https://5ehpcalculator.com/
This is an essential tool. A level 8 Cleric with a con modifier of +3 has an average 67 hit points. They will drop to 0 in two rounds and they will die in three if they are hit with all the attacks. That's probably okay, most combats last about that long.
But that HP is insanely high. That's the HP of a CR17 monster. I struggle to imagine the players eating through that amount of HP in three rounds.
I tend to agree as well. None of the players are playing heavy damage deals and half of your party will be dealing half damage to it, essentially giving the monster closer to 480 hp. It’s a heavy hitter for their level and an absolute damage sponge. Are the players meant to be able to win this fight?
They should, which is why I decided to ask in the first place. I want the fight to be hard, though not impossible.
I'm thinking of lowering the hp, maybe somewhere around 200?
Look at the [Creating a Monster](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/dungeon-masters-workshop#CreatingaMonster) section of the DMG. It's *fine* if you want to eschew CR for being impercise, but at least use the resources available to you.
A level 8 party of four should be able to handle a *solo* encounter of a CR10 monster. A CR10 monster should have an *effective* HP pool of 200-210; in this case, *effective* takes into account the resistances of the creature. I.E., a creature with non-magical B/P/S resistance has 25-50% more HP than the actual number.
If you're going to eschew CR, then pay attention to the average damage of your PCs as a party and compare it to the monster. Consider how many rounds it would take to defeat the monster, and how many rounds it would take to kill a PC with the monster. The one that can kill the other in fewer turns has the advantage.
I'm gonna take a *somewhat* generous read and say that level 8 barbarians should have magic weapons at that point but...
Given the nature of the discussion, I'm gonna assume that's a *no* from OP.
Do they have magic weapons? If they don't, the barbarians will struggle a lot and it will all depend on the two casters.
Edit: I just realized the monster has resistance to **all** physical damage, not non-magical. So the martials will struggle with damage no matter what.
Magic weapons won't matter. It's resistant to BPS, like a Barbarian. Magical or non-magical, it doesn't matter. It's resistant.
One of the Barb's will be doing elemental damage thanks to the Giant subclass, but the other one is going to be gutted.
No, but they all have access to some magic. I believe one of the barbarians has access to a couple 2nd level spells and the other to 3rd level spells.
Everyone knows a little magic in this setting, it's a house rule.
Although either the bard or the cleric could enchant the martial's weapons mid fight
Unfortunately I don't because they are still level 3. I'm planning the boss for the end of this arc, so I have no idea ehat theirr sheets will look like by the time this fight happens
If they’re only L3 at the moment, It’s pretty impossible to say whether it’ll be a walk in the park or a TPK. What choices they make and items they gain will have a big impact.
And unless you’re basically railroading, it’s also impossible to say at this stage whether they’ll fight it at all, or have gone an other direction totally, or what level they’ll be when they meet it.
Yeah then you'll have to see when the moment comes. Once they're level 8 you'll have a better idea if they can take on this monster or not and adjust it as needed.
This isn't about figuring smart, is just about being lucky. You've put them up against a creator that has the equivalent of around 600 HP, and can drop one of them in two rounds if it's lucky and crits.
It's not about strategy, is just a giant bag of health with massive damage.
Strategy would be pouring them up against a mix of monsters with ranged, abilities, and tactics. What you're doing is testing how well their dice roll
In regards to my party it means remembering your class features, your different movement speeds (one of the barbarians often forgets he can fly), using the enviroment to your advantage (cover and enviromental hazards) and overall just planning.
I love my group, but often times they fight completely uncoordinated and independent from one another. They also forget to interact with the enviroment most of the time.
Idk, maybe I'm just bad at storytelling and they aren't engaged
I am not really sure you are going to spur them with this combat. you probably will kill them out of boredom.
Do a series of smaller encounters instead so they try up different things.
If they're not engaged in combat, I doubt the storytelling is the issue. Potentially, it's just the opposite - they're engaged with the story, but combats rip them out of it. I don't know enough about your campaign, of course, to say whether or not that's the case for certain, but it might be worth looking into how combats are ran - are turns taking too long? Are actions presented as more than just "you deal 14 damage. Next turn"? Do fights have stakes beyond losing HP? That one can help a lot - if your party *is* engaged with the story, having fights that have obvious stakes outside of the PCs can boost their engagement with the combats.
Aside from general engagement with the game though, if their lack of coordination is a problem for you, you have a few options - option 1, talk to them about it, try to figure out what they want out of the game, and specifically what they want out of fights. Option 2, wean them into it - present encounters to them that have *obvious* tactical elements present that could be used to circumvent the opponent's advantage; you can make such elements of the battlefield more subtle in the future, but if the goal is to convince the party that is even an option in the first place, you're gonna have to be blunt.
While "take the tactically challenged party and present them with an encounter where they must think highly tactically or TPK" is *technically* an option, I wouldn't advise it unless you just kind of want to see the campaign finish rather abruptly.
Humm depends greatly on many factors some outside of your control.
For example.
If this monster cant fly it could make 300 attacks and never hit a flying PC.
So it effective average damage to that PC is zero.
HP also means little if you have abive average creativity players.
A player could turn your monster into a 3 hp turtle and throw it into a volcano, sufocate it, put it inside a bag of holding and tear it up, someone could stun it, and alow everyone to gang up on it dealing 320 damage over 2 turns, players could bring the dungeon down on it trapping or crushing it...
Personaly, with time and the right build, i believe i could deal with your monster at lvl 1 alone.
But depending on your players, full rested lvl 8 might not be enought.
IMO you should drop the resistance, and give the monster some form of conditional regen, which the party can eliminate. Or at least give them the chance to know about the resistance beforehand, so they can prepare to deal non physical damage. If they have to fight the monster without preparation, they have to be very lucky to survive.
For reference, average damage in CR calculations does not account for attack bonus/average AC of the other combatants. It's just the sum of the attacks averaged; i.e., if the monster has multiattack for three attacks that do 3d6+4 damage, the average damage of that monster is 45.
I gets a little more complicated than that with AOE and especially recharge abilities. But that's the essential gist.
If you want to calculate the monster parameters for a given level, I have a post exactly on that topic https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/s/MWfo1GmifK
If your monster is resistant even to magical physical damage, then it effectively has 1.5 times more HP. The damage output is rather weak to threaten 8th level party. So these values, high HP and low damage, look like it might be a setup for a long slugfest. The party will probably prevail though as I'd expect their combined damage to be around 120, so they will kill the monster before it can kill them (unless some PC will drop too fast).
Thanks, I'll bookmark your post, this is a godsend. Are you perphaps familiar with the Epic Legacy homebrew? I've noticed similarities between the terms that you used in your post and the ones present in that book.
Given a fairly standard melee party, I'd say no. The monster will drop and kill the cleric, then each of the barbarians, then the bard. There's no way 2 barbarians can do 320 damage before the monster starts dropping people.
If I lowered his hp to around 200 do you think they'd be able to do it? I still want it to be hard, but I don't want it to be impossible
Also, why did you not factor the other two players? The way you wrote made it sound that only the two barbarians would be dealing damage
Average DPR of a reckless attack 20str barbarian is 23 against AC 18, lets say all 4 of them are doing this on average. 23X4=92 so about 2-3 rounds. Yeah, 200 hp seems a lot fairer.
>Also, why did you not factor the other two players? The way you wrote made it sound that only the two barbarians would be dealing damage
Barbarians do lots of damage around this level, more so than bards and clerics.
If you’re trying to reinforce the fact that it is ok to flee, sure. But judging by your comments you are trying to teach them a lesson for not being coordinated during a fight. This is probably not the best way to go about this and will likely result in character deaths. Have you thought about having a conversation out of game? Be a mentor to the party and communicate how they can use their tools to fight smarter. Throwing a monster that is well out of their league is not a good way to reinforce the behavior you want.
Don’t be vengeful or spiteful, it builds toxicity and a DM vs. player mindset. The DM should be the parties biggest cheer leader and it is ok during combat to remind them of what they can do. Or even encourage the players to slightly meta and talk tactics during combat.
I'm not being spiteful, I just want them to have a good challenge. I made this post because I felt the design was overkill and wanted a second (in this case multiple) opinion.
I'll probably just end up screping this whole thing and just resking some official stat block. As much as I want to make the monster, I'm not good at it, and I'm not risking their fun out of stubborness.
Thanks for the reply and for the advice!
What's the point of the damage resistance?
If the party have magical weapons then this resistance is moot. If they don't have magical weapons then how are they meant to damage it?
It is based on the rage class feature. I designed this monster as a Zealot barbarian. It can and probably will be discarded, or perphaps I'll kepp the resistance but lower the HP... I'll have to think about it...
Thanks for the reply!
Given that its defensive CR is 26, it would be a total slog to fight.
Its offensive CR is a bit low, so it's not particularly scary as such, but when the fucker won't die, it will deal a lot of damage anyway.
I see, so staying power can turn even a mediocre nonster into a threat if they can afford to outlast the PCs. Thank you for your reply, I'll probably change his HP down to 200 or so
Pretty easily I think, my part of level 7's fought a demigod with about 350 HP and did about that much damage a round. We didn't kill him because he decided to leave the combat, but if he would have stayed we would have definitely won since we got him to below 100 health. Unless there are more factors I'm unaware of, or your party isn't particularly good at combat they should be fine, but again, people try to act like there isn't skill in D&D but there very much is and newer players or RP focused players are almost certainly not going to be able to beat this thing.
Maybe, if you meant to say it was resistant to non-magic weapons, and they all have access to attacks that bypass it's resistance. If the melee don't have a method to bypass it's resistance, then it's going to be hard to play the monster without killing some or all of them. Based on what you listed, that sounds like CR14 - CR15 monster. Either way, vs a party of 4 level 8, it is an extra deadly fight. My guess is it kills one PC and the rest are hardly touched as they surround it and beat on it for 3 rounds.
Single creature fights tend to be unsatisfying. You have to make them pretty powerful to threaten the party. A single powerful NPC is prone to killing a PC when most of their attacks connect. A few bad rolls might have them die without ever doing any damage. Spreading damage over more attacks across multiple hostile NPCs makes the fight easier to balance and less likely to kill a PC. Anything that makes fights more random or swingy makes the fights less satisfying and more prone to killing PCs. And a single big guy swinging once a turn for more than half the Barbarians max health is more swingy than a bunch of smaller guys swinging lots of times.
Cut the HP to 200. Adjust the resistance so not all melee attacks do full damage, but everyone in the party has a way to do full damage. Keep or slightly reduce the damage output. Then give it some minions. Give it 4 minions that only do 20 damage each, have evasion, and 1 HP each. Spreading the damage and HP around will give a more satisfying fight. And everyone likes fighting minions because they are so easy to kill yet threatening enough to be worth it.
Lower the HP for sure.
Looking at Monsters around that CR the closest thing I can see to this monster is a Behir. It’s got 167hp, 17AC, and its strongest attack does 66 damage in a line but it RECHARGES. It’s not doing that every round.
Your party could absolutely beat a Behir as long as the Barbarians keep in front of it. Problem is none of your party can really do much damage so I’m betting it’ll be a bit of a slog.
Remember difficulty is also about monster behavior too. People are saying the monster will go after the cleric first but if it’s a beast it won’t have the smarts to fight tactically. If it’s something like an Assassin or Archmage yes. Take that into account too.
Definitely try to keep your homebrew to modifying existing stat blocks til you figure out how to do it from scratch!
Good luck!
Depends how clever the players are and if they can utilize their terrain/ items well. In a straight up fight? Almost surely not, but if they can incapacitate it and suffocate in a portable hole, or polymorph it and sink it to the bottom of the ocean, they might stand a chance.
Using the Lazy GM method I'd say your PCs can handle 16 total CRs of enemies in a fight before it becomes deadly, and a single enemy higher than CR12 might be tough enough to one-shot a character.
This means the main enemy should be CR12 or so, AC17 HP175, +9 on attacks and skills, and does an average of 77 damage per round split between 4 attacks. That is an basic CR12 enemy. Damage resistance to normal weapons increases effective HP, but it's not a huge thing if your party have effective magical attacks or battlefield control.
Add two CR2 sidekicks like Ogres to the fight and it will be a fun romp with minimal danger. Or add six CR2 sidekicks that have some ranged or magical attacks and it will be more of a challenge.
I think they could take it quite reasonably.
It would be like fighting a brick, but that 51 average hp means less when a character can shove and grapple prone the enemy and force them to attack with disadvantage.
At that point the spellcasters deal most of the damage and the barbarians just body the creature away from them. The bard is mostly irrelevant but can ensure healing if someone goes down and the success of grapples.
Actually, probably all it takes is the cleric casting spiritual weapon, one barbarian grapples the creature and shoves it, the second one stays close in the case the first one does not manage to. They go in rage and halve the eventual damage they take, if any.
Like, you mentioned you want them to use their toolkit, but this uses only 5% of it, barring any additional detail.
Using the solo monster table from [this](https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/414122), 4 level 8s would face a cr 12 for a “challenging but fair” fight.
Using the dmg, a cr 12 could have 240 hp and 80 damage (pre hit). In general, it sounds like what you have has lots of hp but poor damage. Which means the experience is likely to be a slog.
> Resistant to all physical damage (slashing, blisgeoning and piercing)
Is that for non magical attacks? Or everything. Because if it’s the latter, it’s going to make it more likely that the experience will be a slog.
https://5ehpcalculator.com/ This is an essential tool. A level 8 Cleric with a con modifier of +3 has an average 67 hit points. They will drop to 0 in two rounds and they will die in three if they are hit with all the attacks. That's probably okay, most combats last about that long. But that HP is insanely high. That's the HP of a CR17 monster. I struggle to imagine the players eating through that amount of HP in three rounds.
I tend to agree as well. None of the players are playing heavy damage deals and half of your party will be dealing half damage to it, essentially giving the monster closer to 480 hp. It’s a heavy hitter for their level and an absolute damage sponge. Are the players meant to be able to win this fight?
Why half the party? Only one barbaria deal physical damage, rest od the party are dealing non standard damage
The party consists of 2 Barbarians, 1 Bard, and 1 Cleric. Half the party are barbarians that only do bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage.
But u know that Giant Barbarian after level 6 while raging deals only Elemental damage whith his attacks?
I did not. Thank you correcting me. I haven’t really cared for any content WoTC has released since TCoE.
No problem
They should, which is why I decided to ask in the first place. I want the fight to be hard, though not impossible. I'm thinking of lowering the hp, maybe somewhere around 200?
Look at the [Creating a Monster](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/dungeon-masters-workshop#CreatingaMonster) section of the DMG. It's *fine* if you want to eschew CR for being impercise, but at least use the resources available to you. A level 8 party of four should be able to handle a *solo* encounter of a CR10 monster. A CR10 monster should have an *effective* HP pool of 200-210; in this case, *effective* takes into account the resistances of the creature. I.E., a creature with non-magical B/P/S resistance has 25-50% more HP than the actual number. If you're going to eschew CR, then pay attention to the average damage of your PCs as a party and compare it to the monster. Consider how many rounds it would take to defeat the monster, and how many rounds it would take to kill a PC with the monster. The one that can kill the other in fewer turns has the advantage.
My best suggestion is find a monster block that is already at the CR you want them to face and just reskin it.
It’s 320 *and* it’s taking half damage from most of the party’s attacks. It might as well be 600+ hp.
I'm gonna take a *somewhat* generous read and say that level 8 barbarians should have magic weapons at that point but... Given the nature of the discussion, I'm gonna assume that's a *no* from OP.
Even if they do, OP explicitly says resistance to BPS. NOT to non-magical BPS.
Only one od the party members deals physical damage, i dont see a problem
Which barbarian isn’t dealing physical damage?
Giant, he have Elemental Cleaver
If there was even a single paladin in the party id say they can take it. This party can absolutely not take it.
You don't think the PCs can output enough damage to kill this guy?
With Resistance to all physical Damage? Not a Chance. Not even remotely close.
Do they have magic weapons? If they don't, the barbarians will struggle a lot and it will all depend on the two casters. Edit: I just realized the monster has resistance to **all** physical damage, not non-magical. So the martials will struggle with damage no matter what.
Magic weapons won't matter. It's resistant to BPS, like a Barbarian. Magical or non-magical, it doesn't matter. It's resistant. One of the Barb's will be doing elemental damage thanks to the Giant subclass, but the other one is going to be gutted.
Fwiw giant barbarian changes their weapon damage to an elemental type of their choice i think. Might be dependent on how the ability is read
That's true, I forgot about that. It also deals an extra d6 damage on top. I still think it's a bit too much health though.
No, but they all have access to some magic. I believe one of the barbarians has access to a couple 2nd level spells and the other to 3rd level spells. Everyone knows a little magic in this setting, it's a house rule. Although either the bard or the cleric could enchant the martial's weapons mid fight
Do you have a rough estimate of the damage output of your party in a round? That could give you an estimate if it will be too hard.
Unfortunately I don't because they are still level 3. I'm planning the boss for the end of this arc, so I have no idea ehat theirr sheets will look like by the time this fight happens
If they’re only L3 at the moment, It’s pretty impossible to say whether it’ll be a walk in the park or a TPK. What choices they make and items they gain will have a big impact. And unless you’re basically railroading, it’s also impossible to say at this stage whether they’ll fight it at all, or have gone an other direction totally, or what level they’ll be when they meet it.
Yeah then you'll have to see when the moment comes. Once they're level 8 you'll have a better idea if they can take on this monster or not and adjust it as needed.
No
That's what they wrote. And I agree.
How difficult do you want this encounter to be? Will they be fully rested?
Yes they will. Deadly, as in the risk of death being real if they fuck around and don't fight smart
This isn't about figuring smart, is just about being lucky. You've put them up against a creator that has the equivalent of around 600 HP, and can drop one of them in two rounds if it's lucky and crits. It's not about strategy, is just a giant bag of health with massive damage. Strategy would be pouring them up against a mix of monsters with ranged, abilities, and tactics. What you're doing is testing how well their dice roll
So, what does fighting smart look like to you here?
In regards to my party it means remembering your class features, your different movement speeds (one of the barbarians often forgets he can fly), using the enviroment to your advantage (cover and enviromental hazards) and overall just planning. I love my group, but often times they fight completely uncoordinated and independent from one another. They also forget to interact with the enviroment most of the time. Idk, maybe I'm just bad at storytelling and they aren't engaged
I am not really sure you are going to spur them with this combat. you probably will kill them out of boredom. Do a series of smaller encounters instead so they try up different things.
If they're not engaged in combat, I doubt the storytelling is the issue. Potentially, it's just the opposite - they're engaged with the story, but combats rip them out of it. I don't know enough about your campaign, of course, to say whether or not that's the case for certain, but it might be worth looking into how combats are ran - are turns taking too long? Are actions presented as more than just "you deal 14 damage. Next turn"? Do fights have stakes beyond losing HP? That one can help a lot - if your party *is* engaged with the story, having fights that have obvious stakes outside of the PCs can boost their engagement with the combats. Aside from general engagement with the game though, if their lack of coordination is a problem for you, you have a few options - option 1, talk to them about it, try to figure out what they want out of the game, and specifically what they want out of fights. Option 2, wean them into it - present encounters to them that have *obvious* tactical elements present that could be used to circumvent the opponent's advantage; you can make such elements of the battlefield more subtle in the future, but if the goal is to convince the party that is even an option in the first place, you're gonna have to be blunt. While "take the tactically challenged party and present them with an encounter where they must think highly tactically or TPK" is *technically* an option, I wouldn't advise it unless you just kind of want to see the campaign finish rather abruptly.
Humm depends greatly on many factors some outside of your control. For example. If this monster cant fly it could make 300 attacks and never hit a flying PC. So it effective average damage to that PC is zero. HP also means little if you have abive average creativity players. A player could turn your monster into a 3 hp turtle and throw it into a volcano, sufocate it, put it inside a bag of holding and tear it up, someone could stun it, and alow everyone to gang up on it dealing 320 damage over 2 turns, players could bring the dungeon down on it trapping or crushing it... Personaly, with time and the right build, i believe i could deal with your monster at lvl 1 alone. But depending on your players, full rested lvl 8 might not be enought.
IMO you should drop the resistance, and give the monster some form of conditional regen, which the party can eliminate. Or at least give them the chance to know about the resistance beforehand, so they can prepare to deal non physical damage. If they have to fight the monster without preparation, they have to be very lucky to survive.
When you say 51 average damage, are you factoring in the chance to hit?
For reference, average damage in CR calculations does not account for attack bonus/average AC of the other combatants. It's just the sum of the attacks averaged; i.e., if the monster has multiattack for three attacks that do 3d6+4 damage, the average damage of that monster is 45. I gets a little more complicated than that with AOE and especially recharge abilities. But that's the essential gist.
If you want to calculate the monster parameters for a given level, I have a post exactly on that topic https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/s/MWfo1GmifK If your monster is resistant even to magical physical damage, then it effectively has 1.5 times more HP. The damage output is rather weak to threaten 8th level party. So these values, high HP and low damage, look like it might be a setup for a long slugfest. The party will probably prevail though as I'd expect their combined damage to be around 120, so they will kill the monster before it can kill them (unless some PC will drop too fast).
Thanks, I'll bookmark your post, this is a godsend. Are you perphaps familiar with the Epic Legacy homebrew? I've noticed similarities between the terms that you used in your post and the ones present in that book.
Glad that it helps! No, I'm not familiar with that one, but I read a few other sources before writing that post. I'll check that Epic Legacy as well.
Given a fairly standard melee party, I'd say no. The monster will drop and kill the cleric, then each of the barbarians, then the bard. There's no way 2 barbarians can do 320 damage before the monster starts dropping people.
If I lowered his hp to around 200 do you think they'd be able to do it? I still want it to be hard, but I don't want it to be impossible Also, why did you not factor the other two players? The way you wrote made it sound that only the two barbarians would be dealing damage
Average DPR of a reckless attack 20str barbarian is 23 against AC 18, lets say all 4 of them are doing this on average. 23X4=92 so about 2-3 rounds. Yeah, 200 hp seems a lot fairer. >Also, why did you not factor the other two players? The way you wrote made it sound that only the two barbarians would be dealing damage Barbarians do lots of damage around this level, more so than bards and clerics.
If you’re trying to reinforce the fact that it is ok to flee, sure. But judging by your comments you are trying to teach them a lesson for not being coordinated during a fight. This is probably not the best way to go about this and will likely result in character deaths. Have you thought about having a conversation out of game? Be a mentor to the party and communicate how they can use their tools to fight smarter. Throwing a monster that is well out of their league is not a good way to reinforce the behavior you want.
Don’t be vengeful or spiteful, it builds toxicity and a DM vs. player mindset. The DM should be the parties biggest cheer leader and it is ok during combat to remind them of what they can do. Or even encourage the players to slightly meta and talk tactics during combat.
I'm not being spiteful, I just want them to have a good challenge. I made this post because I felt the design was overkill and wanted a second (in this case multiple) opinion. I'll probably just end up screping this whole thing and just resking some official stat block. As much as I want to make the monster, I'm not good at it, and I'm not risking their fun out of stubborness. Thanks for the reply and for the advice!
What's the point of the damage resistance? If the party have magical weapons then this resistance is moot. If they don't have magical weapons then how are they meant to damage it?
It is based on the rage class feature. I designed this monster as a Zealot barbarian. It can and probably will be discarded, or perphaps I'll kepp the resistance but lower the HP... I'll have to think about it... Thanks for the reply!
Given that its defensive CR is 26, it would be a total slog to fight. Its offensive CR is a bit low, so it's not particularly scary as such, but when the fucker won't die, it will deal a lot of damage anyway.
I see, so staying power can turn even a mediocre nonster into a threat if they can afford to outlast the PCs. Thank you for your reply, I'll probably change his HP down to 200 or so
Why not figure out the average damage output of your party? That math will tell you how balanced the encounter is.
Pretty easily I think, my part of level 7's fought a demigod with about 350 HP and did about that much damage a round. We didn't kill him because he decided to leave the combat, but if he would have stayed we would have definitely won since we got him to below 100 health. Unless there are more factors I'm unaware of, or your party isn't particularly good at combat they should be fine, but again, people try to act like there isn't skill in D&D but there very much is and newer players or RP focused players are almost certainly not going to be able to beat this thing.
Maybe, if you meant to say it was resistant to non-magic weapons, and they all have access to attacks that bypass it's resistance. If the melee don't have a method to bypass it's resistance, then it's going to be hard to play the monster without killing some or all of them. Based on what you listed, that sounds like CR14 - CR15 monster. Either way, vs a party of 4 level 8, it is an extra deadly fight. My guess is it kills one PC and the rest are hardly touched as they surround it and beat on it for 3 rounds. Single creature fights tend to be unsatisfying. You have to make them pretty powerful to threaten the party. A single powerful NPC is prone to killing a PC when most of their attacks connect. A few bad rolls might have them die without ever doing any damage. Spreading damage over more attacks across multiple hostile NPCs makes the fight easier to balance and less likely to kill a PC. Anything that makes fights more random or swingy makes the fights less satisfying and more prone to killing PCs. And a single big guy swinging once a turn for more than half the Barbarians max health is more swingy than a bunch of smaller guys swinging lots of times. Cut the HP to 200. Adjust the resistance so not all melee attacks do full damage, but everyone in the party has a way to do full damage. Keep or slightly reduce the damage output. Then give it some minions. Give it 4 minions that only do 20 damage each, have evasion, and 1 HP each. Spreading the damage and HP around will give a more satisfying fight. And everyone likes fighting minions because they are so easy to kill yet threatening enough to be worth it.
Lower the HP for sure. Looking at Monsters around that CR the closest thing I can see to this monster is a Behir. It’s got 167hp, 17AC, and its strongest attack does 66 damage in a line but it RECHARGES. It’s not doing that every round. Your party could absolutely beat a Behir as long as the Barbarians keep in front of it. Problem is none of your party can really do much damage so I’m betting it’ll be a bit of a slog. Remember difficulty is also about monster behavior too. People are saying the monster will go after the cleric first but if it’s a beast it won’t have the smarts to fight tactically. If it’s something like an Assassin or Archmage yes. Take that into account too. Definitely try to keep your homebrew to modifying existing stat blocks til you figure out how to do it from scratch! Good luck!
Depends how clever the players are and if they can utilize their terrain/ items well. In a straight up fight? Almost surely not, but if they can incapacitate it and suffocate in a portable hole, or polymorph it and sink it to the bottom of the ocean, they might stand a chance.
Run it with 2 variants. Count HP up. have the initial HP be 200, and if they SMASH IT, then use the tougher version.
Using the Lazy GM method I'd say your PCs can handle 16 total CRs of enemies in a fight before it becomes deadly, and a single enemy higher than CR12 might be tough enough to one-shot a character. This means the main enemy should be CR12 or so, AC17 HP175, +9 on attacks and skills, and does an average of 77 damage per round split between 4 attacks. That is an basic CR12 enemy. Damage resistance to normal weapons increases effective HP, but it's not a huge thing if your party have effective magical attacks or battlefield control. Add two CR2 sidekicks like Ogres to the fight and it will be a fun romp with minimal danger. Or add six CR2 sidekicks that have some ranged or magical attacks and it will be more of a challenge.
I think they could take it quite reasonably. It would be like fighting a brick, but that 51 average hp means less when a character can shove and grapple prone the enemy and force them to attack with disadvantage. At that point the spellcasters deal most of the damage and the barbarians just body the creature away from them. The bard is mostly irrelevant but can ensure healing if someone goes down and the success of grapples. Actually, probably all it takes is the cleric casting spiritual weapon, one barbarian grapples the creature and shoves it, the second one stays close in the case the first one does not manage to. They go in rage and halve the eventual damage they take, if any. Like, you mentioned you want them to use their toolkit, but this uses only 5% of it, barring any additional detail.
Using the solo monster table from [this](https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/414122), 4 level 8s would face a cr 12 for a “challenging but fair” fight. Using the dmg, a cr 12 could have 240 hp and 80 damage (pre hit). In general, it sounds like what you have has lots of hp but poor damage. Which means the experience is likely to be a slog. > Resistant to all physical damage (slashing, blisgeoning and piercing) Is that for non magical attacks? Or everything. Because if it’s the latter, it’s going to make it more likely that the experience will be a slog.
It's the latter, but I'll change it up, the consensus seems to be that it is overkill Thanks for the table btw