non casters here with magic weapons and armor that tend to gain multiplicative returns as the number of attacks scale. Magic items have always been a critical component of the game and were never just "pure candy".

 

[Zardnaar]

Yes, daily resources are the problem it solves. By having every PC on the same adventuring day cycle it removes a lot of problems that are created by bad scaling of short rest classes and returns the ability to wear down party resources without a couple PCs being able to do things like drop 15 points of ki or 3x 5th level slots each fight... With 6-8 expected combats for the day the class design puts L15 "daily resources" at 195-135 points of ki & 18-24 5th level spell slots.

Yes it does hit some classes pretty hard because their design is one of malicious compliance, but the system is literally designed to support non casters here with magic weapons and armor that tend to gain multiplicative returns as the number of attacks scale. Magic items have always been a critical component of the game and were never just "pure candy".

Makes the problem worse everyone will want to nova.

5MWD is a player problem and newer players are doing it more. 4E would have the same problem everyone would want to blow their dailies and rest.

The solution is on the DM or you would have to rewrite D&D entirely removing dailies and putting everyone on at will and encounter. Then you don't have D&D.

New encounter rules actually work as long as you don't 5MWD. My groups don't do that as I run living world/consequences if they do. Rarely a hard time limit (rescue the princess by midnight). Time taken IRL is approaching 4E if you do though (30-60 minute fights tier 2 maybe 3).

5.5 is more reliant on battlemats so more time taken to set up or draw it in. If you rush you might be able to squeeze in 3 or 4 fights a session but you won't be doing much else.

Its very grindy later on though at 12th level I had 10 encounters just to see what happens low/medium/high in equal numbers.

Its a question of real life time vs DM patience and how players tend to play.

Kinda like 4E grind with 3.5 rocket tag later on IMHO. Heres some big bad with +10 or 15 initiative here comes a 20d6 AoE I can't counter. Kinda balances out the classes. Squashies get nuked.

 

[Tessarael]

You can easily run 5E and 5.5E combat without a battle map. Some players prefer it, but the theater of the mind still works. There is a tactical advantage of having different options across the grid, but if that's a major overhead to setup, it is not always worth it, particularly from a DM time investment perspective.