Another session last night, 3 sessions this week so 2 more to go 6 hour session.
I had been mixing it up earlier with various encounters and I had a spell caster heavy party. This is what we had.
Level 8
1 Polearm FIghter
1 Lore Bard
1 War Cleric
1 Tempest Cleric
1 Hunter Ranger
1 Wizard (diviner)
I designed another deadly encounter i thought would challenge them. They annoyed an NPC who shunted them to the elemental plane of fire.
The situation I designed was they were an a shrinking bubble that warded out the effects of the plane. There was a basalt road of sorts leading to a fortress and hot ash fields were on each side of the road. The road passed between to 10' walls and on each isde of the road was a fire giantwith +2 AC due to cover (ranger has the sharpshooter feat).
Encounter distance was 100'. The kicker was eac wall behind it had 2 flame skulls as well hidden from view. the PCs did not spread out so on round one they got hit by 2 fireballs, 1 from each flameskull and then the flameskulls hid behind the wall again. Giants start throwing rocks. 3/6 PCs had rings/cloaks of fire resistance as well and they were level 8 abut 16d6 damage is a lot I suppsoe.
Anyway this fight dragged on a lto longer than I thought and there was a bit of a break down in party tactics. One of the clerics more or less decides to start using call lightinng on the other giant and ignores the giant the party was focus firing on. Evey now and then this has happened and brute force has often covered for the PCs. The PCs also took longer to get to the giants as well as I thought they would charge to get into melee range or cast haste.
Magic missiles were used from the flameskulls to interrupt concnetration on the ranger/bard/wizard as 1d4+1 thaty doesn't miss is annoying and it was coming from 2 flameskulls. The lightning cleric hung back and used superior range of maxmimised call lightning to blast away. If he focused fire one of the goiants would have died earlier. PC mistake number 1.
PC mistake number 2 was the wizard at level 8 took the elemental adept feat and loaded up on fire spells, he did not even have magic missile prepared. He can ignore fire resistance but not fire immunity. He used haste on the ranger, got interrupted and the ranger missed her turn (see the haste spell). That PC got to addicted to burn spells and took elemntal adept and loaded up on fire spells. Everything was immune to fire this encounter said PC does not have the warcaster feat.
Now this group is still a very tough bunch of PCs and they eventually get to melee range. A flameskull and giant succumb to some melee damage and recurring failed saves on a maxmimised call lightning spell. Tempest cleric ends up dealing around 180 damage over 7 rounds with that spell including multiple targets more like 225. THe surviving flameskull uses a flaming sphere spell at one point while the wall blocks line of sight. The war cleric and fighter are low on hit points from a double tap fireball, the flaming sphere spell, getting hit with magic missiles and the giant KOs one and then the other PC gets knocked down. BOth of them are beside a flaming sphere. The bard runs in and rather than heal the woulded atacks the flaming skull as the giant by this time has died from ranged effect. Both PCs flunk a death save, take a bonus failed save from the flaming sphere which is still going (2nd flaming sphere dmage for one of them) and one of the PCs dies and the flaming skull uses a spell and finishes off the other PC on the ground. PC mistake number 3 not healing the fallen when there is a flaming sphere adjacent to them.
So a combination of factors killed to PCs this session. 3 mistakes were made, double fireballs are nasty even at level 8 and spell caster support and terrain was added to an encounter starting at longer range negating melee damage for several turns (I anticipated 2-3 turns I was wrong). The fight was planned to be hard but they could have recovered from it but they made a few mistakes along the way. We kept on playing, they rolled up some new PCs and they got out of the elemental plane of rfire via a portal and ended up in hot pools in a swamp. The party lost the 2 biggest beat sticks they had and one of the healers/spell casters. The survivors rescued the replacment PCs from a nearby band of hobgoblins, 3 hours into the session we only had one combat encounter which lasted 7 rounds and they did some role playing with Efreeti as well.
Sounds like they should have cast Bless, Stoneskin, and Polymorph. Probably would have saved them.
Ramzour wrote:
Are they unable to find access to anyone capable of casting raise dead?
How did the players feel about the challenge? Did they like the possiblilty of death that they seemed to be missing from the other sessions?
Are they wiser for the experience?
Are you wiser for the experience?
I have a feeling, we'll all be struggling with "perfect" encounter design. 5e has enough randomness to lead hard and deadly encounters to victory or horrible defeat, especially if there are AoE and spellcasting foes around.
Personally, that's why I never try to build a "killer" encounter. I just develop a number of encounters that through time will whittle the party down and work to develop the story or the environment that the PCs are exploring. Of course, variety is the spice of life, so some encounters are more difficult than others.
Do you think it is possible to use 5e to consistently threaten the party if that's what a DM and group want from D&D? I'm sincerely curious because I'm sure there are groups that want that from the game.
Rhenny wrote:
As some people may know I play with Zard, sometimes DM'ing, in this case I was the pole arm fight who bought it. I actually laughed about it because we were talking about how difficult it is to challenge PC's earlier, and then, BOOM, instant karma. (Not planned BTW, I don't think Zard intended to try and kill us, just to challenge us more)
Basically we learned that being down isn't a guaranteed free pass on getting hit, and I hope that the people who played poorly, failed to focus fire and tried to be a hero when really they needed to get the fighter up learned that the game isn't going to hold your hand, and poor play will be punished when the chips are down. I guess its just sad that the people who made these poor decisions weren't the ones who were punished for them.
So what's the Forum advice that resulted in the deaths? And are you happy/sad/indifferent with the results?
CCS wrote:
Don't forget you can throw in larger numbers of lower CR monsters as well.
I've been mixing CR2s and CR7-8s now to build encounters against an 11th level party. Seems to be effective. The 2's can still damage 11th level PC's and soak up player resources. It also keeps the challenge decent while the XP reward lower.
When I first started building encounters back like you did in 3.5 edition my players were getting way too much XP.
My current party is:
11 Veng Paladin.
11 Lore Bard.
11 Abjurer Wizard.
11 Light Cleric.
Spellcaster heavy like yours, espect with Bless + Paladin Aura + Bard Counterspell/Dispel they are a tough nut to crack.
Zardnaar wrote:
ChrisCarlson wrote:
SirEmilCrane wrote:
SirEmilCrane wrote:
I have some advice: Forget the optimizing. Forget seeking the perfect balance for encounters and just play the game.
PC deaths happen. That's why Raise Dead spells are in the game.
If, as a DM, you wish to lessen the chance of death, look less at how you design the encounter, and more at how you play the encounter as it unfolds and how the bad guys respond. If 2 fireballs are too much, then only one gets cast. You control what the NPCs and monsters do. You can "throttle back" at any time in an encounter, and you can do this without fudging dice and all that.
Frankly, the encounter seems fine. Things just didn't go the PC's way is all. I'd be willing to wager that next game they will roflstomp an encounter more difficult than this one, and you'll be posting about how your players thinks the game is too easy.
Don't sweat it. Just play. 
Kishri wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
You guys should play out the T-rex scenario to see how it goes. Even with all the metagaming that's gone into it, it would be interesting to hear about. Try it in a couple different scenarios, even.
It sounds like its hard to consistently predict just how difficult an encounter will be in 5e. And lucky breaks can easily swing things in unexpected ways. I haven't DMed it or even played it much, yet, but is this kinda accurate?
EDIT: What I said, but especially for difficult/deadly encounters. They seem really swingy.
Zardnaar wrote:
It sounds like winning initiative and terrain was the major kicker in the fight. That a pretty hefty advantage for team rocket tag. I can imagine that the terrain alone severely hampered the fighters ability to deal damage, possibly took out the fight completely if they didn't have ranged. They made 3 mistakes, but those were some major mistakes; only losing two PC sounds like a win for the party.