D&D 5E I think I am going to stop using solo monsters.

[Shiroiken]

Numbers are a key component in 5E. During the early release, there were long discussions about a village of commoners able to kill an Ancient Red Dragon just due to BA. They will die by the truckloads, but ignoring any sense of morale they will eventually overwhelm and kill the dragon.

The CR system is fine to use as a measure of how powerful each creature is relative to each other, but the encounter guidelines are not very useful, except to new DMs. Experience will give you a far better clue as to encounter design. From personal experience, I've thrown Deadly x3 encounters at my party they shrugged off with ease. The same group faced a Hard encounter of two adult dragons (in lair with legendary actions) and it was close to a TPK.

Solo encounters need to play smarter, not just bigger stats.

Very true. I ran a single medusa against my party, which should have been an Easy encounter. However, I designed her lair to take full advantage of her abilities. It was a maze of irregular passageways, with T intersections about every 30'. Between each intersection (except a single path through the maze) had a hidden pit trap, and I'd given the Medusa Boots of Striding and Springing.

She would fire from cover (at the intersection), then move back to the next intersection, jumping over the pits. If the party tried to chase after her, they couldn't avoid her gaze (otherwise they couldn't know where she went), and the usually fell into the pit (Dex save). The medusa had something on her person they needed, so they couldn't even just avoid her; they needed to kill her (or at least get her to surrender). Due to the level there was little danger of anyone being turned to stone, but several times it was close, and eventually it caught up to them and the barbarian did become petrified before the end.

tl;dr: smart design can make single monsters far more dangerous than they should be, but that is the exception, rather than the rule.

 

[Zero Cochrane]

Fixing Solo Monsters -- Two Good Solutions

I have had the same problem with single monsters. Here is my own quick-buff solution: Solo Creature Defense Bonuses — Solo creatures rarely last long against a party of adventurers. In fact, the adventurers sometimes manage to eliminate an opponent before it gets a chance to do anything at all. If the encounter is with a single creature, you should increase its defenses a bit, by granting a +2 bonus to its Armor Class and to its Saving Throws. Also give the creature advantage on Perception checks and Initiative rolls. You may also consider giving it maximum hit points for its Hit Dice. Do not increase a solo creature's Challenge Rating. In addition, I have made good use of a free pdf article called "Not-So-Legendary Actions", available at the dmsguild website.

 

[76512390ag12]

Action economy wins every time. Those big bosses need ranks of lesser thugs, shooters and buffers just like the PCs have

Posted by C4-D4RS on the MetroLiberal HoloNet

 

[CAFRedblade]

Summoned to the Prime, and killed.. depending on your world, that could mean she's still alive on her home plane, just banished for a number of years. Which means they need to go to her to properly kill her. Where she has all her stuff and lair and minions...

 

[The Crimson Binome]

You also have the options of building your solo monsters out of multiple parts that act on their own initiative counts. I had to do that with a really big dragon, with each claw and wing counting as a distinct monster.

But then once it was injured, the blood pooled out and formed into beholders, so it still wasn't a solo monster for very long.

 

[transtemporal]

I think, therefore, I am going to adjust my encounter philosophy: bigger, more diverse groups where the "boss" critters aren't necessarily simply tougher but are the ones capable of wrangling such groups. I am also throwing out the CR system for 5E completely: it just does not work any better than simply eyeballing it, IMO.

Yep, you got it, but... solo monsters are quite fun for PCs because you get to unload all your coolest abilities on it, and really if they also have time to set up a clever trap for the monster and do the research and spend the resources - then they deserve their victory! Even if it's a really tough monster!

Although... mariliths have magic resistance, excellent saves, resistance to non-magical weapons and various energy types. The casters are basically useless against it, so the team must be majority melee/ranged guys. Even with a surprise round how would 5th level PCs be able to do enough damage to kill her? Did they have magical weapons?

 

[Valdier]

Although... mariliths have magic resistance, excellent saves, resistance to non-magical weapons and various energy types. The casters are basically useless against it, so the team must be majority melee/ranged guys. Even with a surprise round how would 5th level PCs be able to do enough damage to kill her? Did they have magical weapons?

Now that you mention it... there has to be something else we aren't being told. How did a 5th level party manage to do 189 damage to a Marilith that is resistant to just about everything and has an 18/23 AC? (Meaning they actually effectively did 378 damage) before the creature got to react once? Even with 8 characters...

Assuming everyone is melee, has a 20 in their primary stat, they have about a 50/50 of hitting (slightly better). They must have all hit for 24 damage per hit. Assuming the marilith rolled a low init, they could have potentially hit it for 12 average per hit, 16 times before she acted (against an AC 18 for 8, and AC 23 for 8) - assuming every character had a magic weapon. Something smells fishy in the extreme.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Now that you mention it... there has to be something else we aren't being told. How did a 5th level party manage to do 189 damage to a Marilith that is resistant to just about everything and has an 18/23 AC? (Meaning they actually effectively did 378 damage) before the creature got to react once? Even with 8 characters...

They had a bunch of magic items. That was the premise. Given the choice between getting rid of the magic items, or using those magic items to kill the Marilith, they made the obvious choice.

 

[Darkness]

... But plenty of people are using your large party size to divert from your true findings (above). Don't let yourself get distracted... and maybe use a 4-5 party next time so you don't leave such an easy target for those who prefer to not have to acknowledge you are right.

Keep it civil, please. Implying those who happen not to share your view might not be arguing in good faith isn't cool.

 

[Valdier]

They had a bunch of magic items. That was the premise. Given the choice between getting rid of the magic items, or using those magic items to kill the Marilith, they made the obvious choice.

Can you point out where in the premise it mentioned 8 magical weapons (that allowed them to ignore probabilities)? I think I missed that part.