Last week, the Level 14-16 party beat Graz'zt, 2 Marilith and a Storm Giant...easily

[Upper_Krust]

In the game last week, I was playing a Level 14 Fighter Battle Master (Heavy X-Bow build) and the rest of the group were:

Level 16 Rogue Arcane Trickster
Level 15 Fighter Champion
Level 16 Barbarian
Level 15 Paladin

So very Martial Heavy (the week before the Paladin was not there and another player had a Warlock) and also 5 PCs.

But I was shocked how easily we crushed the adventure's final encounter and how little damage the enemies dealt.

For reference these were the 2014 versions of the monsters.

We did get a bit lucky on Initiative and with a couple of rolls (the Barbarian hit two crits on the Storm Giant) and my Fighter somehow landed 6 hits with Action Surge on Graz'zt taking -5 on each to hit roll for +10 damage.

But it highlighted how feeble high CR monsters are when stacked against a half-decent party.

Using the 7.5 per CR damage output (suggested by Mike Shea)

CR 12 = 90 damage
CR 16 = 120 damage
CR 24 = 180 damage (though personally I would say 210, with 15 points for CRs 21-24)

The Storm Giant can do about 60 damage.
The Marilith can do about 100 damage.
Graz'zt can do 68 or 170 using 3 Legendary Actions to attack. Which on paper looks okay but in practice hiding 60% of his damage output within Legendary Actions is a mistake. I know Graz'zt is not necessarily a damage dealing brute (he did briefly Charm the Champion Fighter) but he just crumpled like tin-foil.

2024 Storm Giant deals 72 (but same HP) and the 2024 Marilth deals 117 (HP increased to 220), so definite improvements.

Hit Points were also a bit flimsy (with 20 per CR as an average)

CR 12 = 240 Hit Points, Storm Giant had 230
CR 16 = 320 Hit Points, Marilith had 189
CR 24 = 480 (I'd suggest 560), Graz'zt had 346

My overall takeaway is that I can see why high-level play gets a bit of bad reputation - the monsters don't hit hard enough. While 2024 improved monsters slightly they also boosted Players by at least as much. Encounter XP budgets have increased - however that fight was just over 100,000 XP which is almost a High Difficulty encounter for a Party of 5 Level 20 characters, let alone 5 characters averaging Level 15.

Anyone else had similar experiences at High-level?

 

[TheSword]

In the game last week, I was playing a Level 14 Fighter Battle Master (Heavy X-Bow build) and the rest of the group were:

Level 16 Rogue Arcane Trickster
Level 15 Fighter Champion
Level 16 Barbarian
Level 15 Paladin

So very Martial Heavy (the week before the Paladin was not there and another player had a Warlock) and also 5 PCs.

But I was shocked how easily we crushed the adventure's final encounter and how little damage the enemies dealt.

For reference these were the 2014 versions of the monsters.

We did get a bit lucky on Initiative and with a couple of rolls (the Barbarian hit two crits on the Storm Giant) and my Fighter somehow landed 6 hits with Action Surge on Graz'zt taking -5 on each to hit roll for +10 damage.

But it highlighted how feeble high CR monsters are when stacked against a half-decent party.

Using the 7.5 per CR damage output (suggested by Mike Shea)

CR 12 = 90 damage
CR 16 = 120 damage
CR 24 = 180 damage (though personally I would say 210, with 15 points for CRs 21-24)

The Storm Giant can do about 60 damage.
The Marilith can do about 100 damage.
Graz'zt can do 68 or 170 using 3 Legendary Actions to attack. Which on paper looks okay but in practice hiding 60% of his damage output within Legendary Actions is a mistake. I know Graz'zt is not necessarily a damage dealing brute (he did briefly Charm the Champion Fighter) but he just crumpled like tin-foil.

2024 Storm Giant deals 72 (but same HP) and the 2024 Marilth deals 117 (HP increased to 220), so definite improvements.

Hit Points were also a bit flimsy (with 20 per CR as an average)

CR 12 = 240 Hit Points, Storm Giant had 230
CR 16 = 320 Hit Points, Marilith had 189
CR 24 = 480 (I'd suggest 560), Graz'zt had 346

My overall takeaway is that I can see why high-level play gets a bit of bad reputation - the monsters don't hit hard enough. While 2024 improved monsters slightly they also boosted Players by at least as much. Encounter XP budgets have increased - however that fight was just over 100,000 XP which is almost a High Difficulty encounter for a Party of 5 Level 20 characters, let alone 5 characters averaging Level 15.

Anyone else had similar experiences at High-level?

Yes. Simply put.

I think there is a solution and that is to design high level encounters like a form of puzzle with interlocking parts.

The DM needs to synergise terrain, plot elements, and monster abilities to make a high level combat a challenge. In short they need to fine tune the antagonists to be effective as possible.

Reading your post has been a bit of eureka moment for me having ran a few campaigns to 20 level, most recently Age of Worms and finding some of the high level combat tedious at times. Now I reflect on it it’s obvious why really.

If you have a party that synergises with other PCs by granting them huge bonuses on saving throws for instance. Or uses terrain - bottlenecks/cover/environmental effect to their advantage. Or tactically selects the most beneficial targets and works as a concerted whole and squeezes every drop of potential out of their action economy. Then of course they are going to easily beat equal opponents that aren’t doing that. The higher the level the more they can synergise and affect the world around them.

I think a heck of a lot of thought has to be put into how high level combat is ran. The monsters and their stat blocks are not enough. I think we sometimes say D&D is badly designed at high level but the more I think about it, the more I am reaching the conclusion that it’s not, it’s just often the players and the DM are playing by a whole different set of expectations and norms.