D&D 5E (2024) Mike Mearls explains why your boss monsters die too easily

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I once accidentally made an encounter slightly harder than intended when I by mistake added four Orcuses instead of four orcs.

Wow, that sounds more devestating than the time when our GM had us fight a Hill Giant but due to a layout problem of the 3E monster manual was using Stone Giant stats or something. Two attacks and two Cleaves later, the party was dead...

 

[Minigiant]

So the characters decimated the clan in a huge battle against 20 of them. Battling three more would be inconsequential, and the most logical outcome is the remaining three flee for their lives (and maybe become better antagonists later). Characters won the day. The rest is well deserved.

It's not 3 goblins left.

It's 3 goblins who flee after the party novas half of them down. There aren't enough goblins left to challenge the party.

Think of it this way:
After a long rest, a mid level party has 100% of their resources.

100% of their resources is design to deal with 6 combat encounters plus some out of combat expenses. So let's say they are designed to spend about 15% of there resources on each combat.

The issue is when the party uses 20-30% of their resources on 3 encounter then uses the remaining 10-30% to escape and rest. Then they return and face the remaining 3 encounters worth of power with 100% resources again.

The issue is, the majority of D&D monster lack

1) the resources to nova and ramp up to a party going all out. The Default for monster is they are already going 100%

2) the resources to rebuild in 8 hours to match a returning party

3) the resources to disrupt escape and rest

4) all of the above.

Typically only spellcasters, armies, and formal organization can either Nova, Rebuild, or Disrupt. So at the mid levels when parties can Nova then Rest the only quality enemies a DM has to offer our spellcasters, organized crime, and armies.

Because the party is designed to meter out resources but the monsters are designed to go all out.

 

[tetrasodium]

I don't know. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. If you think goblins only live in clans of three, and no other goblins within three hours can be found, then we just disagree. That, to me, sounds like a very odd world. A goblin, especially a greedy one, could go persuade many goblins to come to their aid if there was a bunch of treasure wielding adventurers trapped in a bubble that was about to burst. As for bandits, maybe they can, maybe they can't. It depends on the size of the bandit camp or if they belong to a thieves' guild. Again, the adventurers' treasure, and maybe even a ransom, might make it worthwhile. And ogres, I agree. They are more of a wandering creature. But, what about these creatures? What if the party meant them harm, and used LTH in a place they were spotted near their lair? Could they do something?
Aarakocra
Aboleth
Angel, Deva, Planetar, Solar
Animated armor, animated sword, animated rug
Ankheg
Azer
That is just the A's of the MM, and seven out of eleven can indeed make life miserable for the party. And I conceded the point that against most "dungeony" monsters, it is awesome protection. Almost too good? Yes, until you look at all the downfalls. (Although, I would hate to have a group of basilisks outside the hut forcing everyone to just do saving throws. )

I guess I just have a hard time understanding the setting people are playing in. Forgotten Realms is supposedly the most popular, and in it, most dungeons or quests have intelligent bad guys that want the adventurers dead.

And this is also pretending that narrative pacing has zero effect on the players. (I have never seen a group not respond to it, such as in Hoard of the Dragon Queen or The Rise of Tiamat.)

The point is, with narrative setting the pace sometimes, intelligent foes (which are everywhere), magic wielding enemies, and homefield advantage because it's their home being invaded, I just don't see how anyone can think that a group of players could do it to be fresh for every battle. It is literally impossible if the DM uses any fidelity. One or two bad outcomes from using the spell in an obvious dangerous area would prevent it from ever happening again. And those outcomes, they would be logical if the world felt real.

The players can LRH & long or short∆ rest at any point in an adventure so unless that is being refuted & swept under the rug this reads like it almost needs random portals to the goblin home world and dungeon core managed dungeons needed to support that ewok move by a group of goblins bandits or whatever encountering LTH in an empty room somewhere. That kind of respawn solution doesn't particularly fit most settings though..


I can't think of any d&d or ttrpg settings that build out the world even a little around anything like spawn points that provide challenge. Going beyond that ime
Anime/litrpg fiction rarely uses such an overt heavy handed application of monster spawns even when the characters are literally in a game. At best you seem to be describing a risk that could hypothetically be faced by a limited use relic in a system with a much higher bar on resting/recovery.

∆ once again, short rest classes don't need a long rest to recover their nova.

 

[BenjaminPey]

You're describing a static world where everybody's waiting to be mowed down by the party.

If the characters invade a camp and kill 80 % of its inhabitants, what kind of intelligent creatures would stay there waiting to be killed, anyway? The "adventuring day" was narratively finished. The camp is all but emptied. Mowing down the remaining goblins would just have been a chore (and a quite sadistic one at that) in order to complete an XP budget, not my kind of story. I vastly prefer challenging the characters in other ways, of which they are plenty.

 

[Minigiant]

You're describing a static world where everybody's waiting to be mowed down by the party.

If the characters invade a camp and kill 80 % of its inhabitants, what kind of intelligent creatures would stay there waiting to be killed, anyway? The "adventuring day" was narratively finished. The camp is all but emptied. Mowing down the remaining goblins would just have been a chore (and a quite sadistic one at that) in order to complete an XP budget, not my kind of story. I vastly prefer challenging the characters in other ways, of which they are plenty.

Again.

It's not that the monsters are static.
It's that the monsters are poor.

50% of most monster manuals are Monsters without resources to leverage a threat.

The idea of dungeon crawl is very very vulnerable to guerrilla tactics because most monsters are broke.

 

[BenjaminPey]

So what are the characters doing in the camp, exactly? Aren't they here for something other than killing gobs? A treasure maybe ? One the surviving gobs could run away with?

 

[James Gasik]

So consider a large dungeon, like say, the Sunless Citadel. It has multiple factions of foes who are hostile to one another. Given the level range, it's unlikely the party will have LTH, but bear with me.

So if the party ends up fighting the Kobolds and decides to hole up and rest after a few fights by retreating to an earlier part of the dungeon (like say, the room they fought giant rats in, or the room where they almost died fighting the undead Dragonpriest), it's not like the surviving Kobolds can go to the Goblins for help, or that they are inclined to go hunt down the party. They'd be worried about shoring up their own defenses and praying the Goblins don't figure out that they've been weakened, which would surely result in their extermination!

The mad Druid, Belak the Outcast, is tending to the Gulthias Tree in the final area, and is also unlikely to go wandering about in search of the interlopers- they're of no concern to him yet.

Even invoking the wandering monster table, it's not likely any of these creatures would know what LTH is, or know what to do about it, and the party member on watch will likely spot them and the party could deal with them in short order if it came to that.

Chances are actually good that it doesn't matter if the party has LTH or not. The 1st-level Alarm is likely more than sufficient for the party's needs. It's just an extra layer of significant protection on the off chance something did come along.

As PC's reach higher levels, if they have spare spell slots, they can further foil a single use of Dispel Magic with the use of Arcane Lock or Glyph of Warding to protect their ability to long rest. If they're really serious, a scroll of Stone Shape, Wall of Stone, or Guards and Wards are things that could be employed, in theory.

LTH isn't the only problem here- it's a big one, but finding a place to hole up and rest within a dungeon is a time honored tradition, going back to the earliest forms of D&D, and is well supported by the magic system. Heck, with early D&D, you might only have enough steam for a few fights, meaning the 5MWD has been with us from the very beginning.

And few published adventures are really designed to discourage this. While the DM is capable of taking steps to prevent it, it can quickly turn into an arms race with the players, and lead to bad blood if every time they decide to barricade themselves in a room the DM is constantly trying to foil them.

In the end, if you feel excessive resting is abuse, countering it with DM trickery or making sure every group of monsters has contingencies prepared is probably not the way to go. Instead you should sit down with your players and say "hey guys, I know you can do this sort of thing. But if you want the game to remain challenging, you can't be doing this. All that is going to result in is me having to make every encounter Deadly, and our sessions will slow to a crawl."

At this point, the players will either decide to play ball or insist they want to "win" D&D. If they choose the latter, then maybe it's best you announce they've slain every monster in the manual, claimed every treasure, hit level 200, and pack up your books.

 

[NotAYakk]

So my heartbreaker mod for D&D tries to understand and accept this.

1. PC damage grows super-linearly. Weapons deal 2[W] at level 5, 3[W] at level 11 and 4[W] at level 17.

Spoiler

Fighter Extra Attack is split into Combat Dominance and Flurry.

Fighter's Flurry: When you take the attack action on your turn and make a weapon attack, you can sacrifice one [W] of damage instead make 2 attacks.

(This means a level 5 pure fighter with a greatsword can make 1 attack for 4d6 or two attacks each for 2d6; the second is standard D&D extra attack option. The extra [W] however makes bonus action attacks and reactions more deadly; it also makes multiclassing less painful as it keys off player not class level.)

Combat Dominance: When you make a weapon attack on your turn on an adjacent foe, if the target has not attacked you or damaged you since the end of your last turn, you have advantage. You keep this advantage for weapon attacks until the target attacks you or damages you.

(This is a kind of "taunt", but it is aggressive not defensive. Enemies who ignore fighters get punished.)

The fighter gains Extra Attack (when you take the attack action, you can make an additional attack with a weapon) at level 11 (no sacrifice of a [W], and it stacks with Flurry) and Extra Attack II in Tier 4.

No other classes get these abilities; instead they get a rewrite that scales similarly.

Paladins get Blessed Weapon at level 5, which gives their weapon radiant damage, and they get advantage on foes who have attacked any other creature (slightly different "taunt"). This, plus passive boosts to smite effects, gives them scaling damage similar to Fighters.

Barbarians get more [W], and when they take the attack action they can also make an unarmed strike or an improvised weapon attack (starting at level 5). The amount of [W] stacks on top of the baseline [W].

Rangers get to both attack and cast a Ranger spell as part of their attack action. All rangers pick a class feature of Pack or Hunt; Pack gets a scaling companion, and Hunt gets scaling buffs to Hunter's Mark.

Rogues get a Disruptive Strike at level 5 (reaction to an attack, attack first, if your reaction hits the original attack must reroll with disadvantage and target gets resistance to the damage done if it hits), and their sneak attack super-scales with some features later on to keep them on the damage curve.

2. Monster HP scales with the above super-linear PC HP. Monster damage scales with PC durability. A level L monster takes ~3 rounds for a level L PC (with the above buffs) to kill, and can kill a level L PC in ~5 rounds.

3. Elite(N) monsters count as N monsters of their level and have N times the HP and (N+1)/2 times the damage output. If monsters get 2 attacks, this can be done by giving then (N-1) legendary actions that each include 1 attack's worth of damage.

An Elite(N) monster does as much damage as N normal monsters do if the PCs use single-target focus fire on the N normal monsters, wiping them out one at a time, over a fight.

---

The PC damage and Monster HP curve (which are parallel) are roughly proportional to the PC HP and monster Damage curve raised to the 1.7th power. This means that a higher level monsters "act like" Elite monsters; their HP goes up faster than their damage output does, so they are suitable as solos for lower level PCs.

Suppose a level 4 monster does 20 damage and has 50 HP, and a level 8 monster does 40 damage; it would have 163 HP. An Elite(3) version of the level 4 monster would do ... 40 damage per round and have 150 HP.

In short, the Elite(N) is just a short cut way to make a tougher X monster without having to build higher level versions of it; what you get is very similar to what you'd get if you did make that higher level version.

All of this then calls back to the increased baseline damage rate. By more damage increase into the baseline class (and doing similar stuff for various casters) we can have monsters that also scale without worrying as much about optimization.

And because ways to make monster tougher boost HP, and PC optimization usually focuses on damage, it isn't hard to make a fight last a bit longer without turning the PCs into instant giblets.

 

[Marc17]

Again.

It's not that the monsters are static.
It's that the monsters are poor.

50% of most monster manuals are Monsters without resources to leverage a threat.

The idea of dungeon crawl is very very vulnerable to guerrilla tactics because most monsters are broke.

Which is why the goblin leader will keep most of the treasure, supplies, and women and children near him at the end of the dungeon. Once the adventurers have cleared out some of the dead wood in the entrance and left. The leader gathers everybody up into one group for defense or to pack up and leave. Such adventurers are usually lazy and will come back, find it empty, and consider their job done, even if somewhat upset (so long as there are no prisoners or other special items that are the real object of their behavior. The goblins could come back in a week or two, everything would probably still be as it was, and the adventures long gone and off to their next adventure.

Brings up the idea of the 'fake dungeon'. Front of the dungeon are some expendables being watched. Once adventures show up and kill them and leave. The group packs up and leaves to stalk the adventurers as a large group. Track them to their camp, send in steal thieves to get some items, if they are caught or successful, the the rest lay on the attack before they get a full rest.

Although really, that is all just DM still probably being easy on the party even if not realizing it. Want to see what would really happen, bring in another player to run the poor goblins with the DM as just a neutral referee. Let them decide goblin setup and behavior. Once goblins have lookouts, guards who raise hue and cry first, group or even dungeon wide tactical plans, capable of their own action economy focused fire and can use their own guerrilla tactics, things might seem different even if they are poor with few resources. My gaming group tried it a few times, but gave it up as once the monsters are run without effort to be 'fair', PC deaths start happening fairly quick.