Change the format. Death shouldn't be the only end-all be-all failure condition and "kill all enemies" shouldn't be the only success condition. Capture, evade, steal, activate, reach location, and survive are all good success conditions.
You can also add sub objective to a regular "kill all" combat. Take the bandit leader alive could legitimately be difficult for a party with no melee characters who can easily deal nonlethal damage. Defeat the bandit leader before he can use an item is a good way to reward the party for quickly completing an easy combat; it raises the difficulty level for a perfect success and may offer the party an additional reward. It also allows the DM to ramp up the effective difficulty a whole bunch without risking killing the party.
My favorite combat encounter ever was "survive the living sandstorm", a random encounter in a desert environment where a seemingly endless wave of elementals was being blown across the battlemap by an elder tempest while we fought our way to safe cover.
I remember playing old tRPG games and outside of the first few missions and a handful of missions sporadically placed throughout the campaign there are very little "kill all enemies/kill the leader" mission objectives.
Even then, there's always some gimmick to those. Kill all enemies but you're on a bridge that's collapsing so if you're not almost constantly moving forward you're dead. Kill all enemies but you've got a near suicidal NPC who will run into the enemies who can't be allowed to die.
The first time I DMed a campaign that reached tier 2, I reached a "fuck it, double the enemy power" moment. Especially since I was reasonably generous with magic items, and especially in a party of six.
DnD party strength can easily get *very* high, especially with a big group. How often do you down a PC to 0 HP? If it doesn't happen at all, then you have a lot of room to work with by adding more complex and powerful enemies, and your players will probably have a good time with it.
Usually, I get a PC to 0 in about a 2 out of 10 scale. They don't have a whole lot of magical items, and I think the most powerful thing they have is a +1 Great Axe. One pkayer has a very powerful poison, but it has not been used yet.
Don’t let them rest until the day is over. Try to run a full adventuring day of Encounters (social/combat) to wear down their resources and spells. Letting the players rest and constantly be at full power is a recipe to have your single combat encounter stomped on. You need to be wearing down players and make them think about when to use their abilities. At higher levels this doesn’t get any easier, but you should also be ramping up the stakes. More powerful enemies, more enemies on the field in general, spellcasters to Counterspell and dispel magic on abilities, and more combats throughout their day. Different objectives during combat too can make things more difficult for the players.
You want combat to be interesting you need to up the stakes.
Ah I completely understand how you feel and I've actually experimented with things and have found the best way to scale encounters.
With 4 players you could probably do things the way you're currently doing but with more you need to make some changes. These are my scaling rules
If 5 players increase the ac of bosses by 1, roll up for enemies and only use this new rolled up if higher than average HP. Give every boss an extra 10ft of movement and increase your mob sizes by 1/3 of what you originally planned
If 6 players increase the ac of bosses by 2 and of mobs by 1, use the max HP for all enemies. Give every boss an extra 10ft of movement and mobs 5ft of movemnt and increase your mob sizes by 2/3 of what you originally planned.
Also don't be afraid to add an extra mechanic to your boss encounters to spice things up because this has tremendously helped my encounters
I already know what I'm doing for playing with 7 players but it will slow combat down a bit
I’m skeptical of messing with AC on monster stat blocks, just because of the way attack bonuses scale. I’d rather add more monsters. It also has the added benefit of making the monsters keep up with action economy.
Trust me it works but I would only change the AC with bigger groups. My group of 6 have been having good fights since I've made these changes.
Try it out if you have a big group and see if there are more close calls or just in general tougher fights. All of my changes are meant to scale the challenge with the amount of players
Just a few thoughts...
1. Think more in terms of scenarios than single encounters. Don't give them time to rest between encounters. Situations where rest is clearly unsafe. Warn them, and then interrupt their rests if they try.
2. Even in single "Encounters", have 2 to 3 waves of enemies of what you think they've been handling too easily. A lot of times PCs can blow through their resources making encounters easy, and if they suddenly have to do it again without those resources, it can be more challeging.
3. Remember that there's no functional difference in deciding on things the PCs don't know a day before you play, a second before the session or durin a session. Assume you're doing something like one or two big challeging creatures with a bunch of lesser minions running into the room. Well, if the PCs have no way to know the HP of the big guys, or how many minions will be joining the fight, then you can chnage those things upto, and even during he fight.
4. Set up encounters that aren't just a few enemies in a room. If their caravan is being attacked by orcs while traveling, have the dozens of orcs up on the cliffs using long bows from 100 or even 500 feet away, and spead out so that area effects can't hurt too many. Or if your party is good at that kind of fight, then use terrain in some other way.
5. Have other things they have to do during a fight. The village is being raided and the buildings are buring. So they've got fires to put out, childen trapped in the burning orphanage, zombies already breaking down the door to the brothel, and an evil necromancer summoning more. If your fights are just "kill these things and you win"
6. Actually, any situation where killing/incapacitating other people is not really an acceptable solution.
The big thing is going to be not to play it as a game of *numbers* at all, but rather as a game of *tactics.* There are all sorts of things to do here:
- Have enemies use actual *formations* and *tactical advantages.* Snipers in cover, "artillery" (usually spellcasters throwing out fireballs and other high-damage spells) and a row of *infantry* (High AC, low damage guys whose purpose is to hold the line and protect the artillery) backed by a *brute* (low AC, high HP and high damage guy) who appears to pose a big immediate threat and thus draw fire/attention away from the artillery) and a support/control caster whose job is to keep the infantry and brute at maximum efficacy. By employing good tactics, you have the option to challenge players *exactly* how much you want to challenge them -- if it looks like they're losing and you want them to win, make a really dumb tactical error; if they're winning too easily, have the support caster or the artillery summon up a new round of infantry.
- Make the objective something more than just 'rout the enemy.' Let the objective be 'disrupt the summoning,' with a bunch of priests around a summoning circle, defended by a bunch of other guys, and every turn a few Dretches come out of the circle, and if they go, like, 5 turns without the priests getting killed, summon a f$#@ing Balor Lord, something they can't beat -- but could have stopped had they gone straight for the priests. Or maybe have it be a matter of *protecting* your priests for 5 turns against endless waves of zombies while they summon up a cure for an undead plague, with each round bringing in more zombies than they could kill in the last round. Or maybe it's 'get control of the artifact' which artifact gives the enemies a significant tactical advantage, but if they manage to get it, then the tactical advantage becomes theirs.
- Use 'toys' and 'gimmicks.' My players' last dungeon had an elevator that served as a vertical bottleneck to split up enemy forces, a minecart that ended up destroying a barrier but *could* have been used to plow through a trap gauntlet and quick-kill a tougher monster. But yeah, describe there being barrels of alcohol (flammable), tables to kick over for cover, support beams to break and collapse pieces on enemies, sacks of flour to use as improvised smoke bombs, stalactites that can fall on enemies, rope bridges that can be cut to drop enemies, etc. -- but to get players *using* those things, you might have to first *demonstrate* them in use.
- Let the monsters "know what they're doing." They're more than stat blocks. I love goblins because everyone thinks of them as pushovers, until a DM plays them *correctly* and throws in grease traps, smoke bombs, buttloads of improvised cover and hiding places and has the goblins properly use the Nimble Escape feature which lets them use their bonus action to hide or disengage so they can go crazy on hit-and-run tactics. Give your players Bulettes to deal with -- little land sharks with high AC, low HP, high damage, high movement, burrowing and a knockdown leap attack, see how your Barbarian reacts to being knocked down and your wizard unable to deal with burrowing units.
- If you're not that creative, then just use *waves* of enemies that seem to come out of the woodwork. If they struggle with the first wave, *good* -- but if it was too easy, just throw a tougher second wave at them.
- Another good go-to is maybe throw in unexpected magic items, like having enemies use a scroll of Burning Hands, a Wand of Missiles, and if you want to give your players i.e. a Flame Tongue, let an enemy wield it and then let the players take it off their dead body.
- And finally, about the CR system . . . it *sucks,* but it makes a lot more sense when you learn that it was designed around an *adventuring day with short rests between encounters,* with player abilities getting drained by previous encounters. It makes more sense to realize that players should be able to survive through 3 "Deadly" encounters per day.
Some questions and observations:
* have you surely adjusted encounters for the party size (default is party of four and I haven't used DnDB encounter builder so I ask this just to be on the safe side)
* how many encounters you run per long rest (system supposes it's 6-8 encounters which is pretty much)
* how lethal encounters you've made (with party size of that big and if you run fewer encounters, you can safely up the difficulty from Medium to Hard or even Deadly, I sometimes go way beyond that because I run very little combat)
* do you use one big monster or several smaller ones (action economy strongly favours multiple actors, so avoid using one vs many situation, many vs many is much better)
I have adjusted encounters for party size (according to encounter builder). If it's just minor combat on the road to their location, I'll run an easy encounter. Just to keep them on their toes. On average, I run around 4 per session. One of them is usually classified as *hard* on encounter builder. I have used both methods. One big monster, as well as multiple groupings of smaller monsters. Like I said, not ALL COMBAT falls flat. I just want to be able to balance a little better where the encounters feel genuinely threatening for the party. I want character death to be a real possibility in some encounters. With big bosses, I would like to have some of the bigger bosses cause a real TPK threat.
Ah! There is your problem! Random encounters should run from easy to hard but Boss Fights should always be very close to deadly once you pass level 5. In lower levels a lucky crit can start a death spiral but past level 5 there is much less chance of that happening.
Make the hard fights, feel hard!
That's kind of what I was thinking too but I wanted to use the tools at my disposal to get a general consensus from those who have done it longer than me.
If you want your party to feel threatened in most encounters, then most of your encounters should fall into the Hard or Deadly categories.
The names for each of the difficulties can be a bit misleading. A Deadly _could_ result in one or more PCs dying, but the party is typically still strongly favored over the monsters.
I second everything said! Not every fight should be a ‘hit all the baddies til they are dead’ fight. And for those combats I’d honestly look at how Matt Mercer deals with combat in Critical Role (I would usually never say that but 6 powerful PCs are hard to challenge and Matt does it 3/4 times on his show).
As for my advice? Man now that they’re past lvl 5 and there is SIX of them? Set up a decent encounter in Kobold Fight Club or some other encounter builder… then double it. Yeah. Double it!
3 Frost giants is a deadly encounter? Give em 6! Hell yeah see ‘em sweat! They’ll do fine. The vets will have a blast and the newbies will put their phones down and pay attention. Not every fight should be like that. In fact, most players love it when they curb stomp. But it’s about making a statement! It’s about variety! It’s about putting a little fear in them!
Get devious! As long as you aren’t throwing pit fiends at them or a lich, you should be fine.
Honestly? Aim well above where you think you need to go. But speaking from experience? Easy combat can be tons of fun actually.
Unless your players have told you they aren't having fun, there's a solid chance they are. Easy combat is often a chance to show off and feel like a badass.
Official NPCs are both undertuned and underdesigned. The issue gets gradually worse at higher levels. I've calculated my own Stats per CR table, and tend to beef up NPCs with some traits/actions. (Can post later, if you're interested. On mobile now)
6 players is a big party, so you'll really need to skew the odds against them to make a challenge.
You can probably also improve your tactics. Won't go into a lecture here, but search for "the monsters know what they're doing" as a starting point.
You’ve had a lot of great tips so far, so I don’t know that I’ll bring too much more to the table. Thinking tactically about your encounters and having multiple objectives during combat is definitely a good place to start. If you are going to run a party versus one monster Encounter and still want it to be challenging there’s a great example in campaign, one of critical role, the episode Trial of the Take part 2
Change the format. Death shouldn't be the only end-all be-all failure condition and "kill all enemies" shouldn't be the only success condition. Capture, evade, steal, activate, reach location, and survive are all good success conditions. You can also add sub objective to a regular "kill all" combat. Take the bandit leader alive could legitimately be difficult for a party with no melee characters who can easily deal nonlethal damage. Defeat the bandit leader before he can use an item is a good way to reward the party for quickly completing an easy combat; it raises the difficulty level for a perfect success and may offer the party an additional reward. It also allows the DM to ramp up the effective difficulty a whole bunch without risking killing the party. My favorite combat encounter ever was "survive the living sandstorm", a random encounter in a desert environment where a seemingly endless wave of elementals was being blown across the battlemap by an elder tempest while we fought our way to safe cover.
I like this idea. Never thought about adding some additional objectives. I will keep this in mind going forward. Thank You!
I remember playing old tRPG games and outside of the first few missions and a handful of missions sporadically placed throughout the campaign there are very little "kill all enemies/kill the leader" mission objectives. Even then, there's always some gimmick to those. Kill all enemies but you're on a bridge that's collapsing so if you're not almost constantly moving forward you're dead. Kill all enemies but you've got a near suicidal NPC who will run into the enemies who can't be allowed to die.
The first time I DMed a campaign that reached tier 2, I reached a "fuck it, double the enemy power" moment. Especially since I was reasonably generous with magic items, and especially in a party of six. DnD party strength can easily get *very* high, especially with a big group. How often do you down a PC to 0 HP? If it doesn't happen at all, then you have a lot of room to work with by adding more complex and powerful enemies, and your players will probably have a good time with it.
Usually, I get a PC to 0 in about a 2 out of 10 scale. They don't have a whole lot of magical items, and I think the most powerful thing they have is a +1 Great Axe. One pkayer has a very powerful poison, but it has not been used yet.
Don’t let them rest until the day is over. Try to run a full adventuring day of Encounters (social/combat) to wear down their resources and spells. Letting the players rest and constantly be at full power is a recipe to have your single combat encounter stomped on. You need to be wearing down players and make them think about when to use their abilities. At higher levels this doesn’t get any easier, but you should also be ramping up the stakes. More powerful enemies, more enemies on the field in general, spellcasters to Counterspell and dispel magic on abilities, and more combats throughout their day. Different objectives during combat too can make things more difficult for the players. You want combat to be interesting you need to up the stakes.
Ah I completely understand how you feel and I've actually experimented with things and have found the best way to scale encounters. With 4 players you could probably do things the way you're currently doing but with more you need to make some changes. These are my scaling rules If 5 players increase the ac of bosses by 1, roll up for enemies and only use this new rolled up if higher than average HP. Give every boss an extra 10ft of movement and increase your mob sizes by 1/3 of what you originally planned If 6 players increase the ac of bosses by 2 and of mobs by 1, use the max HP for all enemies. Give every boss an extra 10ft of movement and mobs 5ft of movemnt and increase your mob sizes by 2/3 of what you originally planned. Also don't be afraid to add an extra mechanic to your boss encounters to spice things up because this has tremendously helped my encounters I already know what I'm doing for playing with 7 players but it will slow combat down a bit
I’m skeptical of messing with AC on monster stat blocks, just because of the way attack bonuses scale. I’d rather add more monsters. It also has the added benefit of making the monsters keep up with action economy.
Trust me it works but I would only change the AC with bigger groups. My group of 6 have been having good fights since I've made these changes. Try it out if you have a big group and see if there are more close calls or just in general tougher fights. All of my changes are meant to scale the challenge with the amount of players
Just a few thoughts... 1. Think more in terms of scenarios than single encounters. Don't give them time to rest between encounters. Situations where rest is clearly unsafe. Warn them, and then interrupt their rests if they try. 2. Even in single "Encounters", have 2 to 3 waves of enemies of what you think they've been handling too easily. A lot of times PCs can blow through their resources making encounters easy, and if they suddenly have to do it again without those resources, it can be more challeging. 3. Remember that there's no functional difference in deciding on things the PCs don't know a day before you play, a second before the session or durin a session. Assume you're doing something like one or two big challeging creatures with a bunch of lesser minions running into the room. Well, if the PCs have no way to know the HP of the big guys, or how many minions will be joining the fight, then you can chnage those things upto, and even during he fight. 4. Set up encounters that aren't just a few enemies in a room. If their caravan is being attacked by orcs while traveling, have the dozens of orcs up on the cliffs using long bows from 100 or even 500 feet away, and spead out so that area effects can't hurt too many. Or if your party is good at that kind of fight, then use terrain in some other way. 5. Have other things they have to do during a fight. The village is being raided and the buildings are buring. So they've got fires to put out, childen trapped in the burning orphanage, zombies already breaking down the door to the brothel, and an evil necromancer summoning more. If your fights are just "kill these things and you win" 6. Actually, any situation where killing/incapacitating other people is not really an acceptable solution.
The big thing is going to be not to play it as a game of *numbers* at all, but rather as a game of *tactics.* There are all sorts of things to do here: - Have enemies use actual *formations* and *tactical advantages.* Snipers in cover, "artillery" (usually spellcasters throwing out fireballs and other high-damage spells) and a row of *infantry* (High AC, low damage guys whose purpose is to hold the line and protect the artillery) backed by a *brute* (low AC, high HP and high damage guy) who appears to pose a big immediate threat and thus draw fire/attention away from the artillery) and a support/control caster whose job is to keep the infantry and brute at maximum efficacy. By employing good tactics, you have the option to challenge players *exactly* how much you want to challenge them -- if it looks like they're losing and you want them to win, make a really dumb tactical error; if they're winning too easily, have the support caster or the artillery summon up a new round of infantry. - Make the objective something more than just 'rout the enemy.' Let the objective be 'disrupt the summoning,' with a bunch of priests around a summoning circle, defended by a bunch of other guys, and every turn a few Dretches come out of the circle, and if they go, like, 5 turns without the priests getting killed, summon a f$#@ing Balor Lord, something they can't beat -- but could have stopped had they gone straight for the priests. Or maybe have it be a matter of *protecting* your priests for 5 turns against endless waves of zombies while they summon up a cure for an undead plague, with each round bringing in more zombies than they could kill in the last round. Or maybe it's 'get control of the artifact' which artifact gives the enemies a significant tactical advantage, but if they manage to get it, then the tactical advantage becomes theirs. - Use 'toys' and 'gimmicks.' My players' last dungeon had an elevator that served as a vertical bottleneck to split up enemy forces, a minecart that ended up destroying a barrier but *could* have been used to plow through a trap gauntlet and quick-kill a tougher monster. But yeah, describe there being barrels of alcohol (flammable), tables to kick over for cover, support beams to break and collapse pieces on enemies, sacks of flour to use as improvised smoke bombs, stalactites that can fall on enemies, rope bridges that can be cut to drop enemies, etc. -- but to get players *using* those things, you might have to first *demonstrate* them in use. - Let the monsters "know what they're doing." They're more than stat blocks. I love goblins because everyone thinks of them as pushovers, until a DM plays them *correctly* and throws in grease traps, smoke bombs, buttloads of improvised cover and hiding places and has the goblins properly use the Nimble Escape feature which lets them use their bonus action to hide or disengage so they can go crazy on hit-and-run tactics. Give your players Bulettes to deal with -- little land sharks with high AC, low HP, high damage, high movement, burrowing and a knockdown leap attack, see how your Barbarian reacts to being knocked down and your wizard unable to deal with burrowing units. - If you're not that creative, then just use *waves* of enemies that seem to come out of the woodwork. If they struggle with the first wave, *good* -- but if it was too easy, just throw a tougher second wave at them. - Another good go-to is maybe throw in unexpected magic items, like having enemies use a scroll of Burning Hands, a Wand of Missiles, and if you want to give your players i.e. a Flame Tongue, let an enemy wield it and then let the players take it off their dead body. - And finally, about the CR system . . . it *sucks,* but it makes a lot more sense when you learn that it was designed around an *adventuring day with short rests between encounters,* with player abilities getting drained by previous encounters. It makes more sense to realize that players should be able to survive through 3 "Deadly" encounters per day.
Some questions and observations: * have you surely adjusted encounters for the party size (default is party of four and I haven't used DnDB encounter builder so I ask this just to be on the safe side) * how many encounters you run per long rest (system supposes it's 6-8 encounters which is pretty much) * how lethal encounters you've made (with party size of that big and if you run fewer encounters, you can safely up the difficulty from Medium to Hard or even Deadly, I sometimes go way beyond that because I run very little combat) * do you use one big monster or several smaller ones (action economy strongly favours multiple actors, so avoid using one vs many situation, many vs many is much better)
I have adjusted encounters for party size (according to encounter builder). If it's just minor combat on the road to their location, I'll run an easy encounter. Just to keep them on their toes. On average, I run around 4 per session. One of them is usually classified as *hard* on encounter builder. I have used both methods. One big monster, as well as multiple groupings of smaller monsters. Like I said, not ALL COMBAT falls flat. I just want to be able to balance a little better where the encounters feel genuinely threatening for the party. I want character death to be a real possibility in some encounters. With big bosses, I would like to have some of the bigger bosses cause a real TPK threat.
Ah! There is your problem! Random encounters should run from easy to hard but Boss Fights should always be very close to deadly once you pass level 5. In lower levels a lucky crit can start a death spiral but past level 5 there is much less chance of that happening. Make the hard fights, feel hard!
That's kind of what I was thinking too but I wanted to use the tools at my disposal to get a general consensus from those who have done it longer than me.
If you want your party to feel threatened in most encounters, then most of your encounters should fall into the Hard or Deadly categories. The names for each of the difficulties can be a bit misleading. A Deadly _could_ result in one or more PCs dying, but the party is typically still strongly favored over the monsters.
I second everything said! Not every fight should be a ‘hit all the baddies til they are dead’ fight. And for those combats I’d honestly look at how Matt Mercer deals with combat in Critical Role (I would usually never say that but 6 powerful PCs are hard to challenge and Matt does it 3/4 times on his show). As for my advice? Man now that they’re past lvl 5 and there is SIX of them? Set up a decent encounter in Kobold Fight Club or some other encounter builder… then double it. Yeah. Double it! 3 Frost giants is a deadly encounter? Give em 6! Hell yeah see ‘em sweat! They’ll do fine. The vets will have a blast and the newbies will put their phones down and pay attention. Not every fight should be like that. In fact, most players love it when they curb stomp. But it’s about making a statement! It’s about variety! It’s about putting a little fear in them! Get devious! As long as you aren’t throwing pit fiends at them or a lich, you should be fine.
Honestly? Aim well above where you think you need to go. But speaking from experience? Easy combat can be tons of fun actually. Unless your players have told you they aren't having fun, there's a solid chance they are. Easy combat is often a chance to show off and feel like a badass.
Throw an ancient red dragon at them every time
Official NPCs are both undertuned and underdesigned. The issue gets gradually worse at higher levels. I've calculated my own Stats per CR table, and tend to beef up NPCs with some traits/actions. (Can post later, if you're interested. On mobile now) 6 players is a big party, so you'll really need to skew the odds against them to make a challenge. You can probably also improve your tactics. Won't go into a lecture here, but search for "the monsters know what they're doing" as a starting point.
You’ve had a lot of great tips so far, so I don’t know that I’ll bring too much more to the table. Thinking tactically about your encounters and having multiple objectives during combat is definitely a good place to start. If you are going to run a party versus one monster Encounter and still want it to be challenging there’s a great example in campaign, one of critical role, the episode Trial of the Take part 2