D&D 5E Two high-level encounters

[MerricB]

I ran two combat encounters last night for my Greyhawk game.

The party:

• Barbarian 14
• Cleric 16
• Wizard 16
• Paladin 15
• Fighter 13

The first encounter: (Hard)
* 6 trolls (CR 5).

The party are on their way to face "space" trolls - more correctly, trolls that have found extraplanar armour that increase their strength, intelligence and protect them against magic, so their spells are slightly different from normal - and they wanted to save resources if they could.

Trolls attacked from all sides. Combat went a few rounds, with the Fighter 13 taking the bulk of the hits - not enough to drop him, but I think he ended up on 20 hit points.

A few spells were used.

The second encounter: (Deadly)

• 5 trolls (CR 5)
• 2 wyverns (CR 6)

The party wanted to take a short rest, and noticed the wyvern shadows overhead. They decided to go into the building the trolls had left - surely all the trolls were gone?

Well, they weren't. 5 trolls were just waking up from their nap (surprised).

The wizard won initiative, and launched a fireball. He then retreated behind the barbarian.

Unfortunately, that put him in the doorway, and the wyverns attacked him - stinging him a couple of times and then grabbing him (claw attack -> grab) and flying with him up to the nearby rooftop, 50 feet up. The rest of the party were distracted with the trolls and couldn't aid him. And he couldn't dimension door away due to the poison reducing him to 0 hp.

The trolls didn't do that much to the party, although the wounded Fighter ended up on only a few hit points by the end of all this. I hit the Barbarian a few times as well (including by a wyvern's sting). One of the wyverns remained in combat, and was killed before it could escape - which brought its mate back into the fray. Though ineffectually.

After the battle was over, the Cleric flew up to the rooftop and discovered the Wizard had been killed by the wyvern. He used Revivify to bring the Wizard back to life.

The party now are finally taking their short rest before proceeding onwards to the Space Troll Lair.

The two battles took about 90 minutes to resolve in total, I think.

Note that the calculations of how difficult the battles were are from Kobold Fight Club and are retrospective; I just eyeballed the difficulty for both. They actually were a bit more dangerous than I expected!

Cheers!

 

[aco175]

I trust your math, but 5 trolls at CR5 each certainly does not look like an encounter with a party CR of like 15. Even powered up they could have a CR each of 7 and still be rather easy I would expect. Reading you descriptions, it appears that the second was more deadly than I would have guessed. We never ran 16th level PCs in my games and by 12th I tend to start throwing whatever at the PCs and they can mostly take it, or run away.

 

[MarkB]

I trust your math, but 5 trolls at CR5 each certainly does not look like an encounter with a party CR of like 15. Even powered up they could have a CR each of 7 and still be rather easy I would expect. Reading you descriptions, it appears that the second was more deadly than I would have guessed. We never ran 16th level PCs in my games and by 12th I tend to start throwing whatever at the PCs and they can mostly take it, or run away.

That "these guys are small fry, we have to save our best stuff for the really big fight" mentality can catch a group out though, especially if a fight turns around quickly. Especially for spellcasters, they're basically playing their characters as being a couple of levels lower.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Maybe I'm a dumb DM, but my 5 players would have toasted those encounters by 8th or 9th level. By 15th level they were steamrolling ancient dragons.

As an aside, Tier 4 goes by really, really, really fast. I now plan for Tier 3 as the climax of the campaign, with Tier 4 held in reserve because campaigns always have more sessions than I anticipate.

 

[Stalker0]

My question is…was the wizard wounded heavily from the first fight or did you get really lucky with that wyvern damage?

from the description the 16th level wizard dropped in one round to a wyvern which seems very out of ordinary (it does 48 on average)

that said i respect that any time the big monsters can get in melee with the spellcasters and can isolate them from the rest of the party things get dicey quick.

 

[MerricB]

My question is…was the wizard wounded heavily from the first fight or did you get really lucky with that wyvern damage?

from the description the 16th level wizard dropped in one round to a wyvern which seems very out of ordinary (it does 48 on average)

that said i respect that any time the big monsters can get in melee with the spellcasters and can isolate them from the rest of the party things get dicey quick.

Oh, wasn’t just 1 round. More like 2 or 3. And most of the damage was just from the two wyverns. Once I managed to grab the Wizard, it got interesting

 

[MerricB]

Maybe I'm a dumb DM, but my 5 players would have toasted those encounters by 8th or 9th level. By 15th level they were steamrolling ancient dragons.

As an aside, Tier 4 goes by really, really, really fast. I now plan for Tier 3 as the climax of the campaign, with Tier 4 held in reserve because campaigns always have more sessions than I anticipate.

My expectation was that the encounters would be relatively easy. But, and this is one of the reasons I posted this: that wasn’t how it went.

Trolls have three attacks. And 100 hp. If you can’t get magic to bear (or you are saving slots for later encounters), they can get a lot of hits in. It’s unpredictable, because the PCs have high ACs, but a crit or two can be a LOT of hp!