D&D 5E Super Deadly 5E?

[Chaosmancer]

I think the party is too large. I have 6 players including 2 paladins with high AC, an insane AC monk who can shut down anything with a grapple, a cleric, a ranger with healing spirits, and a wizard who focuses on evocation magic. The only time they've had any difficulty is when they split party and go totally reckless. The amount of healing available is ridiculous. There are 4 healers in a party of six. And this wasn't even done on purpose - it's just inherent in the design of the system.

How are they shutting things down with grapple?

Also, are you letting the Paladin auras stack? Because I believe by RAW they do not.

 

[Retreater]

How are they shutting things down with grapple?

Also, are you letting the Paladin auras stack? Because I believe by RAW they do not.

Enemy is grappled. He is unable to move. He can only attack the monk (who he likely cannot hit because the monk has like an AC 19) or waste his action trying to escape the grapple (which he will probably lose because the monk has advantage on the check). With a speed of 0 the enemy is attacked from range and can't attack anyone else - or otherwise they move up, attack, and move away. He might get an opportunity attack.

And no, the Paladin auras don't stack. But they get tons of damage with smites and can chomp through anything.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Enemy is grappled. He is unable to move. He can only attack the monk (who he likely cannot hit because the monk has like an AC 19) or waste his action trying to escape the grapple (which he will probably lose because the monk has advantage on the check). With a speed of 0 the enemy is attacked from range and can't attack anyone else - or otherwise they move up, attack, and move away. He might get an opportunity attack.

And no, the Paladin auras don't stack. But they get tons of damage with smites and can chomp through anything.

How is the monk getting advantage on the check? A special ability or something else I'm not thinking of.

AC 19 is high, but hittable. And if the paladins are using their smites they are burning daily resources.

I don't generally act to counter a party, but it seems like a few more enemies who have slightly higher accuracy, maybe using the help action or the shove action to prone the players would be good. I'd try a big squad of hobgoblins. Military tactics, good damage, good accuracy, plus some spells from their arcane destruction school to add in some damage to keep the others busy with healing.

Have to be careful about the evoker obviously, but the hobs could bring goblin archers or bugbears to flank and keep the caster busy.

 

[Retreater]

How is the monk getting advantage on the check? A special ability or something else I'm not thinking of.

AC 19 is high, but hittable. And if the paladins are using their smites they are burning daily resources.

I don't generally act to counter a party, but it seems like a few more enemies who have slightly higher accuracy, maybe using the help action or the shove action to prone the players would be good. I'd try a big squad of hobgoblins. Military tactics, good damage, good accuracy, plus some spells from their arcane destruction school to add in some damage to keep the others busy with healing.

Have to be careful about the evoker obviously, but the hobs could bring goblin archers or bugbears to flank and keep the caster busy.

I must be mis-remembering the feat the player has. But in any case, he's regularly able to beat Large-sized, high Strength monsters, grappling giants and dragons who can't break free. And if they do "waste" their action trying to break lose, he just immediately re-grapples on his next turn. It's a net loss.

Hobgoblins are +3 to hit. That isn't good accuracy. Haha.

What I would call a good accuracy against a 6th level character with a 19 AC is +7 to +9 to hit, with an average damage of around 13, two attacks per round. That's the challenge I like to run in a game that "feels right."

 

[DND_Reborn]

I must be mis-remembering the feat the player has. But in any case, he's regularly able to beat Large-sized, high Strength monsters, grappling giants and dragons who can't break free. And if they do "waste" their action trying to break lose, he just immediately re-grapples on his next turn. It's a net loss.

Hobgoblins are +3 to hit. That isn't good accuracy. Haha.

What I would call a good accuracy against a 6th level character with a 19 AC is +7 to +9 to hit, with an average damage of around 13, two attacks per round. That's the challenge I like to run in a game that "feels right."

While the monk could certainly grapple a young or wyrmling dragon (large and medium creatures), he can't grapple giants (even hill giants are huge, so beyond the scope unless the monk is enlarged or something). Is your monk human? Does he have expertise in athletics? Also, AC 19 is hardly insanely high. We have characters in our game now with ACs of 24 who still get hit regularly enough.

Also, although they can't move, they can still attack normally unless the monk also makes an attack to knock them prone, in which case they are attacking with disadvantage--but with multiple foes attacking flanking off-sets that by granting advantage. One foe could even remain grappled, by use the Help action to cancel our the disadvantage by the other if you wanted.

From the sounds of it, unless there is something you haven't told us, the monk is likely getting away with stuff he shouldn't. Also, if you have the monk attacked by 3 or more foes, he can only grapple two, leaving the others free. With 3 or more attacking him and the flanking rules, odds are they should have advantage to hit him anyway.

Smites are great, but run out. The biggest thing is the massive amount of healing from the sounds of it.

Are you hitting them with a mix of brutes, ranged, and casters? Throwing all the same type of monster for an encounter generally makes it easier.

Also, if you rolled ability scores instead of using point-buy or the standard array, the characters could be stronger by default than expected.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I must be mis-remembering the feat the player has. But in any case, he's regularly able to beat Large-sized, high Strength monsters, grappling giants and dragons who can't break free. And if they do "waste" their action trying to break lose, he just immediately re-grapples on his next turn. It's a net loss.

Hobgoblins are +3 to hit. That isn't good accuracy. Haha.

What I would call a good accuracy against a 6th level character with a 19 AC is +7 to +9 to hit, with an average damage of around 13, two attacks per round. That's the challenge I like to run in a game that "feels right."

What? Checks book.

What the heck?!

Why, just why are their stats so terrible? I'm used to Gnolls I guess who have a +4/+5 to hit.

But, the point remains. Enemies with organization to knock prone and attack with advantage. The Hobs do hit hard with 1d8+2d6+1 and they have an AC of 18. Send some elites with higher strength and better armor and they'd be nasty.

Also, consistently beating enemies who should have a higher strength and advantage? I'd guess athletics and expertise, but even so, if the enemies have a +9 to hit, they should hit him half the time. I'd never bother to break the grapple, him grappling them puts a low-health high mobility target right in their strike zone. They should just gang up and take him down, then move to the next target.

Even if he uses ki on patient defense, that is greatly reducing his damage output, and getting three enemies on him? He should go down at a decent clip.

 

[Retreater]

The group wanted to roll stats and did so in front of me. The monk player got especially good scores. The average monster at the party level just isn't a threat. I can throw stuff like CR 10s at them, no problem. They are unstoppable gods. Unless I just want to throw a tarrasque their way or something.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Wraith can reduce max hp tally by damage done, death if max hp goes to 0. I think the Wiz-5 had 22 hp and it did 22 damage & she failed CON save, so insta-kill. 22 is 1 point over its average damage! Roll20
It wasn't a TPK; after the wraith raised her as a Spectre and the Cleric failed to turn it, the two remaining PCs fled in terror.

I saw another PC perma-killed by a few Shadows draining his STR to 0. Shadow is only Challenge 1/2 - Shadow - so vs a high level group you can 'legally' use a pretty ridiculous number.

For that matter the Banshee is CR 4 and can insta-kill Banshee
And of course there's the CR 2 intellect devourer... https://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/MM_IntellectDevourer.pdf

Well, not knowing the rest of the encounter, a single Wraith got lucky by smacking a Wiz-5 with 22 hp (which, FWIW means NO CON bonus and/or crappy HD rolls) for a critical hit and the PC failed the CON save (again, with no or little bonus). So, while the 22 damage is basically average for the critical hit, the odds are pretty rare (about 1 in 30). I guess the PC also had no inspiration to reroll the failed save or anything?

Then the cleric failed to turn the Specter? Again the odds are against that as well. Specter's have no WIS mod or save, so it was a straight d20 roll against the Turn DC, which at 5th level should be about 14 or so. That is only about a 1 in 3 chance to make the save. Not bad, but 2-1 against.

So, not knowing the rest of the party (other than a cleric), even with all that being the case, the three remaining PCs would have a "hard" encounter against the Wraith and Specter combined instead of the "easy" it would have been with all four against the Wraith alone. Unless another unlucky crit came up, odds are the remaining three should prevail (dependent on other factors such as resources (spells, feature uses, etc.) remaining and hp and such).

Against the same 4 5th-level characters, using 15 or more shadows would be a deadly encounter, but look at it a bit more closely...

The cleric alone can destroy (not just turn) shadows. Even with only one channel divinity, that 30 ft. means you would likely get the bulk of them and 2 out of 3 on average would be destroyed by failing the DC 14 WIS save. So, suddenly those 15 are probably reduced to 5-10 (at most!). And 5th-level is hardly "high level" for characters.

The Banshee and Intellect Devourer can both be tough foes, certainly, but so much there depends on the encounter set-up and party composition, etc. and basically how much the DM just wants to kill-off PCs.

Finally, from the beginning of this thread, the point has never been that it is hard to kill PCs (any DM can toss whatever they want to make a TPK-not hard at all), but that short of a TPK, keeping people dead isn't as easy. Short of really long-shot unlucky rolls or tossing hordes of such creatures against a party, but don't solve the issue as I see it.

 

[DND_Reborn]

The group wanted to roll stats and did so in front of me. The monk player got especially good scores. The average monster at the party level just isn't a threat. I can throw stuff like CR 10s at them, no problem. They are unstoppable gods. Unless I just want to throw a tarrasque their way or something.

But you do realize that monk can't grapple Huge creatures, right, without magic or something? Also, what about magic items, etc? Is your group more powerful than expected because they might be too well equipped? I feel that way about our current game, but the DM wanted more OP characters...

Honestly, most solo CR 10 creatures against a party of 6 5th-level PCs will be an easy encounter, maybe medium, so that doesn't shock me. You'd have to go to something like CR 16 or 17 for a solo creature to be a deadly encounter, and even then you have to play the foe right. Try an adult blue or red dragon, and you'll see how weak they really are.

Or, for CR 10, try two young red dragons or something similar. Using flight and hit and run tactics, they can wipe out the PCs.

We had a larger party as well, 6 characters (levels 8-9 at that time), and our DM had us fighting for our lives against a single young adult red shadow dragon (CR 13) which we fought in its lair. One PC died and we had to use the single Wish we had from a luck blade to bring her back.

I think there are a lot of things you can do and you'd be surprised how easy it is to knock them down a peg or two if that's your goal.

 

[Todd Roybark]

The monk player got especially good scores.

They are unstoppable gods.

I felt similarly when the 6 person party with rolled stats, that I DM for hit, 6th level.

The Extra attack boost for Tier 2 makes a huge difference, and you had,
from your party makeup, 4 extra attacks added per round.

My rule of thumb is high stats and large parties have a level adjustment of around +2 to +4 levels sort of......a 7th level spell will still outclass them.

Frankly, in my opinion, the only true solution is you have to boost some of the monsters
stats. Default stats on monsters only works if you are using the default array option for PCs.
Exceptional PC Stats mandates some exceptional monsters, at least sometimes.

The good news, is as the PC group advances up the 2nd Tier, that sharp increase in power does not continue. At 9th level, the Monk PC is not going to be substantially different compared to 6th level, but the monsters will be much more powerful.

I have loved rolled stats, from 1e onward, but it complicates running the game in 5e.

The other campaign I run, has eight players, at least 7 seem to show up each session, and it is an easier game to run, in large part due to going with the Default Array.

A Hydra with some watery terrain to retreat to, for hit and run and 2 Bone Nagas with a customized (read optimized) spell list should rate as a Deadly Encounter and I imagine be an event that will cause your group to call for a long rest.

Moderate Encounters are speed bumps to high stat groups.