D&D 5E Regauging Encounter Difficulty

[Tony Vargas]

I'm looking for some advice on how to ramp up the difficulty slowly so that I can get a feel for the PCs' strength without TPKing them randomly.

As long as you don't start 'em at 1st level, TPKs should not be a problem.

I still love the character building side of 5E, but I'm finding more and more need to recalibrate monsters. Any suggestions?

My advice is prettymuch to "use the Force, Luke." Go by feel more than numbers. Put your monster notes (if any) behind the DM screen. In the extreme, you can have your monsters hit, get hit, and die when it seems appropriate. If the PCs happen to 'bracket' an AC, go ahead and stick with it from then on. Less extreme, go ahead and prep some monsters, just be quick to tweak them.

I'm having to stretch to toss extra effects on monster attacks to make them interesting.

Keep stretching, it's a good idea.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I had been (mistakingly) under the impression that keeping to the daily XP guidelines but reducing the number would have had similar effect. But as you point out, this is allowing the players to use their big daily resources with impunity and is making the Hard fights rather easy.

I still don't want to push hard for 6 - 8 encounters a day. I don't like the grind of those encounters. They're easy. They're trivial. The only threat is attrition. There's times when that works; traveling through dangerous territory. But that's survival tension, and it's not quite what I want at all times. So it seems I'll have to play around with the deadly fights and see just what the players can handle. I'm still interested in redoing the CR calculator and changing a lot more (aiming for a 4E feel of every fight is tough with more recovery between fights), but that's going to take some time.

There are a couple of resources that scale this way: Rage and Bladesong and AoE spells like Hypnotic Pattern. If you want to counter those abilities, though, you don't have to break encounters up into multiple encounters--you just need to stretch encounters out longer or spread over a greater spatial area. Rage in particular is vulnerable to spatial dispersion--if the Barbarian spends one round Dashing towards a new target, and doesn't take any damage that round, his Rage ends.

5E is designed so that a fight that a fight of 1000 adjusted XP is supposed to use up twice as many resources as a fight of 2000 adjusted XP. (It's not perfect but it's tuned that way to the best of the designers' ability, while still remaining simple enough to run.) By splitting the adventuring day into fewer fights, you make each given fight deadlier (more likely to cause a death/failure, and therefore more interested IMO) but you don't make long rest abilities more powerful in the general case. You do, however, limit the number of times that short-rest abilities like Action Surge and warlock spells can come into play because obviously they can't rest for an hour in the middle of an encounter unless the players go out of their way to make that possible (e.g. Rope Trick).

If you want to turn up the difficulty on your Hard fights, use more intelligent enemies. Drow and Hobgoblins are favorites of mine. They're smart enough to do things like build fortifications with partial cover, to Dodge when it's appropriate, to drop prone when under missile fire, to withdraw and wait for Rage or spells like Flaming Sphere to burn themselves out, to take advantage of lighting conditions to gain advantage on attacks, etc. I've killed more PCs in "Easy"/"Medium" fights with drow and hobgoblins than I have in "Deadly" fights with melee monsters like Umber Hulks and Iron Golems. Opposable thumbs and large brains FTW!

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Interesting. I was unaware. The formula doesn't get altered until you reach 6 PCs, and I've got 5 right now (they have an NPC with them); do you have a suggested alteration for a 5 person group (aside that it's adding more to their XP budget)?

Well, you could go all the way and actually use the artillery equation for both sides (PCs and monsters)--I'll elaborate on the math if necessary. Or you could accept that it's already just a crude approximation, and eyeball things with the understanding that the high end of Hard will feel more like regular Hard because the numbers are lowballing PC effectiveness.

 

[CapnZapp]

1: Hit the 6-8 encounters/day.

You really should not hand off that advice like it's a gotcha. Making parties keep adventuring until their eighth encounter a day is actually devilishly difficult to accomplish, unless they do it by themselves. And if they do, I can't see how the previous seven encounters can have been anything more than the completely boring cake walks the OP wants to get rid of in the first place.

Since the OP has named the specific adventure (Red Hand of Doom), let's qualify that advice with some hands-on practical things to actually act upon.

Especially since large chunks of RHoD takes place over a large area with frequent travelling. Like lots of official modules, the adventure will consist of many MANY days where you might have one scripted and two random encounters per day. TOPS.

 

[CapnZapp]

I'm still interested in redoing the CR calculator and changing a lot more (aiming for a 4E feel of every fight is tough with more recovery between fights), but that's going to take some time.

Hi Xeviat!

My advice is - forget about the CR calculations. Forget about "6-8 encounters a day".

Just run the adventure as written. Sometimes, but not always, you make an encounter a real challenge, by throwing in many more monsters, or adding a few seriously tough ones.

Getting good at this is not a science the CRs can tell you. It's an art, a skill.

There's really only a single way to get good at knowing what the party can handle, and that is by practice! So stop worrying about TPKs, and just throw in some monsters there!

The party can probably handle it (once they're fifth level or higher). And if they don't, well, chances are somebody will escape with her life.

Talk to your players. Ask them if your concerns are their concerns. You might be surprised - they might be terrified at the "easy" monsters you throw at them. Or they want the extra challenge, and then they're okay with you learning as you go, they're okay with the risk of some rare encounter becoming "too tough".

That's okay. Bottom line: forget everything the challenge guidelines try to tell you, and don't listen to the replies that suggest you're the one doing something wrong. Fifth edition is very conservatively designed; good players will wreck its guidelines.

But YOU know there's always more dragons to throw at the party, so don't worry, be happy. Even if it gets a PC killed on occasion!

 

[I'm A Banana]

You really should not hand off that advice like it's a gotcha. Making parties keep adventuring until their eighth encounter a day is actually devilishly difficult to accomplish, unless they do it by themselves.

It's a really common pitfall of 5e DMs, especially those who are used to 3e and 4e, so it's one of my first pieces of advice to someone having encounter difficulty.

It's also not nearly as hard in practice as it can seem at first blush. The rules for random encounters keep it lively by RAW, if nothing else. (I know this caught me by surprise as a DM who never used random encounters, but seeing them all over WotC adventures, and seeing how they're use there, it has become clear to me that these are not a small throwback to earlier e's, they're a pretty important part of 5e's default pacing.)

And if they do, I can't see how the previous seven encounters can have been anything more than the completely boring cake walks the OP wants to get rid of in the first place.

The decision in earlier encounters of: do I use this limited resource or not becomes the important decision. If you do, you won't have it later in the day. If you don't, the encounter you don't spend that resource in is more difficult. That's the interesting round-to-round decision in encounters that don't necessarily threaten PC death with every attack roll.

Since the OP has named the specific adventure (Red Hand of Doom), let's qualify that advice with some hands-on practical things to actually act upon.

Especially since large chunks of RHoD takes place over a large area with frequent travelling. Like lots of official modules, the adventure will consist of many MANY days where you might have one scripted and two random encounters per day. TOPS.

For overland stuff...

1) Decide what you want out of your overland journey encounters. Is atmosphere all you care about? Do you want to threaten the PC's lives with deadly monsters? Or do you want the journey itself (running out of rations, inclement weather, etc.) to be the difficulty?

2-A) If it's just atmosphere you care about, encounter difficulty doesn't really matter

2-B) If you want to challenge the party with deadly monsters, roll for random encounters every hour, and place quick "5-room" / 6-8 encounter dungeons/sidequests along the way.

2-C) If you want the journey itself to be a challenge, use weather/terrain/monsters to cause skill checks where failure yields a level of exhaustion that doesn't go away until you rest in some sort of civilization.

 

[Rhenny]

Generally, I don't even bother with xp budget. I tend to design what seems natural for a given situation paying attention to CR level of the creatures. I'm running Princes of the Apocalypse now and sometimes I only have 3 or 4 players. I've been using the module as is and it is scary, but the PCs are adapting their tactics and avoiding fights when they are unsure of their chances for success. I love that type of play.

Also, often, I err on the softer side, but have contingencies at times. For example, if I really want more challenge, I'll have some reinforcements show up.

On the other hand, because sometimes an encounter can become mega deadly because it is what would naturally occur in the given area or because the noise of one encounter draws in others so that 2 or more encounters become 1 big encounter, I don 't sweat it when the group wants to take a short rest. If they survive 1 or 2 really big fights they deserve a rest. lol.

Right when 5e launched, I adapted Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, and I basically found that the party could handle everything that was in the adventure with 2 less levels than suggested with playtest rules. I also got really comfortable running sessions for 3 or 4 players rather than 5 or 6. The larger groups of PCs really need much more to challenge them.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Hi Xeviat!

My advice is - forget about the CR calculations. Forget about "6-8 encounters a day".

Just run the adventure as written. Sometimes, but not always, you make an encounter a real challenge, by throwing in many more monsters, or adding a few seriously tough ones.

Getting good at this is not a science the CRs can tell you. It's an art, a skill.

There's really only a single way to get good at knowing what the party can handle, and that is by practice! So stop worrying about TPKs, and just throw in some monsters there!

The party can probably handle it (once they're fifth level or higher). And if they don't, well, chances are somebody will escape with her life.

Talk to your players. Ask them if your concerns are their concerns. You might be surprised - they might be terrified at the "easy" monsters you throw at them. Or they want the extra challenge, and then they're okay with you learning as you go, they're okay with the risk of some rare encounter becoming "too tough".

That's okay. Bottom line: forget everything the challenge guidelines try to tell you, and don't listen to the replies that suggest you're the one doing something wrong. Fifth edition is very conservatively designed; good players will wreck its guidelines.

But YOU know there's always more dragons to throw at the party, so don't worry, be happy. Even if it gets a PC killed on occasion!

I agree with CapnZapp, and I want to add:

If you're really interested in exploring the PCs' limits, you may consider also running a few one-shot type sequences purely for combat practices, either with PCs generated specifically for the scenario or with your players' actual PCs in what is clearly a "dream sequence." My players really "enjoyed" being able to fight a (dream) beholder at 8th(ish) level (IIRC) with no serious consequences when somebody got disintegrated, and both they and I learned something from the experience.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The decision in earlier encounters of: do I use this limited resource or not becomes the important decision. If you do, you won't have it later in the day. If you don't, the encounter you don't spend that resource in is more difficult. That's the interesting round-to-round decision in encounters that don't necessarily threaten PC death with every attack roll.

You can make that decision important within the encounter as well, though. It doesn't require having 6-8 different encounters in a day. If I encounter three kobolds, and I waste them with a Fireball just because I'm itching to spend that spell slot, then when twelve hobgoblins open fire on me eighteen seconds later just when I'm relaxing from killing the kobolds, I no longer have that Fireball available. Maybe some people would call that two separate encounters, but I define an "encounter" as a set of potential interactions between creatures or objects, and since the kobolds and hobgoblins could (and indeed were) cooperating with each other all along to attempt to draw the PCs into the hobgoblin ambush, that's one encounter in my eyes.

As a player, I worry a lot about the element of surprise, so I hold important resources in reserve just in case and I prize both recon and deception. And as a DM I play intelligent humanoids according to their intelligence, which means that black puddings aren't very scary, orcs are somewhat cunning and moderately scary, hobgoblins are pretty scary, and githyanki and drow and mind flayers are extremely scary--and all this has very little to do with their CR.

So "did the PC use this important resource earlier in the day?" is a less interesting question to me as a DM, or as a player, than "did the PC use this important resource twelve seconds ago?" You can't control what your enemy did earlier in the day but you can attempt to control what he did just before you showed your hand.

 

[Quickleaf]

So it seems that I really need to regauge the encounter difficulty in my 5E campaign. I've been updating "Red Hand of Doom" to 5E. I've been aiming for harder fights; the few "medium" fights they've had have been cake walks. I'm looking for some advice on how to ramp up the difficulty slowly so that I can get a feel for the PCs' strength without TPKing them randomly.

Red Hand of Doom is set up to have the monsters get progressively harder, IIRC, adapting to the PCs' tactics and calling in reinforcements. It's sort of the ideal setup for fudging / figuring out the "right" number of monsters to attain the challenge level you want.

To ramp up difficulty slowly, in addition to all the other encounter building math tweaks that folks have mentioned, consider some of the following in upcoming encounters:

1. Battle Horn Reinforcements: A somewhat hard-to-reach monster (probably behind enemy lines or in an elevated position) has a horn or other means of summoning reinforcements. Eliminating this monster swiftly should be a priority, but it risks exposing a PC getting close to the monster, or requires expenditure of spell resources to reach the monster.
2. Multiple Fronts / Split Forces: NPCs caught in the crossfire need rescuing. A gate needs to be sealed shut. Monsters suddenly start pouring in through a tunnel below. Or any other scenario that requires the PCs to split their forces and fight on multiple fronts. These objectives also help to threaten more than the PC's hit points. VERY important in any edition of D&D.
3. Unfair Terrain Advantage: The battle ground favors the monsters. For example, a tight tunnel where the PCs must fight goblins armed with polearms, where a tight formation is required, slashing/bludgeoning weapons have disadvantage to hit, greatswords/greataxes can't be used at all, and spells must be carefully used to avoid friendly fire.
4. False Finale / Boss: Lull them into a false sense of security with a false finale or decoy boss, then spring the twist/complication that introduces the REAL climax. Only, don't overuse this trick. Often players save up resources for who the boss for that cathartic "boss-hacking" moment. Playing with those expectations — judiciously — can lead to a fight where they don't have their big guns to call on.
5. Monster Tactics: When the PCs face a horde of lower level/CR/HD humanoid monsters, have the monsters actually use tactics like the Help action (gaining advantage on an attack roll) to hit high AC characters, making multiple shove/grapple attempts against a single PC to either overbear the PC or knock them off a tower/into a hazard, Readying actions to attack a spellcaster (esp. with hidden archers!), and using the Dodge action when the PCs have a round of "free" ranged attacks or other artillery superiority. No need to stretch to make monster attacks "interesting", just have them use the same PHB combat options the PCs can use.
6. Handling Mobs: Especially when it comes to missile volleys from monsters, consider using the "Handling Mob" rules in the DMG pg. 250. "Automatic damage" is terrifying to players, and would be apropos to the Red Hand scenario with overwhelming waves of monsters.
7. Uneven Scenarios: Modify encounter difficulty using uneven scenarios like cover, surprise, visibility, ongoing damage, or precarious situations like hanging from a rope as described on DMG pg. 85.
8. Siege Weapons: Use (and foreshadow the use of) siege weapons on DMG pg. 255. A mangonel doing 27 point of damage is nothing to sneeze at. Also, get creative with the type of ammunition they shoot...start fires, shake enemy morale, coat the area with a thick tar, have the boulder shatter unleashing another monster (crawling claws? a troll's loathsome limbs?), etc. Consider having some siege weapons making area effect attacks adapted to requires saving throws instead of targeting AC. Destroying siege equipment before it's set up / between reloads also makes for a great PC objective that can help humanoid monsters last longer (since they're not being targeted by PC attacks on the siege equipment).
9. Scaling Monster Gear: As the adventure progresses, feel free to supplement monster armor/weapons with things they scavenge from the battlefield. Maybe that next group of orcs is wearing the scale armor and wielding the longbows of the PCs' dead allies? Small boosts in monster AC/damage have a larger impact when facing hordes of monsters. Also, feel free to reduce monster HP to get the sort of cinematic feel you're aiming for; the equipment boosts and all the other strategies I'm listing will more than make up for it.
10. Strategic Dilemmas: Force the PCs to choose between two battlefields. "The orcs are attacking the watchtower needed to watch for future army movements, and the worg riders are attacking the village in the valley below. You have time to fight one group, but not both, what do you do?" It's hard to explain the emotional impact these sorts of scenarios have on a party. PCs disagree, resources/focus get divided, tactics often get sloppy. More generally, anything that simulates the chaos of battle and requires the players to think strategically is great.
11. Barbarian's Nemesis: Have a "nemesis" emerge among the monsters for your Barbarian PC, who certainly will start to develop a reputation for being undefeatable. This nemesis should have attacks that require saving throws or be similarly damage resistant / hard to kill. A "war" troll whose identity is disguised in black plate armor would be a good choice; have the "black knight" issue a one-on-one challenge in Giant to the barbarian. This sort of thing appeals to player ego and is EXACTLY the sort of approach that fits the Red Hand scenario.
12. Hit 'Em When They're Down: Play the monsters hard, and go after downed PCs. If necessary, focus fire in order to down a PC drawing attention to him or herself. Have an orc "waste" an action to behead its fallen foe, or throw a KO'd foe off the ramparts and make a war cry to Grumsh. Have goblins drag off bodies to plunder them from the safety behind enemy lines. Have hobgoblins try to take captives, binding KO'd PCs/NPCs.