D&D 5E last encounter was totally one-sided

[CapnZapp]

For this one I had brought out rather big guns. To lead the bad guys I chose a Death Knight, supplemented by an Arch-Druid, a Blackguard, a Diviner and a Warlock of the Fiend.

That's a 19th level spellcaster leading an 18th level spellcaster, a 10th level spellcaster, a 15th level spellcaster, and a 17th level spellcaster. The Death Knight and Blackguard are of course fearsome martial fighters and the druid could wild shape into both Wyvern and Mammoth.

The party (14th level) still curbstomped them all... Let me tell you how things went down

The player characters:

• A "ranger" (actually multiclassed fighter 8/ranger 6 i think) fighting with a hand crossbow with poisoned bolts, crossbow expert and sharpshooter. Assuming advantage, he'll use -5/+10 on every shot (since his +13 is turned into +8 he wouldn't use it without advantage)
• A tempest cleric (singleclassed) that didn't get much use out of Spirit Guardians this time
• A shadow monk: combining his ability to stunlock with his supreme battlefield maneuvrability (~110 ft move is flabbergastingly good)
• A warlock (I think fiend/chain)
• A dual-wielding fighter (with no need for armor due to one Barbarian level and an item to gain awesome Unarmored AC)

This fight definitely belonged to the darkness (monk and warlock)

 

[CapnZapp]

The monk won initiative and easily covered a hundred feet's distance to stunlock the archdruid. She never gets to take a single action. The monk takes about 30(?) damage in retaliation from the Diviner and enemy Warlock - at AC 20 and Evasion he's a real pain to attack with their non-area long range spells.

The ranger, fighter and cleric has to spend their rounds to position themselves (they were inside a town hall).

The warlock (eldritch) blasts the enemy warlock, but also hurls her through hell causing 10d10 damage and removing her for one turn.

Death knight runs (I allow triple speed if in a straight line and no obstacles) to cover the distance.

The blackguard can't quite close to melee, casts Command which the fighter shrugs off with Indomitable(?).

---

Next round, the monk reapplies stun, moves 70 ft to also stun the diviner (who though he was safely out of reach).

Archdruid, diviner and warlock are out of commission.

The Blackguard whales into the Fighter for 30+ (?) damage but takes even more in return.

The warlock Forcecages the Death Knight, taking it out of the combat.

The monk and ranger finishes off the diviner.

Note: Sharpshooter is used for +10 damage even against AC 19 assuming advantage from stunlock. Ranger hits with three arrows for about 55+ damage not including 21d6 from poison.

The cleric gets Banished by the enemy Warlock as soon as she returns (she made a morale check for being quite heavily damaged).

---

Third round, the archdruid goes down still stunlocked. The monk runs/teleports across the large square to catch the enemy warlock where the light from the cleric disappears and downs her with regular arrows.

The fighter takes almost 30 damage again, but finishes off the Blackguard together with the Ranger. Note: the 60 damage taken was resisted due to rage, so easy peazy.

Fight ends.

Or at least pauses.

---

One hour later, after resting and looting and general rejoicing, the Forcecage lifts.

I rule nobody can time one hour that precisely, so everybody rolls initiative.

The monk rolls 20 and goes first.

Death Knight stunlocked, everybody makes attacks and 190 hp evaporates before the round is over.

---

Final tally:

The monk lost 10 hp (plus the 15 or so temp hp from Inspiring leader)
The fighter lost ~30 hp.

And that against one Death Knight, one Arch-Druid, one Blackguard, one Diviner, and one Warlock of the Fiend.

 

[CapnZapp]

The amazing thing is that even though everything went close to perfection, the players still realize this could have gone very very very much worse...

The diviner can cast 12+ d6 delayed fireballs... the deathknight a 20d6 hell ball. The blackguard is a kind of paladin and those do very painful amounts of damage. The death knight is a blackguard on super stereoids.

The warlock has feeblemind, banishment and other spells. The archdruid sports roughly 500 hit points (!) in three forms if you chose to defeat her in martial battle.

So... cool, cool... I'm happy for the Volo NPCs. And almost ecstatic I didn't have to stat them up in 3rd edition - that would easily be 6 hours prep utterly wasted on a three round crush

 

[Lanliss]

Damn, sounds like your players know what they're doing. Do you have a single strategist on the team, or do they all have backgrounds in crushing enemy forces to dust?

Not a comment on your DM skills, but I think I would have also had an Assassin in hiding, to take advantage of that Blackguard by the fighter.

 

[CapnZapp]

Analysis:

Monsters have incredibly weak saves, when they're not proficient. The way advantage works, it hardly makes much of a difference.

NPCs are crippled by low attack bonuses. They only hit one out of three attacks against the AC 18-20 of the party, considering they can use Shield or other ways to "parry" up to AC 25, while party members often hit three out of three/four attacks.

No wonder I've absolutely refused to hand out magical plus armor...

In the same way class features like battlemaster, warlock (or bard, though we don't have one this time) provide bonuses that can top up a roll makes a huge difference. Much more huge than is apparent from merely reading through the PHB.

Monk stun is a stupefyingly awesome ability that can win whole battles all by itself. And even when it doesn't win by itself (the monk isn't doing that great damage after all), it is a huge enabler.

Together this absolutely and utterly uncontestably shows how frighteningly overpowered GWM and especially Sharpshooter is. The feat is designed to be balanced at -5, but my ranger player never uses it when it's "balanced".

Instead, when he can shoot at a stunlocked foe for advantage, and use his battlemaster superiority dice to "top up" his attack rolls, and use his halfling lucky to reroll all 1's, he regularly uses the +10 damage even against AC 18ish foes. To miss AC 18 he needs to roll lower than 10 on both dice, which in itself would happen 25% of the time. But when that happens he simply adds 1d10 to the attack roll, which drastically decreases the risk of actually failing. He would need to roll 2-5 twice to seriously risk failure, and that happens 4% of the time.

That's 3d6+45 damage. Noone else comes even close. From the safety of distance. No risk of losing attacks because none can be reached. Or because a foe catches him in melee in return. Good times.

 

[CapnZapp]

And yes, this was an ONE ENCOUNTER DAY.

So sue me...

 

[CapnZapp]

Damn, sounds like your players know what they're doing. Do you have a single strategist on the team, or do they all have backgrounds in crushing enemy forces to dust?

Not a comment on your DM skills, but I think I would have also had an Assassin in hiding, to take advantage of that Blackguard by the fighter.

Heh.

Think is, yes, the "second rate" casters might be only CR 8 or thereabouts, but there's a big difference between a comparably dumb brute CR 8 and a CR 8 with game-nearly-over-spells like Feeblemind.

I mean, as I player I'd gladly have the monsters get a Hezrou ally than a Diviner.

I mean, the comparison is not even funny. An Hezrou does require a Fighter in the party (or it will eat casters), but once that's in place it can no longer do anything even remotely threatening on par with delayed blast fireball or maze or frikkin' mass suggestion. All three of which can wipe a party all by its own.

In comparison, a Hezrou can't even wipe its own ass. It's so seriously carebearian it's no contest.

I guess I'm saying I didn't feel comfortable adding more monsters than PCs.

This was seriously a "don't bring a knife to a gun fight" kind of gun fight...

 

[robus]

And yes, this was an ONE ENCOUNTER DAY.

So sue me...

But you do agree the encounter could have easily swung the other way?

As long as the players realize that they were very lucky then I think it's OK? If they felt like it was a cakewalk then that would be different. Sometimes luck is on your side.

 

[CapnZapp]

As for your other question, I'd say they all have a certain level of competence. There's not one guy steering the others, though there's usually one drowsy one and one more alert (we're in our late forties after all). So somebody might be there to back up any (major) decisions made.

But I'm not sure I'd call us superstars of strategy. Blundering into firefights is not what such people do

What they ARE good at, however, is building characters to squeeze out performance. making sure their builds gain regular access to attacks, bonus actions and reactions. Finding ways to leverage your strengths, including combinations. That kind of stuff.

This means that I can always kill them off if I choose to. But I don't want them to become all cautious and slow and afraid and "cover their bases", since I feel that only slows down the rate of "gameplay experience". I don't want to spend time on checking behind corners, tapping floors for traps, second-guessing what NPCs say and do, and the like.

So I generally don't think too much about tactics for my monsters either: To make an encounter more dangerous, I'd rather use numbers (more monsters, monsters that deal more damage, monsters with bigger spells etc) than sophisticated tactics. It works in the sense that it doesn't discourage the party from going full-on and all-out.

I wouldn't call it beer and pretzels, since there are way too much numbercrunching in our D&D. But it's definitely heavy on the fun and relaxing, rather than making sure every NPC acts optimally.

The heroes are built well but might act impulsively and carelessly.

I guess this is the reason why I want monsters to be built well to, so I don't have to play them "well" unless I want to.

 

[CapnZapp]

But you do agree the encounter could have easily swung the other way?

As long as the players realize that they were very lucky then I think it's OK? If they felt like it was a cakewalk then that would be different. Sometimes luck is on your side.

Yep.

This is after all only a single data point.

Had they obliviously ignored all the signs, and revealed themselves to the bad guys naively, this is what my plans were.

The key point to know was that the Death Knight had the Warlock maintain illusions of him being a regular but stern human lord. So he would not use his decidedly deathknightian abilities until the game is up or he's about to lose.

Middle of the night. Diviner opens up with a delayed blast fireball (22d6 I believe) blowing the inn and any innocents to bits.

Blackguard and Wyvern engages anyone emerging. More fireballs to force people out of hiding.

Banishment, Feeblemind, Maze to target those who actually spot the attackers... the collected enemy firepower is quite impressive. And fireballs.

Then, assuming the heroes still presume to stay alive after this (which I very seriously doubt they would*), a nice juicy 20d6 hell bomb. Fireballs.

Then Mr Knight wades in with seriously bad ass greatsword attacks. I mean, that's three attacks with 4d8 necrotic as a base, and then 4d8 additional with various smite abilities. There's a reason Paladins are the number one class - even NPC monsters based on them kick some serious behind! and fireballs


*) But never estimate the heroes.

After all, the monk voluntarily stayed within a Blade Barrier once since he felt that was a safer(!) place than outside of it (where the monsters and elite drow could get to him)

Epic moment #37: "thanks, but I'll rather stay here among the whirling razor blades where it's nice and calm"

(After all, if he failed his Dex save he would only take half damage, and he didn't fail his Dex save... so the priestess' badass spell turned out to become a Sanctuary for her enemy monk...)