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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6066696" data-attributes="member: 1465">THE BADDIESThe party has fought the following encounters:Wandering cultists: 2 Dark Acolytes + 1 Dark AdeptSmall group of vermins: 6 Giant CentipedesGuarding snake: Giant Snake, customized with added Constrict abilityGreat spider: Aranea (without spells)Cult's guards: 3 Hobgoblins + 1 Hell HoundAs I mentioned before, the players really tried their best to avoid combat whenever possible. They managed to completely sneak around two encounters (a group of Goblins + Leader, and another wandering cultists party), they simply walked back away from a Gray Ooze (which was too slow to pursue them), sacrificed a shield to a Rust Monster to avoid fighting it (they didn't know it was a very easy monster), and kept a much larger group of Giant Centipedes at bay using torches and the ubiquitous Ray of Frost.I had planned other encounters in the dungeon: skeletons, zombies, and a toned-down (50% HP) ochre jelly just because I was curious to see how they would have dealt with its "split & spawn" ability, but they didn't stumble upon these. The last group of cultists was about a dozen Dark Acolytes plus one Dark Priest, but I was planning to send clues that they should have not tried to take them all down at once.My general comment on monsters is that they felt overall quite weak in terms of damage output (except the Aranea) but OTOH had too high attack bonuses. I thought I understood that they were designed this way so that they would hit often but hurt little, therefore creating an "attrition effect" on the PCs, which instead were supposed to hit less but hurt more, but it's hard to tell since the combats usually only lasted 1-2 rounds. Anyway, this IMHO had a couple of problems: (a) it feels artificial in design terms to toss such high attack bonuses to practically all monsters (of course, only I was aware of this, since the players didn't see their stats), and (b) it created an odd effect when the monsters tries something else that uses its ability scores directly (thus no mystery bonus applied). For example, I thought the Giant Snake was a good chance at testing the Grapple rules. Well, with its +5 attack bonus it had an easy time hitting, but with only +2 to Strength then breaking free from its grab was easy as well for both the Fighter and the Rogue. Speaking of Grapple, it also felt unnecessary to have 2 levels (grappling + pinning). There is no penalty whatsoever for being only grappled except that your speed is 0.Something that was unexpectedly powerful was the Hobgoblin's Disciplined ability... with their longspears reach, they were practically able to give each other advantage all the time. They didn't really feel they should have been a 20xp-only monster.We also got the feeling that the DC of monsters special abilities were too easy to beat. I am unsure however, since the PC's ability scores were pretty damn high. Anyway, the manage to beat almost all occurrences (e.g. I tried to let the Aranea focus on webbing them, since I was aware that 1 successful hit plus its poison would have killed any PC outright, however the webs were for all easy to break free from), although they failed the easiest ones i.e. the centipede's poison. And that was actually quite a cool ability! The players liked (so to speak) the small damage but lingering penalties due to the poison, and when they met more centipedes at once, they immediately decided they didn't want to fight them.THE TRINKETSI had hidden a few magic items in the dungeon and on the intelligent monsters, some of which were specifically meant to help them in the most challenging encounters, but eventually they only found a simple +1 amulet of protection, a few healing potions, and two arcane scrolls.The Wizard player didn't notice she could have identified the scrolls with Read Magic (this is good, since I let her know all cantrips, but because she didn't use more than ~5 of them, this ended up playing quite close to the RAW) and everything else with a ritual-ized Identify (now free of costs), and I didn't want to suggest these  unless she noticed them herself. But OTOH I allowed her to identify all items with a Knowledge Arcana check. I think that for Scrolls, the RAW specifically says that you need Read Magic, but the general section on identifying magic items mentions that Knowledge check should be fine (although obviously not automatic, and chance for partial identification is hinted at). For the record, she succeeded with an Invisibility scroll but failed to identify a Rope Trick scroll that I had meant to give them to getting a long rest in the middle of the dungeon (even tho technically the spell lasts 1 hour, but I was going to override this).</blockquote>

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