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

[dave2008]

Like anything from the later 4e Monster tomes. Literally everything you needed to run the monster was there. I was saddened to see 5e went back to a clumsier model. Eh, them's the breaks.

I really liked that about 4e monsters - for simple ones. But I make a lot of stat blocks for high level / epic monsters and I found that 4e stat blocks became very cumbersome to make add the level of options and creativity that I feel high CR / epic monsters need. I must say I am enjoying doing a bit of both with my 5e monsters, flavorful abilities and traits in the stat blocks and then a small selection of spells to flesh out the monster.

 

[Hussar]

Just to backtrack a bit about what I said about swinginess. Let's do a bit of back of the envelope theorycrafting for a sec. Yes, I know that I'm painting with a very broad brush here, but, stick with me.

5e combats, particularly the first combat of the day, tend to be very short. Say three or four rounds. Not much more than that typically. Assume 4 bad guys. That means, in the course of combat, the DM takes about 10 actions, at best. ((I'm ignoring Legendary actions for the moment)) If you also assume 5 PC's, that means that the GM is taking about two actions against each PC. That's it. Just two.

Granted, area of effect actions will up that number, but, many monsters don't have area attacks.

What that means is that 5e monsters have to pack a fair bit of punch in each attack. And, again typically, they do. But, this is where swinginess kicks in. If the DM is hot (my DM today rolled FIVE crits in a single round! Yikes!) then maybe all ten of those actions are successful and the party gets the stuffing beat out of it. OTOH, if the DM is cold, the monsters get steam rolled and can't do anything. Because of bounded accuracy, the die roll matters a lot. Which is going to make predicting the outcome of encounters more difficult. Sometimes a single failed or successful save can turn an entire encounter in either direction.

Where it smooths out is if you pile on the encounters. You really can't expect one encounter days to routinely challenge fresh parties. They just can't. The party can pull out far too many stops and make sure that they punch way above their weight class. Really, the difficult encounters are the fourth to sixth ones where the party really has to conserve its resources.

Not that you have to do 6-8 encounters all the time. Just a enough times to teach the players to not pull out all the stops all the time. Force the choice - pull out the stops now and run out of gas later or save it now and maybe get beat on. That's where the tactical interest comes from.

 

[Zardnaar]

No surprise level 14 is around where scores it 20+ 2 feat combos come online for most classes.

It also around where 5E starts to go off the rails.

 

[CapnZapp]

Can you elaborate on how this works for you? Are you just looking for tanks that deal a lot of damage then? Because anything more nuanced than that (a monster that hits and runs for example) is going to need attention.

Basically what does "well built" mean and can you point to any "well built" monsters in the MM?

I'm not sure I want to go into detail on this thread. I would suggest starting a new thread. With that said, a one sentence description of a well built monster follows. A well built monster gives an obvious role of that creature with obvious synergies between attacks/features listed in the monster stat block, while listing a CR value that is in line with its expected contribution to the encounter.

Let me add one line to this "definition":

A "well built" monster displays evidence the designer is aware of what tricks level-appropriate heroes might have up their sleeves.

Since low level heroes have basically no tricks, this starts out easy enough But too many high-CR MM entries can be trivially shut down.

To not be a joke on a high-level battlefield you must have ways to either reach your opponents or to make meaningful attacks from afar. Merely a land Speed of 30 doesn't cut it - it's far too simple for any thinking group of players to kite such a monster and trivialize its defeat. It's that simple.

Do note that I'm not talking about rank and file monsters now.

I'm not even talking about the Death Knight. It's perfectly alright that SOME boss monsters can be neutralized by keeping them away from you (and he does have his hell ball after all).

It's perfectly alright if an individual grunt out of a dozen can be taken out of combat easily. Indeed, doing so is often critical to your party's continued survival

But for a "boss monster", such design simply does not cut it.

Guess it's high time for actual examples. One category of monsters that are particularly badly affected by this in this edition is demons, a group of monsters I have gotten to know quite well since I'm running Out of the Abyss.

The Marilith is described as a "general of demons", yet its stat blocks suggest a simple brute with no means of overcoming tactical hurdles. Many demon lords are likewise far too naively designed.

I get that the designers wanted to simplify the 3E stat blocks that often contained lots of minor stuff that simply never got used. But they failed. They threw out the baby with the bathwater. Pruning away a dozen minor abilities is one thing,. but taking away crucial battlefield maneuvrability options is a clear error.

As I said, if you compare the CR 8 Hezrou demon to either of the Diviner or Warlock NPC (from Volo) the difference in actual threat level to the party is so enormous it isn't even funny. And that's even before we even think about reshuffling those spellcaster's spell lists as has been suggested here.

---

One more thing:

I believe spellcasting monsters should have had their most common spells statted out as monster abilities. This would help us DMs immensely, instead of assuming we know every PHB spell by heart.

I also believe such NPC spellcaster stat blocks must indicate concentration, right in their spell lists. It is a huge inconvenience to have to check each spell for concentration, which you must do if you don't want to outright cheat.

For instance, here's the spell block from the Mage NPC:

Cantrips (at will): fire bolt, light, mage hand, prestidigitation
1st level (4 slots): detect magic, mage armor, magic
missile, shield
2nd level (3 slots): misty step, suggestion
3rd level (3 slots): counterspell,fireball,fly
4th level (3 slots): greater invisibility, ice storm
5th level (1 slot): cone of cold

Imagine how much easier it would be to run this guy if his three most likely Cast Spell Actions were statted up as Actions, plus any reactions, and if any concentration spell were clearly marked. A quick glance at the following version tells me Fly and Greater Invisibility can't be combined, since they're underlined.

Like this:

Cantrips (at will): fire bolt, light, mage hand, prestidigitation
1st level (4 slots): detect magic, mage armor, magic
missile, shield
2nd level (3 slots): misty step, suggestion
3rd level (3 slots): counterspell, fireball, fly
4th level (3 slots): greater invisibility, ice storm
5th level (1 slot): cone of cold

Actions:
Cast Cone of Cold: 60 foot cone dealing 8d8 cold damage (Con save for half)
Cast Ice Storm: 20-foot-radius, 40-foot-high cylinder within 300 feet deals 2d8
bludgeoning damage and 4d6 cold damage (Dex save for half)
Cast Greater Invisibility: You or touched creature becomes invisible while concentration up to 1 minute

Reactions:
Shield: The mage gains +5 AC until the start of his next turn, including against the triggering attack, and becomes immune to Magic Missile.
Counterspell: The mage automatically counterspells a spell of 3rd level or lower, or makes a spellcasting check to counterspell (d20+6 vs 10+spell level) if the spell is of higher level.

As you can see stat blocks should make no attempt to reproduce spells in every detail.

 

[CapnZapp]

The arrival of such a powerful party should've rang an alarm bell in the minds of the evil group. It didn't. The diviner should've used some divinations on them. They should've set up an ambush and the combat would've been quite different. I wouldn't have changed the spell allotment of the casters (unless given time by the players) but I would've used them very differently. I would've fireballed the inn in which the PC's were. The save would've been at disadvantage as the players had no way to know what was coming to them. I would've been the ambusher...

I'm sure you already read the following, but for the benefit of people that skimmed the first half of the thread:

I had made tentative plans for how the bad guys would respond, once they became aware of the threat posed by the party.

They would indeed fireball the inn or otherwise ambush them, with no regard for the locals. (This would actually mean manipulating the death knight, who was scripted to desire to maintain the illusion of being a mortal lord)

 

[CapnZapp]

But the first step would have to be becoming aware there is a powerful party

The party certainly were overconfident and took few precautions. On the other hand, they acted almost immediately.

I'm not denying the bad guys COULD have used spells to figure out their true identities, but at this point we need to take a step back and look at this from the outside.

Can we as DMs create enemies that wipe the party from the face of the earth in a single swoop. Yes. But does this lead to a fun satisfying game?

I will not apologize for thinking that the party needs to make an active mistake to justify ambushing them with overpowering force. It is a game, after all.

There's nothing wrong with ambushes out of the blue, but those will generally be "level appropriate". In other words, the bad guys think they have the upper hand, but the heroes turn out to be much more heroic than anyone could imagine, and despite being ambushed they prevail.

Or in even blunter terms: any out of the blue ambush is a weak ambush, or the game isn't fun.

This is an unstated agreement or unwritten contract. Normally we don't like to talk about it since it kind of kills the illusion. But when people tell me I could have used my NPCs in a much more deadly fashion, my only response is:

 

[CapnZapp]

I think we have to face the fact that it is much harder to run higher level adventure/encounters than lower level ones. I can sympathize with someone who wants it to be easier to pull monsters off the shelf and run them without having to be overly tactical. That's actually why I enjoy running campaigns/games that take place level 10 and lower.

My standard way to make encounters more difficult isn't to over complicate and buff up or optimize the monsters/npcs, but to send in a second wave or third wave. One of the best tactics for 5e is to have a 2nd force of foes attack PCs from a different direction (from behind if possible) when they are engaged with the initial group. Basically, with 5e, like others have said, numbers matter. More foes = more difficulty, especially if the PCs are not expecting an attack from another direction or if they have already used some of there biggest spells/resources.

Another bonus to using waves is that it also accounts for over swinginess. (I know I'll catch some flack for this, but here goes) --- If the party has a really unlucky experience with the first wave, and things look bad, I can always hold the 2nd wave back or telegraph its arrival so that the party decides to run!! I like this kind of control to offset the possibility of good or bad luck in any encounter.

I say all this, not to criticize CapnZapp, but to build on what he has presented.

Let me only add that this is why solo boss encounters have so little support in 5E.

"More monsters" solve nearly every niggle we might be having with the 5E combat model, but it also means kissing goodbye to the very cool image of all the heroes fighting a fearsome epic monster on its lonesome for, say, half a dozen rounds, the fight waxing and waning, until the heroes finally manage to obliterate the monster, with half their numbers lying dead and scattered around.

I am personally convinced this won't be solved until WotC relents and makes changes to the way spells are an all or nothing proposition (except numeric effects like damage).

It would be so cool if a Forcecage would insta-win against a regular monster, but only hold back and inconvenience an epic one. (Note: Death Knights aren't epic) A Demigorgon or Tiamat getting merely immobilized by the Forcecage, but through sheer awesomeness could still manage to claw its way through to make attacks. The spell would still prevent the monster from wiping the heroes, and so it would still be considered useful, but it would not prevent drama and excitement.

That'd be way cool. But it would also be way advanced, compared to the current state of 5E...

 

[CapnZapp]

Where it smooths out is if you pile on the encounters. You really can't expect one encounter days to routinely challenge fresh parties. They just can't. The party can pull out far too many stops and make sure that they punch way above their weight class. Really, the difficult encounters are the fourth to sixth ones where the party really has to conserve its resources.

Not that you have to do 6-8 encounters all the time. Just a enough times to teach the players to not pull out all the stops all the time. Force the choice - pull out the stops now and run out of gas later or save it now and maybe get beat on. That's where the tactical interest comes from.

Sure... but what if you have neither the time nor the interest for lots of trash encounters? What then Hussar...?

I completely get that I could have reduced swinginess by throwing three or five forest monster encounters at them, and then having the bad guys of the final encounter be much more appropriate for the level (perhaps keep the Death Knight and his "court wizard" the warlock, but reduce everybody else to mook status).

But what this model fails to achieve is the sensation "we beat people that could wipe us in a heartbeat".

I refuse to accept what you guys so readily accept, that this edition of D&D can only handle bad guys that are, by themselves weak and pathetic, and can only threaten heroes that overextend themselves.

In more blunt terms: the resource management game is vastly overrated. Sure it has its place, but the true source of excitement comes from the threat of losing here and now, not from the third next encounter because you used your spell now instead of keeping it.

Especially since 5E takes no step whatsoever towards making heroes actually press on to that fifth encounter.

Had the game actually enforced 5 encounters between long rests, say, you would have found me MUCH more understanding of your viewpoint.


Best regards,
Zapp

 

[Caliburn101]

Not having a sense that even if you do the right thing you might have your character killed is central to effective suspension of disbelief and a great catalyst to role-play.

I had a player in a club game when I ran a 5th Edition campaign and he was a veteran player who would reasonably regularly make predictions of the party's demise as his characters resources began to run out in the middle, not the end, of a tough fight. All his calculations were based on CR and standard encounter design expectations.

None of the players had experienced my GM'ing style and they loved the game - the sense of their decisions making a real difference and some of these being dangerously close to 'life or death' made the game really edgy.

Yet not one of them died, and none spent undue time out of play with their characters 'down' - but then I've been DM'ing a long time and can dance along that edge with skill - but it's a skill everyone can pick up with practice - trust me on this!

Once you make the game actually dangerous it takes on a new and better life - and I'm not just talking about combat... a court encounter with the great and powerful where a PC's life imprisonment or the execution of an innocent is hanging in the balance on the PCs' actions is just as tense and thrilling.

It is all about making players choices MATTER - not just the absence of their mistakes... sure, have trash encounters to demonstrate they are the heroes, they should feel that way... but as Samwise said;

“It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.”

If you slavishly stick to the rather broken CR formula and the players have to make unforced errors to risk significant loss, then you are falling short of the game you could have if you take this passage to heart...

 

[dave2008]

Let me add one line to this "definition":

A "well built" monster displays evidence the designer is aware of what tricks level-appropriate heroes might have up their sleeves.

Since low level heroes have basically no tricks, this starts out easy enough But too many high-CR MM entries can be trivially shut down.

To not be a joke on a high-level battlefield you must have ways to either reach your opponents or to make meaningful attacks from afar. Merely a land Speed of 30 doesn't cut it - it's far too simple for any thinking group of players to kite such a monster and trivialize its defeat. It's that simple.

Do note that I'm not talking about rank and file monsters now.

I'm not even talking about the Death Knight. It's perfectly alright that SOME boss monsters can be neutralized by keeping them away from you (and he does have his hell ball after all).

It's perfectly alright if an individual grunt out of a dozen can be taken out of combat easily. Indeed, doing so is often critical to your party's continued survival

But for a "boss monster", such design simply does not cut it.

Guess it's high time for actual examples. One category of monsters that are particularly badly affected by this in this edition is demons, a group of monsters I have gotten to know quite well since I'm running Out of the Abyss.

The Marilith is described as a "general of demons", yet its stat blocks suggest a simple brute with no means of overcoming tactical hurdles. Many demon lords are likewise far too naively designed.

I get that the designers wanted to simplify the 3E stat blocks that often contained lots of minor stuff that simply never got used. But they failed. They threw out the baby with the bathwater. Pruning away a dozen minor abilities is one thing,. but taking away crucial battlefield maneuvrability options is a clear error.

As I said, if you compare the CR 8 Hezrou demon to either of the Diviner or Warlock NPC (from Volo) the difference in actual threat level to the party is so enormous it isn't even funny. And that's even before we even think about reshuffling those spellcaster's spell lists as has been suggested here.

---

One more thing:

I believe spellcasting monsters should have had their most common spells statted out as monster abilities. This would help us DMs immensely, instead of assuming we know every PHB spell by heart.

I also believe such NPC spellcaster stat blocks must indicate concentration, right in their spell lists. It is a huge inconvenience to have to check each spell for concentration, which you must do if you don't want to outright cheat.

For instance, here's the spell block from the Mage NPC:

Cantrips (at will): fire bolt, light, mage hand, prestidigitation
1st level (4 slots): detect magic, mage armor, magic
missile, shield
2nd level (3 slots): misty step, suggestion
3rd level (3 slots): counterspell,fireball,fly
4th level (3 slots): greater invisibility, ice storm
5th level (1 slot): cone of cold

Imagine how much easier it would be to run this guy if his three most likely Cast Spell Actions were statted up as Actions, plus any reactions, and if any concentration spell were clearly marked. A quick glance at the following version tells me Fly and Greater Invisibility can't be combined, since they're underlined.

Like this:

Cantrips (at will): fire bolt, light, mage hand, prestidigitation
1st level (4 slots): detect magic, mage armor, magic
missile, shield
2nd level (3 slots): misty step, suggestion
3rd level (3 slots): counterspell, fireball, fly
4th level (3 slots): greater invisibility, ice storm
5th level (1 slot): cone of cold

Actions:
Cast Cone of Cold: 60 foot cone dealing 8d8 cold damage (Con save for half)
Cast Ice Storm: 20-foot-radius, 40-foot-high cylinder within 300 feet deals 2d8
bludgeoning damage and 4d6 cold damage (Dex save for half)
Cast Greater Invisibility: You or touched creature becomes invisible while concentration up to 1 minute

Reactions:
Shield: The mage gains +5 AC until the start of his next turn, including against the triggering attack, and becomes immune to Magic Missile.
Counterspell: The mage automatically counterspells a spell of 3rd level or lower, or makes a spellcasting check to counterspell (d20+6 vs 10+spell level) if the spell is of higher level.

As you can see stat blocks should make no attempt to reproduce spells in every detail.

I generally agree with this design approach, however, I would also note that higher level you go the more tricks you need and the more cumbersome this style of stat block becomes. Finally, if the action is describing a cast spell I think it should say so in the description. As you have it now it appears like an at-will cone of cold, etc.