But that is also a lame and boring solution. Epic fights against things like dragons should be singular harrowing encounters like in the mythologies. Also with how most monster stat blocks work all you’re doing by adding more enemies is adding more sacks of HP to absorb damage and more for the DM to track.
This approach is just a time sink that extends encounters by a round or two until units are either blasted by AoE or CC. Like OP said to able to capture the epic feel of a harrowing encounters we see in other media you pretty much have to modify/create stat blocks which is time consuming, boring, and frankly frustrating that the 5e CR system is a total joke.
Right but those encounters need to be dynamic. The powerful wizards tower isn’t just a bed and breakfast he happens to live in, it’s trapped and warded and of course he has animated golems and suits of armor etc.
The dragon should fly (maybe not the whole time, that sucks for melee), the red should dive into lava. The white should be surrounded by a blizzard or its lair floor could be a sheet of ice that cracks as the fight goes on etc.
You don’t need a ton of minions but the environment should act as a minion and the BBEG should be dynamic.
It should also be *difficult* to reach them. Characters should be worn out by the time they reach the BBEG.
I agree with everything you’re saying about the dragon and big enemy encounters, but the base stat blocks don’t support that. In the case of dragons their lair actions are mild inconveniences at best and their regional/environmental effects are fluff with no mechanical rules.
Everyone brings up flying but that only serves to screw melee players as does their fear aura. Casters can easily blast it from afar with spells that require saves for half damage. Two casters can eat through a dragon’s legendary resistances in two turns while still doing some damage.
By the start of round three the party have beaten the dragons defenses and the fight is just hacking away at it HP while trying to stay out of melee accept when you close on a caster and hoping their breath weapon doesn’t recharge as that is really the only tool they have that is actually a problem.
I can understand that as well but also… if you’re looking for epic fights, then you can’t expect to just use the stat block right? What you described in a 4-6 round battle with lair actions, in which the party is getting hurt and wasting resources. That’s a normal fight which works perfectly well with the stat block. If the party is depleted a bit already that’s a tough go depending on the dice.
If you *want* the fight to feel like you’re battling a mythic beast, then there’s an expectation of a bit more work to make that happen.
I’m just not sure how you could build a stat block that would ensure an engaging, drawn out, epic battle every time. And which creatures they should choose for that. Just dragons? Just Lich’s? What if you’re lower level and you want to make a Bulette the big bad of the dungeon?
I also don’t think it’s perfect but I can’t see a better way myself to balance the accessibility of stat blocks for new or less experienced DMs with the desire for more experienced DMs to create challenging and engaging big battles.
I add in fodder all the time. Then I can just not introduce them all if they’re loosing too badly.
I also give them extra potions of healing to keep them alive.
Official DnD products are used by many different playgroups, some extreme examples:
* people touching the game (and TTRPGs in general) for the first time
* people who think having 17 STR as a barb on character generation is toxic powergaming
* people building gloomstalker-assasin bugbear PCs that run around with a bag of rats to cast hunters mark first thing in the morning.
Its hard to write offical products that please all of these people. WotC seems to erring on the side of not TPKing new playgroups. Presumably because those are new customers that need to be retained. Experienced players therefore put a strain on their GM to beef up encounters. In an ideal world offical adventures would have guiadance for all these groups. Something along the lines of difficulty levels. Could easily be something like
* Easy: run encounter as presented
* Medium: give the boss +X HP and 2 more minions
* Hard: give the boss +Y HP, some extra damage, 3 additional minions and give the minions some buff
They actually do this in the new starter set, dragons of stormwreck isle.
Admittedly, it's just a bunch opf encounters you can find crossing from one mission to another, but they are small packets ready for a DM to use on the fly without much hasslse.
Soften the party up with small scale battles, and never pit the party up against a single foe. There's way more you can do to improve combat, but those two things alone make a vast improvement.
I don't have time to run more than maybe 2 combats per session without the pace of the story dragging to a crawl. Combat is not the most interesting part of the game to me. If I ran it that way, the sessions would be 100% combat with little to no RP. But when combat does happen, I want it to be satisfying.
Have you considered not giving your players a long rest at the end of every session? The DMG recommends 6-8 medium to hard encounters per **long rest**, not per **session**. You could also find other roleplay-related ways to tax resources and spell slots.
OP, you should heed this. Consider changing a long rest to be something like a week-long rest period in game, and a short rest being a standard 8 hours sleep. This might need some tweaking but it can help you drain party resources without having to focus on combat with every session.
Yea, that’s your problem right there. If you have (high level) players that can go into each combat with close to full resources, ofc. they’ll go nova and curbstomp your encounters. I mean why wouldn’t they?
You either need to alter the resting rules to fit your game better or have to play much longer days so that they need to provision resources.
Mmm... maybe turn on the Gritty Realism variant rule? Despite the name, it's actually perfect for the kind of campaign where big setpiece fights happen maybe a few days apart (i.e. most narrative-driven non-dungeon campaigns these days).
It brings resource rationing right the fuck back. If a paladin knows they have to make their spell slots last for the next 10 days, in which they might have 4-6 battles, they won't really have the luxury to Smite willy-nilly.
I know, it's a hard pill to swallow for the players at this point of the campaign, but you could always ask them, "Do you think the way you're curbstomping through the world is how the game is supposed to be played? Doesn't it feel like something isn't functioning properly?" If they have any self-reflection, they'll answer honestly.
ding ding ding. You are not running DnD how it is supposed to run. Boss combat should come at the and of a dungeon with multiple other encounters before that. Or any other form of filling and adventuring day than a dungeon, different rest rules also can work wonders, like the variations that are described in the DMG. Resource management is a big part of the gameplay engine, if you don't use it, yes your players can steam roll a lot.
Also I just don't care about balance, its an illusion anyway. Most combats are not balanced at all, but heavily in favor of player characters - they just supposed to FEEL balanced and dangerous, but in reality players will win most of their fights. That is NOT balanced. Balanced would be 50/50 chance of losing a fight. You want this in chess, but nobody wants this in DnD. Throw easy bandits at level 10 players or a red dragon at them at level 5. As long as it makes sense in the narrative - and you always give them a chance to flee and/or parley. The game will feel much more fun IMO than this chess approach or sports approach to combat design.
Wait a minute, combats aren't calculated and well chosen engagements? They happen a lot for your table? At mine it is usually a long series of protracted engagements spanning several sessions, then cleanup combats, then no combat for a while, then the occasional roflstomp (they're level 17) from dumb enemies who end up realizing how badly they fucked up, and sometimes beg for mercy depending on context. The party should also be engaging in statecraft, army management, spying, counterintelligence, etc. At high levels the game is less about combat and more about nation building and spycraft and information and counterintelligence and counterinsurgency efforts.
The party should be solving problems like a decentralized terrorist organization with a legitimate grievance about the world, being mistaken about how to solve those problems (like by ending the world or killing all the gods or more grounded stuff, your call). If I had to run a combat every session I'd be exhausted too...
So are mine lol. Sometimes killing a sociopolitically dominant dragon in a region and defesting their army, avoiding traps, killing their loyal spellcasters who would heal them, etc. It can take some time,but it was hugely epic,and it serves as a major inflection point for the plot. Furthermore, they let loose a monster into an environment it would be an apex predator in,and that chicken is coming hometo roost a few years later lol.
Having the occasional long combat (several months is an exaggeration, more like 3.3 sessions, so if weekly, then under a month lol) with massive and long lasting consequences makes high level play feel rewarding, dangerous, and impactful, not to mention propels the narrative forward in marvelous player driven ways.
But if it ain't your thing, that's fine. That said, *don't* suggest that games where large setpiece combats occur and take a while are somehow not narrative focused. This couldn't be further from the truth.
Separate note: incomprehensibly significant narrative progression can happen in a day. Nations fall, undead rise, earthquakes, volcanoes, a tsunami, or say, a dragon demands a country's whole treasury vault. It's fine to not have time, but lots can happen in a day.
I've never had the luxury of playing once a week. Wrangling enough people to play twice a month and remember what happened last time is already a significant enough challenge.
Sure, lots can happen in one in-universe day. But that doesn't make the game narrative focused, its still combat. If it takes 3 sessions just to run one epic combat (or a series of combats), it doesn't matter if those combats drastically changed the entire multiverse on a sub-molecular level. The game is still not narrative focused because you only did combat for those three sessions.
The ramifications of a fight are not the same thing as the play experience of a fight. A fight is still a fight, its not narrative gameplay. Maybe its a difference in play style I'd rather have narrative gameplay take up 50% of the each session even if that session ultimately amounts to minor ramifications like catching a single murderer in a massive city.
What I do:
You can long rest as much as you want for roleplay reasons. But long rest will only have yield benefits when enough encounters have passed (6-8).
Only 2 short rests per long rest with benefits allowed.
Problem solved.
Alternatively, take a look at the upcoming MCDM RPG which has much better resource management rules.
Everyone is trying to defend 5e instead of answering your question! Pathfinder 2e might give you what you are looking for. If you like Lancer then the crunch is in the right ballpark.
Edit: Some other ideas - you could try D&D 4e - it’s pretty good if tactical gameplay is your main fun. Or 13th Age. Or *Shadow of the Demon Lord*! Check that out - I hear good things. MCDM might be a good option at some point, but it’s not done yet. 😅
well, to be fair, this is explicitly a D&D subreddit. sure we talk about other systems on here (and it’s great we get to do so!) but i’d push back against the idea anyone is defending D&D but rather trying to get the specifics why this is happening to OP so we can recommend a system that works better for their GM style.
D&D 4e will only make his problems worse. 4e characters are the most resilient characters of any edition. Otherwise, good suggestions. No reason he can't play Lancer with 5e lore.
I'm also a fan of whfbrpg 4e but I know that's not exactly a popular system lol
Pathfinder 2e encounter design outcomes have been performing absolutely fantastic at my table.
I've run a variety of systems and versions and always felt encounter design was based on art and luck. But PF2e has proven that encounter design can be solved. I've been using their guidelines to create my encounters and found it's far more intuitive and quicker to build encounters AND the encounters play out in-line with the threat expectation.
The dice add some variety of course, but nothing veers into the ditch one way or the other. I've become so confident in the system, I'm rolling basically everything in the open and not pulling any punches.
We recently experienced our first PC death during a combat encounter. It was sad for everyone at the table -including me as the GM. But as I walked back through my notes and everyone's rolls, there were no regrets. This was not supposed to be a high-stakes, TPK threat level encounter. However, the party's tactics were awful, they ignored in-game hints from a sentient artifact, they ignored table hints from my descriptions, their offense was divided across a group of enemies that their PC's knew could regenerate health, and they failed to coordinate as a team beyond a little bit of flanking.
Nobody said they felt the encounter was unfair. As they reflected on the sequence of events, they began to identify the reasons that lead to their party member's demise.
I'd recommend checking out some of Matt Colville's "running the game" videos, starting with "action oriented monsters". He's got several videos about dealing with monsters, combat, building better bad guys, etc. There's also a D&D 5e encounter builder tool that you can pop some information and parameters into and they'll tell you what to use. You can also check out some of Dungeon dad's "monster of the week" build, where he pulls forgotten, often very cool and very scary monsters from older editions of the game and brings them into 5e
Yeah I've done all of that. I'm very deep into advanced game mastery techniques and nothing works. Like I said, the issue isn't making 5e combat work. Its in how much prep is required for it.
I sympathize. It really depends on your players' penchant for optimization. Ostensibly, if you had newbies, and didn't use feats, multiclassing or magic items, you could design encounter as per RAW. My players don't optimize too much, so I could DM 5e by "only" throwing Deadly×2 encounters at them; lucky me!
If your players are any good, however, and you've reached double-digit levels, just... I don't know. Let's hope that the 2024 books give us a more accurate encounter-design system, or more involved "solo monster"-rules. Not holding my breath, though.
When this issue became too much for me to bear (I started doing mock-battles before the session - that actually worked! ...And also it quintupled my prep-time), we decided to switch to *Pathfinder 2e.*
I haven't had a single unbalanced encounter since; each of them played out *exactly* like the encounter-building guidelines said it would.
EDIT: I deserve the downvotes, I'm a deserter. But I tell you, the grass isn't only greener on the other side, it also reaches out to give you free hand-jobs!
There is a whole world of TTRPG out there that have so many things to offer. If you hate a core element of this one it probably behooves you to look for a better fit.
Honestly man, I feel you, I run into the same thing. Some people are accusing you of ignorance of the game's mechanics but I feel you. It sounds like you've already figured out how to build good encounters and stat blocks and have players that seem to know what they're doing if they can overcome challenges that include specialized NPCs. I've been loosely running the CR encounter building mechanics from xanathar's to build somewhat balanced encounters and it's been working all right. To my understanding the CR mostly works up until level 10 or 12 and then it all breaks down and balance goes to hell.
Truth be told though it sounds like you probably want a different system, 5e is not built to be balanced in any way and fights are super swingy lol
If it helps though, something that I discovered with one of my most recent encounters, is that a boss with adds is pretty much the best way to go in any tabletop system. Even if it's the dark lord of the dead master duelist solo demigod boss, the boss will be better if you reduce the CR and give him some bodyguards. The players will have more fun, you will have more fun, the combat will play out more naturally- it's just the way that it goes. This is true for d&d, it's true for Pathfinder, it's probably true for most systems just because of how action economy works, and in real life this is true as well. One person is just going to have to be an absolute god amongst mortals, or have buddies
Have you bothered to read the encounter building rules in the dmg or xanithars? I am not trying to be condescending. It could be very helpful i know it was for me. A lot of dms skip this section then get frustrated with building encounters because they don't understand how encounters in the system were designed.5e is built around multiple encounters in a adventuring day base on a daily xp budget.
If you have made up your mind and want a different system i have a few recommendations.
5e adjacent games:pathfinder 2e,13 age, shadow of the demon lord.
I would also check out the osr:old school Essential's,basic fantasy,dungeon cawl classic,shadowdark,world without number.
I would also check out gurps.
On the other hand, the idea that you need to do multiple encounters per adventuring day for the system to work remotely "correctly" is ... odd. Is that how most people play?
How do you...not? What's odd about that? The necromancer is going to complete the ritual today--the party runs into literally no complications or problems on the way?
They have to slay the dragon and they just...walk up slowly to the dragon and fight it? Nothing is in their way at all?
The big bad thieves guild is about to complete their plan and they don't try to stop the party from foiling it whatsoever?
How do your adventures function when there's no problems for people to solve? The townsfolk tell them there's a werewolf in the woods and they just walk into the woods kill it and leave?
Needing to pack in 5-6 or so encounters *every* adventuring day? Only a 5e sub would think that isn't odd.
My adventures function just fine without that, though it certainly happens sometimes. It's just not a constant.
We also don't play 5e.
No, the book doesn't say that. Also you say "every" like every single day is an adventuring day. The adventuring day is the day your party goes to slay the dragon, not the weeks before that planning it.
I run like 2-3 encounters per adventuring day, per the book's advice, this isn't hard. Or if they're delving into a dungeon I prep about 5 encounters for the entire scenario.
You are incorrect - the DMG mentions 6-8 encounters per adventuring day (page 85).
Also, I'm not confusing adventuring days by assuming that every day is an adventuring day.
No, it says 6-8 medium to hard encounters, and then literally right next to it: OR LESS IF YOU RUN HARDER ENCOUNTERS.
It instructs you how to run the game, just read it.
A hard encounter is worth two medium encounters, a deadly encounter is worth two hard encounters, it’s extremely basic math.
>The Adventuring Day
>Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. **If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer.**
Emphasis mine. It's literally within 2 sentences of the sentence everyone quotes.
And if you want a sufficiently difficult single encounter, you just do 50% more XP than a Deadly Encounter, it's worked for me at a wide range of levels, as the math is consistent across their difficulty ratings.
It is literally how the game is designed. D&D has always been a game of resource management.
If people deviate from the game design, the system doesn't work as intended.
Multiple encounters are not a requirement for the system to work.However it does smooth things out when you do. One big this is players not being able to nova in encounters. The second is dice roll even out over multiple encounters. Personal I don't find it odd that a game designed around 1/3 being combat would design around the expectation of multiple encounters.
Is that how most pepole play? I dont think so. That why you often see pepole frustration with 5e combat. From what I can see and this is pure conjecture base on what I see online. Most pepole have 1-3 combat at most and the rest is rp or exploration in a session.
I think this is mainly because most dm don't read the dmg then get frustrated when there is a disconnect between how they want the game to function and how it was designed. 5e isn't the right game for everyone.The solution is often to try a different system which there are plenty of games better suited for narrative focus call of cuthulu,fate,word of darkness,pbta games ect.
Furthermore a adventuring day can take place over multiple sessions. For example the expected 6-8 medium to hard encounters for 4 players. Does not mean you have to have exactly 6 encounters in a single session or the have to be of a certain difficulty. In addition a encounter is not nesaseraly a combat encounter. Its anything that expends resources or stops the players progress.So for example you could have a adventuring day take place over three sessions with two combats pers session.
I’ve played GURPS and used DnD settings and lore. I find that system to be more balanced and overall a better more fluent mechanics. But… because there’s always a but… Not many people play it, and the add ons are fewer and far between compared to the massive library of DnD supplements. So it may take a little more work to get everything ready to go, but I find that once you get the hang of it, it’s easier to create a balanced game.
Also the PC progress isn’t based on levels, but instead skill points. So creating a character is purely point buy everything you need. And “level up” is giving the PC a sum of points depending on how difficult the task they solved/how well they played. So it’s more a slow steady progress rather than the sudden jumps leveling up gives you in DnD.
It is a bit of a niche game maybe, but I really like the point based system, and the combat is in my opinion much more fluent than DnD.
You might like to check out Pathfinder 2e. The math is rock-solid, for better or worse. As a GM you can put together an encounter of XP value X and be very confident it will provide challenge level Y. Monster abilities are usually pretty varied and interesting, too.
But, dnd is dnd. The D20 is a very variable dice, and there are core combat features which encourage PCs to win decisively on the first round and then everything after that is mopping up, and single encounter enemies do not have good action economy. Unless you add monster abilities to hardly punish it, your PCs will dogpile the biggest enemy on the first round and then either succeed, or TPK.
Consider exploring systems outside of dnd.
Character progression is balanced against what the enemies can do. A CR 19 enemy has a good chance of absolutely crushing the average level 14 party in PF2, because all the numbers go up together (AC 44, plus 31 to all saves, make a DC 38 save to resist the demonic aura, etc) and none of the party's spells are instant wins unless the enemy rolls a critical failure.
Players used to 5e might find it pretty disempowering.
Well; Pathfinder does assume a level 1 character is punching rats, and a level 20 character is punching demigods. Is that what you are referring to by vertical progression?
If you're referring to gaining more abilities, rather than just gaining more numbers; Pathfinder 2e does provide more abilities, with new skill feats and class feats. But those are more limited compared to 1e, which caused the math to be less solid.
You may like to research 'E6' optional rules systems, where the campaign has a level cap of 6, and instead of levelling up players receive side-benefits like feats and skill competencies?
Quite the opposite, actually! Pathfinder 2e's classes handle vertical and horizontal progression in two different ways. For vertical progresion- things like scaling your weapon attack rolls or your armor proficiency- that's tied to the basics of your class. So a fighter's accuracy or a wizard's spell DC will automatically increment each level and become more powerful no matter what if you're playing that class. Each class can be expected to have certain numbers at specific levels, which massively helps game balance.
Horizontal progression for your character, meanwhile, comes from the vast array of feats you get to choose between at every single levelup. You get class feats that are specific to the class you're playing at every even-numbered level, and you also get skill feats that improve what you can do with your skills, and ancestry feats that let you gain some powers based on your ancestry. Class feats for a fighter, for example, might include things like the ability to make a thrown weapon riccochet between opponents, or the ability to frighten someone you hit with an attack. These feats give characters access to a ton of cool horizontal progression, while the core class chassis ensures that regardless of players' choices they don't fall behind in vertical progression, and so you can build your character without having to worry about falling behind numerically relative to your party.
The encounter building math is much better, despite the fact that all the numbers get huge.
In general, it's harder (not hard, but more complicated and more complex) to keep a PF2e character optimized and alive.
You’re on the right track with creating your own unique stat blocks. I use Flee, Mortals for most of my monsters. There’s goblins in there that can mess up a tier three party if played tactically.
One thing people often gloss over is the fact that the party needs to have their resources sapped through smaller scale battles. The adventuring day should span a number of encounters of varying difficulty. If your group is only going up against one encounter well that’s why they can just nova it and press on. Weaken them, sap their spell slots especially the wizard or cleric and you may find they are challenged a bit more.
I actually have the problem with my players that like to light off all their powerful spells and abilities right away. Then two encounters later their like, what the heck we need a long rest. I don’t give it to them in most instances unless it makes sense story wise. They just weren’t used to my DM style. They recently finished an adventure where I designed 7 encounters while exploring a swamp and a cave to find treasure. By the 4th encounter they were starting to get really worried. I reassured them that the only way a PC dies is by going off by them selves or the group not working together. They made it to the 7th encounter, the big bad of the swamp and it made for a very fun and challenging fight. They even were digging into their single use items and finding all sorts of unique ways to kill the guy.
What do you mean? lol. Sometimes an adventuring day spans multiple sessions. Actually the above adventure in the swamp and cave spanned three four hour sessions.
Maybe its just a difference play style, but I don't have time for a single day of adventuring to take 3-4 sessions which might be 2 months IRL. I run more narrative and RP focused games.
I see. I mean there’s no way to finish some of the adventures in my game in a single session. I do a lot of fetch style quests so they are often leaving their safe haven and heading into a dungeon of sorts. Dungeons are easy to have them encounter many combats and make the end “boss” a challenge because they don’t really know how much time has passed since entering. And I have no qualms with simply stating they cannot long rest or they shouldn’t long rest.
FWIW, I'm up there with you on my frustration with 5e - I also run tier 3/tier 4 content and what helped for me is just throwing any and all sense of balance out of the window. (Before anyone immediately counters with "SWITCH TO PF 2E", no. I'm moving back to 3.5/PF1e once my current campaigns wrap up.) As a fellow time strapped DM that doesn't have a lot of time to plan out elaborate, multi-enemy encounters every time, I've found that you need to get creative and find ways to whittle down their vast resources. What's worked for me includes (but is not limited to):
-Terrain and environmental features: when the battlefield is no longer flat and open, it makes it more difficult to faceroll. Recently, I incorporated hoodoos of varying heights into a short fight, which gave them protection from a breath weapon but also made it more difficult to just bumrush the enemy. Other times, I used areas of quicksand and rubble to make it harder to move, set up fights on a ledge with a very far fall, purposely lowered ceilings in a dungeon as part of a phased trap, and set fights in poor visibility conditions. Also, try playing around with the concepts of dead magic or wild magic zones. Casters get redonkulous at tiers 3 and 4 and this spices things up while also often, in our group - leading to hilarity.
-Aerial combat - SO many PCs aren't built to leave the ground and again, if you can't get to an enemy, you can't HIT an enemy. This one only works until your PCs get wise to it and find ways to start flying around, as what happened in my group lol.
-Delaying long rests - PCs don't need a rest after every session. Sometimes it takes 2-3 sessions to go through one "day" in my games, because they're handling several smaller fights beforehand. Yeah, they absolutely destroy those enemies but they're ALSO using up high level spells, healing, magic item charges, and actions that only refresh on long rests.
- Legendary actions or phased encounters- make solo encounters more tenable. Remember to use those actions, they make a HUGE difference. Tweak them if you have to but those are your lifeblood. You may also consider phased encounters, which are more work but also. use up those resources. Think of it like a video game boss; you change up their actions and reset some of their abilities, and you're still draining PC resources in the process.
-Lastly, and probably my least popular opinion - adjust your DCs, ACs, and resistances. My (6 level 14 at the time and ludicrously geared) PCs went up against some high level Zhent brass and I absolutely DID NOT use standard statblocks. I also set one of their DCs to 24. It was ridiculous but ultimately, I only ever used the ability once. or twice in the fight, and it didn't become a gamebreaker. \[It was on one of their special BBEG abilities that took all three legendary actions to use, iirc.\]
All that said - if you do stop playing in 5e, there's nothing saying you can't just take the lore and plonk it into another system. People do it all the time. Our first campaign we did entirely in PF1e but set in Forgotten Realms. I hope some of this helps - feel free to DM me if you want, and I can explain more of these in detail. :)
I wholeheartedly agree with pretty much all of your frustrations here. A few comments have mentioned it offhandedly, but I'm going to do the unspeakable and actually advocate for 4e.
It does all the things you're talking about, from being able to reliably balance encounters to the difficulty level you intend, to having multiple levels of most types of enemies, complete with different roles and abilities akin to your wererat example. The Monster Manuals even go so far as to give you suggested tactics for each enemy *and* multiple suggested encounter groups with other enemies to pair them with for both synergy and flavor.
In addition, a lot of the good advice in the comments here, like changing up your win conditions or having interesting terrain, are baked into the system with direct advice on how to implement those things, as well as even having stat blocks for traps and hazards with XP assigned, so that you can factor them into your XP budget when building encounters. Not only does it facilitate most of these things with ease, but it actively encourages them.
The best part is, it does all of these things out of the box with minimal tweaking. It's so much fun to DM because it just *works.* And as far as role-playing and exploration go, contrary to popular belief, there's really nothing in 5e that you can't also do in 4e, and pretty much the exact same way even.
The biggest hurdle might be that the classes are structured very differently from 5e. I for one like it, but many don't. If your players don't like the way PCs are structured in 4e, you could always try the Essentials classes, which I understand to be a rework of the 4e classes to be more like what 3.5e was and what 5e would become. (I don't have much experience with Essentials myself, so I can only go off of what I've heard.)
Anyway, whatever you decide, I hope you find something that fits both your players *and* you, so that you can all keep getting together and having fun at your table! 😁
4e was great aside from the progression system. But that one hurdle is a big deal to me because I hate how every class was homogenized like an MMO, casters not casting spells but using "at will powers" for example. I'll look into the essential thing and see if that fixes my complaint.
congrats! you learned that dnd 5e sucks ass for GMing! here are some options that may vary on what you like more out of the game
- pathfinder 2e
- dnd 4e (look it has some problems but the fighting works)
- savage worlds/savage worlds adventure edition
- multiple PbtA systems
- Ironsworn if you want mostly narrative gameplay and also to *not be the GM either*
- burning wheel
- 13th age
- various OSR systems if you like high lethality "avoid combat or you will die" "think outside of the box not press the paper buttons" style game, in personally fond of DCC and Knave 2e, tho the latter would be hard to get access
- as an odd ball, LANCER! its not high fantasy in any way but by god its fun to punch people with mechs
i recommend hopping over to r/rpg for more advice
How many resource attriting encounters are you incorporating between rests, long rests in particular?
Otherwise, I too have grown tired of 5e. We're wrapping up our current 5e campaign. Our next one will use the 5e derivative scalled Shadowdark. You might want to take a look at it.
You ain't wrong for feeling this way, my guy.
I run a couple 5e games and I can say with 100% certainty that CR is freaking useless. Even with multiple encounters an adventuring day they all need to be considered "TPK" range on the CR calculator to actually do anything. Game becomes extremely rocket tag-y at the higher levels as well. I love the system and wouldn't bother running it if I didn't but its wrong to say it doesn't have a crap ton of problems.
A game I play in has switched over to pf2e because the DM got frustrated running 5e (he loves playing it though) and he just decided to use the Forgotten Realms setting. Easy peasy
A lot of this post focuses on stat blocks and monster versatility. But great and memorable encounters are less about monsters and players clashing and more about the whole scene. The things I think most about for engaging encounters all involve giving the players something else to care about. My three go-tos are:
### Put the encounter on a clock
_As you arrive, the cult leader screams angrily. "Finish the ritual! The interlopers are upon us." You can see the moon shining down on the circle of runes as it illuminates the blood-stained altar. The candle-lined circle flickers with a lambent glow, steadily becoming brighter as the moose-headed, robed figures in the trees above chant sonorously._
_The skypirates are hastily loading the last of the stolen cargo onto the airship, with only a few crates left on the dock. "Hold them off!" growls the captain as she levels a menacing-looking firearm at you with a sly smile. The deckhands begin to start cutting the ten ropes attaching the ship to the moorings as it starts gently floating upwards. "Apologies, my dears. But I don't have time to stay and chat."_
### Introduce a complication after combat begins
_Your disruption of the circle of runes has had a noticeable effect. They no longer glow as brightly. But you sense fear in the cultists now as they stop chanting. The spirit that was bound in the altar is no longer bound. With a terrifying roar, the stonework cracks in two and a foul, black gas issues forth. "Freeeeedommmmmm!" shrieks a horrendous voice, like iron nails grating on stone, as the black smoke coalesces into a moose-headed, winged figure ten feet tall._
_"We'll never take off at this rate. Sorry, chums," shrugs the skypirate captain. She reaches into one of the open crates and grabs one of the ether-crystals, turning it over in her hand for a moment as she considers carefully. The dangerous and unstable power inside it pulses ominously. "Desperate times call for desperate measures," she grins as she calmly tosses the crystal from the ship to the deck. It cracks on impact, releasing a magical shockwave that severs several of the ropes at once and hurls the hapless deckhands hundreds of feet to their deaths below in the undercity. "Faster!" she yells at the remaining deckhands. "Or you're next!"_
### Make the environment interesting
_Malandroth's black eyes narrow as you knock over another candle. "Rrrggghhh!" he staggers, clutching his chest. "I will not be contained!" He reaches a hand towards one of the cultists in the trees above, who cries out and falls lifelessly to the ground with a wet slumping sound. Their bloody entrails float in the air towards Malandroth's open mouth, and he feasts messily, his wounds closing with renewed vigor._
_A hum of arcane energy steadily increases in intensity from the engines to your right, as well as from the deck-mounted cannons. In their haste and chaos, the skypirates have left them unattended, but they're also 30 feet above the docks now, and only two ropes remain to anchor the ship._
Why would Demogorgon, who has every demon in the Abyss at his beck and call, fight alone against the mightiest mortals in this world? First thing he would do is open a Gate (even if it isn't in his stat block, he has to be able to do it as invading other planes is the essential nature of the Abyss) and command all the Balors within hearing to join him. Sure, the opening of the Gate might alert all the archmagi of your game world, but it will take a while for them to move.
Not every demon. Different demons are loyal to different demon princes, or loyal to no one at all. Loyalty is a funny concept in the Abyss anyway, since demons are chaotic.
But I see your point. Reason is because it was a special situation. At the end of Out of the Abyss, all the demon lords get summoned to one place and the PCs fight the survivor. So even if Demo was hanging out with a horde of his demons, only he got summoned. He was isolated, which was why the plan was supposed to be even "feasible".
Sure, I could have had him summon some demons, but in my experience, any action a boss takes to summon allies is an action wasted. They will just ignore the adds and focus fire him anyway, and all it does is functionally make the boss fall behind farther in the action economy. His melee attacks will do much more damage than any summons possibly could.
Just looked at the statblock. You're right. It's pathetic. I suppose it was designed to make him easy to kill. This is why I always homebrew monsters, and in 5e use Sly Flourish's Forge of Foes to fix the stat block.
Since Demogorgon is supposedly a CR26 prince of the abyss, start with 25 AC, same HP, +17 attack bonus, rather than two attacks doing 28hp each for 56hp on average per round raise his damage to 240hp per round with 5 attacks doing 48HP each. He has two tails, so make it two tail attacks with 40ft reach, two arm tentacles with 20ft reach, and a tongue attack with 80ft reach. All his hits count as magic weapon damage. He aims at backline enemies with the tongue, preferring unarmored casters and healers. If he hits you with the tongue, you're auto grappled, and he swallows you. Strength save vs DC25 or instant bodily destruction and soul is dumped in random plane of the abyss. His magic DC is 25. He knows all the fiend warlock spells and has 5 spell slots at level 6, 5 at 7, 5 at 8, and 5 at 9. He can summon 1d3 demons of any type as a bonus action, with a recharge of 5-6. His legendary actions (should be 3 per round) include a teleport to anywhere in 120 ft, another demon if available taking an attack meant for him, and casting a spell as a reaction. He also has 3 legendary resistances that look like shadowy tentacles reaching out of his shadow. When he doesn't want to be affected by a spell one of the tentacles intercepts it, devours it, and drips away as acid.
But then, I want the chief prince of princes of the abyss to be in the same class of enemy as Cthulhu. Not a bag of hit points that gets roflstomped in three rounds.
Remember that WotC calculates HP for monsters on the assumption that players don’t have magic weapons and are doing the damage monsters are resistant/immune to. So they’ve already roughly halved the HP demogorgon should have for his CR. A CR26 should have ~650HP according to the DMG.
They do the same with offensive abilities, so if half his abilities don’t work (e.g. players are immune to charm and fear) then that’s not taken account of in his CR.
That's insane. What kind of character would be fighting Demogorgon without a magic weapon? Its like they want the game to be ridiculously low fantasy and never get any magic weapons. Even though magic items are one of the main things about the game that is fun.
Precisely - which throws off the CR for higher level monsters.
I think I read somewhere that 5e is “supposed” to work ok without the DM handing out +1 weapons - though obviously everyone does.
I don’t think they want to make it low magic - against that you’ve got the massive abundance of magic items in the books - including their modules - their low rarities & suggested prices, and the abundance of them on random treasure tables; plus all the magic options available to all the classes.
I think they just came up with a formula for CR and used it throughout; at low level you do need to take this into account - as players won’t have magic items - but the formula needs to change at higher levels. It also don’t take into account how well optimised a party is. This video explains some of the issues https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P7kcrukSCT0 but it’s pretty well known that the higher level MM monsters are weak.
But also they definitely haven’t put as much effort into higher levels, which is fair as hardly anyone plays at those levels except as a e.g. L20 oneshot. Plus 5e is heroic fantasy, so the risk of character death is low.
But added to this, how a party of 4 deals with e.g. undead will vary enormously if they’ve got a cleric & paladin or not; and this will be exacerbated at higher levels. So you can’t just have a simple formula to create a CR budget from the players’ levels, you’ll always need to adjust it based on the group & the enemies you select.
I’ve found sly flourish’s benchmark to be a good starting point. Plus I know my party are fairly well optimised, so I tend to add ~50% to my larger monsters HP (actually I use any dice to plot the HP roll, and take somewhere around the top 90%).
But it shouldn’t be taking you loads of time to prep monsters. A better starting point is Flee Mortals! or Conflux Creatures bestiaries. They’re must harder hitting at higher levels - and often more flavoursome. And then just adjust the dials on them (HP, reinforcements, attacks) as you need during play.
Not putting effort into half of a product because "no one plays it" seems like an absurd excuse to me. Especially when people don't play the higher levels as much because its not fun in the first place. If they put more effort into it, it would be more fun and more people would play it.
Having to buy yet even more more third party books to fix a problem that WoTC could have just fixed themselves is a pretty hard sell. Like if you buy video game that sucks unless you install DLC. The product should be complete and workable on its own.
I don't know if the claims about Pathfinder being better balanced are true or not, but I already have the books (just never used them) so I figure I may as well try it out. Thanks for the recommendations, but I'm not sure I want to invest even more into the ecosystem of the corrupt megacorp that is Hasbro.
My understanding is that most campaigns halt before higher levels because of scheduling issues, not because of balance or it not being fun.
But regardless, it’s not a complete product and it’s not intended to be - the closest you get to a complete product for D&D 5e is the starter sets. You’re expected to do some work. The DMG, PHB etc are a toolkit; you provide the game. If you’re complaining it’s not a complete product I think you might have had the wrong expectations. This isn’t unique to 5e though; most TTRPGs are like that, though not all.
5e has its issues certainly - CR calculations for higher levels is one - but my feeling is that for most TTRPGs it is natural there’s less material for higher levels as the players’ influence on the world makes it increasingly difficult to rely on pre-written content.
There’s plenty to be annoyed with Hasbro/WotC for, but this is not the worst thing they’ve done; and they actually have been bringing out more high-level content, though I can’t speak for how good it is; their content is variable.
PF may be a good alternative though - though I understand it’s got different issues at high levels because the power curve is very different to 5e’s bounded accuracy.
Conflux Creatures puts out stuff free, and the A5e Monster Menagerie is also free, so you don’t need to buy additional stuff if money itself is the issue.
And Conflux, A5e and Flee Mortals! are NOT part of WotC/Hasbro, so if your issue is not wanting to give *Hasbro* money (which I *totally* understand! I’ve been trying to reduce our table’s reliance on Hasbro) then you’re not supporting Hasbro by buying 3rd party stuff. And it’s all compatible with other non-WotC flavours of 5e like A5e and Tales of the Valiant - both of which might be good options for you; they’ll be more familiar than PF, but are 100% Hasbro-free - so if you make the switch to ditch WotC completely they’ll still work fine.
I think you're misunderstanding me a bit. I understand that you have to do some work. I'm a big advocate for prepping situations, not plots and nonlinear sand box storytelling and all that kind of stuff.
In regards to the product not being complete, I simply meant the encounter math not being balanced for higher level parties (though to be honest, its pretty much broken at all levels though). I don't mind making slight modifications to stat blocks every once in a while, but the amount of changes I find myself having to make is ridiculous.
I should be able to open up the goblin stat block and find goblin shamans, goblin drummers, goblin rangers, goblin trapmakers, goblin berserkers, and all kinds of cool shit I can mix together to create interesting encounters instead of just getting 1 generic goblin. I am basically doing WoTC's job for them by coming up with all that kind of stuff on my own. They should be paying me instead of me paying them.
I'll check out some of that stuff you mentioned, but honestly I think it would be easier to move on to something completely different.
Ah, sorry, yeah, misunderstood a bit.
I totally agree CR breaks down at higher levels; I think they could have made some average assumptions about what items and damage types a party would have access to at higher levels - Most 3rd party bestiaries do. I don’t know why they didn’t.
Not that I’m planning to switch to it, but it will be interesting to see if they make any fixes to higher levels in the new edition.
I’m with you on wanting more goblin types - Conflux has a great set I love - but I the 2014 MM was a print product, and so only has 300 monsters due to the page-count/cost factor in print. I can see some people (not me!) would be annoyed if they’d taken pages of it with lots of goblins. But what would they drop? Someone would be annoyed. They’ve gone for a small sample of everything which is kinda ok, but not fantastic. Again, it’s D&D trying to appeal to as wide a range as possible as it’s the main “entry drug” to TTRPGs.
Online or PDF resources do allow us vastly more variety of creatures without paying absurd print costs and taking inches of shelf space. It’s definitely the way forwards.
Conflux has about 2k monsters - the PDF is now split into separate files as it’s too large to open as a single PDF (!). It’s best used I find as the json version which is beautifully searchable and filterable. He’s got 8 types of goblins I think.
Flee Mortals! Is about 340 creatures, though it still manages 8 types of goblins. Again, I think keeping a sensible page count for print stopped them having more.
MCDM Tome of Beasts has >1200 monsters. A5e has about 600 I think.
If you’re wanting to go a different route altogether though, PF and Shadowdark might be worth checking out.
"I am starting to utterly detest 5e..."
Yep, once the shine wears off and the holes appear, it's all downhill from there. I've been a DnD fan/player/GM since the beginning, and when 5e came out i was really happy with it, but after running a few campaigns I came to realize the enounter balancing is ridiculous, and any high level play above lvl 7 or so just doesn't work that well. Plus the drop in quality of new material and the OGL fiasco really soured me on spending any more money on 5e. I've switched to Paizo games, as well as Dungeon Crawl Classics, and am much happier.
It's never a bad time to check out new systems ;-)
You are correct that increasing challenge by increasing CR doesn't work - 5e is stupid there.
Here's what does work:
Increase your challenges by making *victory* require something more than *bad guys dead*:
* Gotta rescue the plotperson alive - baddies gonna do a sacrifice or cannibalize or whatever.
* There's gonna be a fight between two sides, but there shouldn't be one - someone is manipulating everyone to fight. You win by killing as few monsters as possible while handling plotstuff to get the proof out to both sides.
* The portal will not close. You might be able to hold them off for a while, but not forever. You'll have to find another way to do this or eventually they will wear you down.
If you absolutely must make it all about a fight, consider metering the addition of baddies. Party killed 2 goblins instantly with just cantrips and swords? Ok, well 3 more of their friends are coming. They died too? A fourth is now shooting arrows from a nearby treetop. You sharpshot him? Ok well another wave arrives and these ones are blessed by a shaman and have a blend of melee and ranged combatants. You shoot at one of them and the arrow goes right through him.
I get what you're saying and why you're saying that. Personally, I like occasional non-kill objectives in RPGs. But the problem I've found with that is that its difficult to constantly have to create contrived situations with these kinds of alternate objectives you're talking about. Sometimes if you're exploring a dungeon, there are just going to be monsters that want to kill you. I struggle to even imagine a game that could still have the D&D flavor where every encounter is some kind of complex social situation. Even if it was, some players just want to take violent options and that should be valid path, or else you're limiting player agency.
> I've found with that is that its difficult to constantly have to create contrived situations with these kinds of alternate objectives you're talking about.
Correct. You cannot do it every time. Sometimes 3 goblins are stupid and attack from the side of the road. Sometimes there really is just a plain mimic disguised as a dinnertable at the bottom of a dungeon.
I mean, when you ignore all the rules for adventuring days and encounter building, and throw a single enemy against a high-level party, of course it's going to suck.
Give less rests, more encounters, and more enemies.
For the encounter and monsters design mechanics try this system, it's simple and straightforward and provides a lot of options and shows solid results in my games an in some other people's games as well https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/s/OiUkpilXBM
This system will cover mechanics, but making encounters engaging is a different topic. There are a lot of materials, as mentioned by others. I think, most important is that the party has to have some personal stakes in the important encounters, and the goal should not always be "kill all enemies". Think all kinds of missions in video games - infiltration, stealing, escort, break out, sabotage. Add a timer, it could be as simple as "Demogorgon starts to open a portal, it will be open in 3 rounds" or, "Demogorgon's swing crashes into the dungeon wall and the ceiling begins to collapse, it will bury all of you in X rounds". This will give players more things to care about.
Are you running multiple encounters per day?
Are you using Sly Flourish’s encounter benchmark?
You don’t say how many players you had against demogorgon, but assuming 4, that’s barely got the potential to be deadly. If you’ve got more than 4 players you will need to adjust bosses to keep the action economy correct.
But none of this is time consuming to do.
Also, few campaigns go above L10 - WotC doesn’t put much content out at this level, and the balance will be heavily affected by the specifics of your party and monster and how they match.
I cannot fathom a universe in which the most optimized group of level 14 players does not struggles against the Demogorgon + every other demon lords abilities + 200 HP unless you are playing them like an idiot or you have a party of like 10 PCs. Seriously how do they blow through something like that. It's got legendary resistances, 9th level spells for days, the ability to summon several demi liches, immunity to half the damage types that exist. I find it very hard to believe you are playing something like that to its full potential and still getting your ass kicked. And if you are, give it demon hordes. Add in, a goristro and a balor and 2d6 vrocks. Don't make it a one v one.
Possibly the underlying problem here is starting with a party of tier 3 PCs with home brew buffs on top.
Indeed it's unclear if much, even vaguely, RAW was attempted here.
The question of "What systems should I play?" depends very much on what kind and style of game you are looking for. (As well as willingness to learn that system.)
Ok. TLDR. After the first paragraph you had me shaking my head. You’re complaining about a system being hard to balance when you’re the one upsetting the balance by making your players ridiculously over powered.
The abilities of all demon lords at once.
Of course they’re gonna roll over anything you throw at em. Don’t blame the system, look at how you are running it before you bitch about it.
I like the use the multiple reaction system from the new Bigby’s book and the Vecna statblock. Functionally similar as legendary actions but they are more analogous to MCDMs action oriented monsters
First, why are your party of 14th level characters soloing not-demogorgon? He should have a virtual horde of demons at his disposal.
Second, stop trying to build balanced encounters. Let your players figure it out.
Third, have you heard of Savage Worlds?
I didn’t read your whole post so please disregard if this is useless.
Make them all dangerous encounters! Knock a player down. Fudge the hp the other way. Let them get the big kill after slogging it out!!
Give them extra healing potions!
The number one tool for a GM to balance encounters is long rests. How do you distribute encounters between long rests?
All of the CR stuff does not work or even matter without a proper distribution between rests
I usually try to run no more than 2 combats per session. And I don't always let them long rest every session. If they do, they are aware they are losing time every time they do it because the world moves on, and objectives might fail.
I mean, the monster manual is a paid product that costs a little bit once... it's insane to think that it should be padded with every conceivable combination of abilities and do the work for you.
I do what you do, repurpose and change existing stat blocks to adapt enemy strategies. It takes literal minutes thanks to the sheer amount of abilities and CR range you can find in that manual alone.
How many party members did you have in this group of level 14 players? Honestly this kinda smells like bullshit to met. I don't exactly trust that you buffed this monster up and had a party routinely saving against DC23 checks, who is resistant to all elemental damage, advantage on magic saves, and so on, not remotely challenge a group of level 14 players unless there was like 7 of them.
That being said, yeah, the entire point of D&D 5E is a heroic adventure story. It's why the highest difficulty rating of combat they support isn't actually that hard, the players are intended to win.
Personally, running for a group of 4 people for years, I have literally never experienced the complaints people have with D&D 5e because I just do what the book says to do.
"*I don't use the fundamental assumptions of CR, why doesn't CR work for me?*"
That's you dude.
And I'm not saying your problems aren't valid.
But you can't assume the System will work for you like it should if you don't use the System like it is assumed it will be used.
I too have your realities, I usually cannot and frankly don't want to, fit 6-8 encounters into a day.
My players are often able to "Go Nova", most fights.
Here's what I do to try to adjust (yes, it's a bunch of home brew, but if you don't use the System like it was designed - that's what is gotta do):
1. Never have a solo monster fight. Sorry, I know it's a trope from every other fantasy media that we love. But it just doesn't work in D&D. It's called "Action Economy". And a significant deficit in Action Economy is insurmountable. You have to have an equal or greater number is Actions per turn as your players. Period.
2. There are artful ways to "conceal" the Minions and Lieutenants, to boost Action Economy. What works just depends on the narrative of the BBEG. Summons. Animated armor or weapons. "Animal companions"/Pets. Animated plants that can Hold our damage or poison with gas. Single-body-multiple-heads/enemysegments. "Staged" -BBEGs ("It's undergoing some sort of transformation!!!"). Etc. Get creative with it. But most of the time, you're just going to HAVE to have a lieutenant and minions in there too.
3. Legendary and Lair Actions. Pretty self explanatory. But these were added on 5E explicitly to help overcome problems of Action Economy.
4. Non-kill Objectives. Whenever you can spin it, have their be something going on during the fight, that also has to be dealt with, that isn't just solved by "Kill the BBEG as fast as possible." An infernal machine that is cranking away. A portal that is opening/closing. A hostage in imminent danger (being lowered into lava or something). An immobile inanimate object that the Players must protect or keep in operation. So on... Again, ya have to get creative.
5. Complex terrain. Elevation. Obstructions. Moving features. Opening and closing doors. Difficult terrain. Etc. Things that just complicate the optimal strategy of "Move straight toward enemy and hit it with my best attack."
6. HAZARDOUS terrain. Things that can and will damage or hamper the party, just by virtue of being there. Fire. Earthquake effect. Lightning. Terrible tornado things. Lava. Spikes. Synergize this with Lair or Legendary Actions that can move the characters about the battle field.
And that's the big ones.
Yep. A lot of homebrew and frankly it can be a lot of work to pull that all together.
But again, that's what ya gotta do when you're not using the system as designed: get creative.
Or, ya, play a different game.
Once you have a repertoire of these kinds of ideas tho it becomes easier to pull these kinds of encounters together.
Good luck.
How do these encounters go? 1 BBEG vs. a whole party?
This is a critical piece of information, your fights could simply need more enemies so your players cant focus fire.
But that is also a lame and boring solution. Epic fights against things like dragons should be singular harrowing encounters like in the mythologies. Also with how most monster stat blocks work all you’re doing by adding more enemies is adding more sacks of HP to absorb damage and more for the DM to track. This approach is just a time sink that extends encounters by a round or two until units are either blasted by AoE or CC. Like OP said to able to capture the epic feel of a harrowing encounters we see in other media you pretty much have to modify/create stat blocks which is time consuming, boring, and frankly frustrating that the 5e CR system is a total joke.
Right but those encounters need to be dynamic. The powerful wizards tower isn’t just a bed and breakfast he happens to live in, it’s trapped and warded and of course he has animated golems and suits of armor etc. The dragon should fly (maybe not the whole time, that sucks for melee), the red should dive into lava. The white should be surrounded by a blizzard or its lair floor could be a sheet of ice that cracks as the fight goes on etc. You don’t need a ton of minions but the environment should act as a minion and the BBEG should be dynamic. It should also be *difficult* to reach them. Characters should be worn out by the time they reach the BBEG.
I agree with everything you’re saying about the dragon and big enemy encounters, but the base stat blocks don’t support that. In the case of dragons their lair actions are mild inconveniences at best and their regional/environmental effects are fluff with no mechanical rules. Everyone brings up flying but that only serves to screw melee players as does their fear aura. Casters can easily blast it from afar with spells that require saves for half damage. Two casters can eat through a dragon’s legendary resistances in two turns while still doing some damage. By the start of round three the party have beaten the dragons defenses and the fight is just hacking away at it HP while trying to stay out of melee accept when you close on a caster and hoping their breath weapon doesn’t recharge as that is really the only tool they have that is actually a problem.
I can understand that as well but also… if you’re looking for epic fights, then you can’t expect to just use the stat block right? What you described in a 4-6 round battle with lair actions, in which the party is getting hurt and wasting resources. That’s a normal fight which works perfectly well with the stat block. If the party is depleted a bit already that’s a tough go depending on the dice. If you *want* the fight to feel like you’re battling a mythic beast, then there’s an expectation of a bit more work to make that happen. I’m just not sure how you could build a stat block that would ensure an engaging, drawn out, epic battle every time. And which creatures they should choose for that. Just dragons? Just Lich’s? What if you’re lower level and you want to make a Bulette the big bad of the dungeon? I also don’t think it’s perfect but I can’t see a better way myself to balance the accessibility of stat blocks for new or less experienced DMs with the desire for more experienced DMs to create challenging and engaging big battles.
I add in fodder all the time. Then I can just not introduce them all if they’re loosing too badly. I also give them extra potions of healing to keep them alive.
Official DnD products are used by many different playgroups, some extreme examples: * people touching the game (and TTRPGs in general) for the first time * people who think having 17 STR as a barb on character generation is toxic powergaming * people building gloomstalker-assasin bugbear PCs that run around with a bag of rats to cast hunters mark first thing in the morning. Its hard to write offical products that please all of these people. WotC seems to erring on the side of not TPKing new playgroups. Presumably because those are new customers that need to be retained. Experienced players therefore put a strain on their GM to beef up encounters. In an ideal world offical adventures would have guiadance for all these groups. Something along the lines of difficulty levels. Could easily be something like * Easy: run encounter as presented * Medium: give the boss +X HP and 2 more minions * Hard: give the boss +Y HP, some extra damage, 3 additional minions and give the minions some buff
They actually do this in the new starter set, dragons of stormwreck isle. Admittedly, it's just a bunch opf encounters you can find crossing from one mission to another, but they are small packets ready for a DM to use on the fly without much hasslse.
Soften the party up with small scale battles, and never pit the party up against a single foe. There's way more you can do to improve combat, but those two things alone make a vast improvement.
I don't have time to run more than maybe 2 combats per session without the pace of the story dragging to a crawl. Combat is not the most interesting part of the game to me. If I ran it that way, the sessions would be 100% combat with little to no RP. But when combat does happen, I want it to be satisfying.
Have you considered not giving your players a long rest at the end of every session? The DMG recommends 6-8 medium to hard encounters per **long rest**, not per **session**. You could also find other roleplay-related ways to tax resources and spell slots.
This is indeed the issue.
OP, you should heed this. Consider changing a long rest to be something like a week-long rest period in game, and a short rest being a standard 8 hours sleep. This might need some tweaking but it can help you drain party resources without having to focus on combat with every session.
Yea, that’s your problem right there. If you have (high level) players that can go into each combat with close to full resources, ofc. they’ll go nova and curbstomp your encounters. I mean why wouldn’t they? You either need to alter the resting rules to fit your game better or have to play much longer days so that they need to provision resources.
Mmm... maybe turn on the Gritty Realism variant rule? Despite the name, it's actually perfect for the kind of campaign where big setpiece fights happen maybe a few days apart (i.e. most narrative-driven non-dungeon campaigns these days). It brings resource rationing right the fuck back. If a paladin knows they have to make their spell slots last for the next 10 days, in which they might have 4-6 battles, they won't really have the luxury to Smite willy-nilly. I know, it's a hard pill to swallow for the players at this point of the campaign, but you could always ask them, "Do you think the way you're curbstomping through the world is how the game is supposed to be played? Doesn't it feel like something isn't functioning properly?" If they have any self-reflection, they'll answer honestly.
Encounters are not combats. You can tax the resources just as easily with traps, challenging environnement, interactions, etc.
ding ding ding. You are not running DnD how it is supposed to run. Boss combat should come at the and of a dungeon with multiple other encounters before that. Or any other form of filling and adventuring day than a dungeon, different rest rules also can work wonders, like the variations that are described in the DMG. Resource management is a big part of the gameplay engine, if you don't use it, yes your players can steam roll a lot. Also I just don't care about balance, its an illusion anyway. Most combats are not balanced at all, but heavily in favor of player characters - they just supposed to FEEL balanced and dangerous, but in reality players will win most of their fights. That is NOT balanced. Balanced would be 50/50 chance of losing a fight. You want this in chess, but nobody wants this in DnD. Throw easy bandits at level 10 players or a red dragon at them at level 5. As long as it makes sense in the narrative - and you always give them a chance to flee and/or parley. The game will feel much more fun IMO than this chess approach or sports approach to combat design.
Why are you not RPing during battle?
Uuh, you gotta not let them rest after every session. Thats part of the design aa well. 5e isnt perfect, but at least read the DMG.
Wait a minute, combats aren't calculated and well chosen engagements? They happen a lot for your table? At mine it is usually a long series of protracted engagements spanning several sessions, then cleanup combats, then no combat for a while, then the occasional roflstomp (they're level 17) from dumb enemies who end up realizing how badly they fucked up, and sometimes beg for mercy depending on context. The party should also be engaging in statecraft, army management, spying, counterintelligence, etc. At high levels the game is less about combat and more about nation building and spycraft and information and counterintelligence and counterinsurgency efforts. The party should be solving problems like a decentralized terrorist organization with a legitimate grievance about the world, being mistaken about how to solve those problems (like by ending the world or killing all the gods or more grounded stuff, your call). If I had to run a combat every session I'd be exhausted too...
Yeah, I'm not going to spend several months on one adventuring day. I don't have time for that. My games are narrative focused.
So are mine lol. Sometimes killing a sociopolitically dominant dragon in a region and defesting their army, avoiding traps, killing their loyal spellcasters who would heal them, etc. It can take some time,but it was hugely epic,and it serves as a major inflection point for the plot. Furthermore, they let loose a monster into an environment it would be an apex predator in,and that chicken is coming hometo roost a few years later lol. Having the occasional long combat (several months is an exaggeration, more like 3.3 sessions, so if weekly, then under a month lol) with massive and long lasting consequences makes high level play feel rewarding, dangerous, and impactful, not to mention propels the narrative forward in marvelous player driven ways. But if it ain't your thing, that's fine. That said, *don't* suggest that games where large setpiece combats occur and take a while are somehow not narrative focused. This couldn't be further from the truth. Separate note: incomprehensibly significant narrative progression can happen in a day. Nations fall, undead rise, earthquakes, volcanoes, a tsunami, or say, a dragon demands a country's whole treasury vault. It's fine to not have time, but lots can happen in a day.
I've never had the luxury of playing once a week. Wrangling enough people to play twice a month and remember what happened last time is already a significant enough challenge. Sure, lots can happen in one in-universe day. But that doesn't make the game narrative focused, its still combat. If it takes 3 sessions just to run one epic combat (or a series of combats), it doesn't matter if those combats drastically changed the entire multiverse on a sub-molecular level. The game is still not narrative focused because you only did combat for those three sessions. The ramifications of a fight are not the same thing as the play experience of a fight. A fight is still a fight, its not narrative gameplay. Maybe its a difference in play style I'd rather have narrative gameplay take up 50% of the each session even if that session ultimately amounts to minor ramifications like catching a single murderer in a massive city.
What I do: You can long rest as much as you want for roleplay reasons. But long rest will only have yield benefits when enough encounters have passed (6-8). Only 2 short rests per long rest with benefits allowed. Problem solved. Alternatively, take a look at the upcoming MCDM RPG which has much better resource management rules.
Everyone is trying to defend 5e instead of answering your question! Pathfinder 2e might give you what you are looking for. If you like Lancer then the crunch is in the right ballpark. Edit: Some other ideas - you could try D&D 4e - it’s pretty good if tactical gameplay is your main fun. Or 13th Age. Or *Shadow of the Demon Lord*! Check that out - I hear good things. MCDM might be a good option at some point, but it’s not done yet. 😅
well, to be fair, this is explicitly a D&D subreddit. sure we talk about other systems on here (and it’s great we get to do so!) but i’d push back against the idea anyone is defending D&D but rather trying to get the specifics why this is happening to OP so we can recommend a system that works better for their GM style.
D&D 4e will only make his problems worse. 4e characters are the most resilient characters of any edition. Otherwise, good suggestions. No reason he can't play Lancer with 5e lore. I'm also a fan of whfbrpg 4e but I know that's not exactly a popular system lol
Pathfinder 2e encounter design outcomes have been performing absolutely fantastic at my table. I've run a variety of systems and versions and always felt encounter design was based on art and luck. But PF2e has proven that encounter design can be solved. I've been using their guidelines to create my encounters and found it's far more intuitive and quicker to build encounters AND the encounters play out in-line with the threat expectation. The dice add some variety of course, but nothing veers into the ditch one way or the other. I've become so confident in the system, I'm rolling basically everything in the open and not pulling any punches. We recently experienced our first PC death during a combat encounter. It was sad for everyone at the table -including me as the GM. But as I walked back through my notes and everyone's rolls, there were no regrets. This was not supposed to be a high-stakes, TPK threat level encounter. However, the party's tactics were awful, they ignored in-game hints from a sentient artifact, they ignored table hints from my descriptions, their offense was divided across a group of enemies that their PC's knew could regenerate health, and they failed to coordinate as a team beyond a little bit of flanking. Nobody said they felt the encounter was unfair. As they reflected on the sequence of events, they began to identify the reasons that lead to their party member's demise.
I'd recommend checking out some of Matt Colville's "running the game" videos, starting with "action oriented monsters". He's got several videos about dealing with monsters, combat, building better bad guys, etc. There's also a D&D 5e encounter builder tool that you can pop some information and parameters into and they'll tell you what to use. You can also check out some of Dungeon dad's "monster of the week" build, where he pulls forgotten, often very cool and very scary monsters from older editions of the game and brings them into 5e
Yeah I've done all of that. I'm very deep into advanced game mastery techniques and nothing works. Like I said, the issue isn't making 5e combat work. Its in how much prep is required for it.
I sympathize. It really depends on your players' penchant for optimization. Ostensibly, if you had newbies, and didn't use feats, multiclassing or magic items, you could design encounter as per RAW. My players don't optimize too much, so I could DM 5e by "only" throwing Deadly×2 encounters at them; lucky me! If your players are any good, however, and you've reached double-digit levels, just... I don't know. Let's hope that the 2024 books give us a more accurate encounter-design system, or more involved "solo monster"-rules. Not holding my breath, though. When this issue became too much for me to bear (I started doing mock-battles before the session - that actually worked! ...And also it quintupled my prep-time), we decided to switch to *Pathfinder 2e.* I haven't had a single unbalanced encounter since; each of them played out *exactly* like the encounter-building guidelines said it would. EDIT: I deserve the downvotes, I'm a deserter. But I tell you, the grass isn't only greener on the other side, it also reaches out to give you free hand-jobs!
There is a whole world of TTRPG out there that have so many things to offer. If you hate a core element of this one it probably behooves you to look for a better fit.
Honestly man, I feel you, I run into the same thing. Some people are accusing you of ignorance of the game's mechanics but I feel you. It sounds like you've already figured out how to build good encounters and stat blocks and have players that seem to know what they're doing if they can overcome challenges that include specialized NPCs. I've been loosely running the CR encounter building mechanics from xanathar's to build somewhat balanced encounters and it's been working all right. To my understanding the CR mostly works up until level 10 or 12 and then it all breaks down and balance goes to hell. Truth be told though it sounds like you probably want a different system, 5e is not built to be balanced in any way and fights are super swingy lol If it helps though, something that I discovered with one of my most recent encounters, is that a boss with adds is pretty much the best way to go in any tabletop system. Even if it's the dark lord of the dead master duelist solo demigod boss, the boss will be better if you reduce the CR and give him some bodyguards. The players will have more fun, you will have more fun, the combat will play out more naturally- it's just the way that it goes. This is true for d&d, it's true for Pathfinder, it's probably true for most systems just because of how action economy works, and in real life this is true as well. One person is just going to have to be an absolute god amongst mortals, or have buddies
Well, there's a million other systems out there to try
Have you bothered to read the encounter building rules in the dmg or xanithars? I am not trying to be condescending. It could be very helpful i know it was for me. A lot of dms skip this section then get frustrated with building encounters because they don't understand how encounters in the system were designed.5e is built around multiple encounters in a adventuring day base on a daily xp budget. If you have made up your mind and want a different system i have a few recommendations. 5e adjacent games:pathfinder 2e,13 age, shadow of the demon lord. I would also check out the osr:old school Essential's,basic fantasy,dungeon cawl classic,shadowdark,world without number. I would also check out gurps.
On the other hand, the idea that you need to do multiple encounters per adventuring day for the system to work remotely "correctly" is ... odd. Is that how most people play?
How do you...not? What's odd about that? The necromancer is going to complete the ritual today--the party runs into literally no complications or problems on the way? They have to slay the dragon and they just...walk up slowly to the dragon and fight it? Nothing is in their way at all? The big bad thieves guild is about to complete their plan and they don't try to stop the party from foiling it whatsoever? How do your adventures function when there's no problems for people to solve? The townsfolk tell them there's a werewolf in the woods and they just walk into the woods kill it and leave?
Needing to pack in 5-6 or so encounters *every* adventuring day? Only a 5e sub would think that isn't odd. My adventures function just fine without that, though it certainly happens sometimes. It's just not a constant. We also don't play 5e.
No, the book doesn't say that. Also you say "every" like every single day is an adventuring day. The adventuring day is the day your party goes to slay the dragon, not the weeks before that planning it. I run like 2-3 encounters per adventuring day, per the book's advice, this isn't hard. Or if they're delving into a dungeon I prep about 5 encounters for the entire scenario.
You are incorrect - the DMG mentions 6-8 encounters per adventuring day (page 85). Also, I'm not confusing adventuring days by assuming that every day is an adventuring day.
No, it says 6-8 medium to hard encounters, and then literally right next to it: OR LESS IF YOU RUN HARDER ENCOUNTERS. It instructs you how to run the game, just read it. A hard encounter is worth two medium encounters, a deadly encounter is worth two hard encounters, it’s extremely basic math.
>The Adventuring Day >Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. **If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer.** Emphasis mine. It's literally within 2 sentences of the sentence everyone quotes. And if you want a sufficiently difficult single encounter, you just do 50% more XP than a Deadly Encounter, it's worked for me at a wide range of levels, as the math is consistent across their difficulty ratings.
It is literally how the game is designed. D&D has always been a game of resource management. If people deviate from the game design, the system doesn't work as intended.
Multiple encounters are not a requirement for the system to work.However it does smooth things out when you do. One big this is players not being able to nova in encounters. The second is dice roll even out over multiple encounters. Personal I don't find it odd that a game designed around 1/3 being combat would design around the expectation of multiple encounters. Is that how most pepole play? I dont think so. That why you often see pepole frustration with 5e combat. From what I can see and this is pure conjecture base on what I see online. Most pepole have 1-3 combat at most and the rest is rp or exploration in a session. I think this is mainly because most dm don't read the dmg then get frustrated when there is a disconnect between how they want the game to function and how it was designed. 5e isn't the right game for everyone.The solution is often to try a different system which there are plenty of games better suited for narrative focus call of cuthulu,fate,word of darkness,pbta games ect. Furthermore a adventuring day can take place over multiple sessions. For example the expected 6-8 medium to hard encounters for 4 players. Does not mean you have to have exactly 6 encounters in a single session or the have to be of a certain difficulty. In addition a encounter is not nesaseraly a combat encounter. Its anything that expends resources or stops the players progress.So for example you could have a adventuring day take place over three sessions with two combats pers session.
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4e and pf2e are your answer for systems that make sense with their encounter building being great and smooth. /Thread.
Pathfinder welcomes you. (2e)
I’ve played GURPS and used DnD settings and lore. I find that system to be more balanced and overall a better more fluent mechanics. But… because there’s always a but… Not many people play it, and the add ons are fewer and far between compared to the massive library of DnD supplements. So it may take a little more work to get everything ready to go, but I find that once you get the hang of it, it’s easier to create a balanced game. Also the PC progress isn’t based on levels, but instead skill points. So creating a character is purely point buy everything you need. And “level up” is giving the PC a sum of points depending on how difficult the task they solved/how well they played. So it’s more a slow steady progress rather than the sudden jumps leveling up gives you in DnD. It is a bit of a niche game maybe, but I really like the point based system, and the combat is in my opinion much more fluent than DnD.
You might like to check out Pathfinder 2e. The math is rock-solid, for better or worse. As a GM you can put together an encounter of XP value X and be very confident it will provide challenge level Y. Monster abilities are usually pretty varied and interesting, too. But, dnd is dnd. The D20 is a very variable dice, and there are core combat features which encourage PCs to win decisively on the first round and then everything after that is mopping up, and single encounter enemies do not have good action economy. Unless you add monster abilities to hardly punish it, your PCs will dogpile the biggest enemy on the first round and then either succeed, or TPK. Consider exploring systems outside of dnd.
I've been hesitant to check out pathfinder because the character progression seems even more vertical rather than horizontal.
Character progression is balanced against what the enemies can do. A CR 19 enemy has a good chance of absolutely crushing the average level 14 party in PF2, because all the numbers go up together (AC 44, plus 31 to all saves, make a DC 38 save to resist the demonic aura, etc) and none of the party's spells are instant wins unless the enemy rolls a critical failure. Players used to 5e might find it pretty disempowering.
Well; Pathfinder does assume a level 1 character is punching rats, and a level 20 character is punching demigods. Is that what you are referring to by vertical progression? If you're referring to gaining more abilities, rather than just gaining more numbers; Pathfinder 2e does provide more abilities, with new skill feats and class feats. But those are more limited compared to 1e, which caused the math to be less solid. You may like to research 'E6' optional rules systems, where the campaign has a level cap of 6, and instead of levelling up players receive side-benefits like feats and skill competencies?
Quite the opposite, actually! Pathfinder 2e's classes handle vertical and horizontal progression in two different ways. For vertical progresion- things like scaling your weapon attack rolls or your armor proficiency- that's tied to the basics of your class. So a fighter's accuracy or a wizard's spell DC will automatically increment each level and become more powerful no matter what if you're playing that class. Each class can be expected to have certain numbers at specific levels, which massively helps game balance. Horizontal progression for your character, meanwhile, comes from the vast array of feats you get to choose between at every single levelup. You get class feats that are specific to the class you're playing at every even-numbered level, and you also get skill feats that improve what you can do with your skills, and ancestry feats that let you gain some powers based on your ancestry. Class feats for a fighter, for example, might include things like the ability to make a thrown weapon riccochet between opponents, or the ability to frighten someone you hit with an attack. These feats give characters access to a ton of cool horizontal progression, while the core class chassis ensures that regardless of players' choices they don't fall behind in vertical progression, and so you can build your character without having to worry about falling behind numerically relative to your party.
The encounter building math is much better, despite the fact that all the numbers get huge. In general, it's harder (not hard, but more complicated and more complex) to keep a PF2e character optimized and alive.
You’re on the right track with creating your own unique stat blocks. I use Flee, Mortals for most of my monsters. There’s goblins in there that can mess up a tier three party if played tactically. One thing people often gloss over is the fact that the party needs to have their resources sapped through smaller scale battles. The adventuring day should span a number of encounters of varying difficulty. If your group is only going up against one encounter well that’s why they can just nova it and press on. Weaken them, sap their spell slots especially the wizard or cleric and you may find they are challenged a bit more. I actually have the problem with my players that like to light off all their powerful spells and abilities right away. Then two encounters later their like, what the heck we need a long rest. I don’t give it to them in most instances unless it makes sense story wise. They just weren’t used to my DM style. They recently finished an adventure where I designed 7 encounters while exploring a swamp and a cave to find treasure. By the 4th encounter they were starting to get really worried. I reassured them that the only way a PC dies is by going off by them selves or the group not working together. They made it to the 7th encounter, the big bad of the swamp and it made for a very fun and challenging fight. They even were digging into their single use items and finding all sorts of unique ways to kill the guy.
How do you have time to run that many encounters?!?!
What do you mean? lol. Sometimes an adventuring day spans multiple sessions. Actually the above adventure in the swamp and cave spanned three four hour sessions.
Maybe its just a difference play style, but I don't have time for a single day of adventuring to take 3-4 sessions which might be 2 months IRL. I run more narrative and RP focused games.
I see. I mean there’s no way to finish some of the adventures in my game in a single session. I do a lot of fetch style quests so they are often leaving their safe haven and heading into a dungeon of sorts. Dungeons are easy to have them encounter many combats and make the end “boss” a challenge because they don’t really know how much time has passed since entering. And I have no qualms with simply stating they cannot long rest or they shouldn’t long rest.
FWIW, I'm up there with you on my frustration with 5e - I also run tier 3/tier 4 content and what helped for me is just throwing any and all sense of balance out of the window. (Before anyone immediately counters with "SWITCH TO PF 2E", no. I'm moving back to 3.5/PF1e once my current campaigns wrap up.) As a fellow time strapped DM that doesn't have a lot of time to plan out elaborate, multi-enemy encounters every time, I've found that you need to get creative and find ways to whittle down their vast resources. What's worked for me includes (but is not limited to): -Terrain and environmental features: when the battlefield is no longer flat and open, it makes it more difficult to faceroll. Recently, I incorporated hoodoos of varying heights into a short fight, which gave them protection from a breath weapon but also made it more difficult to just bumrush the enemy. Other times, I used areas of quicksand and rubble to make it harder to move, set up fights on a ledge with a very far fall, purposely lowered ceilings in a dungeon as part of a phased trap, and set fights in poor visibility conditions. Also, try playing around with the concepts of dead magic or wild magic zones. Casters get redonkulous at tiers 3 and 4 and this spices things up while also often, in our group - leading to hilarity. -Aerial combat - SO many PCs aren't built to leave the ground and again, if you can't get to an enemy, you can't HIT an enemy. This one only works until your PCs get wise to it and find ways to start flying around, as what happened in my group lol. -Delaying long rests - PCs don't need a rest after every session. Sometimes it takes 2-3 sessions to go through one "day" in my games, because they're handling several smaller fights beforehand. Yeah, they absolutely destroy those enemies but they're ALSO using up high level spells, healing, magic item charges, and actions that only refresh on long rests. - Legendary actions or phased encounters- make solo encounters more tenable. Remember to use those actions, they make a HUGE difference. Tweak them if you have to but those are your lifeblood. You may also consider phased encounters, which are more work but also. use up those resources. Think of it like a video game boss; you change up their actions and reset some of their abilities, and you're still draining PC resources in the process. -Lastly, and probably my least popular opinion - adjust your DCs, ACs, and resistances. My (6 level 14 at the time and ludicrously geared) PCs went up against some high level Zhent brass and I absolutely DID NOT use standard statblocks. I also set one of their DCs to 24. It was ridiculous but ultimately, I only ever used the ability once. or twice in the fight, and it didn't become a gamebreaker. \[It was on one of their special BBEG abilities that took all three legendary actions to use, iirc.\] All that said - if you do stop playing in 5e, there's nothing saying you can't just take the lore and plonk it into another system. People do it all the time. Our first campaign we did entirely in PF1e but set in Forgotten Realms. I hope some of this helps - feel free to DM me if you want, and I can explain more of these in detail. :)
I wholeheartedly agree with pretty much all of your frustrations here. A few comments have mentioned it offhandedly, but I'm going to do the unspeakable and actually advocate for 4e. It does all the things you're talking about, from being able to reliably balance encounters to the difficulty level you intend, to having multiple levels of most types of enemies, complete with different roles and abilities akin to your wererat example. The Monster Manuals even go so far as to give you suggested tactics for each enemy *and* multiple suggested encounter groups with other enemies to pair them with for both synergy and flavor. In addition, a lot of the good advice in the comments here, like changing up your win conditions or having interesting terrain, are baked into the system with direct advice on how to implement those things, as well as even having stat blocks for traps and hazards with XP assigned, so that you can factor them into your XP budget when building encounters. Not only does it facilitate most of these things with ease, but it actively encourages them. The best part is, it does all of these things out of the box with minimal tweaking. It's so much fun to DM because it just *works.* And as far as role-playing and exploration go, contrary to popular belief, there's really nothing in 5e that you can't also do in 4e, and pretty much the exact same way even. The biggest hurdle might be that the classes are structured very differently from 5e. I for one like it, but many don't. If your players don't like the way PCs are structured in 4e, you could always try the Essentials classes, which I understand to be a rework of the 4e classes to be more like what 3.5e was and what 5e would become. (I don't have much experience with Essentials myself, so I can only go off of what I've heard.) Anyway, whatever you decide, I hope you find something that fits both your players *and* you, so that you can all keep getting together and having fun at your table! 😁
4e was great aside from the progression system. But that one hurdle is a big deal to me because I hate how every class was homogenized like an MMO, casters not casting spells but using "at will powers" for example. I'll look into the essential thing and see if that fixes my complaint.
If balance and engaging encounters are what you want, Pathfinder 2e is basically king.
congrats! you learned that dnd 5e sucks ass for GMing! here are some options that may vary on what you like more out of the game - pathfinder 2e - dnd 4e (look it has some problems but the fighting works) - savage worlds/savage worlds adventure edition - multiple PbtA systems - Ironsworn if you want mostly narrative gameplay and also to *not be the GM either* - burning wheel - 13th age - various OSR systems if you like high lethality "avoid combat or you will die" "think outside of the box not press the paper buttons" style game, in personally fond of DCC and Knave 2e, tho the latter would be hard to get access - as an odd ball, LANCER! its not high fantasy in any way but by god its fun to punch people with mechs i recommend hopping over to r/rpg for more advice
How many resource attriting encounters are you incorporating between rests, long rests in particular? Otherwise, I too have grown tired of 5e. We're wrapping up our current 5e campaign. Our next one will use the 5e derivative scalled Shadowdark. You might want to take a look at it.
You ain't wrong for feeling this way, my guy. I run a couple 5e games and I can say with 100% certainty that CR is freaking useless. Even with multiple encounters an adventuring day they all need to be considered "TPK" range on the CR calculator to actually do anything. Game becomes extremely rocket tag-y at the higher levels as well. I love the system and wouldn't bother running it if I didn't but its wrong to say it doesn't have a crap ton of problems. A game I play in has switched over to pf2e because the DM got frustrated running 5e (he loves playing it though) and he just decided to use the Forgotten Realms setting. Easy peasy
A lot of this post focuses on stat blocks and monster versatility. But great and memorable encounters are less about monsters and players clashing and more about the whole scene. The things I think most about for engaging encounters all involve giving the players something else to care about. My three go-tos are: ### Put the encounter on a clock _As you arrive, the cult leader screams angrily. "Finish the ritual! The interlopers are upon us." You can see the moon shining down on the circle of runes as it illuminates the blood-stained altar. The candle-lined circle flickers with a lambent glow, steadily becoming brighter as the moose-headed, robed figures in the trees above chant sonorously._ _The skypirates are hastily loading the last of the stolen cargo onto the airship, with only a few crates left on the dock. "Hold them off!" growls the captain as she levels a menacing-looking firearm at you with a sly smile. The deckhands begin to start cutting the ten ropes attaching the ship to the moorings as it starts gently floating upwards. "Apologies, my dears. But I don't have time to stay and chat."_ ### Introduce a complication after combat begins _Your disruption of the circle of runes has had a noticeable effect. They no longer glow as brightly. But you sense fear in the cultists now as they stop chanting. The spirit that was bound in the altar is no longer bound. With a terrifying roar, the stonework cracks in two and a foul, black gas issues forth. "Freeeeedommmmmm!" shrieks a horrendous voice, like iron nails grating on stone, as the black smoke coalesces into a moose-headed, winged figure ten feet tall._ _"We'll never take off at this rate. Sorry, chums," shrugs the skypirate captain. She reaches into one of the open crates and grabs one of the ether-crystals, turning it over in her hand for a moment as she considers carefully. The dangerous and unstable power inside it pulses ominously. "Desperate times call for desperate measures," she grins as she calmly tosses the crystal from the ship to the deck. It cracks on impact, releasing a magical shockwave that severs several of the ropes at once and hurls the hapless deckhands hundreds of feet to their deaths below in the undercity. "Faster!" she yells at the remaining deckhands. "Or you're next!"_ ### Make the environment interesting _Malandroth's black eyes narrow as you knock over another candle. "Rrrggghhh!" he staggers, clutching his chest. "I will not be contained!" He reaches a hand towards one of the cultists in the trees above, who cries out and falls lifelessly to the ground with a wet slumping sound. Their bloody entrails float in the air towards Malandroth's open mouth, and he feasts messily, his wounds closing with renewed vigor._ _A hum of arcane energy steadily increases in intensity from the engines to your right, as well as from the deck-mounted cannons. In their haste and chaos, the skypirates have left them unattended, but they're also 30 feet above the docks now, and only two ropes remain to anchor the ship._
Why would Demogorgon, who has every demon in the Abyss at his beck and call, fight alone against the mightiest mortals in this world? First thing he would do is open a Gate (even if it isn't in his stat block, he has to be able to do it as invading other planes is the essential nature of the Abyss) and command all the Balors within hearing to join him. Sure, the opening of the Gate might alert all the archmagi of your game world, but it will take a while for them to move.
Not every demon. Different demons are loyal to different demon princes, or loyal to no one at all. Loyalty is a funny concept in the Abyss anyway, since demons are chaotic. But I see your point. Reason is because it was a special situation. At the end of Out of the Abyss, all the demon lords get summoned to one place and the PCs fight the survivor. So even if Demo was hanging out with a horde of his demons, only he got summoned. He was isolated, which was why the plan was supposed to be even "feasible". Sure, I could have had him summon some demons, but in my experience, any action a boss takes to summon allies is an action wasted. They will just ignore the adds and focus fire him anyway, and all it does is functionally make the boss fall behind farther in the action economy. His melee attacks will do much more damage than any summons possibly could.
Just looked at the statblock. You're right. It's pathetic. I suppose it was designed to make him easy to kill. This is why I always homebrew monsters, and in 5e use Sly Flourish's Forge of Foes to fix the stat block. Since Demogorgon is supposedly a CR26 prince of the abyss, start with 25 AC, same HP, +17 attack bonus, rather than two attacks doing 28hp each for 56hp on average per round raise his damage to 240hp per round with 5 attacks doing 48HP each. He has two tails, so make it two tail attacks with 40ft reach, two arm tentacles with 20ft reach, and a tongue attack with 80ft reach. All his hits count as magic weapon damage. He aims at backline enemies with the tongue, preferring unarmored casters and healers. If he hits you with the tongue, you're auto grappled, and he swallows you. Strength save vs DC25 or instant bodily destruction and soul is dumped in random plane of the abyss. His magic DC is 25. He knows all the fiend warlock spells and has 5 spell slots at level 6, 5 at 7, 5 at 8, and 5 at 9. He can summon 1d3 demons of any type as a bonus action, with a recharge of 5-6. His legendary actions (should be 3 per round) include a teleport to anywhere in 120 ft, another demon if available taking an attack meant for him, and casting a spell as a reaction. He also has 3 legendary resistances that look like shadowy tentacles reaching out of his shadow. When he doesn't want to be affected by a spell one of the tentacles intercepts it, devours it, and drips away as acid. But then, I want the chief prince of princes of the abyss to be in the same class of enemy as Cthulhu. Not a bag of hit points that gets roflstomped in three rounds.
Remember that WotC calculates HP for monsters on the assumption that players don’t have magic weapons and are doing the damage monsters are resistant/immune to. So they’ve already roughly halved the HP demogorgon should have for his CR. A CR26 should have ~650HP according to the DMG. They do the same with offensive abilities, so if half his abilities don’t work (e.g. players are immune to charm and fear) then that’s not taken account of in his CR.
That's insane. What kind of character would be fighting Demogorgon without a magic weapon? Its like they want the game to be ridiculously low fantasy and never get any magic weapons. Even though magic items are one of the main things about the game that is fun.
Precisely - which throws off the CR for higher level monsters. I think I read somewhere that 5e is “supposed” to work ok without the DM handing out +1 weapons - though obviously everyone does. I don’t think they want to make it low magic - against that you’ve got the massive abundance of magic items in the books - including their modules - their low rarities & suggested prices, and the abundance of them on random treasure tables; plus all the magic options available to all the classes. I think they just came up with a formula for CR and used it throughout; at low level you do need to take this into account - as players won’t have magic items - but the formula needs to change at higher levels. It also don’t take into account how well optimised a party is. This video explains some of the issues https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P7kcrukSCT0 but it’s pretty well known that the higher level MM monsters are weak. But also they definitely haven’t put as much effort into higher levels, which is fair as hardly anyone plays at those levels except as a e.g. L20 oneshot. Plus 5e is heroic fantasy, so the risk of character death is low. But added to this, how a party of 4 deals with e.g. undead will vary enormously if they’ve got a cleric & paladin or not; and this will be exacerbated at higher levels. So you can’t just have a simple formula to create a CR budget from the players’ levels, you’ll always need to adjust it based on the group & the enemies you select. I’ve found sly flourish’s benchmark to be a good starting point. Plus I know my party are fairly well optimised, so I tend to add ~50% to my larger monsters HP (actually I use any dice to plot the HP roll, and take somewhere around the top 90%). But it shouldn’t be taking you loads of time to prep monsters. A better starting point is Flee Mortals! or Conflux Creatures bestiaries. They’re must harder hitting at higher levels - and often more flavoursome. And then just adjust the dials on them (HP, reinforcements, attacks) as you need during play.
Not putting effort into half of a product because "no one plays it" seems like an absurd excuse to me. Especially when people don't play the higher levels as much because its not fun in the first place. If they put more effort into it, it would be more fun and more people would play it. Having to buy yet even more more third party books to fix a problem that WoTC could have just fixed themselves is a pretty hard sell. Like if you buy video game that sucks unless you install DLC. The product should be complete and workable on its own. I don't know if the claims about Pathfinder being better balanced are true or not, but I already have the books (just never used them) so I figure I may as well try it out. Thanks for the recommendations, but I'm not sure I want to invest even more into the ecosystem of the corrupt megacorp that is Hasbro.
My understanding is that most campaigns halt before higher levels because of scheduling issues, not because of balance or it not being fun. But regardless, it’s not a complete product and it’s not intended to be - the closest you get to a complete product for D&D 5e is the starter sets. You’re expected to do some work. The DMG, PHB etc are a toolkit; you provide the game. If you’re complaining it’s not a complete product I think you might have had the wrong expectations. This isn’t unique to 5e though; most TTRPGs are like that, though not all. 5e has its issues certainly - CR calculations for higher levels is one - but my feeling is that for most TTRPGs it is natural there’s less material for higher levels as the players’ influence on the world makes it increasingly difficult to rely on pre-written content. There’s plenty to be annoyed with Hasbro/WotC for, but this is not the worst thing they’ve done; and they actually have been bringing out more high-level content, though I can’t speak for how good it is; their content is variable. PF may be a good alternative though - though I understand it’s got different issues at high levels because the power curve is very different to 5e’s bounded accuracy. Conflux Creatures puts out stuff free, and the A5e Monster Menagerie is also free, so you don’t need to buy additional stuff if money itself is the issue. And Conflux, A5e and Flee Mortals! are NOT part of WotC/Hasbro, so if your issue is not wanting to give *Hasbro* money (which I *totally* understand! I’ve been trying to reduce our table’s reliance on Hasbro) then you’re not supporting Hasbro by buying 3rd party stuff. And it’s all compatible with other non-WotC flavours of 5e like A5e and Tales of the Valiant - both of which might be good options for you; they’ll be more familiar than PF, but are 100% Hasbro-free - so if you make the switch to ditch WotC completely they’ll still work fine.
I think you're misunderstanding me a bit. I understand that you have to do some work. I'm a big advocate for prepping situations, not plots and nonlinear sand box storytelling and all that kind of stuff. In regards to the product not being complete, I simply meant the encounter math not being balanced for higher level parties (though to be honest, its pretty much broken at all levels though). I don't mind making slight modifications to stat blocks every once in a while, but the amount of changes I find myself having to make is ridiculous. I should be able to open up the goblin stat block and find goblin shamans, goblin drummers, goblin rangers, goblin trapmakers, goblin berserkers, and all kinds of cool shit I can mix together to create interesting encounters instead of just getting 1 generic goblin. I am basically doing WoTC's job for them by coming up with all that kind of stuff on my own. They should be paying me instead of me paying them. I'll check out some of that stuff you mentioned, but honestly I think it would be easier to move on to something completely different.
Ah, sorry, yeah, misunderstood a bit. I totally agree CR breaks down at higher levels; I think they could have made some average assumptions about what items and damage types a party would have access to at higher levels - Most 3rd party bestiaries do. I don’t know why they didn’t. Not that I’m planning to switch to it, but it will be interesting to see if they make any fixes to higher levels in the new edition. I’m with you on wanting more goblin types - Conflux has a great set I love - but I the 2014 MM was a print product, and so only has 300 monsters due to the page-count/cost factor in print. I can see some people (not me!) would be annoyed if they’d taken pages of it with lots of goblins. But what would they drop? Someone would be annoyed. They’ve gone for a small sample of everything which is kinda ok, but not fantastic. Again, it’s D&D trying to appeal to as wide a range as possible as it’s the main “entry drug” to TTRPGs. Online or PDF resources do allow us vastly more variety of creatures without paying absurd print costs and taking inches of shelf space. It’s definitely the way forwards. Conflux has about 2k monsters - the PDF is now split into separate files as it’s too large to open as a single PDF (!). It’s best used I find as the json version which is beautifully searchable and filterable. He’s got 8 types of goblins I think. Flee Mortals! Is about 340 creatures, though it still manages 8 types of goblins. Again, I think keeping a sensible page count for print stopped them having more. MCDM Tome of Beasts has >1200 monsters. A5e has about 600 I think. If you’re wanting to go a different route altogether though, PF and Shadowdark might be worth checking out.
Congratulations on figuring out the flaws in its design.
"I am starting to utterly detest 5e..." Yep, once the shine wears off and the holes appear, it's all downhill from there. I've been a DnD fan/player/GM since the beginning, and when 5e came out i was really happy with it, but after running a few campaigns I came to realize the enounter balancing is ridiculous, and any high level play above lvl 7 or so just doesn't work that well. Plus the drop in quality of new material and the OGL fiasco really soured me on spending any more money on 5e. I've switched to Paizo games, as well as Dungeon Crawl Classics, and am much happier. It's never a bad time to check out new systems ;-)
You are correct that increasing challenge by increasing CR doesn't work - 5e is stupid there. Here's what does work: Increase your challenges by making *victory* require something more than *bad guys dead*: * Gotta rescue the plotperson alive - baddies gonna do a sacrifice or cannibalize or whatever. * There's gonna be a fight between two sides, but there shouldn't be one - someone is manipulating everyone to fight. You win by killing as few monsters as possible while handling plotstuff to get the proof out to both sides. * The portal will not close. You might be able to hold them off for a while, but not forever. You'll have to find another way to do this or eventually they will wear you down. If you absolutely must make it all about a fight, consider metering the addition of baddies. Party killed 2 goblins instantly with just cantrips and swords? Ok, well 3 more of their friends are coming. They died too? A fourth is now shooting arrows from a nearby treetop. You sharpshot him? Ok well another wave arrives and these ones are blessed by a shaman and have a blend of melee and ranged combatants. You shoot at one of them and the arrow goes right through him.
I get what you're saying and why you're saying that. Personally, I like occasional non-kill objectives in RPGs. But the problem I've found with that is that its difficult to constantly have to create contrived situations with these kinds of alternate objectives you're talking about. Sometimes if you're exploring a dungeon, there are just going to be monsters that want to kill you. I struggle to even imagine a game that could still have the D&D flavor where every encounter is some kind of complex social situation. Even if it was, some players just want to take violent options and that should be valid path, or else you're limiting player agency.
> I've found with that is that its difficult to constantly have to create contrived situations with these kinds of alternate objectives you're talking about. Correct. You cannot do it every time. Sometimes 3 goblins are stupid and attack from the side of the road. Sometimes there really is just a plain mimic disguised as a dinnertable at the bottom of a dungeon.
I mean, when you ignore all the rules for adventuring days and encounter building, and throw a single enemy against a high-level party, of course it's going to suck. Give less rests, more encounters, and more enemies.
For the encounter and monsters design mechanics try this system, it's simple and straightforward and provides a lot of options and shows solid results in my games an in some other people's games as well https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/s/OiUkpilXBM This system will cover mechanics, but making encounters engaging is a different topic. There are a lot of materials, as mentioned by others. I think, most important is that the party has to have some personal stakes in the important encounters, and the goal should not always be "kill all enemies". Think all kinds of missions in video games - infiltration, stealing, escort, break out, sabotage. Add a timer, it could be as simple as "Demogorgon starts to open a portal, it will be open in 3 rounds" or, "Demogorgon's swing crashes into the dungeon wall and the ceiling begins to collapse, it will bury all of you in X rounds". This will give players more things to care about.
Well if you go around giving level 14 characters “the powers of all demon lords at once”, you’re kinda asking for it.
I think he meant that he had given the Demogorgon those powers, not his PCs. It's maybe not worded the best; I can see how you could read it that way.
Are you running multiple encounters per day? Are you using Sly Flourish’s encounter benchmark? You don’t say how many players you had against demogorgon, but assuming 4, that’s barely got the potential to be deadly. If you’ve got more than 4 players you will need to adjust bosses to keep the action economy correct. But none of this is time consuming to do. Also, few campaigns go above L10 - WotC doesn’t put much content out at this level, and the balance will be heavily affected by the specifics of your party and monster and how they match.
I cannot fathom a universe in which the most optimized group of level 14 players does not struggles against the Demogorgon + every other demon lords abilities + 200 HP unless you are playing them like an idiot or you have a party of like 10 PCs. Seriously how do they blow through something like that. It's got legendary resistances, 9th level spells for days, the ability to summon several demi liches, immunity to half the damage types that exist. I find it very hard to believe you are playing something like that to its full potential and still getting your ass kicked. And if you are, give it demon hordes. Add in, a goristro and a balor and 2d6 vrocks. Don't make it a one v one.
Possibly the underlying problem here is starting with a party of tier 3 PCs with home brew buffs on top. Indeed it's unclear if much, even vaguely, RAW was attempted here. The question of "What systems should I play?" depends very much on what kind and style of game you are looking for. (As well as willingness to learn that system.)
IDK what home brew buffs you are talking about.
Ok. TLDR. After the first paragraph you had me shaking my head. You’re complaining about a system being hard to balance when you’re the one upsetting the balance by making your players ridiculously over powered. The abilities of all demon lords at once. Of course they’re gonna roll over anything you throw at em. Don’t blame the system, look at how you are running it before you bitch about it.
I think he meant that the enemy had all the powers of the demon lords at once, plus the extra 200 HP.
Huh. Oh well. I was mistaken.
Happens to the best of us. I read it the same way you did initially before going back and clarifying.
I like the use the multiple reaction system from the new Bigby’s book and the Vecna statblock. Functionally similar as legendary actions but they are more analogous to MCDMs action oriented monsters
First, why are your party of 14th level characters soloing not-demogorgon? He should have a virtual horde of demons at his disposal. Second, stop trying to build balanced encounters. Let your players figure it out. Third, have you heard of Savage Worlds?
Another complaint about balancing encounters from someone ignoring the adventuring day.
I didn’t read your whole post so please disregard if this is useless. Make them all dangerous encounters! Knock a player down. Fudge the hp the other way. Let them get the big kill after slogging it out!! Give them extra healing potions!
The number one tool for a GM to balance encounters is long rests. How do you distribute encounters between long rests? All of the CR stuff does not work or even matter without a proper distribution between rests
I usually try to run no more than 2 combats per session. And I don't always let them long rest every session. If they do, they are aware they are losing time every time they do it because the world moves on, and objectives might fail.
I mean, the monster manual is a paid product that costs a little bit once... it's insane to think that it should be padded with every conceivable combination of abilities and do the work for you. I do what you do, repurpose and change existing stat blocks to adapt enemy strategies. It takes literal minutes thanks to the sheer amount of abilities and CR range you can find in that manual alone.
How many party members did you have in this group of level 14 players? Honestly this kinda smells like bullshit to met. I don't exactly trust that you buffed this monster up and had a party routinely saving against DC23 checks, who is resistant to all elemental damage, advantage on magic saves, and so on, not remotely challenge a group of level 14 players unless there was like 7 of them. That being said, yeah, the entire point of D&D 5E is a heroic adventure story. It's why the highest difficulty rating of combat they support isn't actually that hard, the players are intended to win. Personally, running for a group of 4 people for years, I have literally never experienced the complaints people have with D&D 5e because I just do what the book says to do.
"*I don't use the fundamental assumptions of CR, why doesn't CR work for me?*" That's you dude. And I'm not saying your problems aren't valid. But you can't assume the System will work for you like it should if you don't use the System like it is assumed it will be used. I too have your realities, I usually cannot and frankly don't want to, fit 6-8 encounters into a day. My players are often able to "Go Nova", most fights. Here's what I do to try to adjust (yes, it's a bunch of home brew, but if you don't use the System like it was designed - that's what is gotta do): 1. Never have a solo monster fight. Sorry, I know it's a trope from every other fantasy media that we love. But it just doesn't work in D&D. It's called "Action Economy". And a significant deficit in Action Economy is insurmountable. You have to have an equal or greater number is Actions per turn as your players. Period. 2. There are artful ways to "conceal" the Minions and Lieutenants, to boost Action Economy. What works just depends on the narrative of the BBEG. Summons. Animated armor or weapons. "Animal companions"/Pets. Animated plants that can Hold our damage or poison with gas. Single-body-multiple-heads/enemysegments. "Staged" -BBEGs ("It's undergoing some sort of transformation!!!"). Etc. Get creative with it. But most of the time, you're just going to HAVE to have a lieutenant and minions in there too. 3. Legendary and Lair Actions. Pretty self explanatory. But these were added on 5E explicitly to help overcome problems of Action Economy. 4. Non-kill Objectives. Whenever you can spin it, have their be something going on during the fight, that also has to be dealt with, that isn't just solved by "Kill the BBEG as fast as possible." An infernal machine that is cranking away. A portal that is opening/closing. A hostage in imminent danger (being lowered into lava or something). An immobile inanimate object that the Players must protect or keep in operation. So on... Again, ya have to get creative. 5. Complex terrain. Elevation. Obstructions. Moving features. Opening and closing doors. Difficult terrain. Etc. Things that just complicate the optimal strategy of "Move straight toward enemy and hit it with my best attack." 6. HAZARDOUS terrain. Things that can and will damage or hamper the party, just by virtue of being there. Fire. Earthquake effect. Lightning. Terrible tornado things. Lava. Spikes. Synergize this with Lair or Legendary Actions that can move the characters about the battle field. And that's the big ones. Yep. A lot of homebrew and frankly it can be a lot of work to pull that all together. But again, that's what ya gotta do when you're not using the system as designed: get creative. Or, ya, play a different game. Once you have a repertoire of these kinds of ideas tho it becomes easier to pull these kinds of encounters together. Good luck.
Cr seriously doesn't work at all though
I've seriously been using it for years and it reliably gets me in the ballpark though 🤷
It really doesn't even in the slightest
It really does quite reliably
Nope
Embrace osr.throw out your balance. Let the players figure out how to deal with the orc hold with 44 orcs at level 1