D&D 5E Ramping up the Challenge in 5e Combats

[Hussar]

A common complaint or criticism I see about 5e, particularly at higher levels is the lack of serious challenge in combat encounters. People talk about 5e being on easy mode and that sort of thing and I can see what they're talking about. If you have a group that is really tactically minded and work together well and possibly are well versed in squeezing out bonuses, then, sure, 5e monsters are probably on the weak side. That being said though, there are a number of solutions ranging from very simple to somewhat prep intensive that can ramp up the difficulty of an encounter. I'd like to outline a few options here.

Before I start out though, I want to make some of my own presumptions very clear. In my experience, 5e combats don't take a very long time to resolve - 3 or 4 rounds by and large. And the problem here is that the monsters just don't get enough actions to lay the smack down on the PC's. In a 3 round encounter, a monster might only get two rounds of actions and, well, that just isn't going to make anyone stand up and pay attention particularly if the DM has an off night and rolls a miss or three. So, with that in mind, most of these solutions that I'm proposing are meant to either increase the number of actions per round or increase the number of rounds in the encounter, or possibly both.

1. Monster HP

This is likely the simplest solution. 5e monsters from the Monster Manual are given average HP. A Frost Giant forex (CR 8), has a 138 HP - 6/die and Con bonus. But, that monster has 12d12+60 HP. If you give that monster 204 HP, it's going to live, if not twice as long, at least half again as long as it normally would. So, now that fight lasts 5 or 6 rounds, meaning that the Frost Giant goes from a potential of 150 points of damage (if every attack hits), to 300 points of damage, more than enough to give the players a serious "Oh Crap" moment.

2. Feats

In the DMG, under creating monsters, they ignore feats but, the thing is, adding a feat to a monster, while maybe not 100% RAW, isn't going to radically alter the monster's CR. Maybe add a 10% xp bonus or something like that, but, that's about it. The thing is, feats can significantly change how a monster plays out. You can go with something very simple like the Toughness feat for more HP, or, if you want to be a bit more interesting, things like the Sentinel feat can dramatically alter how the encounter plays out. Imagine the difference of an encounter with 6 hobgoblins and 6 hobgobs, 3 with Sentinel and 3 with Polearm Master.

Personally, I'd go with feats like Polearm master and the like that grant extra attacks. The point here is to ramp up the challenge, and the best way to do that is for the baddies to simply have more actions.

3. Adding PC levels.

Now this one's a bit more work intensive depending on the class. But, again, if we're talking about high level baddies, shouldn't really alter the CR too much. Just make the monster a lot more challenging. I suggest only adding 3 levels of a given class, mostly because I'm too lazy to work out how much adding more levels would actually change the monster, and, in most cases, 3 levels is often enough.

For example, tapping in 3 levels of Bear Totem barbarian grants Resistance to everything but psychic attacks. Boom, your monster now has double HP, effectively, a rage bonus (nice for extra damage) and a movement bonus. Easy to add to the stat block and tons of fun. Or, 3 levels of Rogue as another example. Sneak attack plus that bonus action for mobility and hiding can change the tone of an encounter a whole bunch. Imagine Vrocks with 3 levels of rogue. Sneak attack and fly away to cover every round. Hit and run tactics combined with a battlefield with lots of stuff to move behind. Watch your players sit up and pay attention then.

The nice thing about this is some of the classes are really easy to add. Barbarian, rogue and warlock all fit thematically with a pile of monsters and grant just so many goodies. Drow warlocks that can see perfectly in 120 feet of darkness plus can generate Darkness spells. Whee!

Anyway, there are three options for you to use. Challenging higher level PC's is not easy but, these should help a lot I hope.

 

[Li Shenron]

Those are all good ideas, but before modifying the monster I would consider these even simpler ideas:

1) Play the monsters better.

2) Add more monsters to each encounter.

3) Use higher CR monsters.

These 3 are to me a no-brainer. So why aren't these being done?

In my opinion 1) is not always as easy as it sounds, plus many DM are just afraid of being better than players (hint: you aren't) and assume they need to hold back.

On the other hand 2) and 3) are really basic DM options. The fact that they would result in too many XP thus too fast level advancement just tells me that the flaw is not in the monsters but in the XP/level numbers themselves.

 

[Hussar]

Those are all good ideas, but before modifying the monster I would consider these even simpler ideas:

1) Play the monsters better.

2) Add more monsters to each encounter.

3) Use higher CR monsters.

These 3 are to me a no-brainer. So why aren't these being done?

In my opinion 1) is not always as easy as it sounds, plus many DM are just afraid of being better than players (hint: you aren't) and assume they need to hold back.

On the other hand 2) and 3) are really basic DM options. The fact that they would result in too many XP thus too fast level advancement just tells me that the flaw is not in the monsters but in the XP/level numbers themselves.

Oh, for sure. I didn't mean my above ideas to be an exhaustive list. I was kinda presuming that people had tried these kinds of things already. Then again, seeing people describe how they ran some encounters, you might very well be right. Simply taking a few minutes to plan out encounters beforehand can really change things.

Heck one very simple change can do that - focus fire. Creatures never split their attacks. If the creature has multiple attacks, it uses all of them on a single target. Note, I don't mean that every creature attacks one PC, that's goofy. But, I've seen lots of DM's split up multiple attacks across multiple targets and that can really, really reduce the effectiveness of a creature. Doing 20 points of damage to 2 6th level PC's is something they might pretty much ignore. Dealing 40 points to one of those PC's gets everyone's attention.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

A common complaint or criticism I see about 5e, particularly at higher levels is the lack of serious challenge in combat encounters. People talk about 5e being on easy mode and that sort of thing and I can see what they're talking about. If you have a group that is really tactically minded and work together well and possibly are well versed in squeezing out bonuses, then, sure, 5e monsters are probably on the weak side. That being said though, there are a number of solutions ranging from very simple to somewhat prep intensive that can ramp up the difficulty of an encounter. I'd like to outline a few options here.

Before I start out though, I want to make some of my own presumptions very clear. In my experience, 5e combats don't take a very long time to resolve - 3 or 4 rounds by and large. And the problem here is that the monsters just don't get enough actions to lay the smack down on the PC's. In a 3 round encounter, a monster might only get two rounds of actions and, well, that just isn't going to make anyone stand up and pay attention particularly if the DM has an off night and rolls a miss or three. So, with that in mind, most of these solutions that I'm proposing are meant to either increase the number of actions per round or increase the number of rounds in the encounter, or possibly both.

1. Monster HP

This is likely the simplest solution. 5e monsters from the Monster Manual are given average HP. A Frost Giant forex (CR 8), has a 138 HP - 6/die and Con bonus. But, that monster has 12d12+60 HP. If you give that monster 204 HP, it's going to live, if not twice as long, at least half again as long as it normally would. So, now that fight lasts 5 or 6 rounds, meaning that the Frost Giant goes from a potential of 150 points of damage (if every attack hits), to 300 points of damage, more than enough to give the players a serious "Oh Crap" moment.

2. Feats

In the DMG, under creating monsters, they ignore feats but, the thing is, adding a feat to a monster, while maybe not 100% RAW, isn't going to radically alter the monster's CR. Maybe add a 10% xp bonus or something like that, but, that's about it. The thing is, feats can significantly change how a monster plays out. You can go with something very simple like the Toughness feat for more HP, or, if you want to be a bit more interesting, things like the Sentinel feat can dramatically alter how the encounter plays out. Imagine the difference of an encounter with 6 hobgoblins and 6 hobgobs, 3 with Sentinel and 3 with Polearm Master.

Personally, I'd go with feats like Polearm master and the like that grant extra attacks. The point here is to ramp up the challenge, and the best way to do that is for the baddies to simply have more actions.

3. Adding PC levels.

Now this one's a bit more work intensive depending on the class. But, again, if we're talking about high level baddies, shouldn't really alter the CR too much. Just make the monster a lot more challenging. I suggest only adding 3 levels of a given class, mostly because I'm too lazy to work out how much adding more levels would actually change the monster, and, in most cases, 3 levels is often enough.

For example, tapping in 3 levels of Bear Totem barbarian grants Resistance to everything but psychic attacks. Boom, your monster now has double HP, effectively, a rage bonus (nice for extra damage) and a movement bonus. Easy to add to the stat block and tons of fun. Or, 3 levels of Rogue as another example. Sneak attack plus that bonus action for mobility and hiding can change the tone of an encounter a whole bunch. Imagine Vrocks with 3 levels of rogue. Sneak attack and fly away to cover every round. Hit and run tactics combined with a battlefield with lots of stuff to move behind. Watch your players sit up and pay attention then.

The nice thing about this is some of the classes are really easy to add. Barbarian, rogue and warlock all fit thematically with a pile of monsters and grant just so many goodies. Drow warlocks that can see perfectly in 120 feet of darkness plus can generate Darkness spells. Whee!

Anyway, there are three options for you to use. Challenging higher level PC's is not easy but, these should help a lot I hope.

Thanks for starting this thread. I see some fundamental issues with your suggestions and CR. The solutions you suggest will all increase CR. By the RAW, it's true that adding feats or class levels won't affect CR, but the effect of doing this is what modifies CR per RAW.

Adding hp? CR might increase.
Additional attacks? Damage per round will increase = CR might increase.
Class level abilities, fx barbarian resistance? CR might increase.

I'm not tryin to just be a nay-sayer, but while I like the solutions and more or less think that the 5E framework can handle modified monsters, and that you might actually not need to modify CR based on these modifications, the problem is that by the rules, they should. And that, IMO, sort of proves the point - that 5E monsters are too easy.

 

[CubicsRube]

Well they're all valid options. I like the idea of putting some variety in enemies. You could have a pack of them, but one has gwm, another martial adept, etc.

But you can also do a lot by making the enemies play ruthlessly. Have them focus fire. Have them run past the front line and into the back squishies, even if they take a few opportunity attacks. Call in reinforcement, lay traps. Grapple and seperate, give advantage to their ally. Heal each other.

Theres a lot of ways narratively that you can make most monsters and creatures act in the above ways and many tactics can make a fight much tougher than the cr allows.

Question: are your players currently getting to the point of needing death saves?

 

[CubicsRube]

Oh, for sure. I didn't mean my above ideas to be an exhaustive list. I was kinda presuming that people had tried these kinds of things already. Then again, seeing people describe how they ran some encounters, you might very well be right. Simply taking a few minutes to plan out encounters beforehand can really change things.

Heck one very simple change can do that - focus fire. Creatures never split their attacks. If the creature has multiple attacks, it uses all of them on a single target. Note, I don't mean that every creature attacks one PC, that's goofy. But, I've seen lots of DM's split up multiple attacks across multiple targets and that can really, really reduce the effectiveness of a creature. Doing 20 points of damage to 2 6th level PC's is something they might pretty much ignore. Dealing 40 points to one of those PC's gets everyone's attention.

Ah i didnt notice this post.

Yes, focusing fire is huge.

Enemies may have a leader that points and directs all their attacks to one character. That leader is then the most dangerous opponent because hes doing all the directing.

Many pack animals have learned to isokate and gang up on prey. Look at how lions hunt.

Most creatures with a good survival instinct and group mentality would focus fire and either be able to down a pc in a round or two, or see the fight turn badly and run.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Synergistic creatures are another option. For example, bugbears become for more dangerous when paired with a caster who can cast Pass Without Trace (because this helps them gain surprise and which increases their initial damage).

Another useful idea is dangerous or difficult terrain that hinders the PCs but not the monsters. This might seem kludgy at first glance, but it typically isn't since creatures encountered in their natural terrain would likely be well adapted to it. A swamp troll could have little difficulty traversing through muck, while a fire elemental would be perfectly at home in the heart of a volcano.

Moreover, the above suggestions don't affect the experience value of an encounter at all (assuming RAW). Only it's difficulty.

One final note is that since magic items are additive in 5e, limiting them will also help make your fights more challenging. A party decorated like Christmas trees in items of their own choosing is going to require much more to challenge them than a party no magic items. (I'm not saying don't give out notice items, but rather that the DM should take both the quality and quantity of items in the party's possession into account when designing challenges for them).

 

[jimmytheccomic]

I'm running for a level 18 party now- I'd read a lot about how they're difficult to challenge once they hit high levels, so I was expecting some huge power spike, but honestly it's not THAT much different than the lower levels. Here's a few things I've been doing that keep the game rough for them:

1.) Completely ignore the difficulty charts given in the book. They are super useful for the first five levels, and good as a rough guideline for levels 6-10, but once they hit around 11 or 12 the difficulty suggested by the book is completely irrelevant, just feel out your players and put in what would be challenging.
For instance, my most recent game had two encounters. In the first encounter, the party fought two Goristros (CR 17), backed up by three "Bulezau", fairly standard CR 13 creatures that I made. In the second encounter, the party fought a mind flayer lich (CR 22), backed up by four mind flayers (CR 7). Now, if we go by the book, these encounters should have killed them several times over. That's absolutely not happening. But, they were certainly challenging encounters, and the party still has a bit to go before they're able to long rest- the players are totally nervous about running out of juice before they hit the finish line.
In my experience, if you're comfortable completely ignoring the XP charts of the book, and you're making them have several encounters between long rests, you can absolutely put the pressure on them.

2. Another nice DM trick that I've noticed is, as the PCs get higher level their ability scores don't really increase by a ton. So, if you switch out damage dealers for "Fail this save and take damage" or "Fail this save and some horrific status effect happens", combat stays tricky for them.

3. Build your own monsters. Monster creation is a whole different thread, but you do want to get comfortable making your own creatures for the higher level game. Specifically, I've found bringing back in stat/ability score damage really hammers them. They've got a lot of resources to deal with HP loss, but once you start hitting their stats they just have less juice to deal with the consequences. Combine this fact with ability scores remaining a challenge anyway, and they can have a pretty tough adventuring day.

 

[iserith]

Set up the challenge as something other than reducing all the monsters' hit points to zero. Then the difficulty of the challenge is pegged to some other standard.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

For a solo monster (not that I run many of those anymore), the alert feat is a fight saver.

For higher level fights, I like to give the monster a wall spell (type of wall depends on the monster). Cut off a couple of PC's for a round or two does wonders, and if the goal is isolation instead of damage, I tend not to up the CR for the spell.

The domain/oath/patron/terrain lists also make easy additions to mid-to-high level monsters without adding all the other stuff that comes with class levels.