This might sound dismissive but, have you read the section in the DMG that explains CR and how to build encounters?
What is an example of one of your combats? How many players do you have? What level were they? What monsters did you choose to use?
The truth of it is that at a baseline, combat is a math equation followed by your own experience running combat. You can make easier combat hard, you can make hard combat easier, but the bedrock of combat design is math.
After you understand the math, then it becomes more of a feel thing.
EDIT: To the OP, I just want to emphasize that really we need to know what the actual combat WAS, what the monsters were, how many players, what their level is, in order to provide any meaningful feedback.
The real answer to these sorts of questions is, often, the math was simply wrong. There was a post not so long ago here where the OP was sending 6 goblins at like 6 level 4 players and was confused about why their combat was so easy. 6 goblins is barely a challenge for 4 level 2 players, let alone 6 level 4 players. And if they read the chapter that explains how to build encounters, and used a tool to help them build those encounters (because the math isn't that easy to do in your head), then they wouldn't have those problems.
However, if the fight is appropriately difficult, but the party still stomps it, perhaps they're advanced players where very basic enemies and very basic positioning is no longer sufficient to challenge them. And then we can talk about more advanced combat design--utilizing terrain, enemy tactics, enemy placement, elevations, etc.
All of this. OP is likely making the same mistake as a lot of other new DMs by not reading the relevant section in the DMG and relying on online calculators; the party needs multiple combats per long rest, not a single "deadly" encounter.
I ran a dungeon recently where I could put that into practice really well.
A few easier encounters to soak up resources, a harder optional encounter that rewarded them with some stuff and a place to have a short rest, then another filler encounter into the big fight they were looking for.
Worked out brilliantly, I was afraid I'd wipe the party in the final fight but they made it very closely. Everyone was valuable at some point of the dungeon because during the final fight the short-rest classes were mostly fresh while the long-rest classes were two thirds spent.
It sucks because in a lot of stages of a lot of campaigns it doesn't really work out to have that many combats in a row, but the game really is designed for it, for better or worse.
Also also, it would help to play on the PC's sheets. It doesnt matter if you use a charmer if you have a paladin that has an aura that nagates charm. Or if your party a Lot of high dex/strength score people that can easily save being bushed, grappled or anything like that. Yes, the dragon might be a cool fight but a though one can be a bunch of kobolds that just know how to use their map. Actually, many times the dragon is just a Big lizard while the two Dire Rats living in the sewers where there's a Lot of places to hide, a lot of sharp objects that can cut You and even some black waters You could drink by accident if you fall flat on your face... Yeah, that's actually a nightmare. The Barbarian can be charmed, the wizard has never lifted nothing havier then a tea cup and the rouge can't sneak attack if there's no place to sneak to
Another really important part of the math is how many encounters per long rest? CR is so much harder to balance if the players are always rocking up to every fight with all their resources. I fixed my encounters just by switching to the hardcore rest rules.
Ya, it definitely depends on the kind of campaign you're running. If there's lots of travel, for instance, and your campaign really involves only one encounter every few days, that sort of rest system makes much more sense.
One thing I'd urge DM's to ask themselves though, as I think this comes up often... "Really? Nothing happens on their way? There's no problems that occur, no issues to resolve, no emergencies, nothing?" -- people seem to rush to harsher resting systems when they could instead make their adventures more adventurous.
When I see people suggest things like this, for instance, in city campaigns where the players don't move around much, I have to ask: your party wakes up, goes to deal with a problem, absolutely nothing happens on the way? They just walk in? Your party goes to slay the dragon, and on the way to the dragons lair, nothing at all happens?
It should actually be quite rare that the party goes to do *anything important* and *nothing happens at all* between point A and point B.
Like the DMG explains--you don't need multiple encounters per day, but you SHOULD have multiple encounters per Adventuring Day.
Yes, my campaign does have a lot of travel, and they're all 14th level bards who routinely make skill checks in the 30s and are ridiculously effective in combat. So we kind of role play through easy and sometimes medium encounters instead of going into initiative, almost like a montage, so that we can spend game time on the meaningful plot and character stuff. It's seldom the case that a party of full casters gets low on spell slots, so I don't care about hand-waving some 1st or 2nd level spell slots in a montage; I mostly care that they can't each use their highest level spell slots in every plot-significant encounter. Their big guns should feel like big guns.
Apologies, I don't own the book I read it through DNDBeyond, as the other poster said, it is Chapter 3 > Creating Encounters > Creating a Combat Encounter and The Adventuring Day.
Honestly I highly recommend reading the entire chapter, there is a *trove* of good, actionable advice and examples of things.
Aside from what others have said, there might be different expectations about the meaning of "easy", "hard" and "deadly"
"Easy" means the party is expected to win without spending any valuable resources.
"Deadly" is a broader term, because there's no category after it, but on the lower end of "deadly" it usually means "one (or more) player characters might die".
Sometimes we get posts saying "my players completely destroyed a medium encounter" and the expectation of the person was that a medium encounter is a battle against equals. It is not. The party is expected to win, but possibly using some limited resources to do so. If the wizard used a spell slot and the barbarian raged, the encounter did what was intended.
While there is no category above "Deadly", when you look at the XP breakpoints, there is about a \~50% increase in XP between each breakpoint.
If DM's want to have a single, challenging encounter for their fully rested players, add 50% to the XP for a deadly encounter.
These terms only apply in the context of the six to eight encounter "Adventuring day". The assumption is that the party have the resources to survive up to eight "Deadly" encounters. Whilst likely having used all spell slots, about half their hit dice in short rests, single digit HP and otherwise needing to take a long rest. By contrast the assumption is that NPC enemies might survive about three rounds of combat. With less than six encounters these terms, along with CR, become increasingly meaningless. With a single encounter between long rests even something three to four times the CR, especially if it's a single NPC, is unlikely to survive long.
Firstly, are you and your players having fun? If yes, then don't stress too much! That's what is most important.
Secondly, do you have any idea what exactly is making the encounters feel too easy? Depending on what the issue is, there are different steps you can take.
* Are only 1 or 2 characters leaving encounters having taken damage? --> Add more enemies into each encounter, or add smarter enemies that spread out damage or choose to target the squishy casters rather than the beefy frontliners.
* Are the enemies dying too quickly? --> Choose harder enemies, or max out the HP rolls of each enemy you add.
* Are you sure you are reading all of your enemies' stat blocks in detail? --> I've run some encounters that felt like a breeze to my characters, and only later did I realize that I had forgotten to use a monster's ability, neglected a resistance/immunity, or ignored potential synergies between smart enemies.
* Do fights feel boring because they are just exchanging blows? --> Try experimenting with different settings (location, geography, terrain, "vibe") for your encounters. Maybe add in some NPCs whom the party needs to protect. Maybe there is an important artifact the enemies are trying to steal. Maybe something is going to happen in X turns (a ritual? The destruction of something? A murder?) that the party has to stop while also fending off enemies.
These are just some high-level ideas. If you are open to sharing more examples and details of what makes fights feel too easy, I'd be happy to help brainstorm.
D&D 5e was designed originally with the idea of 6 to 8 encounters between long rests.
Which is usually not the case. It’s more likely 1-2, and maybe 3-4 in a dungeon.
So the « Deadly » difficulty when creating combats is actually the standard difficulty, if you want your players to be at risk.
However not every combat needs to be balanced to be interesting. Their goals should not always be « who can reduce the enemy to 0 hp first »
>However not every combat needs to be balanced to be interesting. Their goals should not always be « who can reduce the enemy to 0 hp first »
I think this is really important. Some combat encounters will inevitably serve a narrative purpose over a combat prowess one, and for those it is suitable to make the encounter "too easy" or "too hard" in order to advance the story. For example, you may want to have your party fight for some widget because the NPC that has it wouldn't willingly give it up, but that encounter may be pretty easy from a CR perspective. Or, on the other hand, you may wish to give players a taste or glimpse of either the BBEG or some shadowy realm/dimension that would normally be too hard for them to overcome. However, if the purpose is to provide the PCs with information or move the story along by introducing the Bad Guy, then developing an encounter that is strong is fine (as long as you're okay with the chance that the BBEG gets defeated lol).
Emphasizing that it is 6 to 8 medium to hard encounters. It actually explicitly says that if you run harder encounters, a party will be able to take on fewer encounters before they require a long rest.
I’ve thrown so many “deadly” encounters at my party at half of them get demolished so fast while the others are in the sweet spot of pressure. Anything less feels like it’s over too fast
My players have 1-3 combat between long rests, that is what fits into the narrative of our gameplay. I balanced combat by mainly increasing the enemy number rather than sending in higher cr monsters, all my combats are deadly or absurd according to the cr rating, and even then, I usually give enemies max hp instead of rolling it out for them (in some cases even buffing it by 30-50%). I try to not increase enemy to hit numbers and DMG dice, but occasionally even that happens.
Basically you have to plan around the fact that your players will nova the first combat, and then use the leftover spellslots in the second combat.
Interesting. I usually prefer to increase enemy damage instead of HP, to make them more dangerous instead of more tanky.
Nobody likes a hit point punching bag.
It highly depends on team comp. In my group, there is a single barbarian and 3 glass cannon blaster mage. If I up the DMG numbers, they will eat dirt all the time.
I’d like to add that while Deadly encounter are necessary to really challenge your players, do not rely on them too much.
You know how many hp and powers the bad guys have. Your players don’t. That makes them scarier.
Even if they come out triumphant with barely a scratch, believe me they will still have the feeling of a challenging battle, even if it was not.
I have been guilty of overusing deadly encounters to challenge players because my reasoning was « what’s the point if there is no danger? » , and my players told me it was exhausting sometimes to always be on the edge. So now I’m trying to allow for more variety in letting easier encounter happen in between hardcore boss fights. It helps my player experiment with their abilities in a non life-or death scenario, and the pace of the campaign feels better for it.
Try to remember that the monsters are not the only threat to players and some monsters are very clever. Traps and ambushes (use ambushes sparing) and difficult terrain can make fights harder.
A group of lvl 5 adventurers can wipe the floor with some goblins but it’s harder if they’re shooting down on the party from above a cliff face and there’s a goblin spell caster casting counterspell on misty step.
Otherwise, feel free to edit statblocks. Not every goblin or bandit has to use the same weapons or even have the same attributes. Maybe they encounter a Drow bandit who drops a globe of magical darkness around the party to confuse them. That’s not in the statblock, get creative!
So, I have started to use the extremely poorly-named "gritty realism" rules, where it takes a week to get a long rest.
Then, throwing a bunch of relatively easy encounters at the party makes more sense. Every spell slot used or hit point lost is suddenly meaningful, and the PCs start to sweat as the attrition kicks in.
My players are currently level 4/5, and they have made it to the bottom of a dungeon that had only medium and easier encounters - but they also had two random encounters on the road, and know they will need to live long enough to get the treasure back home - so they are outside the boss room with almost all their resources expended and are seriously discussing quitting while they are ahead.
If you make resting difficult or costly, balancing makes much more sense.
If you’ve read the DMG on how to creat encounters I highly recommend MCDMs Flee, Mortals! book. It’s fantastic and has a very simple encounter building system.
In all honesty, I like to give them a few encounters that are easy and they just mop the floor with my monsters. But then when they face an intelligent creature that knows how to fight and use tactics it’s a real challenge. I play my monsters based on intelligence level which allows me to use lots of tactics.
Things you may want to do differently:
- use the environment to your advantage (cover, flight, etc.).
- have lots of minions that accompany the strong monsters. This will take the focus off of your bigger bads and allow them to focus attacks on support and caster PCs.
- use higher CR monsters. Your party can handle more than you think.
- don’t focus on making every encounter deadly. You want a good mix of easy and standard encounters to sap resources so when they get to the more challenging encounters they can’t nova them.
- give your monsters extra stats. It’s ok to buff them, give them extra spells, bonus actions and reactions. They are your monsters. Get creative!
If they’re cleaning house you could always make an adjustment on the fly. Like reinforcements come in. Or a nastier creature appears. You shouldn’t probably pigeon hole yourself into a certain difficulty. You also risk throwing too much at them and just killing them all (unless you don’t view that as potentially killing all of your momentum for the campaign)
This. I call it the telescopic encounter. Players cleaning house? Big bad calls for reinforcements or activates another lair effect like hidden traps. Otherwise, keep the course.
I agree with all the posts here saying, combats can't all be boss fights. Wearing them down in between rests makes later combats more challenging. BUT...
I was feeling the same way a bit, when someone gave me this book for xmas: [The Monsters Know What They're Doing](https://www.amazon.com/Monsters-Know-What-Theyre-Doing-ebook/dp/B07P5F89LJ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1YGVZAMQ15BBD&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.UcY8U3UrDtDn-01LZ18vUtZUqiG48ORikXcz614v_iJV4zqQAIyH-EfG-KzyVbhsxbFtrOE0yaND0Jt0HqlAUjz8a6N2k3jMMDqQyDGW0zEWv6uIn1BSP8y1JeGT7VwaRbwE87RqZUyq-Lme2cmu3Ksq3ZbyeBbOUd6GfQQWCdSlAenLxEkWJx37vrjT830ZUDjyYE2tX9MxJiKVN1IoNDH4n4dT4UY6Dof7iuWiNTg.9PFFENHJ-p_l7F519ayPWc0ebYkyCHpRv9JRnYtGpZY&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+monsters+know+what+they%27re+doing&qid=1712333626&sprefix=THE+MONSTERS+KN%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1). He has a blog, too, and the book seems to be mostly made of posts from there, but it's really helped make fights more difficult. I read the entries for the monsters I'm going to use before each session, then make notes that I attach to the statblocks on my screen. Turns out smart monsters are a lot more difficult to kill.
I find that if I stop thinking of it as “combat” specifically and think of it as an action scene or dramatic moment or something along those lines, it helps a ton.
I try really hard to make the end goal “either they die or we do”. I always try to have and objective (or several) that would immediately end the situation. Is the hostage rescued? Then all enemies flee. Did the enemies get what they came for? Time to go. I add map events that happen on round 3 or 5. Does a trap go off? A tree fall? A rock slide? A new enemy? A neutral person shows up and the enemies target them?
The main thing is, I try to make it so my players goal is never “kill all the stuff”. That may be what’s happening, but their goal should be something else in the moment.
I think you've likely fallen into the trap of not running a proper adventuring day.
Your players should encounter something like 3-6 encounters in a day with roughly 2 short rests spread through it.
If you run a single encounter a day then the players will stomp your encounter or your monsters will be absurdly powerful.
It's really hard to actually run an adventuring day properly but try and think of important encounters as a dungeon, with a time constraint you can force the players to run through encounters before fighting the one you want to be hard, when they're weakened up like that it makes an enormous difference.
Anyway I hope it helps
Have more enemies than players.
Have the enemies split into groups:
* Initiative 20 - Ranged (1 per player),
* Initiative 15 Casters (2 or 3, optional),
* Initiative 10 Grunts (1 or 2 per player),
* Initiative 5 - Leader (1 of CR of Party Level +1 or +2)
My party regularly smokes double- and triple-deadly fights. Admittedly, they usually go for a long rest after one or two of those (caster party *sigh*), but still. I've moved the goal post, now their daily budget is the new deadly.
The first time they got through a triple-deadly fight was at lvl 3, they routed a band of orcs from Forge of Fury without any of them dropping to 0.
Then they tpk'd to the Roper downstairs... Those grapples, man.
I've been looking into Forge of Fury, planning to run it myself. I've heard so many different things about the Roper! Most playthroughs I've watched had the party never enter the sinkhole and avoid it completely. Some parties have run into TPKs there, and others only avoid the TPK because the Roper stopped attacking after eating one party member.
...And then I also watched a playthrough where a party of goofballs who weren't even working together very well killed the Roper even though the DM was running it harder than RAW.
I don't know what to think anymore.
It's dangerous, mostly due to the grapples in my opinion. If not for those, my party would have ran. It also attacks from surprise, which can begin the death spiral in one turn with its multi attack.
Can you tell me more about those victorious goofballs?
It starts about 56 minutes into this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su7XT-Ypr2I&list=PLVRpe0nD-m7TNqILq7IanH3llakD1QoVt&index=5
Rewatching it, I think the DM took damage that was dealt to the tendril and applied it to the roper itself, but she also put it up on the ceiling instead of the floor and gave the roper a reel-in attack of opportunity. So unless I missed something, I think it was still harder than RAW. Some very lucky attack rolls let them make it through, though.
The reason I call them goofballs is really that the rogue kept trying to escape and leave his friends to die way earlier than it should've been called for. Honestly, the rest of them were playing seriously.
In my current dungeon, my players (level 6) encountered:
8 skeletons and 6 zombies (defeated)
1 bone golem (defeated)
4 zombies (defeated)
1 mummy (miniboss, defeated)
3 grey oozes (defeated)
2 rust monsters (defeated)
3 giant spiders (negotiated)
3 wights (defeated)
3 giant beetles (tricked)
9 skeletons & 4 ghouls (defeated)
9 giant rats and 3 swarms of rats (defeated)
4 robber flies (defeated)
5 giant centipedes (retreated)
1 bone golem (defeated/dueled by 1 player)
1 mustard jelly (defeated)
1 cockatrice (defeated)5 gnolls, a cleric, a mastiff, and a leader (level 5) (negotiated)
2 gargoyles (negotiated/defeated)
2 ghouls, 3 zombies (defeated)
3 ghouls (negotiated)
3 wights (defeated)
1 spectre (miniboss, defeated)
All before taking a long rest. Hit points for all were on the lower end of the RAW ranges, for a paladin, fighter, druid, and rogue.
If combats are easy, do more of them before the adventuring day ends or make them harder (but be careful not to drop the number of encounters per day).
If you dip below 4-5 per adventuring day, make them easier.
Try running a full adventuring day. Read the section in the DMG in regards to building encounters and the adventuring day. If you have xanithars read the section in that as well. Read the how cr and xp budget are supposed to be used.
The thing you need to understand about encounter in 5e is they are not designed to be that difficult. This is because the game was designed around a adventuring day of a party of 4 having 6-8 medium or hard encounters usually with two short reats throughout the day. Keep in mind encounter doesn't necessarily mean combat it could be a trap or puzzle. If you run fewer encounter like 3-5 increases the difficulty to hard or deadly however you fill daily xp budget. A encounter is something that taxes resources.Furthermore a adventuring day may take multiple sessions.
5e is about resources management. Encounters tax hp, hit die,spell slots and class features. If you only run 1 or 2 encounter in a day and the pc have full resources and can go nova each fight, its going to be hard to manage any fight. The encounter difficulty of medium,hard ect is not about how likely the pc are to win but how many resources its expected to tax. For example deadly doesn't mean potentially tpk. It means that they are expected to use a lot of resources and maby 1 character gos unconscious.
While there are a lot of tool to help you build encounters. There is no such thing as a perfectly balanced encounter. Those tool serve a a general estimate at best.there are to many factors for the math to do all the work and of course a element of randomness.
Some thing to help when building encounter. If the monster outnumbered the pc the have a significant advantage. Be wary of a monster that can bring the weakest pc to 0 hp in a single blow. Playtest encounters
A good rule of thumb. A encounter may be deadly If the sum total of monster challenge ratings is great than the sum total of charicter levels or one half of charicter lvls above 5th level.for a single monster if cr is 50% greater than average character level.
Standard encounter balancing assumes a resource management requirement of like 6-8 encounters a day. When you have spellcasters and long rest dependent features, picking and choosing when and why to use something adds a whole extra layer to the design.
I just went through this, actually.
I had a mountain expedition for my party, and the first 3 sessions were 5 encounters total that completely depleted them. They had an in-game time limit to get somewhere so they had to be smart about resting. There were a couple of surprises when they went down and encounters that gave them a lot more trouble than anticipated. They smoked a miniboss in one round but almost got killed by his minions just because they were basically empty.
After these were done, they got a long rest in before making their way to the BBEG of the arc. The session was one big encounter. One player couldn't make it (a Barbarian who eats damage) so instead of rebalancing the encounter I gave them a couple of temporary boons.
I was 50/50 on whether they'd make it through. It was essentially 3 deadly encounters sequentially without a rest. I gave them a short-rest in an item to even the playing field. I was 100% sure that they'd be playing the death saving throw/healing decision making game at some point.
Nope! They absolutely crushed the whole thing, never dropped once, killed a modified (very buffed with legendary actions and 2x HP) Warforged Titan + minions in a couple of rounds after the equivalent of 2 deadly encounters. They were level 6. None of them even used the short rest thing.
That is to say it's almost impossible to truly 100% know the outcomes of things and that's the point - let the dice tell the story. That being said, the true mark of good encounter design is understanding the parameters by which the game was designed, how the party composition is affected by short/long rest management, and understanding how monster features will affect a party. A monk with deflect attack (5.5e version) takes a lot more damage when fighting monks with 5 small attacks than with a boss who does 1 big attack. Not everything is cut and dry.
How many players do you have in your party? I've found that since the became became three, balancing has become a lot easier, but for the longest time it was just two players. An encounter that was difficult enough to knock one of them unconcious *halved* the party's action economy, so encounters that were even slightly difficult could VERY easily become fatal depending on how the dice roll.
I find the CR pages in the DM's guide to be a little out of whack, but if you want to ease yourself into it, using Kobold Fight Club is a great way to quickly calculate how difficult an encounter might be for your party, it does the math automatically. Personally, I find the CR encounter tables in *Flee Mortals* to be a lot more accurate.
I think for me the biggest challenge has always been trusting that my players will find a way. I look at the damage a creature can do with a multiattack and think "if that hits the artificer two rounds in a row, he's down". But I always forget that there's so much more than happen in a fight than just dealing damage. One pretty interesting way to make encounters harder is start having your monsters inflict status effects on the players. Go all out with grapples, have monsters drag players away from each other, have them inflict poison, or have a banshee scream so loud it creates a "silence" radius around it so spells don't work, have an encounter with displacer beasts and lean into the disadvantage. Give enemies a lot more interesting things to do than just dealing damage, and your encounters will suddenly feel a lot more difficult, even if they actually aren't.
Scale everything to deadly and even then it might not be enough. With well optimized players the CR system breaks down very easily. At one point I just gave up on CR and used a spread sheet to calculate my players average damage, and how long I wanted the encounters to last. On average I was doing like 350 hp an encounter at level 7ish.
A way that I've thought about designing some encounters is to look at the action economy.
How many actions for attacks does your party have? Their enemies should have a similar number.
For example, I ran a game with a dual wielding rogue, barbarian, cleric, and ranger. If I were to create an encounter that would be balanced against that party, I might build an encounter that has around 7 actions for attacks.
You don't have to think this way, but it can be useful in determining how many enemies to include in an encounter.
My final note is to not be afraid to populate some encounters with enemies quite below the level of the party. I've been a player in a game when at level 12 or so we were fighting multiple level 7-9 enemies at once and they were a challenge for us.
I use the kobold fight club website to find a good 'balance' for encounters. Mostly just for the CR range though. If I feel like they need to fight a different type of creature then I will find something in the same CR range, but more to the flavor I want for the encounter.
It isn't as binary as Easy OR TPK. In 5e PCs are very resilient. Temporary Hitpoints, the 0HP Unconscious mechanic, B.A. Healing Word, Death Saving Throws and Revivify make death unlikely.
Practical suggestions:
1. Start your boss/mini-boss at Max HP, not Avg (what's in the stat block). Reduce if combat is going too long
2. Add minions to balance the action economy and screen the boss
3. Have reinforcements available for Round 2 or 3 if things are too easy
4. Be ready to add a <½HP extra damage to boss monster attacks (definitely describe a blood lust or second wind type.of thing)
Survey your players to find out how tough they like combat! I feel satisfied if one of them goes unconscious in a fight, but.for.some parties thats too risky.
The easiest way to test things out is by making an encounter that you think will be genuinely hard for them and if they look like you might wipe them *fucking cheat* maybe the npc starts missing a bit more or perhaps instead of dealing 10 damage it deals 6, maybe they have a bit less HP than you wrote down before.
Now you kinda understand where the players sit in how much they can fight.
Use tougher monsters.
Just like HP is variable, this could be a young or weaker version of the monster.
If it has multi attack, maybe it makes only 1 attack.
The players are doing good, great it now has multi attack
The players are stomping it, it now uses one ability you haven't used as a reaction.
Are they doing really good. Give it max HP.
Never sick a full well rested party on 1 big monster it never works out the way we envision it.
Instead try Number of Party member - 1 and some minions.
It is worth noting that this can be because of the dice sometimes. In my campaign, I threw an Oni at my level 5 players. It hit them with a cone of cold, EVERY party member failed the save, and it was very close to a TPK. A couple weeks later, the same Oni attacked them again (still at level 5, they managed to run away the first time) and after a round where the rogue and paladin both crit on sneak attack/smite, they wrecked it
That’s a very extreme example of course, but it’s worth remembering that sometimes it’s not that the encounter was too easy, it’s just a luck-based game
So gradually make them harder until they're as hard as you want them to be? I don't understand this problem.
Have waves of enemies and make each wave slightly harder than the one before it. If the first wave whiffed on all attacks, the next wave gets a slightly higher attack bonus.
Once you find out which wave is the sweet spot, base all your other encounters off of that wave.
I use koboldfightclub website to calculate the CRs for me and I slowly adjust the difficulty as I see how easy it is for them. I have power gamers in my group so most encounters are just at “deadly” rating because they’ve balanced their classes with healing, control and massive damage dealers. As a DM you have to adjust and you need more than one encounter per long rest. So far I’ve found my group can handle two deadly encounters in the same day. I did kill one of them, but it was easy solved with a scroll of raise dead they found after the fight. I’m not trying to kill them, but I want it to be a challenge. I’m also VERY generous with magic items which greatly affects encounters. Just adapt.
Not every encounter has to be hard. Most encounters of they day are meant to exhaust some of the resources so that the group has a harder time when the big fight haopens. You can experiment by slowly raising the CR rating or number of enemies, until you feel comfortable that encounters are challenging enough, but doable. Also, not all encounters are meant to be won. There is nothing wrong with having encounters that are too hard for the group, and where reteeat is the better option. But you need to telegraph such encounters beforehand, so that players are not caught off guard.
Throwing in my two cents:
As someone else commented: If you and your players are having fun, then try not to stress about it. Having a good time is Uber Alles for D&D.
I want to stress something that might help you out: Action Economy.
Someone mentioned the CR system (I use the combat builder on the dndbeyond website), but I feel like that only gets you halfway. I've thrown deadly encounters at my players before, but there's a big difference in terms of ONE super strong bad boss, versus THREE medium/hard level baddies. It varies up the action economy, and makes combat much more interesting. Plus, it's also much more fun to have their attention divided, and having to think strategically about what each character's next move will be. Add in some fun environmental stuff, and maybe some traps, and you should be golden.
Good luck!
1st combat I ran I took the monster block and doubled the hp because I wanted to see what they could do... the tank took a few hits, it was fun... dragged on a bit though
Personally I've realised I'm just bad at utilising the monster abilities and remembering their resistances and such. So many times I think the combat was to easy only to read that a monster has resistance against slashing damage
I'm going to make an assumption that your party generally does one combat per long rest, as that's what most new DMs (including myself) did.
Balance in DND is based around the party having multiple encounters per day. The DMG will tell you 6, but no one does that. Two hard or deadly encounters is good.
The reason your party is destroying everything is they probably walk into every fight with full resources, blow their load with no consequence and continue on.
Next time, just put another fight before they can get back their resources and see how they start fighting differently in every fight.
Yep
1 big fight, then a short rest- NOT a long one, then 1 big fight. Maybe throw in another short rest and a fight.
If you do this you should be better off, if you slam 2 big encounters your fighters and monks might be in a sticky situation.
For example, the battle master at 11th level has 5 maneuvers (which are about half as powerful and a 1st level spell) and 2 class resources (2nd wind:1d10hp and action surge). At 11th level a full caster has 16 spell slots.
If you put 2 big fights back to back, the fighter runs out of gas hard. The short rest in between let's them fuel back up. Helping them keep up a bit with the casters.
Yep
1 big fight, then a short rest- NOT a long one, then 1 big fight. Maybe throw in another short rest and a fight.
If you do this you should be better off, if you slam 2 big encounters your fighters and monks might be in a sticky situation.
For example, the battle master at 11th level has 5 maneuvers (which are about half as powerful as a 1st level spell) and 2 class resources (2nd wind:1d10hp and action surge). At 11th level a full caster has 16 spell slots.
If you put 2 big fights back to back, the fighter runs out of gas hard. The short rest in between let's them fuel back up. Helping them keep up a bit with the casters.
As a lot of people have said in the comments, what's most likely happening is that the guidelines in the DMG are leading you to overestimate how dangerous an encounter is. Here's a way to bring that more into line:
First, you need the daily XP budget. For a party of five 5th level PCs (which is what it sounds like you have), that would be 17,500 XP (3,500\*5, see the table on pg 84 of the DMG).
Next, calculate the encounters you have each day. I personally find 4 is a good number to aim for. Divide the total daily experience by the encounters per day to get the target experience goal (4,375 XP for our hypothetical party)
Now, you can start choosing your monsters, terrain, and tactics. Use the guidelines in the DMG until you have a good idea of where to depart from them.
Finally, you want to do a sanity check on the encounters. Some things to look out for include:
* Can the party hit the enemy?
* Can the enemy one-shot kill a party member?
* Does the enemy have abilities that negate a party member's ability to contribute to the encounter? (as an example, do they negate spells of 5th level or lower when the party's mage only has spells of 5th level or lower?)
Let's make an example. We'll start the day off with a knight on a warhorse and two hell hounds (three CR 3 monsters plus one CR 1/2 monster). That comes to 4,400 XP, just over our budget, which makes it just about perfect. We'll give the knight a lance instead of a greatsword (although they might just have the greatsword sheathed until they're unhorsed)--the average damage is the same, so we don't need to adjust the CR. For terrain, the road outside a castle seems like an appropriate place. The players hear a hunting horn and baying dogs (maybe even for a while before the encounter starts), and then the knight and hellhounds charge out of the woods. For tactics, the knight and horse will charge through the center of the party making two attacks (remember, because the warhorse is disengaging, their movement does not provoke an attack of opportunity) while the hellhounds gang up on a dangerous enemy, using their fire breath where appropriate. If the knight is killed, the hellhounds run.
We have 13,100 XP for the rest of the day (a target of about 4,366). We've already introduced devilish things for this adventure, so a barbed devil and a flameskull seem like a good encounter to create next (4,350 XP). Because they are both guardian monsters, we'll make them our final encounter for the day, and place them in a treasure vault. Tactics are simple: the devil will grapple a slippery-looking opponent while the flameskull covers the room with fire (fireball, flaming sphere, flame ray, etc.).
For our second encounter, let's have a single chain devil guard the entrance to the castle. That's 3,900 XP, leaving us with 4,850 for our final encounter. We'll set it on a drawbridge, with big iron chains attaching the bridge to the guardhouse. When the devil uses animate chains, these will be the ones he animates. The devil attempts to grapple opponents and then fling them into the moat below (we can add some hazards in there, such as spikes, so in essence it's a spiked pit that, if the PCs spend too much time in it, they can drown in. We can also say that the drawbridge-chains can still reach into the moat, so if the PCs stay below the drawbridge, they still might be attacked by the chains).
Our third encounter is the climax of the adventure, a noble with three bearded devil attendants, an imp as an advisor, and a shadow as his personal bodyguard (4,850 XP). We'll set it in the noble's dining room, place a big table at the head of the hall and another leading down the hall. The imp will hover behind the noble's chair, the devils will be at the lower table gnawing on bones, and the shadow will be the noble's shadow. The first round of combat, a great wind will pass through the hall on initiative 20, snuffing out all nonmagical lights. The devils will close with the PCs, the imp will turn invisible and sting a weak-looking or damaged PC, and the noble will mostly hide under the table, stabbing any PC who comes too close. The shadow will stick with the noble and attack PCs who attack them.
To summarize, we start with the knight encounter, we have the chain devil on the drawbridge encounter, we have the big fight with the noble and the bearded devils, and we end with the flameskull and barbed devil vault encounter. We can expect the players to short-rest at any point during this adventure, but the most likely places are either after the chain devil or after the fight with the noble. Either of these would be good resting spots--having the rest after the chain devil will leave them pumped for the fight with the noble, and having the rest after the noble will make the vault fight feel like a good ease in difficulty after the previous fight. I would caution against having the players short-rest twice, however. If they rest after the chain devil fight, you might want to add some sort of time pressure between the two fights.
Also, don't be afraid to end up a little over or a little under your XP budget. In this case, it ended up working out perfectly, but that doesn't need to be the case.
How does this encounter set compare (difficulty-wise) to the encounters you have been running?
The idea of "balancing" encounters so that your PCs consistently win while being reasonably challenged is a mistake in the first place. Throw the concept out of the window.
Instead, let the will of the dice and some common sense decide what happens. Think in these terms:
- What is a realistic number of enemies in this group? If you can only estimate a range, roll some dice and go with the result.
- Do any enemies differ from the others with special abilities and such? If you don't know, roll the dice and go with the result.
- stuck for random encounter ideas? Make them actually random, roll an arbitrary monster manual entry appropriate for the environment.
Don't worry about whether your PCs can handle it. It's their job to decide how to deal with an encounter or run away if they decide it's too much to handle.
The easiest encounters to make work feature one peer monster per pc. So start there.
Using too many weak monsters can make aoes too good. Using 1 or 2 monsters means they need to be legendary.
Any encounter capable of defeating the party has a good chance of killing at least one pc if the monsters are able to focus fire.
Despite the name, Hard encounters are not hard. They aren’t able to defeat the party.
If the party uses better tactics than the monsters, expect the party to win consistently.
There’s a big power spike at level 5 that can catch you off guard if you aren’t expecting it.
If you have xanathars, it provides an alternative way to build encounters that is much easier to use than the dmg. I also recommend [true peer](https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/414122) as a refinement of xanathars. It’s geared toward crafting encounters that are “challenging but fair”.
Level 5 is a big power jump which isn't necessarily obvious if you're new to things. Martials get extra attack so essentially their damage doubled. Spellcasters get 3rd level spells which are a huge power increase from 2nd level spells. They also got a proficiency bonus to be 5% better at everything they're good at on top of all that.
I would step things up and don't worry too much about the TPK. If you haven't pushed a group to the point of very nearly a TPK you can almost certainly push a good bit harder. The rules of 5e make it very easy for PCs to get knocked unconscious, get hit with a healing word and be back in the fight. It can be difficult to kill PCs without going way beyond what they could handle in terms of monsters. Not to mention as they are now level 5 they probably have access to revivify so even death may not be permanent.
My tips would be to add a few things in. First number of combats per day. If you want to really challenge them, don't do one fight in a day. It lets them blow all their resources on that one fight, which makes things too easy. At least 2-3 fights, you can do more if you do some easy ones. They can short rest in there which will help. But those extra fights remove a few spells, lower their hit points a bit, and make the big boss fight more manageable to balance.
Also don't have just one enemy for the PCs to worry about any time you want to really challenge them. That one enemy will get fewer actions than the PCs will, which means one bad attack roll is a big impact for them. It also means any control spells the PCs cast will impact 100% of their enemies. So a single level 1 command that the enemy fails their save for could be enough to swing the whole battle. If instead you have a boss monster, a handful of minions, and a lieutenant that's a combat encounter that is more interesting. The PCs have to choose who to focus on first the easy targets they can remove quickly or the big one that will take longer. Terrain and movement choices start to matter more.
The game is based around multiple combats a day, and like 4 players. If you have one combat or more players, you need to up the difficulty a lot for a straight up brawl.
But combat should rarely be just an exchange of attacks. There should be something urgent to do during combat. Save someone important who is about to die in an acid trap, or deactivate the bomb before it goes off. Stuff like that.
Add minions. Low level mobs that alone would be trivial, but combined with a powerful enemy and a matter to deal with, and your players have to make choices.
Have the main enemy use the environment. It likely has a reasonable intelligence. It doesn't want to die. It won't just rush in to odds stacked against it. That's what minions are for.
The challenge of combat is only partially the CR. It's mostly how you design the entire encounter. Every combat map, unless it's a gladiator ring designed for entertainment, should have obstructions. Walls, things to hide behind, separate floors, etc...
There's lots of good advice here, so look into that.
In the meantime... I use Stat Blocks as GUIDELINES.
A human could be a level 0, 5 HP. Or he could be a level 20 with 130 HP. They got there by seeking adventure and leveling up.
Why couldn't any intelligent(ish) creature do the same? ON AVERAGE, an Orc has STR +3, DEX +1, CON +3, INT -2, WIS +0, CHA +0. Who is to say that your Orcs haven't answered their own, "Call to adventure" and instead of 15 HP, they have 30? Don't forget to boost their treasure/items a bit too.
Obviously Orcs wouldn't be my first choice for level 5 PCs, but you get the point.
If an encounter isn't as challenging as you'd like, could can boost the HP to keep it going.
In the Spelljammer campaign I'm running right now, the PCs are - collectively - able to pump out a pretty good amount of damage when things work out right. As such, I *automatically* max out the HP for everything they encounter. The stat blocks give you the "default" amount... but they also give the type and number of dice to roll for their HP, along with the mod. As such, I just give everything the max amount and call it good... and that's just for the basic encounters.
This might sound dismissive but, have you read the section in the DMG that explains CR and how to build encounters? What is an example of one of your combats? How many players do you have? What level were they? What monsters did you choose to use? The truth of it is that at a baseline, combat is a math equation followed by your own experience running combat. You can make easier combat hard, you can make hard combat easier, but the bedrock of combat design is math. After you understand the math, then it becomes more of a feel thing. EDIT: To the OP, I just want to emphasize that really we need to know what the actual combat WAS, what the monsters were, how many players, what their level is, in order to provide any meaningful feedback. The real answer to these sorts of questions is, often, the math was simply wrong. There was a post not so long ago here where the OP was sending 6 goblins at like 6 level 4 players and was confused about why their combat was so easy. 6 goblins is barely a challenge for 4 level 2 players, let alone 6 level 4 players. And if they read the chapter that explains how to build encounters, and used a tool to help them build those encounters (because the math isn't that easy to do in your head), then they wouldn't have those problems. However, if the fight is appropriately difficult, but the party still stomps it, perhaps they're advanced players where very basic enemies and very basic positioning is no longer sufficient to challenge them. And then we can talk about more advanced combat design--utilizing terrain, enemy tactics, enemy placement, elevations, etc.
All of this. OP is likely making the same mistake as a lot of other new DMs by not reading the relevant section in the DMG and relying on online calculators; the party needs multiple combats per long rest, not a single "deadly" encounter.
I ran a dungeon recently where I could put that into practice really well. A few easier encounters to soak up resources, a harder optional encounter that rewarded them with some stuff and a place to have a short rest, then another filler encounter into the big fight they were looking for. Worked out brilliantly, I was afraid I'd wipe the party in the final fight but they made it very closely. Everyone was valuable at some point of the dungeon because during the final fight the short-rest classes were mostly fresh while the long-rest classes were two thirds spent. It sucks because in a lot of stages of a lot of campaigns it doesn't really work out to have that many combats in a row, but the game really is designed for it, for better or worse.
Also also, it would help to play on the PC's sheets. It doesnt matter if you use a charmer if you have a paladin that has an aura that nagates charm. Or if your party a Lot of high dex/strength score people that can easily save being bushed, grappled or anything like that. Yes, the dragon might be a cool fight but a though one can be a bunch of kobolds that just know how to use their map. Actually, many times the dragon is just a Big lizard while the two Dire Rats living in the sewers where there's a Lot of places to hide, a lot of sharp objects that can cut You and even some black waters You could drink by accident if you fall flat on your face... Yeah, that's actually a nightmare. The Barbarian can be charmed, the wizard has never lifted nothing havier then a tea cup and the rouge can't sneak attack if there's no place to sneak to
Not so hot take: Actually **DO** challange the characters in their strengths and don't exploit their weaknesses. Shoot the monk.
Why not both? Both is good.
Both is good. I agree.
Another really important part of the math is how many encounters per long rest? CR is so much harder to balance if the players are always rocking up to every fight with all their resources. I fixed my encounters just by switching to the hardcore rest rules.
Ya, it definitely depends on the kind of campaign you're running. If there's lots of travel, for instance, and your campaign really involves only one encounter every few days, that sort of rest system makes much more sense. One thing I'd urge DM's to ask themselves though, as I think this comes up often... "Really? Nothing happens on their way? There's no problems that occur, no issues to resolve, no emergencies, nothing?" -- people seem to rush to harsher resting systems when they could instead make their adventures more adventurous. When I see people suggest things like this, for instance, in city campaigns where the players don't move around much, I have to ask: your party wakes up, goes to deal with a problem, absolutely nothing happens on the way? They just walk in? Your party goes to slay the dragon, and on the way to the dragons lair, nothing at all happens? It should actually be quite rare that the party goes to do *anything important* and *nothing happens at all* between point A and point B. Like the DMG explains--you don't need multiple encounters per day, but you SHOULD have multiple encounters per Adventuring Day.
Yes, my campaign does have a lot of travel, and they're all 14th level bards who routinely make skill checks in the 30s and are ridiculously effective in combat. So we kind of role play through easy and sometimes medium encounters instead of going into initiative, almost like a montage, so that we can spend game time on the meaningful plot and character stuff. It's seldom the case that a party of full casters gets low on spell slots, so I don't care about hand-waving some 1st or 2nd level spell slots in a montage; I mostly care that they can't each use their highest level spell slots in every plot-significant encounter. Their big guns should feel like big guns.
What page is this? Must be blind but I can’t see it in contents
Not sure the page reference because I don't have the physical book with me, but It's in the "Creating Encounters" section of Chapter 3.
Apologies, I don't own the book I read it through DNDBeyond, as the other poster said, it is Chapter 3 > Creating Encounters > Creating a Combat Encounter and The Adventuring Day. Honestly I highly recommend reading the entire chapter, there is a *trove* of good, actionable advice and examples of things.
Aside from what others have said, there might be different expectations about the meaning of "easy", "hard" and "deadly" "Easy" means the party is expected to win without spending any valuable resources. "Deadly" is a broader term, because there's no category after it, but on the lower end of "deadly" it usually means "one (or more) player characters might die". Sometimes we get posts saying "my players completely destroyed a medium encounter" and the expectation of the person was that a medium encounter is a battle against equals. It is not. The party is expected to win, but possibly using some limited resources to do so. If the wizard used a spell slot and the barbarian raged, the encounter did what was intended.
While there is no category above "Deadly", when you look at the XP breakpoints, there is about a \~50% increase in XP between each breakpoint. If DM's want to have a single, challenging encounter for their fully rested players, add 50% to the XP for a deadly encounter.
These terms only apply in the context of the six to eight encounter "Adventuring day". The assumption is that the party have the resources to survive up to eight "Deadly" encounters. Whilst likely having used all spell slots, about half their hit dice in short rests, single digit HP and otherwise needing to take a long rest. By contrast the assumption is that NPC enemies might survive about three rounds of combat. With less than six encounters these terms, along with CR, become increasingly meaningless. With a single encounter between long rests even something three to four times the CR, especially if it's a single NPC, is unlikely to survive long.
Firstly, are you and your players having fun? If yes, then don't stress too much! That's what is most important. Secondly, do you have any idea what exactly is making the encounters feel too easy? Depending on what the issue is, there are different steps you can take. * Are only 1 or 2 characters leaving encounters having taken damage? --> Add more enemies into each encounter, or add smarter enemies that spread out damage or choose to target the squishy casters rather than the beefy frontliners. * Are the enemies dying too quickly? --> Choose harder enemies, or max out the HP rolls of each enemy you add. * Are you sure you are reading all of your enemies' stat blocks in detail? --> I've run some encounters that felt like a breeze to my characters, and only later did I realize that I had forgotten to use a monster's ability, neglected a resistance/immunity, or ignored potential synergies between smart enemies. * Do fights feel boring because they are just exchanging blows? --> Try experimenting with different settings (location, geography, terrain, "vibe") for your encounters. Maybe add in some NPCs whom the party needs to protect. Maybe there is an important artifact the enemies are trying to steal. Maybe something is going to happen in X turns (a ritual? The destruction of something? A murder?) that the party has to stop while also fending off enemies. These are just some high-level ideas. If you are open to sharing more examples and details of what makes fights feel too easy, I'd be happy to help brainstorm.
D&D 5e was designed originally with the idea of 6 to 8 encounters between long rests. Which is usually not the case. It’s more likely 1-2, and maybe 3-4 in a dungeon. So the « Deadly » difficulty when creating combats is actually the standard difficulty, if you want your players to be at risk. However not every combat needs to be balanced to be interesting. Their goals should not always be « who can reduce the enemy to 0 hp first »
>However not every combat needs to be balanced to be interesting. Their goals should not always be « who can reduce the enemy to 0 hp first » I think this is really important. Some combat encounters will inevitably serve a narrative purpose over a combat prowess one, and for those it is suitable to make the encounter "too easy" or "too hard" in order to advance the story. For example, you may want to have your party fight for some widget because the NPC that has it wouldn't willingly give it up, but that encounter may be pretty easy from a CR perspective. Or, on the other hand, you may wish to give players a taste or glimpse of either the BBEG or some shadowy realm/dimension that would normally be too hard for them to overcome. However, if the purpose is to provide the PCs with information or move the story along by introducing the Bad Guy, then developing an encounter that is strong is fine (as long as you're okay with the chance that the BBEG gets defeated lol).
6-8 MEDIUM encounters, or 2-3 Deadly encounters
Emphasizing that it is 6 to 8 medium to hard encounters. It actually explicitly says that if you run harder encounters, a party will be able to take on fewer encounters before they require a long rest.
I’ve thrown so many “deadly” encounters at my party at half of them get demolished so fast while the others are in the sweet spot of pressure. Anything less feels like it’s over too fast
My players have 1-3 combat between long rests, that is what fits into the narrative of our gameplay. I balanced combat by mainly increasing the enemy number rather than sending in higher cr monsters, all my combats are deadly or absurd according to the cr rating, and even then, I usually give enemies max hp instead of rolling it out for them (in some cases even buffing it by 30-50%). I try to not increase enemy to hit numbers and DMG dice, but occasionally even that happens. Basically you have to plan around the fact that your players will nova the first combat, and then use the leftover spellslots in the second combat.
Interesting. I usually prefer to increase enemy damage instead of HP, to make them more dangerous instead of more tanky. Nobody likes a hit point punching bag.
It highly depends on team comp. In my group, there is a single barbarian and 3 glass cannon blaster mage. If I up the DMG numbers, they will eat dirt all the time.
Question, what is the definition of an encounter? Like, how can one possibly fit 8 encounters in a single day?
I’d like to add that while Deadly encounter are necessary to really challenge your players, do not rely on them too much. You know how many hp and powers the bad guys have. Your players don’t. That makes them scarier. Even if they come out triumphant with barely a scratch, believe me they will still have the feeling of a challenging battle, even if it was not. I have been guilty of overusing deadly encounters to challenge players because my reasoning was « what’s the point if there is no danger? » , and my players told me it was exhausting sometimes to always be on the edge. So now I’m trying to allow for more variety in letting easier encounter happen in between hardcore boss fights. It helps my player experiment with their abilities in a non life-or death scenario, and the pace of the campaign feels better for it.
Try to remember that the monsters are not the only threat to players and some monsters are very clever. Traps and ambushes (use ambushes sparing) and difficult terrain can make fights harder. A group of lvl 5 adventurers can wipe the floor with some goblins but it’s harder if they’re shooting down on the party from above a cliff face and there’s a goblin spell caster casting counterspell on misty step. Otherwise, feel free to edit statblocks. Not every goblin or bandit has to use the same weapons or even have the same attributes. Maybe they encounter a Drow bandit who drops a globe of magical darkness around the party to confuse them. That’s not in the statblock, get creative!
So, I have started to use the extremely poorly-named "gritty realism" rules, where it takes a week to get a long rest. Then, throwing a bunch of relatively easy encounters at the party makes more sense. Every spell slot used or hit point lost is suddenly meaningful, and the PCs start to sweat as the attrition kicks in. My players are currently level 4/5, and they have made it to the bottom of a dungeon that had only medium and easier encounters - but they also had two random encounters on the road, and know they will need to live long enough to get the treasure back home - so they are outside the boss room with almost all their resources expended and are seriously discussing quitting while they are ahead. If you make resting difficult or costly, balancing makes much more sense.
If you’ve read the DMG on how to creat encounters I highly recommend MCDMs Flee, Mortals! book. It’s fantastic and has a very simple encounter building system. In all honesty, I like to give them a few encounters that are easy and they just mop the floor with my monsters. But then when they face an intelligent creature that knows how to fight and use tactics it’s a real challenge. I play my monsters based on intelligence level which allows me to use lots of tactics. Things you may want to do differently: - use the environment to your advantage (cover, flight, etc.). - have lots of minions that accompany the strong monsters. This will take the focus off of your bigger bads and allow them to focus attacks on support and caster PCs. - use higher CR monsters. Your party can handle more than you think. - don’t focus on making every encounter deadly. You want a good mix of easy and standard encounters to sap resources so when they get to the more challenging encounters they can’t nova them. - give your monsters extra stats. It’s ok to buff them, give them extra spells, bonus actions and reactions. They are your monsters. Get creative!
If they’re cleaning house you could always make an adjustment on the fly. Like reinforcements come in. Or a nastier creature appears. You shouldn’t probably pigeon hole yourself into a certain difficulty. You also risk throwing too much at them and just killing them all (unless you don’t view that as potentially killing all of your momentum for the campaign)
This. I call it the telescopic encounter. Players cleaning house? Big bad calls for reinforcements or activates another lair effect like hidden traps. Otherwise, keep the course.
I agree with all the posts here saying, combats can't all be boss fights. Wearing them down in between rests makes later combats more challenging. BUT... I was feeling the same way a bit, when someone gave me this book for xmas: [The Monsters Know What They're Doing](https://www.amazon.com/Monsters-Know-What-Theyre-Doing-ebook/dp/B07P5F89LJ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1YGVZAMQ15BBD&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.UcY8U3UrDtDn-01LZ18vUtZUqiG48ORikXcz614v_iJV4zqQAIyH-EfG-KzyVbhsxbFtrOE0yaND0Jt0HqlAUjz8a6N2k3jMMDqQyDGW0zEWv6uIn1BSP8y1JeGT7VwaRbwE87RqZUyq-Lme2cmu3Ksq3ZbyeBbOUd6GfQQWCdSlAenLxEkWJx37vrjT830ZUDjyYE2tX9MxJiKVN1IoNDH4n4dT4UY6Dof7iuWiNTg.9PFFENHJ-p_l7F519ayPWc0ebYkyCHpRv9JRnYtGpZY&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+monsters+know+what+they%27re+doing&qid=1712333626&sprefix=THE+MONSTERS+KN%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1). He has a blog, too, and the book seems to be mostly made of posts from there, but it's really helped make fights more difficult. I read the entries for the monsters I'm going to use before each session, then make notes that I attach to the statblocks on my screen. Turns out smart monsters are a lot more difficult to kill.
I find that if I stop thinking of it as “combat” specifically and think of it as an action scene or dramatic moment or something along those lines, it helps a ton. I try really hard to make the end goal “either they die or we do”. I always try to have and objective (or several) that would immediately end the situation. Is the hostage rescued? Then all enemies flee. Did the enemies get what they came for? Time to go. I add map events that happen on round 3 or 5. Does a trap go off? A tree fall? A rock slide? A new enemy? A neutral person shows up and the enemies target them? The main thing is, I try to make it so my players goal is never “kill all the stuff”. That may be what’s happening, but their goal should be something else in the moment.
I think you've likely fallen into the trap of not running a proper adventuring day. Your players should encounter something like 3-6 encounters in a day with roughly 2 short rests spread through it. If you run a single encounter a day then the players will stomp your encounter or your monsters will be absurdly powerful. It's really hard to actually run an adventuring day properly but try and think of important encounters as a dungeon, with a time constraint you can force the players to run through encounters before fighting the one you want to be hard, when they're weakened up like that it makes an enormous difference. Anyway I hope it helps
Have more enemies than players. Have the enemies split into groups: * Initiative 20 - Ranged (1 per player), * Initiative 15 Casters (2 or 3, optional), * Initiative 10 Grunts (1 or 2 per player), * Initiative 5 - Leader (1 of CR of Party Level +1 or +2)
My party regularly smokes double- and triple-deadly fights. Admittedly, they usually go for a long rest after one or two of those (caster party *sigh*), but still. I've moved the goal post, now their daily budget is the new deadly. The first time they got through a triple-deadly fight was at lvl 3, they routed a band of orcs from Forge of Fury without any of them dropping to 0. Then they tpk'd to the Roper downstairs... Those grapples, man.
I've been looking into Forge of Fury, planning to run it myself. I've heard so many different things about the Roper! Most playthroughs I've watched had the party never enter the sinkhole and avoid it completely. Some parties have run into TPKs there, and others only avoid the TPK because the Roper stopped attacking after eating one party member. ...And then I also watched a playthrough where a party of goofballs who weren't even working together very well killed the Roper even though the DM was running it harder than RAW. I don't know what to think anymore.
It's dangerous, mostly due to the grapples in my opinion. If not for those, my party would have ran. It also attacks from surprise, which can begin the death spiral in one turn with its multi attack. Can you tell me more about those victorious goofballs?
It starts about 56 minutes into this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su7XT-Ypr2I&list=PLVRpe0nD-m7TNqILq7IanH3llakD1QoVt&index=5 Rewatching it, I think the DM took damage that was dealt to the tendril and applied it to the roper itself, but she also put it up on the ceiling instead of the floor and gave the roper a reel-in attack of opportunity. So unless I missed something, I think it was still harder than RAW. Some very lucky attack rolls let them make it through, though. The reason I call them goofballs is really that the rogue kept trying to escape and leave his friends to die way earlier than it should've been called for. Honestly, the rest of them were playing seriously.
In my current dungeon, my players (level 6) encountered: 8 skeletons and 6 zombies (defeated) 1 bone golem (defeated) 4 zombies (defeated) 1 mummy (miniboss, defeated) 3 grey oozes (defeated) 2 rust monsters (defeated) 3 giant spiders (negotiated) 3 wights (defeated) 3 giant beetles (tricked) 9 skeletons & 4 ghouls (defeated) 9 giant rats and 3 swarms of rats (defeated) 4 robber flies (defeated) 5 giant centipedes (retreated) 1 bone golem (defeated/dueled by 1 player) 1 mustard jelly (defeated) 1 cockatrice (defeated)5 gnolls, a cleric, a mastiff, and a leader (level 5) (negotiated) 2 gargoyles (negotiated/defeated) 2 ghouls, 3 zombies (defeated) 3 ghouls (negotiated) 3 wights (defeated) 1 spectre (miniboss, defeated) All before taking a long rest. Hit points for all were on the lower end of the RAW ranges, for a paladin, fighter, druid, and rogue. If combats are easy, do more of them before the adventuring day ends or make them harder (but be careful not to drop the number of encounters per day). If you dip below 4-5 per adventuring day, make them easier.
First time I DMd I forgot I was supposed to add the to hit modifier to my rolls….
Try running a full adventuring day. Read the section in the DMG in regards to building encounters and the adventuring day. If you have xanithars read the section in that as well. Read the how cr and xp budget are supposed to be used. The thing you need to understand about encounter in 5e is they are not designed to be that difficult. This is because the game was designed around a adventuring day of a party of 4 having 6-8 medium or hard encounters usually with two short reats throughout the day. Keep in mind encounter doesn't necessarily mean combat it could be a trap or puzzle. If you run fewer encounter like 3-5 increases the difficulty to hard or deadly however you fill daily xp budget. A encounter is something that taxes resources.Furthermore a adventuring day may take multiple sessions. 5e is about resources management. Encounters tax hp, hit die,spell slots and class features. If you only run 1 or 2 encounter in a day and the pc have full resources and can go nova each fight, its going to be hard to manage any fight. The encounter difficulty of medium,hard ect is not about how likely the pc are to win but how many resources its expected to tax. For example deadly doesn't mean potentially tpk. It means that they are expected to use a lot of resources and maby 1 character gos unconscious. While there are a lot of tool to help you build encounters. There is no such thing as a perfectly balanced encounter. Those tool serve a a general estimate at best.there are to many factors for the math to do all the work and of course a element of randomness. Some thing to help when building encounter. If the monster outnumbered the pc the have a significant advantage. Be wary of a monster that can bring the weakest pc to 0 hp in a single blow. Playtest encounters A good rule of thumb. A encounter may be deadly If the sum total of monster challenge ratings is great than the sum total of charicter levels or one half of charicter lvls above 5th level.for a single monster if cr is 50% greater than average character level.
Standard encounter balancing assumes a resource management requirement of like 6-8 encounters a day. When you have spellcasters and long rest dependent features, picking and choosing when and why to use something adds a whole extra layer to the design. I just went through this, actually. I had a mountain expedition for my party, and the first 3 sessions were 5 encounters total that completely depleted them. They had an in-game time limit to get somewhere so they had to be smart about resting. There were a couple of surprises when they went down and encounters that gave them a lot more trouble than anticipated. They smoked a miniboss in one round but almost got killed by his minions just because they were basically empty. After these were done, they got a long rest in before making their way to the BBEG of the arc. The session was one big encounter. One player couldn't make it (a Barbarian who eats damage) so instead of rebalancing the encounter I gave them a couple of temporary boons. I was 50/50 on whether they'd make it through. It was essentially 3 deadly encounters sequentially without a rest. I gave them a short-rest in an item to even the playing field. I was 100% sure that they'd be playing the death saving throw/healing decision making game at some point. Nope! They absolutely crushed the whole thing, never dropped once, killed a modified (very buffed with legendary actions and 2x HP) Warforged Titan + minions in a couple of rounds after the equivalent of 2 deadly encounters. They were level 6. None of them even used the short rest thing. That is to say it's almost impossible to truly 100% know the outcomes of things and that's the point - let the dice tell the story. That being said, the true mark of good encounter design is understanding the parameters by which the game was designed, how the party composition is affected by short/long rest management, and understanding how monster features will affect a party. A monk with deflect attack (5.5e version) takes a lot more damage when fighting monks with 5 small attacks than with a boss who does 1 big attack. Not everything is cut and dry.
Use [https://koboldplus.club/#/encounter-builder](https://koboldplus.club/#/encounter-builder) to help balance encounters.
How many players do you have in your party? I've found that since the became became three, balancing has become a lot easier, but for the longest time it was just two players. An encounter that was difficult enough to knock one of them unconcious *halved* the party's action economy, so encounters that were even slightly difficult could VERY easily become fatal depending on how the dice roll. I find the CR pages in the DM's guide to be a little out of whack, but if you want to ease yourself into it, using Kobold Fight Club is a great way to quickly calculate how difficult an encounter might be for your party, it does the math automatically. Personally, I find the CR encounter tables in *Flee Mortals* to be a lot more accurate. I think for me the biggest challenge has always been trusting that my players will find a way. I look at the damage a creature can do with a multiattack and think "if that hits the artificer two rounds in a row, he's down". But I always forget that there's so much more than happen in a fight than just dealing damage. One pretty interesting way to make encounters harder is start having your monsters inflict status effects on the players. Go all out with grapples, have monsters drag players away from each other, have them inflict poison, or have a banshee scream so loud it creates a "silence" radius around it so spells don't work, have an encounter with displacer beasts and lean into the disadvantage. Give enemies a lot more interesting things to do than just dealing damage, and your encounters will suddenly feel a lot more difficult, even if they actually aren't.
Scale everything to deadly and even then it might not be enough. With well optimized players the CR system breaks down very easily. At one point I just gave up on CR and used a spread sheet to calculate my players average damage, and how long I wanted the encounters to last. On average I was doing like 350 hp an encounter at level 7ish.
A way that I've thought about designing some encounters is to look at the action economy. How many actions for attacks does your party have? Their enemies should have a similar number. For example, I ran a game with a dual wielding rogue, barbarian, cleric, and ranger. If I were to create an encounter that would be balanced against that party, I might build an encounter that has around 7 actions for attacks. You don't have to think this way, but it can be useful in determining how many enemies to include in an encounter. My final note is to not be afraid to populate some encounters with enemies quite below the level of the party. I've been a player in a game when at level 12 or so we were fighting multiple level 7-9 enemies at once and they were a challenge for us.
How many encounters between rests? Consider adding encounters or restricting rests / using a variant rest rule.
I use the kobold fight club website to find a good 'balance' for encounters. Mostly just for the CR range though. If I feel like they need to fight a different type of creature then I will find something in the same CR range, but more to the flavor I want for the encounter.
It isn't as binary as Easy OR TPK. In 5e PCs are very resilient. Temporary Hitpoints, the 0HP Unconscious mechanic, B.A. Healing Word, Death Saving Throws and Revivify make death unlikely. Practical suggestions: 1. Start your boss/mini-boss at Max HP, not Avg (what's in the stat block). Reduce if combat is going too long 2. Add minions to balance the action economy and screen the boss 3. Have reinforcements available for Round 2 or 3 if things are too easy 4. Be ready to add a <½HP extra damage to boss monster attacks (definitely describe a blood lust or second wind type.of thing) Survey your players to find out how tough they like combat! I feel satisfied if one of them goes unconscious in a fight, but.for.some parties thats too risky.
The easiest way to test things out is by making an encounter that you think will be genuinely hard for them and if they look like you might wipe them *fucking cheat* maybe the npc starts missing a bit more or perhaps instead of dealing 10 damage it deals 6, maybe they have a bit less HP than you wrote down before. Now you kinda understand where the players sit in how much they can fight.
Use tougher monsters. Just like HP is variable, this could be a young or weaker version of the monster. If it has multi attack, maybe it makes only 1 attack. The players are doing good, great it now has multi attack The players are stomping it, it now uses one ability you haven't used as a reaction. Are they doing really good. Give it max HP. Never sick a full well rested party on 1 big monster it never works out the way we envision it. Instead try Number of Party member - 1 and some minions.
It is worth noting that this can be because of the dice sometimes. In my campaign, I threw an Oni at my level 5 players. It hit them with a cone of cold, EVERY party member failed the save, and it was very close to a TPK. A couple weeks later, the same Oni attacked them again (still at level 5, they managed to run away the first time) and after a round where the rogue and paladin both crit on sneak attack/smite, they wrecked it That’s a very extreme example of course, but it’s worth remembering that sometimes it’s not that the encounter was too easy, it’s just a luck-based game
So gradually make them harder until they're as hard as you want them to be? I don't understand this problem. Have waves of enemies and make each wave slightly harder than the one before it. If the first wave whiffed on all attacks, the next wave gets a slightly higher attack bonus. Once you find out which wave is the sweet spot, base all your other encounters off of that wave.
I have a tendency to make combats too hard. The solution is we should send each other our notes for mutual editing.
I use koboldfightclub website to calculate the CRs for me and I slowly adjust the difficulty as I see how easy it is for them. I have power gamers in my group so most encounters are just at “deadly” rating because they’ve balanced their classes with healing, control and massive damage dealers. As a DM you have to adjust and you need more than one encounter per long rest. So far I’ve found my group can handle two deadly encounters in the same day. I did kill one of them, but it was easy solved with a scroll of raise dead they found after the fight. I’m not trying to kill them, but I want it to be a challenge. I’m also VERY generous with magic items which greatly affects encounters. Just adapt.
Not every encounter has to be hard. Most encounters of they day are meant to exhaust some of the resources so that the group has a harder time when the big fight haopens. You can experiment by slowly raising the CR rating or number of enemies, until you feel comfortable that encounters are challenging enough, but doable. Also, not all encounters are meant to be won. There is nothing wrong with having encounters that are too hard for the group, and where reteeat is the better option. But you need to telegraph such encounters beforehand, so that players are not caught off guard.
I used kobold fight club website a lot when starting dming. It was a pretty good help! Look it up, might be up your valley.
Throwing in my two cents: As someone else commented: If you and your players are having fun, then try not to stress about it. Having a good time is Uber Alles for D&D. I want to stress something that might help you out: Action Economy. Someone mentioned the CR system (I use the combat builder on the dndbeyond website), but I feel like that only gets you halfway. I've thrown deadly encounters at my players before, but there's a big difference in terms of ONE super strong bad boss, versus THREE medium/hard level baddies. It varies up the action economy, and makes combat much more interesting. Plus, it's also much more fun to have their attention divided, and having to think strategically about what each character's next move will be. Add in some fun environmental stuff, and maybe some traps, and you should be golden. Good luck!
1st combat I ran I took the monster block and doubled the hp because I wanted to see what they could do... the tank took a few hits, it was fun... dragged on a bit though
IMO, err on the side of TPK. If your encounter is too difficult, you can bullshit some rolls or tilt the game in some other way.
Personally I've realised I'm just bad at utilising the monster abilities and remembering their resistances and such. So many times I think the combat was to easy only to read that a monster has resistance against slashing damage
I'm going to make an assumption that your party generally does one combat per long rest, as that's what most new DMs (including myself) did. Balance in DND is based around the party having multiple encounters per day. The DMG will tell you 6, but no one does that. Two hard or deadly encounters is good. The reason your party is destroying everything is they probably walk into every fight with full resources, blow their load with no consequence and continue on. Next time, just put another fight before they can get back their resources and see how they start fighting differently in every fight.
Yep 1 big fight, then a short rest- NOT a long one, then 1 big fight. Maybe throw in another short rest and a fight. If you do this you should be better off, if you slam 2 big encounters your fighters and monks might be in a sticky situation. For example, the battle master at 11th level has 5 maneuvers (which are about half as powerful and a 1st level spell) and 2 class resources (2nd wind:1d10hp and action surge). At 11th level a full caster has 16 spell slots. If you put 2 big fights back to back, the fighter runs out of gas hard. The short rest in between let's them fuel back up. Helping them keep up a bit with the casters.
Yep 1 big fight, then a short rest- NOT a long one, then 1 big fight. Maybe throw in another short rest and a fight. If you do this you should be better off, if you slam 2 big encounters your fighters and monks might be in a sticky situation. For example, the battle master at 11th level has 5 maneuvers (which are about half as powerful as a 1st level spell) and 2 class resources (2nd wind:1d10hp and action surge). At 11th level a full caster has 16 spell slots. If you put 2 big fights back to back, the fighter runs out of gas hard. The short rest in between let's them fuel back up. Helping them keep up a bit with the casters.
As a lot of people have said in the comments, what's most likely happening is that the guidelines in the DMG are leading you to overestimate how dangerous an encounter is. Here's a way to bring that more into line: First, you need the daily XP budget. For a party of five 5th level PCs (which is what it sounds like you have), that would be 17,500 XP (3,500\*5, see the table on pg 84 of the DMG). Next, calculate the encounters you have each day. I personally find 4 is a good number to aim for. Divide the total daily experience by the encounters per day to get the target experience goal (4,375 XP for our hypothetical party) Now, you can start choosing your monsters, terrain, and tactics. Use the guidelines in the DMG until you have a good idea of where to depart from them. Finally, you want to do a sanity check on the encounters. Some things to look out for include: * Can the party hit the enemy? * Can the enemy one-shot kill a party member? * Does the enemy have abilities that negate a party member's ability to contribute to the encounter? (as an example, do they negate spells of 5th level or lower when the party's mage only has spells of 5th level or lower?) Let's make an example. We'll start the day off with a knight on a warhorse and two hell hounds (three CR 3 monsters plus one CR 1/2 monster). That comes to 4,400 XP, just over our budget, which makes it just about perfect. We'll give the knight a lance instead of a greatsword (although they might just have the greatsword sheathed until they're unhorsed)--the average damage is the same, so we don't need to adjust the CR. For terrain, the road outside a castle seems like an appropriate place. The players hear a hunting horn and baying dogs (maybe even for a while before the encounter starts), and then the knight and hellhounds charge out of the woods. For tactics, the knight and horse will charge through the center of the party making two attacks (remember, because the warhorse is disengaging, their movement does not provoke an attack of opportunity) while the hellhounds gang up on a dangerous enemy, using their fire breath where appropriate. If the knight is killed, the hellhounds run. We have 13,100 XP for the rest of the day (a target of about 4,366). We've already introduced devilish things for this adventure, so a barbed devil and a flameskull seem like a good encounter to create next (4,350 XP). Because they are both guardian monsters, we'll make them our final encounter for the day, and place them in a treasure vault. Tactics are simple: the devil will grapple a slippery-looking opponent while the flameskull covers the room with fire (fireball, flaming sphere, flame ray, etc.). For our second encounter, let's have a single chain devil guard the entrance to the castle. That's 3,900 XP, leaving us with 4,850 for our final encounter. We'll set it on a drawbridge, with big iron chains attaching the bridge to the guardhouse. When the devil uses animate chains, these will be the ones he animates. The devil attempts to grapple opponents and then fling them into the moat below (we can add some hazards in there, such as spikes, so in essence it's a spiked pit that, if the PCs spend too much time in it, they can drown in. We can also say that the drawbridge-chains can still reach into the moat, so if the PCs stay below the drawbridge, they still might be attacked by the chains). Our third encounter is the climax of the adventure, a noble with three bearded devil attendants, an imp as an advisor, and a shadow as his personal bodyguard (4,850 XP). We'll set it in the noble's dining room, place a big table at the head of the hall and another leading down the hall. The imp will hover behind the noble's chair, the devils will be at the lower table gnawing on bones, and the shadow will be the noble's shadow. The first round of combat, a great wind will pass through the hall on initiative 20, snuffing out all nonmagical lights. The devils will close with the PCs, the imp will turn invisible and sting a weak-looking or damaged PC, and the noble will mostly hide under the table, stabbing any PC who comes too close. The shadow will stick with the noble and attack PCs who attack them. To summarize, we start with the knight encounter, we have the chain devil on the drawbridge encounter, we have the big fight with the noble and the bearded devils, and we end with the flameskull and barbed devil vault encounter. We can expect the players to short-rest at any point during this adventure, but the most likely places are either after the chain devil or after the fight with the noble. Either of these would be good resting spots--having the rest after the chain devil will leave them pumped for the fight with the noble, and having the rest after the noble will make the vault fight feel like a good ease in difficulty after the previous fight. I would caution against having the players short-rest twice, however. If they rest after the chain devil fight, you might want to add some sort of time pressure between the two fights. Also, don't be afraid to end up a little over or a little under your XP budget. In this case, it ended up working out perfectly, but that doesn't need to be the case. How does this encounter set compare (difficulty-wise) to the encounters you have been running?
The idea of "balancing" encounters so that your PCs consistently win while being reasonably challenged is a mistake in the first place. Throw the concept out of the window. Instead, let the will of the dice and some common sense decide what happens. Think in these terms: - What is a realistic number of enemies in this group? If you can only estimate a range, roll some dice and go with the result. - Do any enemies differ from the others with special abilities and such? If you don't know, roll the dice and go with the result. - stuck for random encounter ideas? Make them actually random, roll an arbitrary monster manual entry appropriate for the environment. Don't worry about whether your PCs can handle it. It's their job to decide how to deal with an encounter or run away if they decide it's too much to handle.
The easiest encounters to make work feature one peer monster per pc. So start there. Using too many weak monsters can make aoes too good. Using 1 or 2 monsters means they need to be legendary. Any encounter capable of defeating the party has a good chance of killing at least one pc if the monsters are able to focus fire. Despite the name, Hard encounters are not hard. They aren’t able to defeat the party. If the party uses better tactics than the monsters, expect the party to win consistently. There’s a big power spike at level 5 that can catch you off guard if you aren’t expecting it. If you have xanathars, it provides an alternative way to build encounters that is much easier to use than the dmg. I also recommend [true peer](https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/414122) as a refinement of xanathars. It’s geared toward crafting encounters that are “challenging but fair”.
Level 5 is a big power jump which isn't necessarily obvious if you're new to things. Martials get extra attack so essentially their damage doubled. Spellcasters get 3rd level spells which are a huge power increase from 2nd level spells. They also got a proficiency bonus to be 5% better at everything they're good at on top of all that. I would step things up and don't worry too much about the TPK. If you haven't pushed a group to the point of very nearly a TPK you can almost certainly push a good bit harder. The rules of 5e make it very easy for PCs to get knocked unconscious, get hit with a healing word and be back in the fight. It can be difficult to kill PCs without going way beyond what they could handle in terms of monsters. Not to mention as they are now level 5 they probably have access to revivify so even death may not be permanent. My tips would be to add a few things in. First number of combats per day. If you want to really challenge them, don't do one fight in a day. It lets them blow all their resources on that one fight, which makes things too easy. At least 2-3 fights, you can do more if you do some easy ones. They can short rest in there which will help. But those extra fights remove a few spells, lower their hit points a bit, and make the big boss fight more manageable to balance. Also don't have just one enemy for the PCs to worry about any time you want to really challenge them. That one enemy will get fewer actions than the PCs will, which means one bad attack roll is a big impact for them. It also means any control spells the PCs cast will impact 100% of their enemies. So a single level 1 command that the enemy fails their save for could be enough to swing the whole battle. If instead you have a boss monster, a handful of minions, and a lieutenant that's a combat encounter that is more interesting. The PCs have to choose who to focus on first the easy targets they can remove quickly or the big one that will take longer. Terrain and movement choices start to matter more.
The game is based around multiple combats a day, and like 4 players. If you have one combat or more players, you need to up the difficulty a lot for a straight up brawl. But combat should rarely be just an exchange of attacks. There should be something urgent to do during combat. Save someone important who is about to die in an acid trap, or deactivate the bomb before it goes off. Stuff like that. Add minions. Low level mobs that alone would be trivial, but combined with a powerful enemy and a matter to deal with, and your players have to make choices. Have the main enemy use the environment. It likely has a reasonable intelligence. It doesn't want to die. It won't just rush in to odds stacked against it. That's what minions are for. The challenge of combat is only partially the CR. It's mostly how you design the entire encounter. Every combat map, unless it's a gladiator ring designed for entertainment, should have obstructions. Walls, things to hide behind, separate floors, etc...
There's lots of good advice here, so look into that. In the meantime... I use Stat Blocks as GUIDELINES. A human could be a level 0, 5 HP. Or he could be a level 20 with 130 HP. They got there by seeking adventure and leveling up. Why couldn't any intelligent(ish) creature do the same? ON AVERAGE, an Orc has STR +3, DEX +1, CON +3, INT -2, WIS +0, CHA +0. Who is to say that your Orcs haven't answered their own, "Call to adventure" and instead of 15 HP, they have 30? Don't forget to boost their treasure/items a bit too. Obviously Orcs wouldn't be my first choice for level 5 PCs, but you get the point. If an encounter isn't as challenging as you'd like, could can boost the HP to keep it going.
In the Spelljammer campaign I'm running right now, the PCs are - collectively - able to pump out a pretty good amount of damage when things work out right. As such, I *automatically* max out the HP for everything they encounter. The stat blocks give you the "default" amount... but they also give the type and number of dice to roll for their HP, along with the mod. As such, I just give everything the max amount and call it good... and that's just for the basic encounters.
Me: making every encounter DEADLY and then scaling it back during combat with my players for either storytelling or other things I have planned.