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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mistwell" data-source="post: 6310517" data-attributes="member: 2525">I've been playtesting 5e for aboout 9-10 months now.  I have it pretty well down finding challenges for the party with multiple creatures.  They've had several battles come down to the wire, with players dropping left and right, and even a couple times where the party barely escaped with a retreat.But I am have a real problem finding a solo monster challenge for them.I will give you a recent example:Party is 4th level: 2 fighters, 1 ranger, 1 wizard, 1 rogue, 1 clericChallenged them with a solo Wyvern, a 6th level creature.Now you might be thinking, "well, 6 PCs, of course they beat it".  Not so fast! The party killed the Wyvern in a single surprise round, and it only really took four of them to do it.  The Wyvern never even got a single round to act.  The Cleric hung back in reserve, and one of the fighters mostly maneuvered rather than attack.  In fact, the rogue took it for one-third of it's hit points in the first round with a well placed assassination sneak attack (thanks to surprise he got advantage and auto crit with max sneak attack as well, so that's 6 (arrow) + 4 (dex) + 6 (sneak attack) + 1d6 (crit, he rolled a 6) for 22 damage), the wizard took it down most of the rest of the way with a scorching ray (three rays which each do 2d6 damage if they hit,  for 18 damage), and then the ranger and one fighter did clean-up (average 13 damage each I think).  Bam, the thing was dead.And even though some of this involved lucky rolls, it's not like it would have lasted much more than one round beyond that anyway.  The thing would have hit someone, maybe hard but not hard enough to put them down, and then the party would have taken it down the rest of the way the next round, even if only four had participated.And unfortunately that's probably my 4-5 attempt to challenge them with a solo, and each time it ends pretty quickly with the party being fairly unharmed by it.So I'd like some advice from playtesters here.  How much higher of a level do I need to go to challenge the party with a solo? If they are fourth level, do I need to use a 7th level creature (Lich)? 8th (Succubus)? 9th (Cyclops)? Won't it get to the point where that creature will outright kill a PC in one round eventually? I mean, a Cyclops can do 40 damage in one round (2 attacks at 20 each), which is enough to take down anyone in the party.  Heck, the Lich can Cloudkill twice, covering an entire 40 x 40 room, which does 6d8 damage (half on save) per round to anyone in the room, and it's immune to the damage.  That's also going to TPK a party I think.I'm just not sure which creature to choose to challenge the party, without a likely TPK.  Any suggestions?</blockquote>

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