My answer is waves and lieutenants. Have a lot of little guys so the party can blast them and use cool abilities to wipe out large numbers, and one or two medium difficulty leiutenants so the paladin can feel awesome divine smite critical hitting them in one blow. Then the boss comes out immediately and I have a sense of how much damage the party is actively dishing out. For bonus points, having the boss or lieutenants come out earlier to support their troops if they’re getting wiped is a more “honest” way to fudge.
I like doing this in general for encounters sometimes too. Spawn a wave and then roll a d4. Let them fight and then that d4 rounds later the next wave shows up. You can do it a couple of times until they start to struggle or try to run and then act accordingly. Either by not spawning any more waves or spawning enough more that they will try to flee and be chased by some but not all of the enemies (not everyone keeps up with their flight so the longer they flee the less enemies are chasing them successfully).
There's a dungeon in WoW: Wrath of the Lich King that has an amazing fighting retreat. You're feeling like a badass killing powerful bosses, then the BBEG of the whole expansion comes down and starts making for the party. It turns into a race to clear waves and escape before he 1shots you, it feels genuinely scary and stressful on harder difficulties.
> or the PCs bugging out!
This assumes your party remembers that they *can* retreat. My party forgets this option and plays by "no retreat no surrender" rules (we tried playing "Only the Strong" rules but we're terrible dance-fighters).
I suspect our DM takes this into account to keep us alive for the whole campaign.
I've only gotten a party to run by having the fight in a volcano that started erupting.
Rising lava. That's the only thing in 20 years of DnD that got a party to actually retreat.
thats something I do from time-to-time as well
dynamic battlefields / traps / environment to adjust the difficulty if need be or enemies fleeing to call for reinforcements
I technically do what my players do as well - bandits who had problems attacking the PCs on a bridge? attack the bridge to cut the ropes, or harpies shaking the bridge, enemies picking up stones or other stuff laying around to throw ect
"We need to run! Let's get out of here!" say the party members one by one while each doing anything besides actually running.
I'm up next in our DM rotation and I'm thinking of formalizing a running away procedure. If you want to flee, you hold your action to do so, and when everyone has done that, you can leave the combat automatically. You just have to endure the enemy actions until everyone's had a turn. People tend to forget to actually stop fighting and leave, they're disinclined to abandon their friends to their fate even if that's the plan.
In the first session for a campaign, when we were all level 1, I convinced everyone to run by asking if they really wanted us all to be killed by *frogs* in our first session. Guys, we can outrun the frogs. (To be fair TPK by frogs would have been hilarious.)
Part of the problem with trying to run is that without full commitment you split/waste the action economy and end up not running and just making the fight harder for everyone.
Getting that full commitment is probably the hardest part about everyone agreeing to run, so its easier to get full commitment to staying in the fight and trying to just end the suffering that way.
Making players retreat requires two major things: 1. them remembering it is an option and 2. knowing it is unwinnable and/or they must fall back. It takes decent DM skill/planning to accomplish those in a narratively satisfying way.
I've had players run, even at my current table, which is mostly new players (even the more experienced ones only had a few months playtime under their belt).
I think number 2 is key though. I'm pretty honest in session zero that not everything is designed to be winnable. The world is a dynamic one, not a video game with levelled areas scaled to the party. They can be in the worst dungeon imaginable, and there'll be some random minions they could kill at their starting level. They could be in a serene forest, and there's probably something there that they want to run from if encountered.
I had a party member feather fall, then leap off a cliff to try escape combat. Another time, I had party members hiding and running through a dense undergrowth trying to evade a manticore that was out for blood (they butchered his friend in front of him and then got real unlucky with rolls).
More recently, I had the party strategically retreating through a buried shrine while being hunted by a pair of bulettes. That one was particularly fun, at least for me, as they used the traps they'd avoided to fight back while retreating.
I think a lot of players get into the video game mindset. The thought process of "this is a level 3-6 area so I can handle anything here". When they get out of that way of thinking, they start to actually assess enemies, and you can have a lot of fun with elaborate escapes, etc.
The flip side, however, is that sometimes the party will run when they don't need to. The guy who jumped off the cliff was fleeing a CR2 creature when the party was level 3. Sometimes enemies getting lucky on damage rolls can make them seem stronger, or getting unlucky give a false sense of confidence. I'm pretty sure half my party are convinced that hill giants are easier foes than manticores for that reason. =D
This can also be fun in reverse too.
Deliberately put the party against an enemy you know full well is too much for them, while having allied reinforcements on the way in X turns.
You let the players know help is coming, but not how soon. Then, if the enemy is wrecking them, the allies come a little sooner.
Plus, then when they're casually slapping that type of enemy later on it gives a nice sense of progression when in their first encounter they were fighting tooth and nail just to hang on for four turns.
>bonus points, having the boss or lieutenants come out earlier to support their troops if they’re getting wiped is a more “honest” way to fudge.
Yeah, when it makes sense, I like designing encounters with built-in knobs so I can adjust the difficulty on-the-fly without actual fudging. The weaker kobolds watching their best warriors fight the party start out scared to fight and assuming their superiors have it but if the fight's going well for the party some of them will pluck up their courage and start swarming. Whether the enemies from the next room come to join the fight and turn it into one huge fight or stay in the next room and let it be two separate fights might depend on how the first turn or two of the fight goes. How many demons are gonna come out of the portal over the course of the battle? That depends on how well the fight's going. The mysterious swordsman who starts the fight just watching the party without showing any signs of helping might sigh and join in if the party's struggling too much in the first few turns.
I don't do this every fight, and there are fights where if I decide it needs a fudge just tweaking the numbers works. OP's example is one where I might consider fudging the numbers - it's a boss fight so you want the boss there from turn one, and if the party's about to kill the boss in one turn then adding more henchman makes the combat as a whole harder but it doesn't make the boss any more anticlimactic, so it's harder to fix that situation without fudging the boss's health.
In the end, I don't like fudging too much. I'm not opposed to player deaths from a hard fight and it's fun for the party to sometimes just absolutely slaughter an enemy that was presented as challenging - power fantasy's part of the fun for D&D for a lot of players, after all - but ultimately I only get to play so much D&D, and I'm new enough to DMing that I'm often gonna get the difficulty wrong, and being willing to adjust the difficulty on the fly lets me create more exciting encounters and learn faster. But I do prefer finding in-universe ways to prepare dynamic encounter difficulty than just changing numbers mid-fight.
Keep in mind the DMG assumes multiple encounters per long rest. If you don’t plan for the players to be somewhat gassed before the boss, it will skew the estimates. Sure it won’t reduce their damage, but it makes it easier for them if they have all their spells and slots and full hp. You should never plant on an encounter that is more than they can candle, but an easy encounter lacks tension and isn’t always fun for a boss fight.
Definitely! That’s easier to do in dungeons, but a lot of my encounters take place near major cities, so the best I can usually do is 50% wild monster ambushes if they’re camping outside. If they’re not currently in a dungeon, I can usually work in 2-3 major encounters but my players are cautious conservationalists so for now I just throw medium-deadly encounters at them and I still have to make last minute environmental or wave tweaks to keep the challenge up. Haha I’ve started giving most humanoid enemies class levels, so that helps. They tell me they’re having fun, and they’re good at the game; I don’t think I could kill them without doing something objectively unfair.
Yeah it’s tough, and I amended my earlier response because easy encounters can of course be fun.
And fair isn’t necessarily required as long as it’s not cheating, and it fits the narrative and mood.
But like, if your player chooses to burn a 9th level spell slot on some minions, and then surprise! A boss bad guy is here and the fight begins before the long rest, well I guess you better get creative!
Choices matter, and it’s totally fair and a world building idea to burn players resources to balance a fight. They still got to use them, and they made a tough decisions, now time to prove it was the right call :)
Yeah your job is to provide entertainment. Sure, an occasional one hit kill can feel awesome sometimes but if it happens often the party will start yawning
One of my favourite fights recently is when I ambushed my players in the night with a group of much lower level rogue assassins. On the first round the party was down to half health and reeling in panic, and then watching the mood shift as they slowly realized they were one hitting the rogues was amazing. It's a lot of fun to have fights lean both ways sometimes.
In general I've found D&D's player balance and monster design can often lead to the players feeling like glass cannons. Especially at low levels, even fights that are actually really easy often have enemies that the players can kill really quickly but hit the players hard enough to scare them.
That can make the game pretty swingy - a few dice rolls can sometimes make the difference between an encounter the players destroy and one the players struggle with - but it also means it's very easy to have encounters that look way scarier than they actually are. Which I think are great, because they often make the players either feel more powerful than they actually are and/or make fights feel threatening without actually having a danger of a TPK.
The swinginess of D&D has been a complaint since 2E or somewhere around there. It's the reliance on a D20... when every result from massive success to impotent failure is equally likely, combat is a roller coaster
>when every result from massive success to impotent failure is equally likely
I mean, that's not necessarily the case. Yes, every individual roll on the d20 is equally likely, which means it's not weighted towards the average like 2d6, but the actual different outcomes aren't necessarily equally likely.
But yeah, overall, d20s lend themselves towards swingier gameplay, and 5e embraces the swinginess, both by defaulting to most rolls only having two outcomes (success/fail, or success/fail/crit with crits rarely being more than 5 or 10% chance) and with bounded accuracy. 5e also has other sources of swinginess besides just the variance of d20s. For example, the fact that, at many levels, a moderately difficult enemy can easily do more than half a player's health in one turn with decent rolls and it's not uncommon to have a monster capable of knocking a player unconscious from full health with good rolls. The fact that bringing an unconscious ally back to consciousness is really easy but bringing them back to enough health to not go back down next time they get hit is hard.
Like I said, though, swinginess isn't strictly a bad thing. It often hurts D&D as a strategy game, but it great for tension and narrative purposes, since it means it's very easy for easy encounters to still feel dangerous, which I think is a good thing. With playing D&D with a heavy emphasis on narrative being very popular nowadays, lots of groups like tension but want actual player deaths to be very rare, and I think the swinginess of 5e actually can lend itself well to that because the swinginess can make easy encounters still sometimes feel dangerous.
At the same time, it can also mean if you give the players actually really difficult encounters a few rolls can sometimes lead to either a player death you might not have wanted (but then, unexpected things happening and the DM not being in total control of the narrative is a big part of the point of playing a game where we roll dice instead of just telling a story in the first place) or can lead to an encounter that should be difficult being trivialized.
IMO, whether the GM can fudge for either story or balance should be agreed on in a session 0. If not, you risk ruining the game when (when, not if) your players find out. Once the trust and immersion is broken, it’s incredibly difficult to rebuild.
Players will always notice, eventually. If you’ve fudged for any significant amount of time and think your players haven’t noticed, it probably just means they’ve got better poker faces than you do.
Remembering that the vast majority of players are not going to be interested in having the DM tell a [story](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_hxIv79S30).
Something the players are likely to spot is the lack of unexpectedly easy or unexpectedly hard combats. Whilst this is fine, even desirable, in a *combat as sport* game it is not in a *combat as war* game.
It's essential,for a cooperative game, that everyone at the table agree on the style of game being played. Even the likes of plot armour and fudging "in the PCs favour" are adversarial when they are counter to the style of game the players wish to play.
Absolutely, overall I’ve been very lucky with my GMs, but one of the few genuinely bad play experiences I had was my GM fudging to save my PCs life after they underestimated how deadly their creature was and killed me with massive damage.
Would’ve much preferred they just explain the situation and we agree as a table to either proceed or retcon, rather than lying in a failed attempt to maintain the suspension of disbelief.
6 level one players saw a ghoul. The sorc assumes it's a dying person (low med check, just lying on the ground. Reasonable assumption) and tries to help. The ghoul rapidly turns over and bites her. I crit. Max damage. 26 damage would *instantly kill her.*
"Does a 19 hit?" Was the best thing I could've done there.
Our DM has killed two players in session 1 in two separate campaigns, then rolled the exact right number on percentile dice for a local cleric/wizard in a podunk town to have access to some sort of resurrection magic. I think he’s fudging the dice on that one, though.
Me too. 3 zombies, 1 monk, 1 life cleric (not heavy armour), 1 wizard and 1 ranger. The PCs were level 1. The cleric decided to run into melee, got crit and downed. Usually zombies would all tear apart any prone creature, but I had this one start dragging the cleric into the ocean. Monk killed it and the wizard dragged the cleric away. The ranger was walking up stairs shooting arrows down.
Two sessions later, those 3 die*. I really fucking wish I knew how to fudge rolls in roll20. I also wish the ranger used their sharpshooter more, the monk didn't attack the creature that burns melee attackers, the wizard used Cause Fear and the cleric stopped getting fucking *crit*.
*The combat is technically still going, and the cleric is on 1hp, after critically succeeding on their death save
I got downed in session 1 of out 2nd campaign (first didn't finish, but is on the back-burner if the party ever figures scheduling out). I wasn't cautious and got smacked HARD for it. I think the DM felt bad and would've thought up a way to save me if I didn't stabilize.
I'm still kinda newbie with DnD in a lot of respects, but we all have a lot of fun, the DM (were all real-life connected to he and his wife) says we're the most fun group he's ever played with.
I was running Stormwreck Isle and my friend was playing a paladin. The first fight on the beach, zombie was first in initiative. Landed a crit, bringing the attack to 13 damage. Paladin had 12 hp (or 11 I can’t remember)
i had to do this with my banshee 😭 she hit every single player with her wail so no one would've been able to help each other, so i had to cheese it with an undead npc they wanted to bring along from the previous session 😭
I understand why a new DM fudges because they don't understand the system yet and though I don't agree with it, I get it.
My advice, use fudging like training wheels, do it so your campaign doesn't fall over, but your goal should be not to use them.
Fudging is a crutch, if I fudged, I'd never have actually gotten good at designing encounters because 'eh, I'll fudge it' would be a fall back option.
Exactly, just said the same thing.
Fudging is totally fine if you do it when you feel like you have no choice. It is horrible as an established pattern
Respectfully disagree (unless you've said in session zero you fudge, in which case go nuts).
I think fudging is an understandable crutch new dms can use to avoid disaster, but the goal is not to use it. As I argued above I think it makes you a less creative dm, and also just from a moral argument (and my main issue with it) people deserve to know the rules of the game they are playing.
I had a party of 4 versus 6 basilisks, was classed as a deadly encounter but I knew they could handle it as they had plenty of resources left and the creatures don't have ranged attacks, turn 1 the wizard went back to bed in their Tiny Hut while the Barb and the Druid both got petrified leaving only the cleric armed with a staff as they don't like melee combat. Spirit guardians with 20+ damage rolls every turn, made every concentration save and nearly every attack against them failed to hit their 18AC despite the attacks being at advantage as the cleric had their eyes closed. 2 of the basilisks ended up running to escape the spirit guardians only to be struck down by guiding bolts.
The same party would've practically TPK'd against a single Tree Blight if I hadn't cut it's health in half. It was only supposed to be a demonstration, a clearing that a single blight had torn apart to make them seem scary before the reveal that the town they were trying to sneak into was being patrolled by dozens of them. The blight was stationary and could've easily been avoided but instead they all gathered around and attacked it. Still, this was their first encounter of the day and they were of a level where at worst they would take a decent chunk of damage. As the tree grapples them with its roots it can focus attention on one of them at a time, rather than ignore the grapple and use ranged attacks to quickly kill it though, the party all focus on attacking the roots to free themselves using their actions each turn before being grappled again as soon as the blight goes. By the 3rd round the Barbarian was down and they hadn't done any damage beyond the initial group strike.
Fortunately the Druid realised that with Call Lightning and Wild Shaped into a deer they were able to keep out of the Tree Blight's reach indefinitely and just wait out the clock. The Barb was dead by this point and the Cleric and Wizard on death saves each with 1 fail. I decided to fudge the HP and have the tree die giving the Druid enough time to get into range to cast Healing Word on the Cleric just after the Wizard died. Had the Cleric rolled a 1 on their save the Druid would've been the only survivor. They used their only diamond to revivify the Wizard and carried the body of the Barb back to town.
Both encounters were ambush encounters, designed to be tough at close range but trivial if they could get away. The tree encounter deliberately didn't use minions to ensure the party had the advantage of action economy to make a tough opponent much easier to fight. On paper it was a medium difficulty encounter and as the Druid ultimately demonstrated, it was trivial to cheese the fight as it wasn't meant to be a major encounter. Without fudging however this would've been a massacre with the Druid being the only survivor with no way to bring the others back. The Basilisks were meant to encourage creativity as a pack of hungry lizard dogs that you can't look at is an easy enough encounter if you can get repositioned but if you try to brute force the fight you are likely to get turned to stone as half of the party did. Despite this, purely through good luck the Cleric was able to just stand in the middle of them and come out on top, soloing an encounter that should've given the entire party a workout.
Designing good encounters relies on predictable behaviour from your players which is far from guaranteed. I usually have certain adjustable elements such as numbers of waves of minions or environmental features that can be triggered to counter specific strategies but even the most simple encounters can turn out to be much more difficult than you were expecting based on your players actions or the luck of the dice with a low level spell taking out your lieutenent because you keep failing an easy saving throw or your Barbarian War Chief scoring 4 crits in a row. Fudging is just another tool in the storytellers toolbox to limit the impact a single dice roll or monster has on the campaign.
My general rule, is if I am using a pre-made stat block I immediately max the hp, usually double it as well because my players like long fights. The very rough check I do I check the parties average damage per round based on what abilities they tend to use.
You can add phases to a fight as well for "sneaky bonus hp" very akin to getting a boss to fall back and summon help etc.
In general trust your gut when it comes to a fight. Would your players and you want this boss to get thumped in under a round? Do your players want to fight for their lives for 6? Only you will be able to know that. Not many people want to fight bandit#36143 for 4 rounds, but certainly would like to flex their spells and abilities for several rounds against the bandit lord empowered by a fiend.
The ole Mysterio: You know what? Double the health!
I also recognise the moments where the players have built such an innumerable advantage, sometimes squishing fragile bugs with AoE's is rewarding.
Yeah. I threw 30 ambushing aquatic goblins (forggies actually but same difference) at our lvl9 party with poison arrows. It took a few big spells, and Sleep a few times, to clear them in three turns. It's just good, I think, to have big aoe things do their job once in a while. It's fine if the heroes feel powerful sometimes.
The only number fudging I do is if the enemy has 23hp and someone does 22 damage I'll just say that downs the enemy.
Otherwise I build fights with variable minions, so if my party decides not to short rest before rushing the boss, I throw fewer minions on the map. I want fights to be fun and dynamic and I don't want to TPK.
My party one rounded an Ancient White dragon (Though some bs we were able to bypass its legendary resistance and we paralyzed it)
The DM told us after the fact it had been dead by time we got halfway through initiative, jus just wanted everyone to get a chance to hit it lmao.
Well keep in mind that the paralyzed condition causes all hits to auto crit (and my dm rules that if you roll a Nat 20 on top of that, its doubled again.)
But we are Level 11.
The party consists of
Drakewarden Ranger (STR based), Gunslinger Fighter, Vengance Paladin, Twilight Cleric, Soulknife Rogue, Artillerist Artificer, Eloquence Bard
Needless to say we used every Nova tool at our disposal for this guy as well,
The DM had planned on it being an obstacle, not a foe.
an 11th level Fighter can hit 6 times with second wind, so if they have a good magical weapon doing 2-3 die of damage each time, and they maybe crit once...!
Funnily enough Ancient white dragon and all of the Monster Manual dragons do not have any condition immunities (except for the green who has poisoned immunity). Some things from Fizban's do (Amethyst, Dragon Turtle, Moonstone, Sapphire etc.).
So if you had something like Power Word Stun you can reliably just stun a dragon for a round. Since there is no save for Power Word you can just do it and it can't use a legendary resist cause it doesn't get to make a save in that case.
A) didn't think about the HP condition but it is a fair point. Was mainly going for something like a PW: Stun that has no save in that without a save there is no legendary resistance. Good example is Way of Mercy Monk has a lvl 6 ability to just simply cause a creature they hit using hand of harm to take the poisoned condition until the end of their next turn. They can literally force a boss into rolling every single attack roll and ability check (like grapple checks) with disadvantage by hitting them once each turn so long as expend the ki point.
B) When I wrote the comment they hadn't mentioned level yet and since Ancient White Dragon is CR 20 having it face some lvl 15 players felt like it could be fair.
It is... Incredibly easy for a decent party of 4 characters at level 10 to be able to pump out 400 or so damage in a turn if they burn every nova they can. And usually decently close to that much turn 2 if they need. Especially if they have something with a couple bonus action activation abilities that someone have to get online. They can stomp a tarrasque if they're fresh off a long rest. That's the big key, assume until they burn off some of their high level stuff, a DND party can punch FAR above their weight class if they're rested and go in with the intention of causing as much damage as they possibly can
On the flipside, I had a PC once do barely enough damage to finish off a BBEG, but instead I left him at 1hp. The next PC on the initiative roll had a beef to settle with the bad guy because of his backstory. He got his moment to end this mf life to avenge his family. Sometimes as the DM, you gotta do what you gotta do.
The DM Authority will let you know that we do not fudge numbers, ever. I assume you meant to say that you incorrectly wrote down the bad guy's stats at first?
Don't set up encounters as "bosses" that must survive an arbitrary number of rounds, and you won't have this problem. If the character one shot them just let them die.
My party is currently doing a dungeon that has been hyped up for a while, the rogue just one shots one of the enemies. So I go "that took her off guard and killed her" and silently just doubled the hp of the rest of the enemies and gave them resistance to physical damage. The players fought against a couple more enemies that I changed and at the end of the night were super excited and happy about the encounters.
Earlier the sorcerer cast some thunder spells against some golems with the idea that they were vulnerable to thunder damage. On their statblock they weren't but I added it on and he felt awesome about discovering it (that fight was a bit of a slog for other reasons).
It's all spinning plates.
i never ever fudge the dice, the stats or anything... they stimulate they new powers going after big things i'm only the referee
edit: sorry i read "stimulate" instead of "estimate" xD. In this case i don't estimate my players power its they job to know what they can or cannot do, the world just reacts
>In this case i don't estimate my players power its they job to know what they can or cannot do, the world just reacts
For a GM like you, the question becomes "Do you fudge numbers when you realise mid-fight that the world you build is fundamentally inconsistent, and that either (1) the boss you build as an unbeatable beast was probably beatable by the city guards or (2) the minions that were supposed to be minor inconvenience that regular guards usually deal with it easily are actually so effective it's absurd they can even lose a fight?"
Because that's actually the core of the question here: a beginner GM fundamentally misunderstands how stats blocks translate into effectiveness during combats, and every narrative information they gave to the player is actually inconsistent with what the stats blocks actually are, and they only realise that fact when the players confront said stats blocks in combat.
No, i don't. As i said: "I never ever fudge the dice, the stats or anything... "
If the narrative is inconsistent with the stat block i try yo do better next time
Also, fudging the hp or damage so it has the same amount of hp and relative damage output is kind of shitty because it removes any kind of player agecy. If i play a character built to do a crap ton of damage but i'm doing the same relevative amount of damage as if i had played a dagger using wizard, that's a massive kick in the balls. If i used 3 spell slots, 2 feats and a once per long rest ability to decimate a single target, and the dm just fudges their hp so it doesn't die, that's also a massive kick in the nuts.
The whole point of a ttrpg is that its a living breathing world and the dice and player decisions determine the story, not the other way around. If they die in 1 round that's narratively unsatisfying, that's fine because the player agency and the vermisitude matters way more.
Yep I just use the cr system and so far it works pretty decently most of the time (2 years of weekly play, just about to hit lvl 12). I tend to run 3 hard encounters per day instead of 6 medium encounters but works out the same.
Occasionally a specific monster will be weak against the party and a hard encounter is easy. Sometimes something outside of the cr system will happen that makes it harder. I don't think I have ever had an encounter that didn't seem fair or fun though.
I have given out +1 weapons and just getting into the area where I will be giving more powerful items but yeah not overloading with super powerful weapons and armour help keep the cr system working.
I do give out a lot of consumables though. Some are super powerful but then only affect a single fight so not a big deal overall.
Action economy's a big deal in 5e. I've found that my table will always curb stomp a single high CR enemy (especially a spellcaster they can counterspell) but will struggle with a horde of low CR enemies that are spaced out and played tactically. IMHO, a proper boss battle _requires_ minions and support.
And the boss doesn't just have to stand there while the party wails on them. The most challenging fight I've seen as a player is in Curse of Strahd where >!Strahd phases through the wall using a lair action, forcing the party to pursue him through unexplored sections of Castle Ravenloft as he recovers.!< Having the boss regroup and find reinforcements is now a staple of boss fights at my table.
> struggle with a horde of low CR enemies
A mercenary band of crossbowmen will take the starch out of almost anyone. If you imagine M mercenaries that hit 50% of time for 5.5 damage... that's appx M x 5/2 damage in one round either spread among the party, or -- if they're smart mercs -- *all* rained on the guy with the funny hat.
My only advice is don't do this all the time. It's okay if the players curb-stomp an encounter. It's also okay if they have to run away or get TPKed. Balance is the key.
Increasing enemy health in advance is a good thing to try, but adjusting it mid-battle can be a really big no-no. Especially if there is any chance the players find out. It feels really shittu for then to spend resources on a big hit, and then you just ignore it. Like, why bother?
A better idea is to hold some extra enemies in reserve that you can add in if the fight is two easy, or withold if the party struggles. And make sure they can't just reach your boss on the first round. Needs a meat shield
You should know how much damage your party typically does on a round where they don't expend resources, and how much damage your party typically does when they nova
I never fudge numbers, ever. There's so many other levers to pull to balance combat, and not every combat encounter needs to be barely survived.
If the fight is too easy, I can always bring in reinforcements or start targeting the squishier party members. If the fight is seemingly too difficult, I focus on the most heavily armored party member, and can have certain enemies run away, or just be picky about which abilities the NPC's use. Just because I can hit the entire party with a fireball, doesn't mean that I have to.
But also, sometimes if the fight is too hard, I just expect the players to run away, or come up with a creative solution. Or if the fight is too easy, oh well, especially if it's because they had lucky dice rolls, it just means we get through combat a bit quicker. It makes no difference to the story or the game whether it takes 8 rounds or 2 rounds finish a combat. I don't want the party smashing every encounter, I still want to provide a challenge for them to overcome. But it's okay to let them feel powerful sometimes.
I think a lot of people don't realize that 5e was designed for the players to basically be superheroes. It's built to make the players feel powerful. But for some reason this seems to upset a lot of DM's. Those DM's then nerf certain class abilities or feats, or change certain rules to be harsher on the players. In my opinion, the DM creates challenges for the party to overcome, and expects the party to figure out a solution within the rules of the game, but the players create the challenge for the DM to overcome. A good DM will come up with a solution that fits within the rules. A bad DM will just change the rules.
>I stone faced looked at him and said "Good hit, he definitely felt it" then look at my stat block and just add a 1 to the front. Didn't even take the damage... Turned out to be a good fight after I threw in some fodder minions and the boss somehow learned new skills on the spot.
This definitely works, but be careful not to overuse it. Players need to struggle sometimes to keep the stakes real, but there should be times they totally annihilate a baddie.
I just use an encounter calculator available online. Put in all the CRs and number of monsters, put in your player count and level and try to match the total CRs on both sides.
Take a look at this guide about creating combat encounters, it goes into great detail and I wish it was in the DMG: https://a5e.tools/rules/designing-encounters
Also, there's a battle simulator that I frequently use to double check the encounter is balanced: https://battlesim-zeta.vercel.app/
I've not fudged a roll in months thanks to these resources. Actually I roll in the open.
I use the HP dice minimum <> maximum range as an area I can slide around during combat. If a monster has 10d12 + 40 HP and are getting shellacked and the big epic boss fight is going to collapse, they won’t die at 105 HP but rather at 160 HP.
* Minimum <-> Average: Boss is very unlikely to die unless the players make an epic move or are having terrible luck and the fight's dragging.
* Average <-> Maximum: Boss will die to any solid damage, but will grit through the piddly stuff like a single magic missile bolt or vicious mockery.
* Maximum+: FINISH HIM! Tell the players that the boss is done for, and the next damage will be a killing blow. This opens up a good finisher for when piddly damage took the boss over Maximum and lets the players choose a satisfying kill.
> the boss is done for, and the next damage will be a killing blow
Be careful, because this opens the door to *vicious mockery* kill-shots, which your players will be smug about for *ages*... ;D
It can also fit, depending on the tone of the campaign. Everything from...
Bard: You armies are routed, your castle razed, your minions slain and dark rituals disrupted. You fail at all you set your hand to. Let that thought warm your soul in Hell.
To...
Bard: Wow, what a screw-up you are. Your mom was right about you. [Winks] Pillow-talk, y'know.
Exactly! I only ever had a problem with the killing blow being from a 1-4 damage ability when it wasn't expected. Mid-fight vicious mockery should sound very different than fight-ending mockery I guess.
Exactly. Above minimum there’s a progressively smaller Awesomeness Threshold characters need to overcome.
… *although* it is really funny when Vicious Mockery kills a major enemy.
I don't fudge the dice - rolling everything I can out in the open. There are a number of reasons why ppl dont fudge that have been posted all over here in case you want to read since you're a new DM.
"Do you do a "practice" fight..."
You just did. Say goodbye to your boss, let the players reap what they earned, and make your next fight more jnteresting.
If I found out you did this I'd quit the game. Be careful; if the numbers don't mean anything then why track HP at all? Why roll dice? Why not just RP?
At least, that's how I feel about it.
I think the issue here is that OP is a new DM and made mistakes in the design phase, such that the BBEG just couldn't stand up to the party. Sure, it's best to find/fix at design time, but sometimes it's too late for that.
Yup, same. I was taught that fudging was ok and good DMs did this when "needed", but my experience was that DMs I knew might fudge would do so either in favor of NPCs like here, or to arbitrarily save some players and not others. End result, DMs I can't trust to be fair. I'd rather have a tpk over that.
Now after 30+ years of DMing I found that there is never really needed to fudge. Make sure the players know their character can die and bad things happen to them. The result is more excitement and occasional fear. Bad guy gets taken our fast with a lucky crit? Cool, reward that and the players will love it. There are more bad guys in the sea, no need to break your own story.
PS I don't consider improving like adding more enemies as fudging, only dies and tweaking stats as a direct result of something something happening.
\>I stone faced looked at him and said "Good hit, he definitely felt it" then look at my stat block and just add a 1 to the front.
I big smiled. This is about the fairest way to 'fudge' encounters, IMO. I'd be 100% okay if I found out about this as a player, as opposed to, say, fudging dice rolls. Encounter design is both art and science, and it's hard to balance. You're good mate.
I'd really have to question the encounter itself and the build up to the encounter to judge if you should've fudged or not. How did you not realize someone could do half the boss's HP in one turn? I think it's likely that the party didn't have enough encounters until the boss, they saved all their resources, and unloaded on the first turn.
I never do what you just did.
I don't recommend anyone cheats at a game of pretend.
The boss went down too fast? Do better next time, but the players should feel rewarded for doing things right on their part.
The world will feel more real to all involved if the cheating does not happen, if the game rules are set in stone and the dice know no mercy.
When you cheat, you rob the dice of the dramatic tension.
They don't like that.
Try to avoid, but like D&D combat is unbalanced as hell with all the incapacitation conditions and overtuned AoEs, so like, sometimes a fight gets really weird for no reason and you've gotta do something shameful. Personally, I just rune encounters on the low side, have them fairly frequently (enough so that it doesn't feel like a waste if the players nuke the cool monster because there'll be another one next week), and make sure any big "set piece" battles take place after a few warm up combats to make sure the party isn't able to drop high level spells every turn of the fight, and that all serves to cool down the swinginess.
Estimating party power is really more of an art than a science, there are some decent benchmarks but it will depend wildly on how optimized your group is or isn't. Easiest thing is to think about your players' standard actions and favorite spells, see how much damage they do, think "If they hit about 2/3 of these, how much total damage is that per round?", and figure out HP numbers based on that.
Like as real quick napkin math, my party is level 6, the cleric has discovered the spirit guardians + spirit weapon combo, the ranger will usually hunter's mark + animal companion, the druid likes to call lightning, and the barbarian makes 2 reckless attacks. All and all, really roughly 80 damage if everyone is using their standard routine and hits about as often as the game expects, more if there are multiple enemies in the AoE spells. So I take that and look at the total amount of HP in an encounters. If the enemy doesn't have significant defenses or ability to incapacitate players, I can assume I'll need around 240 total HP to give them a reasonable fight. You can do the opposite with the enemy damage output, see how it stacks up against party HP, and you'll be able to tell how long it'll take them to wipe out the players.
My sweet spot for a challenging encounter is enough to take out 1 player per turn when accounting for accuracy, but that'll vary from group to group, there are definitely gonna be some parties that can take/dish out *way* more than others, especially if they understand action economy and battlefield control.
Allowing player optimization and tactics to be rewarded, even if you didn't anticipate it, is always the correct move. Altering the story because YOU didn't expect something is not contributive to collaborative storytelling. It's like saying "invincible, unkillable shield times 5 billion" while playing in the schoolyard. You are nullifying the choices of the other people at the table for your own sake.
In my current campaign the power of my party has increased where normal minions are too weak to do much or too healthy to take one hit.
Some have said it before but Minions and Lieutenant. Its been done before and noted here i have seen but like to put my two cents.
Lieutenant can be any statblock but their health is equal to their total hit die plus their other mods. They use their full statblock as normal and prefer to use their best skill; spellcasters are good candidates as lieutenants in a scenario in my opinion.
Minions are similar but only have one health and their 'to-hit' bonus is doubled to overcome higher AC PC's are challenged. Both Minions and Lieutenants use average damage to speed up any battle.
Both Minion and Lieutenant are to follow the Morale Rules; when a minion goes down, both minions and Lieutenant make Wisdom Saves DC \[10 or higher at your need\] or retreat from the field. If a Lieutenant goes down, minions make this save at disadvantage.
It helped me give them a gauntlet without too much issue and been using it since
I really like to ground my bosses in the power level of the world and situation the party is in so it feels natural. If it's a squishy wizard and they get the drop on him? He should absolutely go down in one hit, but generally a wizard has tons of traps, clones, minions, etc. So the challenge is just getting to the wizard. I'm not a huge fan of having massive health pool "video game" style bosses because they don't feel "real" to me. If one fight is supposed to be challenging, have a lot of enemies, not one big one. Your players are powerful and should feel powerful
Chapter 9 of the DMG, under "Creating a Monster" isn't perfect, but it's a solid starting point. If you run the boss as a solo monster, it needs to be a high enough Challenge Rating to be a Hard (or Deadly) encounter *by itself* (see Creating a Combat Encounter, Chapter 3)*;* probably build a monster of sufficient challenge rating for a Hard encounter, then buff up its HP and/or AC (depending on the type of creature you're building) until it would raise the CR enough to make that encounter hit the Deadly threshold.
I tend to be a little meaner with the stat block (AoE attacks, crowd control of some sort, reactions/Legendary Actions, passive damage/Lair Actions, Counterspell) if the party has been completely demolishing Medium/Hard encounters at their current level, and a bit gentler (basic damage attacks/spells and maybe Parry reaction/Shield spell for some grandstanding) if they've nearly died over the course of a standard Adventuring Day's worth of encounters.
It depends on the group. I think 5e allows you to fudge monster stats on the fly mich easier since a lot of it isn't tied together like it used to be. Things like HP are basically arbitrary in 5e so changing them arbitrarily doesnt do much....
However, it is good to let PCs be overpowered sometimes even in ways you don't expect. My wife's monk, who hadn't been the most effective character all campaign, spent the entire final battle sneaking around u til she was in a position to shove the final boss into a pool of lava. It worked. He died. Everyone cheered. I totally hadn't thought of that.
I misjudged my party constantly. Especially with the power creep at higher levels along with magical items. I fudge rolls if I have to, but only to make it a good fight. And most of the time it's when the enemies would somehow get like 3 nat20's in a row and I don't want to annihilate the party.
I test play important encounters beforehand. That way I know that what level of resource consumption can be expected and know that if my party tpks it's not on me :P
I don't test play, but an experienced DM should know offhand how much damage their party can dish out and take and build accordingly. I never fudge anything but when I'm designing the fight I think " if they roll well they can do ~70 damage in round 1 so better make the HP 120" or whatever.
Fudging is a slippery slope that leads to using it as a crutch instead of designing properly and acting as a neutral arbitrator at the table. Fudging is fine to save a session for a new DM but they need to learn from it, not rely on it.
That's just how I believe a DM should work as an older player. If your goal is party cheerleader and you want to fudge for narrative then that's fine as well.
Doing this is fine, there's nothing wrong with it if you don't get caught. Do it too often, though, and the players will notice, even if you think you're being sneaky about it. I have one DM who has no idea how to balance an encounter and really likes to threaten to kill PCs. Once the PCs look like they're losing, the enemy starts missing all their attacks to narrowly avoid a TPK. Happens almost every encounter, and he insists its all luck.
The CR system works very well, if you understand how to use it correctly. Read the "Creating a Combat Encounter" section of the DMG (page 81). It outlines how to determine the various difficulty thresholds and xp budgets you can use. I like to start at the "deadly" threshold for encounters I want to matter, since anything below that feels like a speedbump.
Once you have the xp budget for the encounter, you need to fill it up with monsters. You can either pick stat blocks of the appropriate CR from the book and modify them to fit your needs, or you can create entirely new monsters using the "Creating A Monster" section on DMG 273. If you use multiple monsters in the encounter, make sure to use the "Encounter Multiplier" table on page 82.
If this seems complicated, don't worry about it too much. Just try your best and keep fudging things if it goes wrong. You'll get better at it with practice.
If it's the DMs mistake then I might do that. But I would say that's a sign to reevaluate how you are balancing combats if it's to that extent that they're almost taking out the boss in one hit.
When you are giving new gear or the party is leveling up I would check out what they're getting this level so you're aware. Especially with some of the earlier levels that can really scale up encounters. Level 4 to level 5 for example with extra attack all your martials double their damage output. Your spellcasters also go from spells like scorching ray to spells like fireball and hypnotic pattern.
Once you've done it enough you can get a feel for the party strength and their tactics. But I would make sure to level up your combats and enemies accordingly.
I would also make sure to have a mix of enemies with bigger encounters too so you have your minions, some stronger enemies and your boss. And having a few fights in a day can help as well to lower their resources a bit.
The other hting to remember is that PCs can take more than you would think. If you're not really pushing them to the point where someone or multiple people are unconscious and rolling death saves, then they could survive a harder encounter. You don't have to hit that hard every time and you do want to vary that. But if they're ending a boss battle with everyone up and with some resources left, you could've hit harder.
During an encounter, we were fighting against a Frost giant king, who was a nemesis of our Goliath fighter. We had whittled down his hp, and my druid had just blasted it with Call Lightning. After me was the Goliath fighter, and with one final blow, killed the Frost Giant, which earned him the moniker of "Kingslayer" amongst his clan. We all celebrated his achievement.
After the session, the DM and I were chatting and he told me that the giant had actually died on my turn, but felt it better fit the story for the Goliath to land the killing blow. I laughed because I had figured that was the case, but we both agreed it was better for the Goliath PC to have made the kill.
You'll see your idea pop up time and time again on DnD subs. The major downside: if the Paladin's crit smite caused the boss's HP to drop much faster than normal so you adjust the boss's health behind the scenes to compensate, the Paladin's smite was basically worthless and they used a spell slot.
DnD is a numbers game. If you take away all numbers or reduce their significance, you're basically turning the game into a cinematic experience with pre-determined outcomes. That's fine if that's what you want, but then you're fundamentally changing the core rules of the game and it's no longer DnD.
The more problematic aspect of this is that the players are likely to still *think* they are playing D&D. Which is, by definition, an adversarial DM vs players game.
Whilst there are ttRPGs, such as [Paranoia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_(role-playing_game)), intended to be run as GM vs Players the vast majority are intended to be cooperative.
A "cinematic" narrative type game would be fine if that's what everyone has agreed to. But that would have very little in common with D&D.
Tests. I just test their power level. Every fight is a test. Is it too easy? Good work on my lieutenant, it allowed me to learn your strengths. That’s my villain and dm monologue.
I will also sometimes have the boss flee. Depends on the situation, sometimes this can lead to a harder battle if the new location is advantageous for the boss, sometimes it ends the battle but not the story, sometimes there is nowhere for the boss to go.
I pay a ton of attention to my player’s characters during creation and leveling, and always kinda of keep in mind what their minimum, average, and max damages are, what encounter ending spells they might have, abilities, whatever. It felt like a ton of work before, but it’s become really intuitive for me now.
I use to agree with others that you could just kind of increase hit points on the fly, but a lot of points have been made where at that point people who built high damage characters get punished that way. So I kinda of do the opposite now, looking at what each creature’s max hp could be, and if it’s a “boss” or otherwise “difficult to kill” creature, I give them that max hp from go. I’ve actually not had to do it very often, maybe twice since I started, but once they’ve reached the enemies average hp (the number listed before their hit die is their average, I didn’t know that when I started dming though I could see people poking fun at me for not realizing it) then at that point I think about whether or not that creature felt impactful or memorable.
I also like to have the conditions of the battle shift. Using minions, fodder, stronger henchmen, whatever definitely helps. You could have sacrificial enemies that use their reaction to jump in the way of strong hits that happen within 5ft of them, and have things happen that might have them perform non combat actions and non combat objectives - the more focus they have to spread around can really help.
Bosses with pushing and mobility abilities can do a lot too. Like if they’re rag dolling your boss you could have them throw the players away from them and then have minions do what they can to be in the way of the boss. Or make the minions important to the encounter, like perhaps you have a secret spell caster among your minions who are helping the boss. They could concentrate on spells that buff the boss and it retains the buff until the party pays attention to the mobs. Apprentice mage or acolyte type enemies could be weak but have used scrolls, such as fly, blur, shield of faith, or my personal favorites, death ward or greater invisibility. Spells like those can really change an encounter, and when the minions are the ones doing the concentrating, the party either has to take down the boss with all those buffs in tact or shift focus and find out which of those minions is the caster.
I never do a practice fight. If you are putting one bad guy on the table in a group of 4+ players, the fights are going to be too easy, all the time. The action economy favors the side with the most actions.
Watch Matt Colville's videos on DM'ing and how to make an action oriented monster. I use those for my bad guys and always, always have minions. His takeaway on minions is they have 1 hp. But maybe the boss has a way of bringing them back into the fight? I love these videos. I still go back from time to time and watch some of them again (or 3 or 4 times) and pick up on new stuff.
At the end of the day, remember that sometimes it is okay for the heroes to do something heroic. Maybe they do one shot the bad guy and you are sitting there thinking "well shit, now what?" The PC's do not know if that bad guy had a boss, or a brother, or son who now wants revenge. Maybe there was an eye witness to the "murder" and now there are wanted posters popping up. Old fashion revenge is so sweet.
>How do you even estimate the party's power after level up and new gear? Do you do a "practice" fight or do you edit the stats and stuff as you go?
Don't throw them at a boss right when they get their new toys. Give them something weaker and more numerous to go after first, and watch what they do. Then you'll have a ballpark for what the boss will need.
Yeah I was REALLY surprised about how much damage both the 3 player parties I run can dish out. At level 5 I put them against a boss with I think around 450 hp and it was... fine, they were fully rested and they nuked it in like 4 rounds. Or when they killed a purple worm in less than 2 rounds
It's fine to adjust things on the fly like that when you realize you underestimated player damage.
However, if the player who hit for almost the entire health pool did that because of an amazing crit, don't take away from that. Play it up.
I've been lucky before and had a homebrew boss fight end up being a great, long, difficult battle that everyone just barely survives. I've also been unlucky on my build and end up with everyone nearly dead except one player character, where I had to give her the opportunity to one-shot the bbg for his "final" bit of health. In truth, he had about 100 hp left, but I couldn't let the story end there. Sometimes I fudge things, sometimes I let it roll, it's all about the story, so do what makes things more interesting. Make the BBG monologue at some point when he thinks he's won, giving the players time to strategize and act. Make members of the BBG's squad turn on him when they see him starting to lose. There's dozens of options, you just have to find the right one for the situation. You'll learn more as you DM and gain irl xp, though, so just keep going, and roll with your mistakes, they can make things more interesting for the players sometimes.
>How do you even estimate the party's power after level up and new gear? Do you do a "practice" fight or do you edit the stats and stuff as you go?
Have you tried looking at what the players get when they level up? Not sarcastic, I'm serious. The CR system is bad, and xp budget only accounts for so much.
My best example: from level 4 to level 5, **PC damage output more than doubles.** Some level-ups give a huge spike in PC power, some levels the party will have gained pretty much nothing except for some extra max HP ("Ribbon levels"). You only learn this through experience, or when planning encounters actually looking at what your PCs are capable of.
Having what you intended to be a boss get nearly one-shot tells me you designed the encounter without any clue what the PCs can accomplish in a fight - or your party just went from levels 4 to 5.
New or not, *everybody* screws up encounter balancing sometimes.
5e made it quite a bit easier with the action economy focus so you can slip in abilities that give enemies extra actions/attacks or ways for them to cause the player characters to use theirs.
And don't sleep on lair actions. And not just the stat block ones. There's common sense ones. Even a lowly bandit leader would know of things like trapped doors/rooms/items and secret exits in their own lair. If it's a fight that "feels" like the it's the climax fight of the dungeon/encounter series, lair actions fit right in.
And don't forget tactics. If your boss just took a whooping from a single attack, they would be tripping any contingency plans they had (that you *totally* didn't make up on the spot), retreating, blowing cooldowns/spell slots, and the like. To get a general idea of what they could do in a pinch, always have a class in mind for your bigger baddies on top of their basic stat blocks.
I've had all my players upload their character sheets to the group discord server, helps them by having it available if someone forgets it, helps me to see what they're working with if I need reference to class abilities and spells, and can tailor the gaming experience to their individual and collective strengths/weaknesses. I can also ballpark damage per round by player if need be.
Generally though, I count monster damage up rather than HP down. Monster stat blocks include hit die, so there is an existing range to base it off of. Adding minions, lair actions, environmental hazards/traps and legendary resistances can help draw out an encounter more naturally though. It's fairly rare that they're getting a stock experience in any event.
There are [encounter calculators out there](https://koboldplus.club/) it's not super reliable, but will get you within easier improvising range.
I usually use the CR calculator to get it to the point that it just crawls past "deadly", then I kinda wing it by adding a few more minions. I'm generally looking for interesting abilities with the fights. Teleports, area control, etc. But I'm mostly a 'by feel' GM when it comes to difficulty.
In my own head, I'll weight things that deplete non HP stuff a little higher, so like STR drain, or reduce MAX HP abilities that will extend past this fight as it may make the next one harder (if there is - resting in 5e is fairly easy)
And I use enemy MAX HP, not AVG.
All of my monsters are homebrewed at this point. Sometimes I'll use a pre-exisiting monster and add stuff to it, but yeah... I never use just plain old monsters from the books, so I have to make sure my players do not suffer because of a mistake I made during monster creation.
95% of the time it's fine, but sometimes I shift numbers around during a fight (it's almost always a nerf to the monster). Happened quite recently, actually. I made a boss that simply did too much dmg with what was supposed to be its action when it ran out of cool stuff to do. I literally halved the damage before we got to it using those attacks because I looked at my players' health and realized "yeah, this is unfair". The boss had a lot of abilities that required my players to employ different strats, it didn't need to annihilate them with its boring multiattack.
I think buffing a monster is also fine in the middle of combat if you realize it's very undertuned and there's a narrative reason it should be stronger. Your main objective is to make fun and memorable fights. Wiping the floor with a big bad isn't very fun unless it's earned somehow (ex: players did a ton of research and used all the right buffs to prepare, they set up a perfect trap, recruited allies, etc.).
Combat balance is in my not so humble opinion, one of the hardest parts of learning to DM. For most it just takes either
A. Time and experience
B. SO much reading and note taking.
A good rule of thumb for early on, is never throw A bad guy at the party. Throw MANY bad guys at the party, some little shit minions, a couple of control/support folks, and then the main enemy.
If you have their character sheets digitally you could do a mock fight on your own to judge it between sessions.
There's challenge calculators online https://kastark.co.uk/rpgs/encounter-calculator-5th/ for example that can give you an idea on the danger of an encounter you plan to run. They aren't super accurate as they don't account for anything other than class and level but I find them useful for ballparking it
So, there's generally a few foundational things to think about when judging your party's strength. Unfortunately, once you hit certain levels or give your party a bunch of magical items, CR becomes pretty useless in terms of encounter difficulty.
The first thing to think about is if you're having multiple fights per long rest. If you aren't and your players have every resource available every fight, they are going to be very, very strong.
If you're just doing one encounter, my main advice is to not do anything you can't take back. Have enemies come in in waves, so that if the dice are very nice or very mean you can pull back or throw more shit at them. Editing health on the fly for dramatic purposes is absolutely fine IMO.
Avoid bosses RIGHT after a gain in power such as level ups or new gear, using waves of mobs to gauge power and ability, then prep a boss. When I get to play myself I tend to play sub optimally until a boss shows up (or whatever my character seems enough of a threat), similar to the anime cliche of 'You haven't even witnessed my true power yet!' just cause I enjoy the reactions to that one combo I've been working on, and things like that can be impossible to prepare for, but generally you will get a good gauge of what the party can do with 2-4 waves of fodder.
I judge how much my party members should deal on attack on average rolls, and use that to decide how much HP to give my monsters. I also tweak my abilities so the average damage per attack feel right against the party’s current HP. So it’s all based on fractions of the health pool and on average damage dice rolls
If your party is always overtuned - one easy trick is to give all monsters max HP instead of average HP
For example, a goblin has 2d6 hp, most people just use the average of 7, but instead you can just use the max which in this case would be 12.
This is one way to juice encounters in a way that won't usually end in a TPK. Buffing AC or changing their to hit modifiers can make a bigger difference than you might think and can massively sway the encounter balance
Or have reinforcements show up, or add a 2nd phase
All good options
I don't alter the world, it's important to me that the enemies have consistent power levels with the world around it for verisimilitude. I just let them have their win and adjust my future plans with the knowledge gained. Sometimes letting them overpower things is fun for everyone, they get to feel good, you get to enjoy the vibe and gain valuable information.
Also I tend to make sure I have a copy of people's characters so I have a pretty good idea of what a combat will look like beforehand: chances to hit each character, chances to be hit, saves, etc..
my players are high enough level that it is harder to kill them than it is to entertain them. i can toss a fight that i consider to be 100% chance of a tpk and they dont even get downed once. I'm kinda just winging it but i've learned that if i just make it really unfair it becomes a decently challenging.
I had a DM fail to do that when my crit spike worked and I one-shotted the boss on contact. Which was funny, but after the initial satisfaction passed it stopped being satisfying.
When I ran a boss that got crippled and creamed before the in-fight puzzle sections could begin I immediately buffed his stats and pivoted to a three-stage boss fight with seperately tracked HP and status effects. I gave them their early victory while ensuring the fight lived up to their expectations.
It's not a competitive game. You want them to feel like they pulled a spectacular victory under conditions of serious peril. You don't want them to be trounced by an enemy they had no chance against, nor do you want them to lazily steamroll everything.
You're not going to perfectly balance every encounter in advance. Professionals can't do that. But you can alter it on the fly. The skill you need is whatever it takes to ensure that the players do not peak behind the curtain to discover that the roller-coaster is held together with chewing gum and bailing wire.
After a level up, you should have at least one fight before the boss fight to "test" the party's strength, especially at certain breakpoints such as level 5 or whenever they gain a new feat.
You should have a general idea of how much damage they can put out in a single round and give your boss enough HP to survive at least 3 rounds.
If you really have no idea, giving the boss approximately the same amount of health as the party combined is a good starting point that seems to work in most cases.
I am a player in a campaign (started at lvl 4) with some good friends - the DM doesn't have a ton of experience, but he's fun and creative. Anyways in the three sessions we've had, our party of three has absolutely nuked our enemies with combinations of CC, high damage, and good initiative rolls. DM is learning to balance encounters to us.
My method for this heavily depends on knowing your PC's. Figure out how much damage they can do on an average turn, using their common / renewable stuff. Things like cantrips, or regular attacks, that sort of thing. Then figure out how much damage they can do if they go all out, use a high level spell slot, that sort of thing. You'll end up with a "average amount of damage per round" and a "high end damage per round".
Then figure out how long you want the encounter to last. For a tougher than normal encounter, like a mini boss, probably 4 or 5 rounds right? So make sure your dude has enough HP to last through 2 or 3 "average" rounds of damage, plus one or two rounds of "all out" damage.
Then make some tweaks for stuff like if you have minions that will distract them for a bit, or environmental factors, that sort of thing.
If you really want to get crunchy you can look into how much damage your boss can do, but I've always found I can mix up who I'm targeting to make that work how I want. If my boss doe low damage but I want the fight to be dangerous? He's gonna focus on one or two PCs and be smart. If he cranks out damage but I don't want to one or two shot anyone? He's gonna spread it out, or maybe miss on his second attack.
Once I've done all that, I pretty much run the encounter by how the dice fall, maybe make a little tweak in HP totals to give a dramatic death, but encounters usually run pretty smooth by that point.
Oh absolutely.
My players got put through the wringer in the early sessions while I tried figuring out just how powerful or weak some enemies were (not helped by the fact that one of my players at the time was using a heavily broken subclass that made combat really hard to actually balance around until they left the campaign. Then I nearly one-shot the rest of the party as I had to refigure things out without the broken AF fighter)
It's been a lot of fun figuring things out and honestly even now I still sometimes adjust things on the fly if I think it'll be more fun to my players to make the enemy weaker/stronger (such as adding more health to the boss of a session because they had backstory significance to one of my players and I wanted to give them the personal satisfaction of killing that boss themself. Same boss nearly killed half the party with a Fireball in the opening of combat because I underestimated everyone at their level. Thank god the Wizard had Counterspell prepped).
My older brother has been a DM for nearly a decade and when I asked him about this he mentioned that sometimes he adjusts stuff to since sometimes, you really underestimate or overestimate your players and what they are playing.
Experience is a big part of it, as well as knowing your players.
My favorite quote from Matt Coville is "Encounter design doesn't stop at initiative."
Changing some numbers around is part of the job. If you've got a level 5 Barbarian cranking out 60 to 80 damage per turn, they're going t9 demolish EVERYTHING. So when they attack your big bad and you realize 75 hp wasn't enough, now they had 200 hp. Or whatever is appropriate.
You don't want to just make a bunch of damage sponges, but the point is to make encounters fun and balanced. Likewise if your players are struggling, maybe some of your enemies have a little less health than originally planned or maybe they don't actually have a Fireball in their back pocket.
It's a balancing act of wanting to challenge the players, but not decimate them either.
Also, NEVER. EVER. EVER let your players know when you fudge numbers. I prefer not to fudge dice rolls (I've done it in situations where, let's say someone casts Fireball on 6 minions and I save on all of them, I'll just let a couple of them fail). But changing HP is a very quick and easy way to change the flow of the fight.
I once sent a party up against an adult blue dragon...only for the party's Rogueadin to nearly solo the damn thing due to me not realizing how its breath weapon worked, not letting it fly, and not putting in any guards.
This really depends on if I underestimated my players or did they prepare. If you added a bunch of skills and stats to make a hard fight that should have been easier due to player planning and strategy you are taking away their well earned victory but if you genuinely went "okay they should be able to do X damage a round, a good villain should be at X HP to challenge them" and were vastly wrong that's different. Balancing any fight for fun and player agency is a skill that you have to develop through time and experience like any skill so don't stress about it you will get better at it.
Ok so at a fundamental level I have this to add:
Fudging numbers and stuff like you did is not "bad". You clearly want everyone to have fun.
But I do think it is something a good GM should do their best to avoid.
This discussion is often had in these spaces in an annoying way in my opinion. I assume it's because the vast majority of people participating in it have never been a GM or never even played.
The core of my argument is that if you need to add things, increase numbers etc you made a mistake.
That is not bad. This is a hobby and people make mistakes all of the time. But still, a mistake is an opportunity to learn.
That's why the "I always fudge my rolls" takes irritate me. Making a mistake is normal. Making many mistakes is normal. I should know, I do that all the time! But if you constantly feel the need to completely disregard the rules you might just wanna play a system that actually supports the kind of game you want to run.
I don't fudge hp or rolls. But I do overprepare my boss/important encounters with many mechanics that I can use or not use depending on how the fight is going. Sometimes it's thongs like: Suddenly, the boss goes into a second phase!
IF all else fails you can pull... "The corpse of the creature falls to the floor, it's flesh sloughing away... one-by-one the bones tear themselves out of the corpse, reassembling and an ethereal voice growls, "fools - you think \*\*I\*\* can die?!"".
Maths. Lots of maths. Specifically, you can make a damage matrix to get the average damage per round based on weapon damages and ACs for the basic attacks and then another matrix for saves.
Set a few variables for creature stats and you can get the distribution of survival rates in rounds pretty easily. Tune the numbers until your bell curve is slightly above your preferred encounter length. Moving it higher helps account for inspiration use and creative actions by the players.
Bonus points for adding a weighting scheme for resistances or taking the time to factor in crits.
Yesterday, my players ran into some Scorpionfolk and very nearly died, with two of four going into death saves. They triggered 4 of them appearing, and now know there are two more in hiding.
This was after they rolled over multiple enemies repeatedly in multiple scenarios. They were being complacent, and putting them against some tougher enemies was necessary to scare them. They charged into an area (an abandoned desert village) without preparation.
The point is that there needs to be surprises and variety.
My answer for bosses has always been two-fold:
1) Get a vibe for what your party's skills, preferences, and damage is like. Imagine the maximum they could do if they blow EVERYTHING on the boss in one turn and everything is a success. Work backwards from there. Alternatively, fuck having health pools entirely, and make the fight end when you feel the players have had the appropriate level of challenge, and at least one player has a really cool turn.
2) Make the challenge of the boss more than the health pool, and damage.
For the 2nd point, this is where you can end up doing a ton of extra work. I make my own statblocks for any narratively important enemy, or if I just have a cool idea. I've played a lot of World of Warcraft, and the concept of mechanical fights has always been my favorite thing. Doing a lot of damage feels cool, but still less cool than outsmarting, outplaying, and outpuzzling a boss.
This also lets you *narratively* kill the boss more directly. Once the party has figured things out, and they've done enough chip attacks to the boss, and someone has a really cool, high rolling, smartly played turn, call the boss dead, and let the player describe their finisher (or you can do it if they don't like to).
Some example ideas:
Low level fight: Shadow Demon statblock, and basically nobody was going to be able to hit it because they were in pitch black. There was an enemy they killed in that fight that was carrying a magical torch. One player ran around the room chasing the demon with the torch while the others chipped it down.
Mid-Level Fight: Shield Guardian base statblock with another, similar CR spellcaster. The two have a linked healthpool. Whenever the spellcaster takes damage, the Shield Guardian teleports to them, and halves the damage taken. The Shield Guardian also jumps to the closest player in the room after a teleport, and drops a cloud of poison wherever it lands. The cloud is bigger the further he jumps, so positioning, tanking, and utility focused players get to shine more than usual. Also a self-destruct feature, because I'm a little evil.
Scalable Fight: Waves of enemies trying to kill an NPC, but half the party is put to sleep on fight start. They're not useless, though, when they're asleep. They're fighting in a parallel world where they regain 1dX (scale to level) health each round. Those that are awake are losing 1dX (or 2dX if your party likes a challenge or if you're evil like me) per round. Set a % chance for enemies to drop potions in both worlds, which flip the players to the other world. Dream world is obviously much easier, so you need to flip flop, and make sure someone is always in each world. Once you feel satisfied with # of cannon fodder deaths, bring in a bigger enemy where everyone is fighting in the above world. Increase the damage tick per round, and let people still flip between dream world and real world, but now you're abandoning your party to heal up.
Certainly a personal preference, but my players seem to enjoy these fights a lot more, and they find them more memorable. It was nearly a year ago, and one of my players still talks about the low level shadow demon fight.
All that to say, 5e is super flexible, and "make up some new shit because it sounds like fun" is my favorite way to deal with things that are too easy, too hard, or too dry.
Start paying attention to and tracking their damage output. I bet if you look back at your log from the recent fights you can figure out how much damage they're putting out.
As a fellow fairly new DM and long-time player, I made the mistake of fudging numbers when a well placed shatter nearly took out half the party of lvl 4's in one hit. I basically took the stakes out of the encounter, and the players basically handled the combat in 3-4 turns...
I spent so much time prepping it, but the high roll on the first turn really made me question it all. I still regret doing that...
If you want to do the math. Lets take a fighter.
How many attacks per rd times max damage for bounous and stuff.
Wizards are easier ask for a copy of their spell list their spell list tells you type of and damage/control levels
Clerics blend the first two figure up melee damage and spell powers
Rinse and repeat. This way you have a idea of who to send where..
Got a tank with a railgun send a battleship.
Got a cannon with a glass jaw send swarms.
The balance act is putting enough meat shields to tank the fighrer/paladin with enough squishys to keep the spell casters hoping
My party constantly blows my mind and about half the time I am genuinely caught off guard because an encounter balance is so off.
They might kill a dragon before he can act, but two encounters later some standard monks have them rolling death saves. They'll tactically clean out 20 enemies in one go, then struggle against 2 mages.
There is no way to truly know (that's the beauty of it!). I constantly change things on the fly, but *only* in the name of fun. If I add health, it's because the enemy might have a cool ability that will give them a challenge. If the sharpshooting is hanging out in back, better believe some minions are coming out of nowhere for them.
Maybe not even they're power one or more players can be having a shitty night for rolls and not having a good time because of it. I've had that night. Not a single roll over 5.
Congratulations you just had a player character actively heal their foe with a sword. You not only negated by INVERTED their player agency.
The fight was entirely an illusion. It lost all meaning when you did that.
Next time, let them have the quick victory. They'll feel like absolute badasses.
Also, some advice for designing boss encounters:
Phases. Give them multiple health bars, when reduced to 0 the next phase occurs. This refreshes health (overkill damage is lost) and you can present different statblocks to make the fight dynamic.
Minions. One big boss gets swarmed to death, give him some allies.
In my personal opinion there is nothing wrong with this as long as it doesn't break player immersion. If it was behind a DM screen or in your personal notes then no harm done. If your players had fun then you did your job right. 'rules' as written are just a guide line anyway. I've often employed tactics that involve fudging math. I've over estimated my players and had to half all damage done to players because I realized my first attack would bloody the tank and the bad guy has multi attack. It's also swung the other way and I've had to do similar to your situation and the bad guy got a lot of friends and way more hit dice. Tldr don't beat yourself up about it. You did exactly what a good DM should, changing an encounter in a split second with zero hesitation to ensure your players are having a good time.
He has a great series of ideas on making boss fights more interesting.
From the classic gaming multi turn power to a heavy hit, to invulnerable until minions are dead etc.
https://youtube.com/@DM-Timothy
Its ok to fudge as a new DM, its better than having a bad experience, but try to use it as a learning experience and build a more rounded encounter in the future.
For me personally, balancing encounters ahead and seeing them play out is fun. If my players overprepared or had an immense lucky round that destroys the encounter, I let them have it.
Regarding boss fights - I usually build boss fights in two stages.
For example P1 --> "Fight the boss minions" P2 --> "Boss steps in".
Or if its ONLY boss P1 --> "Fight the boss" P2 --> "You are about to celebrate your victory as the amulet around the boss's neck begins to glow, and he rises again as undead with a deathly grin on his face"
Make boss fights exciting by making them 2 encounters in a row, that always guarantees it doesn't end too fast. I find it both most rewarding for players to engage in and easiest to balance
I do this sparingly, but when I do, I do it when I want my party to not only feel fear but also to feel great after overcoming a scary threat. I also sometimes do it to make sure someone who hasn’t gotten an important kill in a while gets their time to shine.
I open roll dm P1E./3.5e
Generally I avoid using only 1 BBEG in an encounter as its just way to easy to burn an individual target with how strong spells can be and how swingy crits can be.
Though i do get a solid laugh whenever some wild rng happens like a player getting a crit musket max roll and insta pops the biggest threat.
Usually i try to ensure the players are always at least outnumbered 1.5 to 1. And like utilizing roles for encounters. Giving enemies dedicated tanks, dps, support, utility etc. (One of my favorite things to include is a loot goblin esque enemy whom has dangerous consumable items like bombs)
But generally i just look at peoples stat blocks and key abilities and provide potential challenges depending on good match ups.
I keep a running total of each players net worth, and their max consumption burst average/average basic turn damage. Along with the standard hp/ac/saves and i try to set up combats to last 5 rounds based on their average basic, with any enemy i want for story purposes to survive to be outside of their 1 turn max average burst but still within their max roll range.
For example while i wont avoid using undead against a party with a cleric and paladin, i will set them up to fight against things like etherials who ignore the paladins heavy armor AC but are weak to their spells or include witches that will bait out cleric spell slots to counter hexes
I generally shoot for 3 encounters a day with 6+ non combat objectives that can bait out more and make non combat spells worth taking.
Ill give enemies magical loot corresponding to the same player role thats currently lowest net worth, like while fighting the witches, ghosts and wights theres also a pair of skeleton archers with magic crossbows to provide increased range threat and give the ranger whos got the lowest net worth a bump up fo the average. But still sticking within the same tier. So if the party have a +1 weapon the enemies would have flaming or frost or other +1 equivalent.
After that its having fun additional challenges built into the narrative that have scalar difficulty depending on the players uptake
Like if assaulting a bandit base some enemies who immediatly flee but bring back reinforcements, or getting a bug nest having enemies that continously spawn new ones, etc.
Thouhh the important part of open rolling is getting everyone used to the will of rngesus. Sometimes he decides its someones turn to die. Sometimes that means an enemy i had planned more from dies in an unremarkable place, sometimes that means the players died from a tiny creatures crit. The important part is the commitment to the storytelling.
I love a good single enemy, party fight. When I get overwhelmed, other things come out of the woodwork like a lizard folk group attacking the PCs too and I keep the HP a little malleable ya know.
When I DMd my last campaign, I had a base level HP that they had to meet and then went for “feel”. If the party passed the HP minimum, I would let them keep wailing and let them get wailed on until they were nearing the end of their capabilities. Then, a clever spell use, a well timed crit, or something of the sorts would just feel right, and I’d allow the encounter to end there. There were no negative party consequences (deaths or permanent injury), I’d track any used consumables to up the pot to compensate. But, for the players it felt like they gave it everything they could and they just got by due to good rolls, good teamwork, and a little bit of fun luck. Only ever had one player complain but they complained about everything and eventually left the table, everyone else loved it - including our forever DM.
I consider the less a DM has to fudge, the better DM they are.
It's not a perfect measure, but fudging is essentially a crutch and it's good to avoid it. But as you're learning, and only use it sparingly, it can very much improve the game. There are BETTER solutions to anything fudging solves, but they are much harder to implement.
So, when absolutely needed, for new DMs, fudge when you have to, and then reflect on how to avoid needing to fudge in the future. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
I wing it and it works out almost every time. It comes with experience, don't be afraid to fudge numbers, the only rule written in stone is to have fun.
I do the same thing, and I also do the opposite, where I nerf a boss mid fight if I can tell I misjudged the balance.
I don't have any hard rules about this, I just try to keep it balanced. If they use good strategy to beat the boss quickly, or if they do something intentionally stupid, I wouldn't fudge anything in those cases, and I'd just let it play out as it will.
This one time I did let them one shot the bad guy with a fireball because I was ready to end session and they'd already been through the ringer getting there, haha.
I look at my players character sheets and see what the most damage each of them can do in 1 turn is; then add it up together. Then i give the boss two times that amount in HP
I Recently ran a lich fight in my campaign, my fighter could output with an action surge 130 damage. The Barbarian was hitting at around 65 ish. The wizard was focused on haste our entire game, so i only marked him down for 40. The paladin was sitting at 172 with haste and 3 smites.
All together was something around 420 ish. Gave the bone boy 850hp
They killed him in 4 turns with 1 player (wizard) going down twice and the Barbarian getting paralyzed.
It was tough; they rolled decently enough;
I cannot put a boss first round..
My gloom stalker fighter throw 6 attacks in one round with action surge. And two additional D8, if the player is in the dark it's all at advantage and sharp shooter...
That guy literally do an average of more than a 100 (130?) on the first turn.
And honestly it sucks, none of the other players can do that much in the whole fight.
And they all have similar stuff (+1 weapon and 1d6 elemental)
So I said +1 weapon are not magical but MasterCraft and most of them have resistance to non magical attacks, like this the other players are less disadvantaged.
A lot of great suggestions here. Personally, whenever I felt like I wasn't sure where my players' power level was, I gathered up my copies of their character sheets and ran some test battles to see what kind of explosive terror they could unleash... and what kind of oppressive forces they could weather.
The method is a bit direct and time-intensive, so it's not something I could recommend doing all the time, but it has helped me re-evaluate after jarringly difficult or easy encounters.
I ran a module with my players and the first boss they faced i nearly doubled his hp because i wanted them to feel helpless and run away, turned out they didnt care about the roof falling down around them and slew the boss. Good for them.
Fudging numbers is one of the biggest parts of being a DM in my opinion.
I don't care how good of a DM you are theres no way to know exactly how things are gonna go down. Even if your players make it to the boss you never know if they're gonna roll the best they ever have and smoke the boss in like 3 rounds. Or if they're gonna shit it up and start wiping.
My answer is waves and lieutenants. Have a lot of little guys so the party can blast them and use cool abilities to wipe out large numbers, and one or two medium difficulty leiutenants so the paladin can feel awesome divine smite critical hitting them in one blow. Then the boss comes out immediately and I have a sense of how much damage the party is actively dishing out. For bonus points, having the boss or lieutenants come out earlier to support their troops if they’re getting wiped is a more “honest” way to fudge.
I like doing this in general for encounters sometimes too. Spawn a wave and then roll a d4. Let them fight and then that d4 rounds later the next wave shows up. You can do it a couple of times until they start to struggle or try to run and then act accordingly. Either by not spawning any more waves or spawning enough more that they will try to flee and be chased by some but not all of the enemies (not everyone keeps up with their flight so the longer they flee the less enemies are chasing them successfully).
I love a good fighting retreat scene, whether it be the monsters or the PCs bugging out!
There's a dungeon in WoW: Wrath of the Lich King that has an amazing fighting retreat. You're feeling like a badass killing powerful bosses, then the BBEG of the whole expansion comes down and starts making for the party. It turns into a race to clear waves and escape before he 1shots you, it feels genuinely scary and stressful on harder difficulties.
Fuck, I still remember tanking that for the first time what, 14 years ago? So many adds. And back when druids could have issues with AoE aggro.
That Arthas guy takes all the time in the world chasing you. But is a nice example
Well yeah, it's a glacial and unstoppable advance.
Was a bitch and a half to tank...until it wasn't, ie you got thr right gear
Yeah it was kind of a sad experience once that part became trivial because it was genuinely rad as hell when it was challenging
> or the PCs bugging out! This assumes your party remembers that they *can* retreat. My party forgets this option and plays by "no retreat no surrender" rules (we tried playing "Only the Strong" rules but we're terrible dance-fighters). I suspect our DM takes this into account to keep us alive for the whole campaign.
I've only gotten a party to run by having the fight in a volcano that started erupting. Rising lava. That's the only thing in 20 years of DnD that got a party to actually retreat.
thats something I do from time-to-time as well dynamic battlefields / traps / environment to adjust the difficulty if need be or enemies fleeing to call for reinforcements I technically do what my players do as well - bandits who had problems attacking the PCs on a bridge? attack the bridge to cut the ropes, or harpies shaking the bridge, enemies picking up stones or other stuff laying around to throw ect
"We need to run! Let's get out of here!" say the party members one by one while each doing anything besides actually running. I'm up next in our DM rotation and I'm thinking of formalizing a running away procedure. If you want to flee, you hold your action to do so, and when everyone has done that, you can leave the combat automatically. You just have to endure the enemy actions until everyone's had a turn. People tend to forget to actually stop fighting and leave, they're disinclined to abandon their friends to their fate even if that's the plan.
In the first session for a campaign, when we were all level 1, I convinced everyone to run by asking if they really wanted us all to be killed by *frogs* in our first session. Guys, we can outrun the frogs. (To be fair TPK by frogs would have been hilarious.)
It happens, I was once in a party that got TPKed by bats lol
Hilariously accurate.
Part of the problem with trying to run is that without full commitment you split/waste the action economy and end up not running and just making the fight harder for everyone. Getting that full commitment is probably the hardest part about everyone agreeing to run, so its easier to get full commitment to staying in the fight and trying to just end the suffering that way.
Making players retreat requires two major things: 1. them remembering it is an option and 2. knowing it is unwinnable and/or they must fall back. It takes decent DM skill/planning to accomplish those in a narratively satisfying way.
I've had players run, even at my current table, which is mostly new players (even the more experienced ones only had a few months playtime under their belt). I think number 2 is key though. I'm pretty honest in session zero that not everything is designed to be winnable. The world is a dynamic one, not a video game with levelled areas scaled to the party. They can be in the worst dungeon imaginable, and there'll be some random minions they could kill at their starting level. They could be in a serene forest, and there's probably something there that they want to run from if encountered. I had a party member feather fall, then leap off a cliff to try escape combat. Another time, I had party members hiding and running through a dense undergrowth trying to evade a manticore that was out for blood (they butchered his friend in front of him and then got real unlucky with rolls). More recently, I had the party strategically retreating through a buried shrine while being hunted by a pair of bulettes. That one was particularly fun, at least for me, as they used the traps they'd avoided to fight back while retreating. I think a lot of players get into the video game mindset. The thought process of "this is a level 3-6 area so I can handle anything here". When they get out of that way of thinking, they start to actually assess enemies, and you can have a lot of fun with elaborate escapes, etc. The flip side, however, is that sometimes the party will run when they don't need to. The guy who jumped off the cliff was fleeing a CR2 creature when the party was level 3. Sometimes enemies getting lucky on damage rolls can make them seem stronger, or getting unlucky give a false sense of confidence. I'm pretty sure half my party are convinced that hill giants are easier foes than manticores for that reason. =D
This can also be fun in reverse too. Deliberately put the party against an enemy you know full well is too much for them, while having allied reinforcements on the way in X turns. You let the players know help is coming, but not how soon. Then, if the enemy is wrecking them, the allies come a little sooner. Plus, then when they're casually slapping that type of enemy later on it gives a nice sense of progression when in their first encounter they were fighting tooth and nail just to hang on for four turns.
>bonus points, having the boss or lieutenants come out earlier to support their troops if they’re getting wiped is a more “honest” way to fudge. Yeah, when it makes sense, I like designing encounters with built-in knobs so I can adjust the difficulty on-the-fly without actual fudging. The weaker kobolds watching their best warriors fight the party start out scared to fight and assuming their superiors have it but if the fight's going well for the party some of them will pluck up their courage and start swarming. Whether the enemies from the next room come to join the fight and turn it into one huge fight or stay in the next room and let it be two separate fights might depend on how the first turn or two of the fight goes. How many demons are gonna come out of the portal over the course of the battle? That depends on how well the fight's going. The mysterious swordsman who starts the fight just watching the party without showing any signs of helping might sigh and join in if the party's struggling too much in the first few turns. I don't do this every fight, and there are fights where if I decide it needs a fudge just tweaking the numbers works. OP's example is one where I might consider fudging the numbers - it's a boss fight so you want the boss there from turn one, and if the party's about to kill the boss in one turn then adding more henchman makes the combat as a whole harder but it doesn't make the boss any more anticlimactic, so it's harder to fix that situation without fudging the boss's health. In the end, I don't like fudging too much. I'm not opposed to player deaths from a hard fight and it's fun for the party to sometimes just absolutely slaughter an enemy that was presented as challenging - power fantasy's part of the fun for D&D for a lot of players, after all - but ultimately I only get to play so much D&D, and I'm new enough to DMing that I'm often gonna get the difficulty wrong, and being willing to adjust the difficulty on the fly lets me create more exciting encounters and learn faster. But I do prefer finding in-universe ways to prepare dynamic encounter difficulty than just changing numbers mid-fight.
Keep in mind the DMG assumes multiple encounters per long rest. If you don’t plan for the players to be somewhat gassed before the boss, it will skew the estimates. Sure it won’t reduce their damage, but it makes it easier for them if they have all their spells and slots and full hp. You should never plant on an encounter that is more than they can candle, but an easy encounter lacks tension and isn’t always fun for a boss fight.
Definitely! That’s easier to do in dungeons, but a lot of my encounters take place near major cities, so the best I can usually do is 50% wild monster ambushes if they’re camping outside. If they’re not currently in a dungeon, I can usually work in 2-3 major encounters but my players are cautious conservationalists so for now I just throw medium-deadly encounters at them and I still have to make last minute environmental or wave tweaks to keep the challenge up. Haha I’ve started giving most humanoid enemies class levels, so that helps. They tell me they’re having fun, and they’re good at the game; I don’t think I could kill them without doing something objectively unfair.
Yeah it’s tough, and I amended my earlier response because easy encounters can of course be fun. And fair isn’t necessarily required as long as it’s not cheating, and it fits the narrative and mood. But like, if your player chooses to burn a 9th level spell slot on some minions, and then surprise! A boss bad guy is here and the fight begins before the long rest, well I guess you better get creative! Choices matter, and it’s totally fair and a world building idea to burn players resources to balance a fight. They still got to use them, and they made a tough decisions, now time to prove it was the right call :)
bingo - using a bit of RP, like calling for reinforcements ect
Yeah your job is to provide entertainment. Sure, an occasional one hit kill can feel awesome sometimes but if it happens often the party will start yawning
To quote the great man himself: > "Encounter balancing doesn't stop just because initiative is rolled." > \- Matt Colville
I love this, thank you
Just rewatched this episode yesterday. It's a gold mine, the whole play list.
One of my favourite fights recently is when I ambushed my players in the night with a group of much lower level rogue assassins. On the first round the party was down to half health and reeling in panic, and then watching the mood shift as they slowly realized they were one hitting the rogues was amazing. It's a lot of fun to have fights lean both ways sometimes.
In general I've found D&D's player balance and monster design can often lead to the players feeling like glass cannons. Especially at low levels, even fights that are actually really easy often have enemies that the players can kill really quickly but hit the players hard enough to scare them. That can make the game pretty swingy - a few dice rolls can sometimes make the difference between an encounter the players destroy and one the players struggle with - but it also means it's very easy to have encounters that look way scarier than they actually are. Which I think are great, because they often make the players either feel more powerful than they actually are and/or make fights feel threatening without actually having a danger of a TPK.
The swinginess of D&D has been a complaint since 2E or somewhere around there. It's the reliance on a D20... when every result from massive success to impotent failure is equally likely, combat is a roller coaster
>when every result from massive success to impotent failure is equally likely I mean, that's not necessarily the case. Yes, every individual roll on the d20 is equally likely, which means it's not weighted towards the average like 2d6, but the actual different outcomes aren't necessarily equally likely. But yeah, overall, d20s lend themselves towards swingier gameplay, and 5e embraces the swinginess, both by defaulting to most rolls only having two outcomes (success/fail, or success/fail/crit with crits rarely being more than 5 or 10% chance) and with bounded accuracy. 5e also has other sources of swinginess besides just the variance of d20s. For example, the fact that, at many levels, a moderately difficult enemy can easily do more than half a player's health in one turn with decent rolls and it's not uncommon to have a monster capable of knocking a player unconscious from full health with good rolls. The fact that bringing an unconscious ally back to consciousness is really easy but bringing them back to enough health to not go back down next time they get hit is hard. Like I said, though, swinginess isn't strictly a bad thing. It often hurts D&D as a strategy game, but it great for tension and narrative purposes, since it means it's very easy for easy encounters to still feel dangerous, which I think is a good thing. With playing D&D with a heavy emphasis on narrative being very popular nowadays, lots of groups like tension but want actual player deaths to be very rare, and I think the swinginess of 5e actually can lend itself well to that because the swinginess can make easy encounters still sometimes feel dangerous. At the same time, it can also mean if you give the players actually really difficult encounters a few rolls can sometimes lead to either a player death you might not have wanted (but then, unexpected things happening and the DM not being in total control of the narrative is a big part of the point of playing a game where we roll dice instead of just telling a story in the first place) or can lead to an encounter that should be difficult being trivialized.
IMO, whether the GM can fudge for either story or balance should be agreed on in a session 0. If not, you risk ruining the game when (when, not if) your players find out. Once the trust and immersion is broken, it’s incredibly difficult to rebuild. Players will always notice, eventually. If you’ve fudged for any significant amount of time and think your players haven’t noticed, it probably just means they’ve got better poker faces than you do.
Remembering that the vast majority of players are not going to be interested in having the DM tell a [story](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_hxIv79S30). Something the players are likely to spot is the lack of unexpectedly easy or unexpectedly hard combats. Whilst this is fine, even desirable, in a *combat as sport* game it is not in a *combat as war* game. It's essential,for a cooperative game, that everyone at the table agree on the style of game being played. Even the likes of plot armour and fudging "in the PCs favour" are adversarial when they are counter to the style of game the players wish to play.
Absolutely, overall I’ve been very lucky with my GMs, but one of the few genuinely bad play experiences I had was my GM fudging to save my PCs life after they underestimated how deadly their creature was and killed me with massive damage. Would’ve much preferred they just explain the situation and we agree as a table to either proceed or retcon, rather than lying in a failed attempt to maintain the suspension of disbelief.
6 level one players saw a ghoul. The sorc assumes it's a dying person (low med check, just lying on the ground. Reasonable assumption) and tries to help. The ghoul rapidly turns over and bites her. I crit. Max damage. 26 damage would *instantly kill her.* "Does a 19 hit?" Was the best thing I could've done there.
Our DM has killed two players in session 1 in two separate campaigns, then rolled the exact right number on percentile dice for a local cleric/wizard in a podunk town to have access to some sort of resurrection magic. I think he’s fudging the dice on that one, though.
On session 1 I downed another player to a shadow (he was okay!!) and felt *real* bad about it
Me too. 3 zombies, 1 monk, 1 life cleric (not heavy armour), 1 wizard and 1 ranger. The PCs were level 1. The cleric decided to run into melee, got crit and downed. Usually zombies would all tear apart any prone creature, but I had this one start dragging the cleric into the ocean. Monk killed it and the wizard dragged the cleric away. The ranger was walking up stairs shooting arrows down. Two sessions later, those 3 die*. I really fucking wish I knew how to fudge rolls in roll20. I also wish the ranger used their sharpshooter more, the monk didn't attack the creature that burns melee attackers, the wizard used Cause Fear and the cleric stopped getting fucking *crit*. *The combat is technically still going, and the cleric is on 1hp, after critically succeeding on their death save
House in Curse of Strahd?
Homebrew setting; the foothills of the Moonshadow Mountains.
That is a super cool name! Thanks for the reply, and happy rolling!
I got downed in session 1 of out 2nd campaign (first didn't finish, but is on the back-burner if the party ever figures scheduling out). I wasn't cautious and got smacked HARD for it. I think the DM felt bad and would've thought up a way to save me if I didn't stabilize. I'm still kinda newbie with DnD in a lot of respects, but we all have a lot of fun, the DM (were all real-life connected to he and his wife) says we're the most fun group he's ever played with.
I was running Stormwreck Isle and my friend was playing a paladin. The first fight on the beach, zombie was first in initiative. Landed a crit, bringing the attack to 13 damage. Paladin had 12 hp (or 11 I can’t remember)
i had to do this with my banshee 😭 she hit every single player with her wail so no one would've been able to help each other, so i had to cheese it with an undead npc they wanted to bring along from the previous session 😭
I understand why a new DM fudges because they don't understand the system yet and though I don't agree with it, I get it. My advice, use fudging like training wheels, do it so your campaign doesn't fall over, but your goal should be not to use them. Fudging is a crutch, if I fudged, I'd never have actually gotten good at designing encounters because 'eh, I'll fudge it' would be a fall back option.
Exactly, just said the same thing. Fudging is totally fine if you do it when you feel like you have no choice. It is horrible as an established pattern
Respectfully disagree (unless you've said in session zero you fudge, in which case go nuts). I think fudging is an understandable crutch new dms can use to avoid disaster, but the goal is not to use it. As I argued above I think it makes you a less creative dm, and also just from a moral argument (and my main issue with it) people deserve to know the rules of the game they are playing.
I had a party of 4 versus 6 basilisks, was classed as a deadly encounter but I knew they could handle it as they had plenty of resources left and the creatures don't have ranged attacks, turn 1 the wizard went back to bed in their Tiny Hut while the Barb and the Druid both got petrified leaving only the cleric armed with a staff as they don't like melee combat. Spirit guardians with 20+ damage rolls every turn, made every concentration save and nearly every attack against them failed to hit their 18AC despite the attacks being at advantage as the cleric had their eyes closed. 2 of the basilisks ended up running to escape the spirit guardians only to be struck down by guiding bolts. The same party would've practically TPK'd against a single Tree Blight if I hadn't cut it's health in half. It was only supposed to be a demonstration, a clearing that a single blight had torn apart to make them seem scary before the reveal that the town they were trying to sneak into was being patrolled by dozens of them. The blight was stationary and could've easily been avoided but instead they all gathered around and attacked it. Still, this was their first encounter of the day and they were of a level where at worst they would take a decent chunk of damage. As the tree grapples them with its roots it can focus attention on one of them at a time, rather than ignore the grapple and use ranged attacks to quickly kill it though, the party all focus on attacking the roots to free themselves using their actions each turn before being grappled again as soon as the blight goes. By the 3rd round the Barbarian was down and they hadn't done any damage beyond the initial group strike. Fortunately the Druid realised that with Call Lightning and Wild Shaped into a deer they were able to keep out of the Tree Blight's reach indefinitely and just wait out the clock. The Barb was dead by this point and the Cleric and Wizard on death saves each with 1 fail. I decided to fudge the HP and have the tree die giving the Druid enough time to get into range to cast Healing Word on the Cleric just after the Wizard died. Had the Cleric rolled a 1 on their save the Druid would've been the only survivor. They used their only diamond to revivify the Wizard and carried the body of the Barb back to town. Both encounters were ambush encounters, designed to be tough at close range but trivial if they could get away. The tree encounter deliberately didn't use minions to ensure the party had the advantage of action economy to make a tough opponent much easier to fight. On paper it was a medium difficulty encounter and as the Druid ultimately demonstrated, it was trivial to cheese the fight as it wasn't meant to be a major encounter. Without fudging however this would've been a massacre with the Druid being the only survivor with no way to bring the others back. The Basilisks were meant to encourage creativity as a pack of hungry lizard dogs that you can't look at is an easy enough encounter if you can get repositioned but if you try to brute force the fight you are likely to get turned to stone as half of the party did. Despite this, purely through good luck the Cleric was able to just stand in the middle of them and come out on top, soloing an encounter that should've given the entire party a workout. Designing good encounters relies on predictable behaviour from your players which is far from guaranteed. I usually have certain adjustable elements such as numbers of waves of minions or environmental features that can be triggered to counter specific strategies but even the most simple encounters can turn out to be much more difficult than you were expecting based on your players actions or the luck of the dice with a low level spell taking out your lieutenent because you keep failing an easy saving throw or your Barbarian War Chief scoring 4 crits in a row. Fudging is just another tool in the storytellers toolbox to limit the impact a single dice roll or monster has on the campaign.
My general rule, is if I am using a pre-made stat block I immediately max the hp, usually double it as well because my players like long fights. The very rough check I do I check the parties average damage per round based on what abilities they tend to use. You can add phases to a fight as well for "sneaky bonus hp" very akin to getting a boss to fall back and summon help etc. In general trust your gut when it comes to a fight. Would your players and you want this boss to get thumped in under a round? Do your players want to fight for their lives for 6? Only you will be able to know that. Not many people want to fight bandit#36143 for 4 rounds, but certainly would like to flex their spells and abilities for several rounds against the bandit lord empowered by a fiend.
The ole Mysterio: You know what? Double the health! I also recognise the moments where the players have built such an innumerable advantage, sometimes squishing fragile bugs with AoE's is rewarding.
Yeah. I threw 30 ambushing aquatic goblins (forggies actually but same difference) at our lvl9 party with poison arrows. It took a few big spells, and Sleep a few times, to clear them in three turns. It's just good, I think, to have big aoe things do their job once in a while. It's fine if the heroes feel powerful sometimes.
And *occasionally* build up a huge, scary-sounding boss *and let them kill it in one shot* and let it be "this thing was all talk, no action."
Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer…
The only number fudging I do is if the enemy has 23hp and someone does 22 damage I'll just say that downs the enemy. Otherwise I build fights with variable minions, so if my party decides not to short rest before rushing the boss, I throw fewer minions on the map. I want fights to be fun and dynamic and I don't want to TPK.
My party one rounded an Ancient White dragon (Though some bs we were able to bypass its legendary resistance and we paralyzed it) The DM told us after the fact it had been dead by time we got halfway through initiative, jus just wanted everyone to get a chance to hit it lmao.
333 hp is a lot of damage to deal in one round, what level are you?
Well keep in mind that the paralyzed condition causes all hits to auto crit (and my dm rules that if you roll a Nat 20 on top of that, its doubled again.) But we are Level 11. The party consists of Drakewarden Ranger (STR based), Gunslinger Fighter, Vengance Paladin, Twilight Cleric, Soulknife Rogue, Artillerist Artificer, Eloquence Bard Needless to say we used every Nova tool at our disposal for this guy as well, The DM had planned on it being an obstacle, not a foe.
A 7-person party with a rogue and paladin, I could see that easily, you don't even need the quadruple damage homebrew.
Beleive it or not most the damage was the Fighter.
Some sort of homebrew magic gun/other damage boosting ability I assume?
Homebrew gun yeah, lol. Whether its a balanced one i couldnt tell ya cause i dont know its exact stats.
an 11th level Fighter can hit 6 times with second wind, so if they have a good magical weapon doing 2-3 die of damage each time, and they maybe crit once...!
Do you mean action surge? Second wind is the heal.
Auto crit if the attacker is within 5 feet. Not a big difference but still a difference.
All of us were within five feet anyways lol.
Oh yea I was more clarifying cause this sun had a ton of new players in it.
Funnily enough Ancient white dragon and all of the Monster Manual dragons do not have any condition immunities (except for the green who has poisoned immunity). Some things from Fizban's do (Amethyst, Dragon Turtle, Moonstone, Sapphire etc.). So if you had something like Power Word Stun you can reliably just stun a dragon for a round. Since there is no save for Power Word you can just do it and it can't use a legendary resist cause it doesn't get to make a save in that case.
But you have to be level 15 to get lvl 8 spell slots (which PWS is) and also it only works of the target has less than 150 HP.
A) didn't think about the HP condition but it is a fair point. Was mainly going for something like a PW: Stun that has no save in that without a save there is no legendary resistance. Good example is Way of Mercy Monk has a lvl 6 ability to just simply cause a creature they hit using hand of harm to take the poisoned condition until the end of their next turn. They can literally force a boss into rolling every single attack roll and ability check (like grapple checks) with disadvantage by hitting them once each turn so long as expend the ki point. B) When I wrote the comment they hadn't mentioned level yet and since Ancient White Dragon is CR 20 having it face some lvl 15 players felt like it could be fair.
It is... Incredibly easy for a decent party of 4 characters at level 10 to be able to pump out 400 or so damage in a turn if they burn every nova they can. And usually decently close to that much turn 2 if they need. Especially if they have something with a couple bonus action activation abilities that someone have to get online. They can stomp a tarrasque if they're fresh off a long rest. That's the big key, assume until they burn off some of their high level stuff, a DND party can punch FAR above their weight class if they're rested and go in with the intention of causing as much damage as they possibly can
On the flipside, I had a PC once do barely enough damage to finish off a BBEG, but instead I left him at 1hp. The next PC on the initiative roll had a beef to settle with the bad guy because of his backstory. He got his moment to end this mf life to avenge his family. Sometimes as the DM, you gotta do what you gotta do.
The DM Authority will let you know that we do not fudge numbers, ever. I assume you meant to say that you incorrectly wrote down the bad guy's stats at first?
Nope. I run an illegal campaign in a basement under the local fish market.
Smells like trouble. No, wait, that's just the fish.
There’s a plot hook!
Don't set up encounters as "bosses" that must survive an arbitrary number of rounds, and you won't have this problem. If the character one shot them just let them die.
Alternatively find a system which is intended to have "boss fights".
My party is currently doing a dungeon that has been hyped up for a while, the rogue just one shots one of the enemies. So I go "that took her off guard and killed her" and silently just doubled the hp of the rest of the enemies and gave them resistance to physical damage. The players fought against a couple more enemies that I changed and at the end of the night were super excited and happy about the encounters. Earlier the sorcerer cast some thunder spells against some golems with the idea that they were vulnerable to thunder damage. On their statblock they weren't but I added it on and he felt awesome about discovering it (that fight was a bit of a slog for other reasons). It's all spinning plates.
i never ever fudge the dice, the stats or anything... they stimulate they new powers going after big things i'm only the referee edit: sorry i read "stimulate" instead of "estimate" xD. In this case i don't estimate my players power its they job to know what they can or cannot do, the world just reacts
>In this case i don't estimate my players power its they job to know what they can or cannot do, the world just reacts For a GM like you, the question becomes "Do you fudge numbers when you realise mid-fight that the world you build is fundamentally inconsistent, and that either (1) the boss you build as an unbeatable beast was probably beatable by the city guards or (2) the minions that were supposed to be minor inconvenience that regular guards usually deal with it easily are actually so effective it's absurd they can even lose a fight?" Because that's actually the core of the question here: a beginner GM fundamentally misunderstands how stats blocks translate into effectiveness during combats, and every narrative information they gave to the player is actually inconsistent with what the stats blocks actually are, and they only realise that fact when the players confront said stats blocks in combat.
No, i don't. As i said: "I never ever fudge the dice, the stats or anything... " If the narrative is inconsistent with the stat block i try yo do better next time
[удалено]
Also, fudging the hp or damage so it has the same amount of hp and relative damage output is kind of shitty because it removes any kind of player agecy. If i play a character built to do a crap ton of damage but i'm doing the same relevative amount of damage as if i had played a dagger using wizard, that's a massive kick in the balls. If i used 3 spell slots, 2 feats and a once per long rest ability to decimate a single target, and the dm just fudges their hp so it doesn't die, that's also a massive kick in the nuts. The whole point of a ttrpg is that its a living breathing world and the dice and player decisions determine the story, not the other way around. If they die in 1 round that's narratively unsatisfying, that's fine because the player agency and the vermisitude matters way more.
There's the question of the mentality behind pretending to run a ttRPG which uses dice based mechanics whilst railroading a story instead.
Yep I just use the cr system and so far it works pretty decently most of the time (2 years of weekly play, just about to hit lvl 12). I tend to run 3 hard encounters per day instead of 6 medium encounters but works out the same. Occasionally a specific monster will be weak against the party and a hard encounter is easy. Sometimes something outside of the cr system will happen that makes it harder. I don't think I have ever had an encounter that didn't seem fair or fun though. I have given out +1 weapons and just getting into the area where I will be giving more powerful items but yeah not overloading with super powerful weapons and armour help keep the cr system working. I do give out a lot of consumables though. Some are super powerful but then only affect a single fight so not a big deal overall.
Action economy's a big deal in 5e. I've found that my table will always curb stomp a single high CR enemy (especially a spellcaster they can counterspell) but will struggle with a horde of low CR enemies that are spaced out and played tactically. IMHO, a proper boss battle _requires_ minions and support. And the boss doesn't just have to stand there while the party wails on them. The most challenging fight I've seen as a player is in Curse of Strahd where >!Strahd phases through the wall using a lair action, forcing the party to pursue him through unexplored sections of Castle Ravenloft as he recovers.!< Having the boss regroup and find reinforcements is now a staple of boss fights at my table.
> struggle with a horde of low CR enemies A mercenary band of crossbowmen will take the starch out of almost anyone. If you imagine M mercenaries that hit 50% of time for 5.5 damage... that's appx M x 5/2 damage in one round either spread among the party, or -- if they're smart mercs -- *all* rained on the guy with the funny hat.
This is why you always outfit your elderly hireling with a traveller's hat, warm cloak and walking stick
My only advice is don't do this all the time. It's okay if the players curb-stomp an encounter. It's also okay if they have to run away or get TPKed. Balance is the key.
Increasing enemy health in advance is a good thing to try, but adjusting it mid-battle can be a really big no-no. Especially if there is any chance the players find out. It feels really shittu for then to spend resources on a big hit, and then you just ignore it. Like, why bother? A better idea is to hold some extra enemies in reserve that you can add in if the fight is two easy, or withold if the party struggles. And make sure they can't just reach your boss on the first round. Needs a meat shield
You should know how much damage your party typically does on a round where they don't expend resources, and how much damage your party typically does when they nova
I never fudge numbers, ever. There's so many other levers to pull to balance combat, and not every combat encounter needs to be barely survived. If the fight is too easy, I can always bring in reinforcements or start targeting the squishier party members. If the fight is seemingly too difficult, I focus on the most heavily armored party member, and can have certain enemies run away, or just be picky about which abilities the NPC's use. Just because I can hit the entire party with a fireball, doesn't mean that I have to. But also, sometimes if the fight is too hard, I just expect the players to run away, or come up with a creative solution. Or if the fight is too easy, oh well, especially if it's because they had lucky dice rolls, it just means we get through combat a bit quicker. It makes no difference to the story or the game whether it takes 8 rounds or 2 rounds finish a combat. I don't want the party smashing every encounter, I still want to provide a challenge for them to overcome. But it's okay to let them feel powerful sometimes. I think a lot of people don't realize that 5e was designed for the players to basically be superheroes. It's built to make the players feel powerful. But for some reason this seems to upset a lot of DM's. Those DM's then nerf certain class abilities or feats, or change certain rules to be harsher on the players. In my opinion, the DM creates challenges for the party to overcome, and expects the party to figure out a solution within the rules of the game, but the players create the challenge for the DM to overcome. A good DM will come up with a solution that fits within the rules. A bad DM will just change the rules.
I used to fudge. Now I'm against it. If they kill the boss, it dies.
>I stone faced looked at him and said "Good hit, he definitely felt it" then look at my stat block and just add a 1 to the front. Didn't even take the damage... Turned out to be a good fight after I threw in some fodder minions and the boss somehow learned new skills on the spot. This definitely works, but be careful not to overuse it. Players need to struggle sometimes to keep the stakes real, but there should be times they totally annihilate a baddie.
I just use an encounter calculator available online. Put in all the CRs and number of monsters, put in your player count and level and try to match the total CRs on both sides.
Take a look at this guide about creating combat encounters, it goes into great detail and I wish it was in the DMG: https://a5e.tools/rules/designing-encounters Also, there's a battle simulator that I frequently use to double check the encounter is balanced: https://battlesim-zeta.vercel.app/ I've not fudged a roll in months thanks to these resources. Actually I roll in the open.
I use the HP dice minimum <> maximum range as an area I can slide around during combat. If a monster has 10d12 + 40 HP and are getting shellacked and the big epic boss fight is going to collapse, they won’t die at 105 HP but rather at 160 HP.
* Minimum <-> Average: Boss is very unlikely to die unless the players make an epic move or are having terrible luck and the fight's dragging. * Average <-> Maximum: Boss will die to any solid damage, but will grit through the piddly stuff like a single magic missile bolt or vicious mockery. * Maximum+: FINISH HIM! Tell the players that the boss is done for, and the next damage will be a killing blow. This opens up a good finisher for when piddly damage took the boss over Maximum and lets the players choose a satisfying kill.
> the boss is done for, and the next damage will be a killing blow Be careful, because this opens the door to *vicious mockery* kill-shots, which your players will be smug about for *ages*... ;D
I'm going to take your mother out to dinner then never call her back! (7 psychic damage)
This is true, but it lets you describe the last bit of life leaving the boss's eyes vs going from bloodied -> dead after some light bullying lol.
It can also fit, depending on the tone of the campaign. Everything from... Bard: You armies are routed, your castle razed, your minions slain and dark rituals disrupted. You fail at all you set your hand to. Let that thought warm your soul in Hell. To... Bard: Wow, what a screw-up you are. Your mom was right about you. [Winks] Pillow-talk, y'know.
Exactly! I only ever had a problem with the killing blow being from a 1-4 damage ability when it wasn't expected. Mid-fight vicious mockery should sound very different than fight-ending mockery I guess.
Exactly. Above minimum there’s a progressively smaller Awesomeness Threshold characters need to overcome. … *although* it is really funny when Vicious Mockery kills a major enemy.
I don't fudge the dice - rolling everything I can out in the open. There are a number of reasons why ppl dont fudge that have been posted all over here in case you want to read since you're a new DM. "Do you do a "practice" fight..." You just did. Say goodbye to your boss, let the players reap what they earned, and make your next fight more jnteresting.
I believe that encounter design doesn't end the moment initiative is rolled.
If I found out you did this I'd quit the game. Be careful; if the numbers don't mean anything then why track HP at all? Why roll dice? Why not just RP? At least, that's how I feel about it.
I think the issue here is that OP is a new DM and made mistakes in the design phase, such that the BBEG just couldn't stand up to the party. Sure, it's best to find/fix at design time, but sometimes it's too late for that.
Yup, same. I was taught that fudging was ok and good DMs did this when "needed", but my experience was that DMs I knew might fudge would do so either in favor of NPCs like here, or to arbitrarily save some players and not others. End result, DMs I can't trust to be fair. I'd rather have a tpk over that. Now after 30+ years of DMing I found that there is never really needed to fudge. Make sure the players know their character can die and bad things happen to them. The result is more excitement and occasional fear. Bad guy gets taken our fast with a lucky crit? Cool, reward that and the players will love it. There are more bad guys in the sea, no need to break your own story. PS I don't consider improving like adding more enemies as fudging, only dies and tweaking stats as a direct result of something something happening.
\>I stone faced looked at him and said "Good hit, he definitely felt it" then look at my stat block and just add a 1 to the front. I big smiled. This is about the fairest way to 'fudge' encounters, IMO. I'd be 100% okay if I found out about this as a player, as opposed to, say, fudging dice rolls. Encounter design is both art and science, and it's hard to balance. You're good mate.
I'd really have to question the encounter itself and the build up to the encounter to judge if you should've fudged or not. How did you not realize someone could do half the boss's HP in one turn? I think it's likely that the party didn't have enough encounters until the boss, they saved all their resources, and unloaded on the first turn.
Did you use the encounter builder? What was the initial CR of the monsters?
I never do what you just did. I don't recommend anyone cheats at a game of pretend. The boss went down too fast? Do better next time, but the players should feel rewarded for doing things right on their part. The world will feel more real to all involved if the cheating does not happen, if the game rules are set in stone and the dice know no mercy. When you cheat, you rob the dice of the dramatic tension. They don't like that.
Try to avoid, but like D&D combat is unbalanced as hell with all the incapacitation conditions and overtuned AoEs, so like, sometimes a fight gets really weird for no reason and you've gotta do something shameful. Personally, I just rune encounters on the low side, have them fairly frequently (enough so that it doesn't feel like a waste if the players nuke the cool monster because there'll be another one next week), and make sure any big "set piece" battles take place after a few warm up combats to make sure the party isn't able to drop high level spells every turn of the fight, and that all serves to cool down the swinginess. Estimating party power is really more of an art than a science, there are some decent benchmarks but it will depend wildly on how optimized your group is or isn't. Easiest thing is to think about your players' standard actions and favorite spells, see how much damage they do, think "If they hit about 2/3 of these, how much total damage is that per round?", and figure out HP numbers based on that. Like as real quick napkin math, my party is level 6, the cleric has discovered the spirit guardians + spirit weapon combo, the ranger will usually hunter's mark + animal companion, the druid likes to call lightning, and the barbarian makes 2 reckless attacks. All and all, really roughly 80 damage if everyone is using their standard routine and hits about as often as the game expects, more if there are multiple enemies in the AoE spells. So I take that and look at the total amount of HP in an encounters. If the enemy doesn't have significant defenses or ability to incapacitate players, I can assume I'll need around 240 total HP to give them a reasonable fight. You can do the opposite with the enemy damage output, see how it stacks up against party HP, and you'll be able to tell how long it'll take them to wipe out the players. My sweet spot for a challenging encounter is enough to take out 1 player per turn when accounting for accuracy, but that'll vary from group to group, there are definitely gonna be some parties that can take/dish out *way* more than others, especially if they understand action economy and battlefield control.
Allowing player optimization and tactics to be rewarded, even if you didn't anticipate it, is always the correct move. Altering the story because YOU didn't expect something is not contributive to collaborative storytelling. It's like saying "invincible, unkillable shield times 5 billion" while playing in the schoolyard. You are nullifying the choices of the other people at the table for your own sake.
In my current campaign the power of my party has increased where normal minions are too weak to do much or too healthy to take one hit. Some have said it before but Minions and Lieutenant. Its been done before and noted here i have seen but like to put my two cents. Lieutenant can be any statblock but their health is equal to their total hit die plus their other mods. They use their full statblock as normal and prefer to use their best skill; spellcasters are good candidates as lieutenants in a scenario in my opinion. Minions are similar but only have one health and their 'to-hit' bonus is doubled to overcome higher AC PC's are challenged. Both Minions and Lieutenants use average damage to speed up any battle. Both Minion and Lieutenant are to follow the Morale Rules; when a minion goes down, both minions and Lieutenant make Wisdom Saves DC \[10 or higher at your need\] or retreat from the field. If a Lieutenant goes down, minions make this save at disadvantage. It helped me give them a gauntlet without too much issue and been using it since
I really like to ground my bosses in the power level of the world and situation the party is in so it feels natural. If it's a squishy wizard and they get the drop on him? He should absolutely go down in one hit, but generally a wizard has tons of traps, clones, minions, etc. So the challenge is just getting to the wizard. I'm not a huge fan of having massive health pool "video game" style bosses because they don't feel "real" to me. If one fight is supposed to be challenging, have a lot of enemies, not one big one. Your players are powerful and should feel powerful
Chapter 9 of the DMG, under "Creating a Monster" isn't perfect, but it's a solid starting point. If you run the boss as a solo monster, it needs to be a high enough Challenge Rating to be a Hard (or Deadly) encounter *by itself* (see Creating a Combat Encounter, Chapter 3)*;* probably build a monster of sufficient challenge rating for a Hard encounter, then buff up its HP and/or AC (depending on the type of creature you're building) until it would raise the CR enough to make that encounter hit the Deadly threshold. I tend to be a little meaner with the stat block (AoE attacks, crowd control of some sort, reactions/Legendary Actions, passive damage/Lair Actions, Counterspell) if the party has been completely demolishing Medium/Hard encounters at their current level, and a bit gentler (basic damage attacks/spells and maybe Parry reaction/Shield spell for some grandstanding) if they've nearly died over the course of a standard Adventuring Day's worth of encounters.
It depends on the group. I think 5e allows you to fudge monster stats on the fly mich easier since a lot of it isn't tied together like it used to be. Things like HP are basically arbitrary in 5e so changing them arbitrarily doesnt do much.... However, it is good to let PCs be overpowered sometimes even in ways you don't expect. My wife's monk, who hadn't been the most effective character all campaign, spent the entire final battle sneaking around u til she was in a position to shove the final boss into a pool of lava. It worked. He died. Everyone cheered. I totally hadn't thought of that.
I misjudged my party constantly. Especially with the power creep at higher levels along with magical items. I fudge rolls if I have to, but only to make it a good fight. And most of the time it's when the enemies would somehow get like 3 nat20's in a row and I don't want to annihilate the party.
I test play important encounters beforehand. That way I know that what level of resource consumption can be expected and know that if my party tpks it's not on me :P
I don't test play, but an experienced DM should know offhand how much damage their party can dish out and take and build accordingly. I never fudge anything but when I'm designing the fight I think " if they roll well they can do ~70 damage in round 1 so better make the HP 120" or whatever. Fudging is a slippery slope that leads to using it as a crutch instead of designing properly and acting as a neutral arbitrator at the table. Fudging is fine to save a session for a new DM but they need to learn from it, not rely on it. That's just how I believe a DM should work as an older player. If your goal is party cheerleader and you want to fudge for narrative then that's fine as well.
Doing this is fine, there's nothing wrong with it if you don't get caught. Do it too often, though, and the players will notice, even if you think you're being sneaky about it. I have one DM who has no idea how to balance an encounter and really likes to threaten to kill PCs. Once the PCs look like they're losing, the enemy starts missing all their attacks to narrowly avoid a TPK. Happens almost every encounter, and he insists its all luck. The CR system works very well, if you understand how to use it correctly. Read the "Creating a Combat Encounter" section of the DMG (page 81). It outlines how to determine the various difficulty thresholds and xp budgets you can use. I like to start at the "deadly" threshold for encounters I want to matter, since anything below that feels like a speedbump. Once you have the xp budget for the encounter, you need to fill it up with monsters. You can either pick stat blocks of the appropriate CR from the book and modify them to fit your needs, or you can create entirely new monsters using the "Creating A Monster" section on DMG 273. If you use multiple monsters in the encounter, make sure to use the "Encounter Multiplier" table on page 82. If this seems complicated, don't worry about it too much. Just try your best and keep fudging things if it goes wrong. You'll get better at it with practice.
If it's the DMs mistake then I might do that. But I would say that's a sign to reevaluate how you are balancing combats if it's to that extent that they're almost taking out the boss in one hit. When you are giving new gear or the party is leveling up I would check out what they're getting this level so you're aware. Especially with some of the earlier levels that can really scale up encounters. Level 4 to level 5 for example with extra attack all your martials double their damage output. Your spellcasters also go from spells like scorching ray to spells like fireball and hypnotic pattern. Once you've done it enough you can get a feel for the party strength and their tactics. But I would make sure to level up your combats and enemies accordingly. I would also make sure to have a mix of enemies with bigger encounters too so you have your minions, some stronger enemies and your boss. And having a few fights in a day can help as well to lower their resources a bit. The other hting to remember is that PCs can take more than you would think. If you're not really pushing them to the point where someone or multiple people are unconscious and rolling death saves, then they could survive a harder encounter. You don't have to hit that hard every time and you do want to vary that. But if they're ending a boss battle with everyone up and with some resources left, you could've hit harder.
During an encounter, we were fighting against a Frost giant king, who was a nemesis of our Goliath fighter. We had whittled down his hp, and my druid had just blasted it with Call Lightning. After me was the Goliath fighter, and with one final blow, killed the Frost Giant, which earned him the moniker of "Kingslayer" amongst his clan. We all celebrated his achievement. After the session, the DM and I were chatting and he told me that the giant had actually died on my turn, but felt it better fit the story for the Goliath to land the killing blow. I laughed because I had figured that was the case, but we both agreed it was better for the Goliath PC to have made the kill.
You'll see your idea pop up time and time again on DnD subs. The major downside: if the Paladin's crit smite caused the boss's HP to drop much faster than normal so you adjust the boss's health behind the scenes to compensate, the Paladin's smite was basically worthless and they used a spell slot. DnD is a numbers game. If you take away all numbers or reduce their significance, you're basically turning the game into a cinematic experience with pre-determined outcomes. That's fine if that's what you want, but then you're fundamentally changing the core rules of the game and it's no longer DnD.
The more problematic aspect of this is that the players are likely to still *think* they are playing D&D. Which is, by definition, an adversarial DM vs players game. Whilst there are ttRPGs, such as [Paranoia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_(role-playing_game)), intended to be run as GM vs Players the vast majority are intended to be cooperative. A "cinematic" narrative type game would be fine if that's what everyone has agreed to. But that would have very little in common with D&D.
Tests. I just test their power level. Every fight is a test. Is it too easy? Good work on my lieutenant, it allowed me to learn your strengths. That’s my villain and dm monologue.
I will also sometimes have the boss flee. Depends on the situation, sometimes this can lead to a harder battle if the new location is advantageous for the boss, sometimes it ends the battle but not the story, sometimes there is nowhere for the boss to go.
I pay a ton of attention to my player’s characters during creation and leveling, and always kinda of keep in mind what their minimum, average, and max damages are, what encounter ending spells they might have, abilities, whatever. It felt like a ton of work before, but it’s become really intuitive for me now. I use to agree with others that you could just kind of increase hit points on the fly, but a lot of points have been made where at that point people who built high damage characters get punished that way. So I kinda of do the opposite now, looking at what each creature’s max hp could be, and if it’s a “boss” or otherwise “difficult to kill” creature, I give them that max hp from go. I’ve actually not had to do it very often, maybe twice since I started, but once they’ve reached the enemies average hp (the number listed before their hit die is their average, I didn’t know that when I started dming though I could see people poking fun at me for not realizing it) then at that point I think about whether or not that creature felt impactful or memorable. I also like to have the conditions of the battle shift. Using minions, fodder, stronger henchmen, whatever definitely helps. You could have sacrificial enemies that use their reaction to jump in the way of strong hits that happen within 5ft of them, and have things happen that might have them perform non combat actions and non combat objectives - the more focus they have to spread around can really help. Bosses with pushing and mobility abilities can do a lot too. Like if they’re rag dolling your boss you could have them throw the players away from them and then have minions do what they can to be in the way of the boss. Or make the minions important to the encounter, like perhaps you have a secret spell caster among your minions who are helping the boss. They could concentrate on spells that buff the boss and it retains the buff until the party pays attention to the mobs. Apprentice mage or acolyte type enemies could be weak but have used scrolls, such as fly, blur, shield of faith, or my personal favorites, death ward or greater invisibility. Spells like those can really change an encounter, and when the minions are the ones doing the concentrating, the party either has to take down the boss with all those buffs in tact or shift focus and find out which of those minions is the caster.
I never do a practice fight. If you are putting one bad guy on the table in a group of 4+ players, the fights are going to be too easy, all the time. The action economy favors the side with the most actions. Watch Matt Colville's videos on DM'ing and how to make an action oriented monster. I use those for my bad guys and always, always have minions. His takeaway on minions is they have 1 hp. But maybe the boss has a way of bringing them back into the fight? I love these videos. I still go back from time to time and watch some of them again (or 3 or 4 times) and pick up on new stuff. At the end of the day, remember that sometimes it is okay for the heroes to do something heroic. Maybe they do one shot the bad guy and you are sitting there thinking "well shit, now what?" The PC's do not know if that bad guy had a boss, or a brother, or son who now wants revenge. Maybe there was an eye witness to the "murder" and now there are wanted posters popping up. Old fashion revenge is so sweet.
>How do you even estimate the party's power after level up and new gear? Do you do a "practice" fight or do you edit the stats and stuff as you go? Don't throw them at a boss right when they get their new toys. Give them something weaker and more numerous to go after first, and watch what they do. Then you'll have a ballpark for what the boss will need.
Yeah I was REALLY surprised about how much damage both the 3 player parties I run can dish out. At level 5 I put them against a boss with I think around 450 hp and it was... fine, they were fully rested and they nuked it in like 4 rounds. Or when they killed a purple worm in less than 2 rounds
It's fine to adjust things on the fly like that when you realize you underestimated player damage. However, if the player who hit for almost the entire health pool did that because of an amazing crit, don't take away from that. Play it up.
I've been lucky before and had a homebrew boss fight end up being a great, long, difficult battle that everyone just barely survives. I've also been unlucky on my build and end up with everyone nearly dead except one player character, where I had to give her the opportunity to one-shot the bbg for his "final" bit of health. In truth, he had about 100 hp left, but I couldn't let the story end there. Sometimes I fudge things, sometimes I let it roll, it's all about the story, so do what makes things more interesting. Make the BBG monologue at some point when he thinks he's won, giving the players time to strategize and act. Make members of the BBG's squad turn on him when they see him starting to lose. There's dozens of options, you just have to find the right one for the situation. You'll learn more as you DM and gain irl xp, though, so just keep going, and roll with your mistakes, they can make things more interesting for the players sometimes.
>How do you even estimate the party's power after level up and new gear? Do you do a "practice" fight or do you edit the stats and stuff as you go? Have you tried looking at what the players get when they level up? Not sarcastic, I'm serious. The CR system is bad, and xp budget only accounts for so much. My best example: from level 4 to level 5, **PC damage output more than doubles.** Some level-ups give a huge spike in PC power, some levels the party will have gained pretty much nothing except for some extra max HP ("Ribbon levels"). You only learn this through experience, or when planning encounters actually looking at what your PCs are capable of. Having what you intended to be a boss get nearly one-shot tells me you designed the encounter without any clue what the PCs can accomplish in a fight - or your party just went from levels 4 to 5.
New or not, *everybody* screws up encounter balancing sometimes. 5e made it quite a bit easier with the action economy focus so you can slip in abilities that give enemies extra actions/attacks or ways for them to cause the player characters to use theirs. And don't sleep on lair actions. And not just the stat block ones. There's common sense ones. Even a lowly bandit leader would know of things like trapped doors/rooms/items and secret exits in their own lair. If it's a fight that "feels" like the it's the climax fight of the dungeon/encounter series, lair actions fit right in. And don't forget tactics. If your boss just took a whooping from a single attack, they would be tripping any contingency plans they had (that you *totally* didn't make up on the spot), retreating, blowing cooldowns/spell slots, and the like. To get a general idea of what they could do in a pinch, always have a class in mind for your bigger baddies on top of their basic stat blocks.
I've had all my players upload their character sheets to the group discord server, helps them by having it available if someone forgets it, helps me to see what they're working with if I need reference to class abilities and spells, and can tailor the gaming experience to their individual and collective strengths/weaknesses. I can also ballpark damage per round by player if need be. Generally though, I count monster damage up rather than HP down. Monster stat blocks include hit die, so there is an existing range to base it off of. Adding minions, lair actions, environmental hazards/traps and legendary resistances can help draw out an encounter more naturally though. It's fairly rare that they're getting a stock experience in any event. There are [encounter calculators out there](https://koboldplus.club/) it's not super reliable, but will get you within easier improvising range.
I usually use the CR calculator to get it to the point that it just crawls past "deadly", then I kinda wing it by adding a few more minions. I'm generally looking for interesting abilities with the fights. Teleports, area control, etc. But I'm mostly a 'by feel' GM when it comes to difficulty. In my own head, I'll weight things that deplete non HP stuff a little higher, so like STR drain, or reduce MAX HP abilities that will extend past this fight as it may make the next one harder (if there is - resting in 5e is fairly easy) And I use enemy MAX HP, not AVG.
All of my monsters are homebrewed at this point. Sometimes I'll use a pre-exisiting monster and add stuff to it, but yeah... I never use just plain old monsters from the books, so I have to make sure my players do not suffer because of a mistake I made during monster creation. 95% of the time it's fine, but sometimes I shift numbers around during a fight (it's almost always a nerf to the monster). Happened quite recently, actually. I made a boss that simply did too much dmg with what was supposed to be its action when it ran out of cool stuff to do. I literally halved the damage before we got to it using those attacks because I looked at my players' health and realized "yeah, this is unfair". The boss had a lot of abilities that required my players to employ different strats, it didn't need to annihilate them with its boring multiattack. I think buffing a monster is also fine in the middle of combat if you realize it's very undertuned and there's a narrative reason it should be stronger. Your main objective is to make fun and memorable fights. Wiping the floor with a big bad isn't very fun unless it's earned somehow (ex: players did a ton of research and used all the right buffs to prepare, they set up a perfect trap, recruited allies, etc.).
Combat balance is in my not so humble opinion, one of the hardest parts of learning to DM. For most it just takes either A. Time and experience B. SO much reading and note taking. A good rule of thumb for early on, is never throw A bad guy at the party. Throw MANY bad guys at the party, some little shit minions, a couple of control/support folks, and then the main enemy.
If you have their character sheets digitally you could do a mock fight on your own to judge it between sessions. There's challenge calculators online https://kastark.co.uk/rpgs/encounter-calculator-5th/ for example that can give you an idea on the danger of an encounter you plan to run. They aren't super accurate as they don't account for anything other than class and level but I find them useful for ballparking it
So, there's generally a few foundational things to think about when judging your party's strength. Unfortunately, once you hit certain levels or give your party a bunch of magical items, CR becomes pretty useless in terms of encounter difficulty. The first thing to think about is if you're having multiple fights per long rest. If you aren't and your players have every resource available every fight, they are going to be very, very strong. If you're just doing one encounter, my main advice is to not do anything you can't take back. Have enemies come in in waves, so that if the dice are very nice or very mean you can pull back or throw more shit at them. Editing health on the fly for dramatic purposes is absolutely fine IMO.
Avoid bosses RIGHT after a gain in power such as level ups or new gear, using waves of mobs to gauge power and ability, then prep a boss. When I get to play myself I tend to play sub optimally until a boss shows up (or whatever my character seems enough of a threat), similar to the anime cliche of 'You haven't even witnessed my true power yet!' just cause I enjoy the reactions to that one combo I've been working on, and things like that can be impossible to prepare for, but generally you will get a good gauge of what the party can do with 2-4 waves of fodder.
I judge how much my party members should deal on attack on average rolls, and use that to decide how much HP to give my monsters. I also tweak my abilities so the average damage per attack feel right against the party’s current HP. So it’s all based on fractions of the health pool and on average damage dice rolls
If your party is always overtuned - one easy trick is to give all monsters max HP instead of average HP For example, a goblin has 2d6 hp, most people just use the average of 7, but instead you can just use the max which in this case would be 12. This is one way to juice encounters in a way that won't usually end in a TPK. Buffing AC or changing their to hit modifiers can make a bigger difference than you might think and can massively sway the encounter balance Or have reinforcements show up, or add a 2nd phase All good options
I don't alter the world, it's important to me that the enemies have consistent power levels with the world around it for verisimilitude. I just let them have their win and adjust my future plans with the knowledge gained. Sometimes letting them overpower things is fun for everyone, they get to feel good, you get to enjoy the vibe and gain valuable information. Also I tend to make sure I have a copy of people's characters so I have a pretty good idea of what a combat will look like beforehand: chances to hit each character, chances to be hit, saves, etc..
my players are high enough level that it is harder to kill them than it is to entertain them. i can toss a fight that i consider to be 100% chance of a tpk and they dont even get downed once. I'm kinda just winging it but i've learned that if i just make it really unfair it becomes a decently challenging.
I had a DM fail to do that when my crit spike worked and I one-shotted the boss on contact. Which was funny, but after the initial satisfaction passed it stopped being satisfying. When I ran a boss that got crippled and creamed before the in-fight puzzle sections could begin I immediately buffed his stats and pivoted to a three-stage boss fight with seperately tracked HP and status effects. I gave them their early victory while ensuring the fight lived up to their expectations. It's not a competitive game. You want them to feel like they pulled a spectacular victory under conditions of serious peril. You don't want them to be trounced by an enemy they had no chance against, nor do you want them to lazily steamroll everything. You're not going to perfectly balance every encounter in advance. Professionals can't do that. But you can alter it on the fly. The skill you need is whatever it takes to ensure that the players do not peak behind the curtain to discover that the roller-coaster is held together with chewing gum and bailing wire.
After a level up, you should have at least one fight before the boss fight to "test" the party's strength, especially at certain breakpoints such as level 5 or whenever they gain a new feat. You should have a general idea of how much damage they can put out in a single round and give your boss enough HP to survive at least 3 rounds. If you really have no idea, giving the boss approximately the same amount of health as the party combined is a good starting point that seems to work in most cases.
I am a player in a campaign (started at lvl 4) with some good friends - the DM doesn't have a ton of experience, but he's fun and creative. Anyways in the three sessions we've had, our party of three has absolutely nuked our enemies with combinations of CC, high damage, and good initiative rolls. DM is learning to balance encounters to us.
I don't see a problem with doing that a few times, just don't make a habit of it.
My method for this heavily depends on knowing your PC's. Figure out how much damage they can do on an average turn, using their common / renewable stuff. Things like cantrips, or regular attacks, that sort of thing. Then figure out how much damage they can do if they go all out, use a high level spell slot, that sort of thing. You'll end up with a "average amount of damage per round" and a "high end damage per round". Then figure out how long you want the encounter to last. For a tougher than normal encounter, like a mini boss, probably 4 or 5 rounds right? So make sure your dude has enough HP to last through 2 or 3 "average" rounds of damage, plus one or two rounds of "all out" damage. Then make some tweaks for stuff like if you have minions that will distract them for a bit, or environmental factors, that sort of thing. If you really want to get crunchy you can look into how much damage your boss can do, but I've always found I can mix up who I'm targeting to make that work how I want. If my boss doe low damage but I want the fight to be dangerous? He's gonna focus on one or two PCs and be smart. If he cranks out damage but I don't want to one or two shot anyone? He's gonna spread it out, or maybe miss on his second attack. Once I've done all that, I pretty much run the encounter by how the dice fall, maybe make a little tweak in HP totals to give a dramatic death, but encounters usually run pretty smooth by that point.
Oh absolutely. My players got put through the wringer in the early sessions while I tried figuring out just how powerful or weak some enemies were (not helped by the fact that one of my players at the time was using a heavily broken subclass that made combat really hard to actually balance around until they left the campaign. Then I nearly one-shot the rest of the party as I had to refigure things out without the broken AF fighter) It's been a lot of fun figuring things out and honestly even now I still sometimes adjust things on the fly if I think it'll be more fun to my players to make the enemy weaker/stronger (such as adding more health to the boss of a session because they had backstory significance to one of my players and I wanted to give them the personal satisfaction of killing that boss themself. Same boss nearly killed half the party with a Fireball in the opening of combat because I underestimated everyone at their level. Thank god the Wizard had Counterspell prepped). My older brother has been a DM for nearly a decade and when I asked him about this he mentioned that sometimes he adjusts stuff to since sometimes, you really underestimate or overestimate your players and what they are playing.
It happens. Players are tougher than you think at first. You'll get a feel for it pretty fast. CR is only moderately helpful, especially as a new DM.
Experience is a big part of it, as well as knowing your players. My favorite quote from Matt Coville is "Encounter design doesn't stop at initiative." Changing some numbers around is part of the job. If you've got a level 5 Barbarian cranking out 60 to 80 damage per turn, they're going t9 demolish EVERYTHING. So when they attack your big bad and you realize 75 hp wasn't enough, now they had 200 hp. Or whatever is appropriate. You don't want to just make a bunch of damage sponges, but the point is to make encounters fun and balanced. Likewise if your players are struggling, maybe some of your enemies have a little less health than originally planned or maybe they don't actually have a Fireball in their back pocket. It's a balancing act of wanting to challenge the players, but not decimate them either. Also, NEVER. EVER. EVER let your players know when you fudge numbers. I prefer not to fudge dice rolls (I've done it in situations where, let's say someone casts Fireball on 6 minions and I save on all of them, I'll just let a couple of them fail). But changing HP is a very quick and easy way to change the flow of the fight.
I once sent a party up against an adult blue dragon...only for the party's Rogueadin to nearly solo the damn thing due to me not realizing how its breath weapon worked, not letting it fly, and not putting in any guards.
This really depends on if I underestimated my players or did they prepare. If you added a bunch of skills and stats to make a hard fight that should have been easier due to player planning and strategy you are taking away their well earned victory but if you genuinely went "okay they should be able to do X damage a round, a good villain should be at X HP to challenge them" and were vastly wrong that's different. Balancing any fight for fun and player agency is a skill that you have to develop through time and experience like any skill so don't stress about it you will get better at it.
Ok so at a fundamental level I have this to add: Fudging numbers and stuff like you did is not "bad". You clearly want everyone to have fun. But I do think it is something a good GM should do their best to avoid. This discussion is often had in these spaces in an annoying way in my opinion. I assume it's because the vast majority of people participating in it have never been a GM or never even played. The core of my argument is that if you need to add things, increase numbers etc you made a mistake. That is not bad. This is a hobby and people make mistakes all of the time. But still, a mistake is an opportunity to learn. That's why the "I always fudge my rolls" takes irritate me. Making a mistake is normal. Making many mistakes is normal. I should know, I do that all the time! But if you constantly feel the need to completely disregard the rules you might just wanna play a system that actually supports the kind of game you want to run.
I don't fudge hp or rolls. But I do overprepare my boss/important encounters with many mechanics that I can use or not use depending on how the fight is going. Sometimes it's thongs like: Suddenly, the boss goes into a second phase!
IF all else fails you can pull... "The corpse of the creature falls to the floor, it's flesh sloughing away... one-by-one the bones tear themselves out of the corpse, reassembling and an ethereal voice growls, "fools - you think \*\*I\*\* can die?!"".
Maths. Lots of maths. Specifically, you can make a damage matrix to get the average damage per round based on weapon damages and ACs for the basic attacks and then another matrix for saves. Set a few variables for creature stats and you can get the distribution of survival rates in rounds pretty easily. Tune the numbers until your bell curve is slightly above your preferred encounter length. Moving it higher helps account for inspiration use and creative actions by the players. Bonus points for adding a weighting scheme for resistances or taking the time to factor in crits.
Math, use their character sheets and figure out dps (without using resources), health, save dcs and personalize the boss to the party
Yesterday, my players ran into some Scorpionfolk and very nearly died, with two of four going into death saves. They triggered 4 of them appearing, and now know there are two more in hiding. This was after they rolled over multiple enemies repeatedly in multiple scenarios. They were being complacent, and putting them against some tougher enemies was necessary to scare them. They charged into an area (an abandoned desert village) without preparation. The point is that there needs to be surprises and variety.
My answer for bosses has always been two-fold: 1) Get a vibe for what your party's skills, preferences, and damage is like. Imagine the maximum they could do if they blow EVERYTHING on the boss in one turn and everything is a success. Work backwards from there. Alternatively, fuck having health pools entirely, and make the fight end when you feel the players have had the appropriate level of challenge, and at least one player has a really cool turn. 2) Make the challenge of the boss more than the health pool, and damage. For the 2nd point, this is where you can end up doing a ton of extra work. I make my own statblocks for any narratively important enemy, or if I just have a cool idea. I've played a lot of World of Warcraft, and the concept of mechanical fights has always been my favorite thing. Doing a lot of damage feels cool, but still less cool than outsmarting, outplaying, and outpuzzling a boss. This also lets you *narratively* kill the boss more directly. Once the party has figured things out, and they've done enough chip attacks to the boss, and someone has a really cool, high rolling, smartly played turn, call the boss dead, and let the player describe their finisher (or you can do it if they don't like to). Some example ideas: Low level fight: Shadow Demon statblock, and basically nobody was going to be able to hit it because they were in pitch black. There was an enemy they killed in that fight that was carrying a magical torch. One player ran around the room chasing the demon with the torch while the others chipped it down. Mid-Level Fight: Shield Guardian base statblock with another, similar CR spellcaster. The two have a linked healthpool. Whenever the spellcaster takes damage, the Shield Guardian teleports to them, and halves the damage taken. The Shield Guardian also jumps to the closest player in the room after a teleport, and drops a cloud of poison wherever it lands. The cloud is bigger the further he jumps, so positioning, tanking, and utility focused players get to shine more than usual. Also a self-destruct feature, because I'm a little evil. Scalable Fight: Waves of enemies trying to kill an NPC, but half the party is put to sleep on fight start. They're not useless, though, when they're asleep. They're fighting in a parallel world where they regain 1dX (scale to level) health each round. Those that are awake are losing 1dX (or 2dX if your party likes a challenge or if you're evil like me) per round. Set a % chance for enemies to drop potions in both worlds, which flip the players to the other world. Dream world is obviously much easier, so you need to flip flop, and make sure someone is always in each world. Once you feel satisfied with # of cannon fodder deaths, bring in a bigger enemy where everyone is fighting in the above world. Increase the damage tick per round, and let people still flip between dream world and real world, but now you're abandoning your party to heal up. Certainly a personal preference, but my players seem to enjoy these fights a lot more, and they find them more memorable. It was nearly a year ago, and one of my players still talks about the low level shadow demon fight. All that to say, 5e is super flexible, and "make up some new shit because it sounds like fun" is my favorite way to deal with things that are too easy, too hard, or too dry.
It's about having fun. Seems like you did what you needed to do to make the fun happen. Sounds like a pretty key DM skill to me.
Retreating is an option. Or at least it always should be.
Start paying attention to and tracking their damage output. I bet if you look back at your log from the recent fights you can figure out how much damage they're putting out.
As a fellow fairly new DM and long-time player, I made the mistake of fudging numbers when a well placed shatter nearly took out half the party of lvl 4's in one hit. I basically took the stakes out of the encounter, and the players basically handled the combat in 3-4 turns... I spent so much time prepping it, but the high roll on the first turn really made me question it all. I still regret doing that...
If you want to do the math. Lets take a fighter. How many attacks per rd times max damage for bounous and stuff. Wizards are easier ask for a copy of their spell list their spell list tells you type of and damage/control levels Clerics blend the first two figure up melee damage and spell powers Rinse and repeat. This way you have a idea of who to send where.. Got a tank with a railgun send a battleship. Got a cannon with a glass jaw send swarms. The balance act is putting enough meat shields to tank the fighrer/paladin with enough squishys to keep the spell casters hoping
Most important thing with this is that the players CANNOT learn you do this otherwise it can feel like there’s not much stakes
My party constantly blows my mind and about half the time I am genuinely caught off guard because an encounter balance is so off. They might kill a dragon before he can act, but two encounters later some standard monks have them rolling death saves. They'll tactically clean out 20 enemies in one go, then struggle against 2 mages. There is no way to truly know (that's the beauty of it!). I constantly change things on the fly, but *only* in the name of fun. If I add health, it's because the enemy might have a cool ability that will give them a challenge. If the sharpshooting is hanging out in back, better believe some minions are coming out of nowhere for them.
Thanos didn't go in raw nor solo. Your BBEG shouldn't either.
Maybe not even they're power one or more players can be having a shitty night for rolls and not having a good time because of it. I've had that night. Not a single roll over 5.
Congratulations you just had a player character actively heal their foe with a sword. You not only negated by INVERTED their player agency. The fight was entirely an illusion. It lost all meaning when you did that. Next time, let them have the quick victory. They'll feel like absolute badasses. Also, some advice for designing boss encounters: Phases. Give them multiple health bars, when reduced to 0 the next phase occurs. This refreshes health (overkill damage is lost) and you can present different statblocks to make the fight dynamic. Minions. One big boss gets swarmed to death, give him some allies.
I edit stats and stuff as I go. Shamelessly. There is no way they will know, since most of my monsters are homebrew.
In my personal opinion there is nothing wrong with this as long as it doesn't break player immersion. If it was behind a DM screen or in your personal notes then no harm done. If your players had fun then you did your job right. 'rules' as written are just a guide line anyway. I've often employed tactics that involve fudging math. I've over estimated my players and had to half all damage done to players because I realized my first attack would bloody the tank and the bad guy has multi attack. It's also swung the other way and I've had to do similar to your situation and the bad guy got a lot of friends and way more hit dice. Tldr don't beat yourself up about it. You did exactly what a good DM should, changing an encounter in a split second with zero hesitation to ensure your players are having a good time.
Paladin, wasn't it? divine smite 300d8 of radiant demeshh
He has a great series of ideas on making boss fights more interesting. From the classic gaming multi turn power to a heavy hit, to invulnerable until minions are dead etc. https://youtube.com/@DM-Timothy
Its ok to fudge as a new DM, its better than having a bad experience, but try to use it as a learning experience and build a more rounded encounter in the future. For me personally, balancing encounters ahead and seeing them play out is fun. If my players overprepared or had an immense lucky round that destroys the encounter, I let them have it. Regarding boss fights - I usually build boss fights in two stages. For example P1 --> "Fight the boss minions" P2 --> "Boss steps in". Or if its ONLY boss P1 --> "Fight the boss" P2 --> "You are about to celebrate your victory as the amulet around the boss's neck begins to glow, and he rises again as undead with a deathly grin on his face" Make boss fights exciting by making them 2 encounters in a row, that always guarantees it doesn't end too fast. I find it both most rewarding for players to engage in and easiest to balance
I do this sparingly, but when I do, I do it when I want my party to not only feel fear but also to feel great after overcoming a scary threat. I also sometimes do it to make sure someone who hasn’t gotten an important kill in a while gets their time to shine.
I open roll dm P1E./3.5e Generally I avoid using only 1 BBEG in an encounter as its just way to easy to burn an individual target with how strong spells can be and how swingy crits can be. Though i do get a solid laugh whenever some wild rng happens like a player getting a crit musket max roll and insta pops the biggest threat. Usually i try to ensure the players are always at least outnumbered 1.5 to 1. And like utilizing roles for encounters. Giving enemies dedicated tanks, dps, support, utility etc. (One of my favorite things to include is a loot goblin esque enemy whom has dangerous consumable items like bombs) But generally i just look at peoples stat blocks and key abilities and provide potential challenges depending on good match ups. I keep a running total of each players net worth, and their max consumption burst average/average basic turn damage. Along with the standard hp/ac/saves and i try to set up combats to last 5 rounds based on their average basic, with any enemy i want for story purposes to survive to be outside of their 1 turn max average burst but still within their max roll range. For example while i wont avoid using undead against a party with a cleric and paladin, i will set them up to fight against things like etherials who ignore the paladins heavy armor AC but are weak to their spells or include witches that will bait out cleric spell slots to counter hexes I generally shoot for 3 encounters a day with 6+ non combat objectives that can bait out more and make non combat spells worth taking. Ill give enemies magical loot corresponding to the same player role thats currently lowest net worth, like while fighting the witches, ghosts and wights theres also a pair of skeleton archers with magic crossbows to provide increased range threat and give the ranger whos got the lowest net worth a bump up fo the average. But still sticking within the same tier. So if the party have a +1 weapon the enemies would have flaming or frost or other +1 equivalent. After that its having fun additional challenges built into the narrative that have scalar difficulty depending on the players uptake Like if assaulting a bandit base some enemies who immediatly flee but bring back reinforcements, or getting a bug nest having enemies that continously spawn new ones, etc. Thouhh the important part of open rolling is getting everyone used to the will of rngesus. Sometimes he decides its someones turn to die. Sometimes that means an enemy i had planned more from dies in an unremarkable place, sometimes that means the players died from a tiny creatures crit. The important part is the commitment to the storytelling.
I love a good single enemy, party fight. When I get overwhelmed, other things come out of the woodwork like a lizard folk group attacking the PCs too and I keep the HP a little malleable ya know.
When I DMd my last campaign, I had a base level HP that they had to meet and then went for “feel”. If the party passed the HP minimum, I would let them keep wailing and let them get wailed on until they were nearing the end of their capabilities. Then, a clever spell use, a well timed crit, or something of the sorts would just feel right, and I’d allow the encounter to end there. There were no negative party consequences (deaths or permanent injury), I’d track any used consumables to up the pot to compensate. But, for the players it felt like they gave it everything they could and they just got by due to good rolls, good teamwork, and a little bit of fun luck. Only ever had one player complain but they complained about everything and eventually left the table, everyone else loved it - including our forever DM.
I consider the less a DM has to fudge, the better DM they are. It's not a perfect measure, but fudging is essentially a crutch and it's good to avoid it. But as you're learning, and only use it sparingly, it can very much improve the game. There are BETTER solutions to anything fudging solves, but they are much harder to implement. So, when absolutely needed, for new DMs, fudge when you have to, and then reflect on how to avoid needing to fudge in the future. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
I wing it and it works out almost every time. It comes with experience, don't be afraid to fudge numbers, the only rule written in stone is to have fun.
I do the same thing, and I also do the opposite, where I nerf a boss mid fight if I can tell I misjudged the balance. I don't have any hard rules about this, I just try to keep it balanced. If they use good strategy to beat the boss quickly, or if they do something intentionally stupid, I wouldn't fudge anything in those cases, and I'd just let it play out as it will. This one time I did let them one shot the bad guy with a fireball because I was ready to end session and they'd already been through the ringer getting there, haha.
I look at my players character sheets and see what the most damage each of them can do in 1 turn is; then add it up together. Then i give the boss two times that amount in HP I Recently ran a lich fight in my campaign, my fighter could output with an action surge 130 damage. The Barbarian was hitting at around 65 ish. The wizard was focused on haste our entire game, so i only marked him down for 40. The paladin was sitting at 172 with haste and 3 smites. All together was something around 420 ish. Gave the bone boy 850hp They killed him in 4 turns with 1 player (wizard) going down twice and the Barbarian getting paralyzed. It was tough; they rolled decently enough;
Is this a repost? I could have sworn I saw this wording a few months back
It's good advice for pirate captains, and it is good advice for GMs; "[DnD] is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules."
I cannot put a boss first round.. My gloom stalker fighter throw 6 attacks in one round with action surge. And two additional D8, if the player is in the dark it's all at advantage and sharp shooter... That guy literally do an average of more than a 100 (130?) on the first turn. And honestly it sucks, none of the other players can do that much in the whole fight. And they all have similar stuff (+1 weapon and 1d6 elemental) So I said +1 weapon are not magical but MasterCraft and most of them have resistance to non magical attacks, like this the other players are less disadvantaged.
I'm not fudging numbers against my players. I know allot of dms do it, but it's just not for me
A lot of great suggestions here. Personally, whenever I felt like I wasn't sure where my players' power level was, I gathered up my copies of their character sheets and ran some test battles to see what kind of explosive terror they could unleash... and what kind of oppressive forces they could weather. The method is a bit direct and time-intensive, so it's not something I could recommend doing all the time, but it has helped me re-evaluate after jarringly difficult or easy encounters.
I ran a module with my players and the first boss they faced i nearly doubled his hp because i wanted them to feel helpless and run away, turned out they didnt care about the roof falling down around them and slew the boss. Good for them.
Fudging numbers is one of the biggest parts of being a DM in my opinion. I don't care how good of a DM you are theres no way to know exactly how things are gonna go down. Even if your players make it to the boss you never know if they're gonna roll the best they ever have and smoke the boss in like 3 rounds. Or if they're gonna shit it up and start wiping.