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

[hawkeyefan]

Once again putting words in that I didn't say. They most certainly wouldn't say, "Charge." They would scout it, say 300 orc horde with a leader, probably port or transport in, take out the leaders, and nuke a major portion of the central command, adios out, piecemeal the rest of the orcs. Tactically, a group of level 15 characters with a mix of magic and martial might have a lot of power at their beck and call. They wouldn't have much fear of an orc warband. By 15th level they've fought dragons, demons, giants, and far worse than a group of 300 orcs. It's not going to scare them and it shouldn't. At that level the wizards are accessing magic that allows them to traverse the world fairly quickly, druids are turning into elementals and summoning animal hordes, fighters can take fire breath weapons full force and smile, paladins are immune to most anything and have insane saves, rogues can hide where no orc would have a shot at seeing them nearly any round, and clerics can heal a lot of damage as well as wade into the middle of an orc horde where any orc coming near them is likely do die in a single round. Can you imagine a level 15 war cleric wading into an orc horde with a higher level spirtual guardians going in plate armor buffed up doing not much but using the dodge action. Orcs dying every round by the dozen.

I'm not trying to put words in your mouth so much as going with how I took your earlier comments. You said no threat and no hesitation and no fear and easy and things like that.

What you're describing above is a much more thoughtful approach, and more carefully planned, and I would say more likely to succeed. The more direct approach I don't think would work; the example of the war cleric is indeed impressive, until he inevitably loses concentration and is then attacked by multiple enemies at once. Things might not go so great as you describe, at that point.

But really, the orc horde example isn't the point. The point is that there is just a logistical aspect at play. Why would any group of 6 people assume they could easily dispatch 300 other people? If you read a book where they did think that, wouldn't that resonate with you as false? Or forced? Or just bad writing? I'm not saying they can't face great odds and triumph...indeed that can and should happen. But it's when the characters start acting like they know this all with a certainty that things need to change.

I don't know if you've played a level 15 character or run them, they are damn powerful. Not just damage output, but overall party capabilities. If the orc horde is smart, they wouldn't even try to take on a group of level 15 characters. If they knew whatever city or village they planned to attack had a group of lvl 15 characters protecting it, they would go elsewhere.

I have played with high level characters. One PC group in my campaign is a mix of level 16 and 14. I know how capable they are.

My point, however, is more about how you address this in a game. Why would the orcs know that level 15 characters opposed them? They may know that capable adventurers opposed them, but they have no idea of levels and so on. Nor should the PCs, except as an abstract representation of overall ability. Characters don't walk around with experience bars floating above their heads like in video games.

You think 6 characters that are in essence the most powerful warriors, archers, warlocks, wizards, sorcerers, rogues, and so on in an epic fantasy world with dragons, giants, demons, and the like should fear 300 humanoid orcs? If the orcs are every bit as capable as the PCs, that game world is extremely skewed. I like the players to feel powerful. They should reach a point where anything less than a legendary orc horde the size of The Mongols will not cause them trouble. A small 300 orc horde should be something a level 15 character deals with fairly easy. By that level they should be venturing onto other planes or dealing with world or realm shattering threats.

If you make them 300 legendary level 15 warrior orc heroes resurrected from some ancient orc graveyard by a powerful orc necromancer intent on taking on the world, then cool. Those 300 orcs should be real scary.

My assumption is we're talking standard 300 orc horde with a mix of clerics, warleaders, and the like. I think taking care of that is not what you're calling on level 15 heroes for. They're taking on far more potent enemies by that time. No one is saying you can't make 300 orcs a challenge, but I am saying that a fairly standard 300 orc horde should not be much of an issue for level 15 characters.

My point is that it seems that your players know immediately that this would be a standard orc horde. They already know the capabilities based on their knowledge of the monster entry in the Monster Manual rather than anything else. My point is that from a fictional standpoint, why would any character assume that they and their 5 friends could easily defeat a force of 300? Especially when that force could include opponents just as capable as they are. Why can't a cleric of Gruumsh be as capable as a cleric of Torm? Why would the characters assume that?

Because the players assume it. And my assumption, which could be wrong, is that they assume that because you've given them no reason to assume anything else. You present the challenges directly out of the book, balanced to one degree or another to be easy or difficult or deadly or whatever....but they're all supposed to be defeated.

This is what I mean by shifting your DM style. Your players know how badass their characters are, and so the characters know it as well. You need to break them of that knowledge. Having a war band of orcs that consisted of some level 12 leaders and then an assortment of other orc threats would probably help out in that regard. Put them up against something that cannot be beaten in combat. Make them think of another solution. Surprise them a bit from time to time so that they stop assuming every encounter is meant to be defeated. You have to give them a little doubt.

All the fancy abilities in the world, min-maxed to the extreme, won't always save them. Make them know that.

 

[Celtavian]

I'm not trying to put words in your mouth so much as going with how I took your earlier comments. You said no threat and no hesitation and no fear and easy and things like that.

What you're describing above is a much more thoughtful approach, and more carefully planned, and I would say more likely to succeed. The more direct approach I don't think would work; the example of the war cleric is indeed impressive, until he inevitably loses concentration and is then attacked by multiple enemies at once. Things might not go so great as you describe, at that point.

But really, the orc horde example isn't the point. The point is that there is just a logistical aspect at play. Why would any group of 6 people assume they could easily dispatch 300 other people? If you read a book where they did think that, wouldn't that resonate with you as false? Or forced? Or just bad writing? I'm not saying they can't face great odds and triumph...indeed that can and should happen. But it's when the characters start acting like they know this all with a certainty that things need to change.



I have played with high level characters. One PC group in my campaign is a mix of level 16 and 14. I know how capable they are.

My point, however, is more about how you address this in a game. Why would the orcs know that level 15 characters opposed them? They may know that capable adventurers opposed them, but they have no idea of levels and so on. Nor should the PCs, except as an abstract representation of overall ability. Characters don't walk around with experience bars floating above their heads like in video games.



My point is that it seems that your players know immediately that this would be a standard orc horde. They already know the capabilities based on their knowledge of the monster entry in the Monster Manual rather than anything else. My point is that from a fictional standpoint, why would any character assume that they and their 5 friends could easily defeat a force of 300? Especially when that force could include opponents just as capable as they are. Why can't a cleric of Gruumsh be as capable as a cleric of Torm? Why would the characters assume that?

Because the players assume it. And my assumption, which could be wrong, is that they assume that because you've given them no reason to assume anything else. You present the challenges directly out of the book, balanced to one degree or another to be easy or difficult or deadly or whatever....but they're all supposed to be defeated.

This is what I mean by shifting your DM style. Your players know how badass their characters are, and so the characters know it as well. You need to break them of that knowledge. Having a war band of orcs that consisted of some level 12 leaders and then an assortment of other orc threats would probably help out in that regard. Put them up against something that cannot be beaten in combat. Make them think of another solution. Surprise them a bit from time to time so that they stop assuming every encounter is meant to be defeated. You have to give them a little doubt.

All the fancy abilities in the world, min-maxed to the extreme, won't always save them. Make them know that.

Depends on the book and characters. Elric was capable of destroying nations while other characters like Aragorn have to stay out of the way of even twenty orcs and Conan is between the two extremes. All three writers were good in my opinion. It is important that a DM have an idea of what level of power he wants to base the internal consistency of the world.

I think my biggest problem is the limited nature of higher level creatures. When players are getting spells like wall of force and abilities like high DC stuns, monsters are still just big bags of hit points with fairly straightforward capabilities. There's a lack of tactical capability by mariliths, balors, dragons, and the like. It's real easy for PCs to spread out to mitigate their best attacks and match monster mobility and damage, especially for ranged attackers which tend to dominate my games due to the extreme advantage of ranged attacking in this game. Even in 3E they made being able to move and use a powerful ranged attack limited. It was a serious feat to fire an arrow and move your full movement between shots. Not so in 5E. And I'm seeing why this was something 3E designers avoided. Ranged parties hit, then move to cover. They really hammer big bad martial creatures like dragons and balors. It's kind of a pain in the behind as a DM. I'm trying to find a modification for this that allows the creature to close the distance and not negate the players' ranged capabilities that satisfies my imagination as to how this should look on the battlefield. It's taking some work.

Right now it comes down to the demon having to completely avoid showing himself because if he comes up for air, it gets focus fired and killed way too quickly. I do not like that at all. Yes. I already know I could come up with some environment that mitigates this a bit, but doing this every time lessens the fearsomeness of the creature. It shouldn't need a highly beneficial environment to be effective in my opinion.

 

[Helldritch]

Once again putting words in that I didn't say. They most certainly wouldn't say, "Charge." They would scout it, say 300 orc horde with a leader, probably port or transport in, take out the leaders, and nuke a major portion of the central command, adios out, piecemeal the rest of the orcs. Tactically, a group of level 15 characters with a mix of magic and martial might have a lot of power at their beck and call. They wouldn't have much fear of an orc warband. By 15th level they've fought dragons, demons, giants, and far worse than a group of 300 orcs. It's not going to scare them and it shouldn't. At that level the wizards are accessing magic that allows them to traverse the world fairly quickly, druids are turning into elementals and summoning animal hordes, fighters can take fire breath weapons full force and smile, paladins are immune to most anything and have insane saves, rogues can hide where no orc would have a shot at seeing them nearly any round, and clerics can heal a lot of damage as well as wade into the middle of an orc horde where any orc coming near them is likely do die in a single round. Can you imagine a level 15 war cleric wading into an orc horde with a higher level spirtual guardians going in plate armor buffed up doing not much but using the dodge action. Orcs dying every round by the dozen.

I don't know if you've played a level 15 character or run them, they are damn powerful. Not just damage output, but overall party capabilities. If the orc horde is smart, they wouldn't even try to take on a group of level 15 characters. If they knew whatever city or village they planned to attack had a group of lvl 15 characters protecting it, they would go elsewhere.



You think 6 characters that are in essence the most powerful warriors, archers, warlocks, wizards, sorcerers, rogues, and so on in an epic fantasy world with dragons, giants, demons, and the like should fear 300 humanoid orcs? If the orcs are every bit as capable as the PCs, that game world is extremely skewed. I like the players to feel powerful. They should reach a point where anything less than a legendary orc horde the size of The Mongols will not cause them trouble. A small 300 orc horde should be something a level 15 character deals with fairly easy. By that level they should be venturing onto other planes or dealing with world or realm shattering threats.

If you make them 300 legendary level 15 warrior orc heroes resurrected from some ancient orc graveyard by a powerful orc necromancer intent on taking on the world, then cool. Those 300 orcs should be real scary.

My assumption is we're talking standard 300 orc horde with a mix of clerics, warleaders, and the like. I think taking care of that is not what you're calling on level 15 heroes for. They're taking on far more potent enemies by that time. No one is saying you can't make 300 orcs a challenge, but I am saying that a fairly standard 300 orc horde should not be much of an issue for level 15 characters.

1) I did play and DM high level. Probably more often than most. Hell, one of my group played immortal in OD&D! If playing litteral gods is not high level enough nothing is. Even made Epic adventures in the 30th level range in 3.5. And we played the adventures of 4th ed up to the end with Orcus. Island of the ape, Bastion of souls and many more.

2)33 years of experience as a DM.

3)Do not assume. Read. I said at la "lord of the ring". Orcs are coming from all sides. And no, they are not all standard orcs. And it is not that easy to spot the "elite" one in such a massive rush onward. The players will face the 300 at once or in wave coming in round after round after round. And once enough clerics/shaman will be close enough, the dreaded silence spell will come into play. No more spells for your casters and nowhere to move to get out of it. Orcs will target casters first then the fighters. They will suround your players and unless your players have an AC reaching the sky, they will die.

But then again. We must have very different play style. Maybe with yours, PCs won't be afraid of these orcs. But in mine, they will flee as fast as they can. They will regroup and come back for a win, but if they stand their ground, they are dead.

 

[OB1]

Let's white room this and say they are all standard Orcs. In that case it may come down to the initiative roll of the Wizard in the party.

Assume 16 orcs create a 20' perimeter around the party with greatswords and another 16 behind them with glaives.

That leaves 268 Orcs to shoot at the party with longbows at a +4 1d8+1

I'll assume the wizard has Mage Armor up and therefore her AC is 16 with a +3 Dex

Giving the Orcs a DPR against her of 2.65

Assume an equal distribution of initiative with the orcs, and you end up with 13.4 orcs per initiative count, from 21 to 2

Each initiative group will do an average of 35.51 points of damage per round.

With a +2 con the Wizard would have 92hp at level 15, so 3 initiative groups going before the wizard would kill her, giving her an 80% chance of true death before she gets to act.

Without a wizard, I'm not sure how a party of 6 (with say 800 hp on average) and 6 actions per round could defeat 4,500 hp of orcs with 300 actions per round (and dealing 400 hp per round at full strength). Even with a party optimized against this type of encounter, I would bet the odds are never better than 50/50 for the party, which means they should always run.

But really, all this is besides the point. While a horde of 300 orcs by themselves isn't necessarily going to be a challenge to 15th level players (depending on party makeup), 100 orcs fighting along side a couple Storm Giants would be, because of the way it splits your focus. The orcs can do enough damage to still cause a lot of trouble and can't be ignored to focus on the Storm Giants because they can eat away at the party. Focus on the orcs, and the Storm Giants can stomp you.

And the bottom line is, a true army of say 1,000 orcs or 10,000 orcs would be far to much for even 20th level adventurers. 5e heroes are powerful, but they can't fight a war for you alone.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Right now it comes down to the demon having to completely avoid showing himself because if he comes up for air, it gets focus fired and killed way too quickly. I do not like that at all. Yes. I already know I could come up with some environment that mitigates this a bit, but doing this every time lessens the fearsomeness of the creature. It shouldn't need a highly beneficial environment to be effective in my opinion.

This has to be one of the most backwards things to me. Of course the environment should be important, and both enemies and PCs should use it to the best of their advantage. D&D is not played in a white room. It's played in an environment. Using the environment doesn't lessen the fearsomeness of a creature. It can enhance it. PCs going into a swamp to fight a black dragon should be MORE afraid of it there than if they ran into it in an arena. I can only speak for my groups obviously, but we've had PCs overcome overwhelming odds by using the environment to their advantage, and we've had monsters that should be a cake walk (according to you) nearly TPK (and kill some) PCs by using the environment.

The environment is critical and what separates D&D from just another boardgame. Without taking in environmental concerns, you're just doing a boring math problem; it's what can make or break encounters.


And yet, all that aside, you're also missing the other half of what we've pointed out: NPC behavior. Even if you strip away the environment, run the monsters and NPCs like they would behave, and not mindless bags of HP with some abilities that are listed. Orcs aren't stupid, and live their life in battle. They'd have tactics they would use, as I mentioned in my post above.

 

[Celtavian]

Let's white room this and say they are all standard Orcs. In that case it may come down to the initiative roll of the Wizard in the party.

Assume 16 orcs create a 20' perimeter around the party with greatswords and another 16 behind them with glaives.

That leaves 268 Orcs to shoot at the party with longbows at a +4 1d8+1

I'll assume the wizard has Mage Armor up and therefore her AC is 16 with a +3 Dex

Giving the Orcs a DPR against her of 2.65

Assume an equal distribution of initiative with the orcs, and you end up with 13.4 orcs per initiative count, from 21 to 2

Each initiative group will do an average of 35.51 points of damage per round.

With a +2 con the Wizard would have 92hp at level 15, so 3 initiative groups going before the wizard would kill her, giving her an 80% chance of true death before she gets to act.

Without a wizard, I'm not sure how a party of 6 (with say 800 hp on average) and 6 actions per round could defeat 4,500 hp of orcs with 300 actions per round (and dealing 400 hp per round at full strength). Even with a party optimized against this type of encounter, I would bet the odds are never better than 50/50 for the party, which means they should always run.

But really, all this is besides the point. While a horde of 300 orcs by themselves isn't necessarily going to be a challenge to 15th level players (depending on party makeup), 100 orcs fighting along side a couple Storm Giants would be, because of the way it splits your focus. The orcs can do enough damage to still cause a lot of trouble and can't be ignored to focus on the Storm Giants because they can eat away at the party. Focus on the orcs, and the Storm Giants can stomp you.

And the bottom line is, a true army of say 1,000 orcs or 10,000 orcs would be far to much for even 20th level adventurers. 5e heroes are powerful, but they can't fight a war for you alone.

I would disagree. If the DM is taking into account the limitations of space, a group of lvl 20th characters could slowly kill an army of 10,000. This idea that every single orc gets an action is ludicrous, even with only 300. A group of level 20 characters would attack an orc army in a fashion where they would not get to return fire very often at all. It's not hard in 5E to do that. 5E is one of the easier editions to hit and run in.

The one area I do agree with is that 10,000 orcs is a challenge for a lvl 20 party whereas it wasn't in 3E or earlier editions. The only problem is that large scale combat in D&D is almost always boring and tedious. I doubt the players would enjoy a fight against a large army of any kind unless you broke it down into a handful of cinematic moments that allowed them to be an important part of the battle, while not bogging them down in all the monotonous dice rolling and planning it would take to destroy such a horde.

 

[Helldritch]

[MENTION=5834]Celtavian[/MENTION]

Again you assume optimal positioning for the players and put the "dumbness of dumbness" in the orcs. We do not take space into account simply because we are using the lord of the ring scenario. You keep putting the PCs in a good limelight whereas they were not aware of the horde. They are exploring an unknown vast and I mean very vast room where hundreds could stand with many many many openings. Stop putting your PCs out of the situation to put them in a good tactical encounter where they can win easily.

The whole point of this situation is to point out that contrary to other editions, the orcs would stand a real threatening chance to win that encounter with the PCs. We have already conceded that in some scenarios the PC could and would win. You only take these into account and blatantly ignore what we are saying. Take time to think about it and you will see that the possibility of failing for the PCs in that scenario is real.

OB1 did a white room math and proved that the PC would be in way over their heads and he was only using standard orcs. I said a horde. That means clerics and orogs and everything that orcs can bring about. And they will not hesitate to put flaming oil on the ground putting concentration spells at risk and doing auto damage every round. Even a DC 10 with advantage can be failed. With 3 to 5 silence spells in the middle of the players, no more spells for your PCs. They would simply be toast.

One thing I will give you is that doing the 300 or the 10,000 orcs fight would be boooooring to the extreme. All one sided battles are.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The one area I do agree with is that 10,000 orcs is a challenge for a lvl 20 party whereas it wasn't in 3E or earlier editions. The only problem is that large scale combat in D&D is almost always boring and tedious.

3e introduced (AFAIK) a 'swarm' mechanic(template? design?) that statted out a large number of itty-bitty monsters as a single creature. It eventually expanded it to statting out a 'mob' of small or medium creatures as a much larger creature. 4e kept both. 5e still has the odd swarm though it doesn't make a big deal of it and it'd be easy enough to extrapolate a mob.

So a mob of orcs or unit of disciplined hobgoblin soldiers or throng of zombies could be handled that way, making it more of a challenge for a higher level party and also less tedious to resolve.

 

[Sacrosanct]

"Only a dozen orcs took you out? You low level newb."

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think my biggest problem is the limited nature of higher level creatures. When players are getting spells like wall of force and abilities like high DC stuns, monsters are still just big bags of hit points with fairly straightforward capabilities. There's a lack of tactical capability by mariliths, balors, dragons, and the like. It's real easy for PCs to spread out to mitigate their best attacks and match monster mobility and damage, especially for ranged attackers which tend to dominate my games due to the extreme advantage of ranged attacking in this game. Even in 3E they made being able to move and use a powerful ranged attack limited. It was a serious feat to fire an arrow and move your full movement between shots. Not so in 5E. And I'm seeing why this was something 3E designers avoided. Ranged parties hit, then move to cover. They really hammer big bad martial creatures like dragons and balors. It's kind of a pain in the behind as a DM. I'm trying to find a modification for this that allows the creature to close the distance and not negate the players' ranged capabilities that satisfies my imagination as to how this should look on the battlefield. It's taking some work.

The evilest way to do this is for flying creatures to dive-bomb the PCs. Since 5E tends to treat falling as instantaneous by default, it's not that incongruous to say "the dragon 800' above your head suddenly tucks his wings and dives, pulling out of the dive 60' above your heads as he breathes fire all over everyone!" You can cover 740' of distance without technically spending any movement at all.

I don't find this method completely satisfactory aesthetically (because seriously--instantaneous falls?!?), but it works okay in practice. As well as the rest of 5E's movement rules, anyway.