Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Atari2600 Nov 23, 2014 18:26:06	Hello   i have noticed that since my players have gone to level 2 and 3, the encounters of my campaign have been quite easy for the players.   i think I may be doing something wrong. Probably my strategy is not working. I do not want to kill them, but would like for them to feel like they can die or lose an encounter, and specially, that sometimes just going around killing everyone may not be an option.   the wizards are the ones that are making the encounters very easy. Also, I am noticing that the hp of the players is around 20 to 30 hit points, so it's been starting to be difficult to make any damage.   any suggestions? I am talking about 5E and running mines of phandelven campaikgn - currently entering crawman castle.   advice?
#2 DaveDash Nov 23, 2014 18:47:26	You need to throw in encounters that are like 4 CR above their level to actually challenge them, or grind them down with numerous lower CR encounters and somehow prevent them from resting. Don't do this all the time though because many encounters are designed to be fairly easy. Also at lower levels, combat can be quite swingly, that is, if they roll bad things can go bad for them very quickly.   Most of the encounters in the published adventures (LMoP and HotDQ) are *way* above deadly.   The three biggest factors in combat difficulty in my gaming experience are: Party composition. Some parties are better at handling certain kinds of foes than others. Terrain. Giving monsters the ability to scoot around cover and shoot increases their survivability greatly. Also cover helps them survive AoE spells. Numbers. Having more actions, and more hitpoints for the party to chew through has a significant impact on difficulty. Also make sure you have ranged foes to challenge the Wizard at the back.
#3 AaronOfBarbaria Nov 23, 2014 20:00:45	To phrase part of what DaveDash said with a different tone:   A single encounter is meant to be pretty easy, since by design it is meant to take 6 to 8 encounters on average for a party to feel like they are too low on resources to keep going (and thus rest and replenish).   In my experience, trying to make it so that 1 encounter feels like a difficult challenge leads to an arms race between the DM and the players where in the players spend all their resources in the shortest time possible to overcome an encounter and then rest to replenish (because they feel they can't survive an encounter without this behavior) and the DM makes each encounter tougher and tougher trying to get that one encounter to be a challenge in the face of the PCs "going nova", and eventually hits the point where the bad guys can survive the nova, which usually coincides with numerous PC deaths.
#4 Atari2600 Nov 24, 2014 8:22:27	This is great advice. I guess you are right. Having various easy encounter without rest is better.   i tried to make a single difficult encounter with a whole buch of creatures. What ended happening was that it was not that diffucult, took a lot of time to get dice rolled, it Was kind of Hard to handle with several types of monsters in the field at the same time.   It was a wandering encounter, so if it did not worked out does not matter that much.    Now ow what about combat strategy? Do you recommend to charge for combat immediately or wait?
#5 Theros Nov 24, 2014 9:43:30	Your enemy tacticals are always going to be improving and evolving, mine still aren’t where I’d like them to be and I doubt they ever will be.   That said, here’s what goes through my mind whenever I’m designing an encounter.   Why are they here? What kind of force would they need to stand a reasonable chance of success? Do they know about the party? How much game time do I want this encounter to take? Does this encounter need to happen? If the PC’s bypass the area can I reuse the encounter later on? Do my enemies complement each other in combat? Don’t forget to give the encounter a narrative too.
(Reply to #4) Ashrym	Atari2600 wrote:
#7 DaveDash Nov 24, 2014 13:33:43	Yep +1 for longer multi part encounters. Also the main thing is play your bad guys smart (if they are smart). My group is fighting their way into the underdark at the moment, so they're fighting a lot of Drow. In the beginning they'd pick off the Drow spellcasters straight away, so now I've had the Drow adapt. They all dress the same as to not give away who is who, and they also fight from fortified positions (spread out, defense in depth, etc). Same sort of encounters, MUCH harder for the players. I'm also actively scouting on them using scry, arcane eye, familiars, etc and setting up defenses accordingly. Arranging counter attacks for when they rest, so they have to think about resource conservation, etc. The world is not static.
#8 ZezKai Nov 24, 2014 14:14:12	DaveDash wrote:
#9 CFK Nov 25, 2014 6:23:44	ZezKai wrote:
#10 Illithidbix Nov 25, 2014 17:11:37	Combat encounters using the Encounter Builder are expected to be won by the players, but with an emphasis on how much resources are expended and how taxed they are if challenged again.   Deadly is about having a substantial risk to the party of some party members dying, but is still expected to be defeatable by the player party. Not really TPK territory, more “risk of TPK” Of course it could be if players don't fight tactically or they have a string of bad luck (or monsters are very lucky) then it might be. A deadly encounter after several easier encounters might also be far more dangerous as spell slots and similar resources have been used already. Similarly higher level parties have “more buttons to press” and resources to burn if things go bad than low level parties.    Also AFIK it's aimed at kinda the “average casual gamer”, so highly optimised and tactical parties who know the rules well might find even deadly encounters pretty straight forward.
(Reply to #9) Atari2600	CFK wrote: