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View Full Version : Help me make fights that are actually a challenge



Heliomance
2011-02-01, 06:36 PM
So I just ran a session with my players. For a fight, I threw them up against a level 7 sorcerer and two of these (http://d20npcs.wikia.com/wiki/CR_5_Hired_Gun), minimally adapted to D&D. The party are all level 6, and there's 6 of them. According to the EL calculator, this should have been a fairly tough fight.

Sorcerer cast Nerveskitter, and won initiative. He spent his first action casting Mirror Image. Round progresses, one of the mooks lands a hit on the rogue, does 11 damage.

Dragon Shaman uses Entangling Exhalation, gets mage and one mook.

Monk charges the sorcerer, manages to hit the real one, hits, Snap Kicks, and does 35 damage out of the sorcerer's 44 HP.

Beguiler dispels Mirror Image. Sorcerer, now on 7 HP, craps his pants. Recasts Mirror Image as his best chance of surviving.

Warblade manages to hit the real one, drops him.

Mooks follow shortly after.

In the entire fight, that 11 damage from the first shot was the sole damage the party took. What am i doing wrong?

Human Paragon 3
2011-02-01, 06:48 PM
I think that your description is an example of lucky rolls. That happens. Your sorcerer was using... OK tactics. Your group doesn't sound like it has a lot of ranged ability. Not sure if this is the case or not, since you only mention 4 characters, but using flying enemies (like, having the sorcerer cast Fly, or have it cast before the fact would have been helpful here. Mirror image helps avoid attacks, but fly gets you out of RANGE which is stronger.

It also sounds like your group has a good selection of abilities: battlefield control, utility magic, melee strength... They're ready to take on a lot of different challenges. I'll think on this more and get back to you. I'm getting dinner now.

Z3ro
2011-02-01, 06:55 PM
Depends on what you wanted out of the fight. Was it supposed to be a tough, boss type fight? Then I'd have had all their buffs up, ready to go as soon as the party started. As much as I hate control wizards, something like a grease or glitterdust would have also helped to lessen the rush against the sorcerer. Maybe a couple summon monsters as well.

If it was just another encounter, I'd have simply had the sorcerer ignore defense and start blasting. While it might not have made a huge difference a scorching ray or two would have at least hurt the party some, rather than letting them walk away unharmed.

And yeah, it sounds like the rolls kinda went against you, that happens sometimes.

mabriss lethe
2011-02-01, 06:55 PM
Try to make the environment difficult for the pcs. Rough terrain, cover, concealment, poor lighting. Things to hide behind, traps to spring, etc. That alone adds a whole new dimension to things.

If the monk had to winnow his way through a warehouse full of crates with rotted and broken floorboards, If the goons could shoot from cover and then push crates on top of the party/block paths, then the sorcerer can sit high and dry, raining doom from a catwalk above with all of his duplicates laughing in unison.

Jair Barik
2011-02-01, 07:05 PM
A common tactic for enemy casters is to not let the opponent know they are there. Invisibility+either air walk or flight then summon spam, buff/heal allies and finally bring offensive spells to play if the enemy dispels their invisibility or they run out of other useful spells.

Heliomance
2011-02-01, 07:10 PM
This is turning into a pretty low-combat game - so far, I think we're running an average of slightly less than one combat per session. So when fights do happen, I'd like them to be more than speedbumps.

Party composition:
Monk, given full BAB, heavy damage dealer
Homebrew class, melee battlefield control/lockdown focused on tripping.
Beguiler, somewhat combat shy, but not bad at the control role when she thinks about it
Warblade, another heavy damage dealer
Psychic Rogue, think he's playing it quite hit-and-run
Dragon Shaman, mostly support and BC from Entagling Exhalation

Psychonix
2011-02-01, 07:15 PM
Psychic Rogue member of the party here;

Something I feel I should point out, is that you effectively allowed the party to file into the room before initiating combat. The only way into that room was a small door, initiative should probably been called when the door was opened, meaning that the party would take a round or so to enter the room before being combat effective.
Instead, the party acted as if they were already inside the room when initiative was called.

Secondly, a few more mooks would have probably been a good idea. As you said after the game, with six players, we rather dominated the action economy.

Thirdly, as a party we are weak on the magic front. We have a beguiler and a psychic rogue. I'm surprised that you haven't exploited this yet.

To be fair though, lucky rolls on our part did shorten the encounter. It's a pity that you did not get exsanguinate off, that would have been rather nice on one of the squishies in the party, hell it would have been nice on any member of the party.

starwoof
2011-02-01, 07:19 PM
I've found that when players outnumber the enemy the fight is almost always really easy. These days I try to have a 1-1 ratio of mooks to party members before I add in special guys like enemy spellcasters or big monsters. It helps a lot.

Jair Barik
2011-02-01, 07:20 PM
If you want to challenge them then it seems an intelligent dragon wouldn't go amiss. Fly by attacks/breathe weapon, entangling exhalation of its own, possibly some meta breath feats to either strengthen its attacks or reduce the time between it being able to use it. Alternatively put extra feats towards multi attacking madness for if they manage to force it into close combat.

Mikeavelli
2011-02-01, 07:44 PM
First, D20 Modern isn't balanced against vanilla 3.5 D&D, those thugs are probably CR 3 or 4 (compare them to Ogres (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/ogre.htm)) - so the encounter was underpowered from the start.

Second, as everyone else is recommending, a 1:1 ratio of Enemies:Players tends to provide the most satisfying encounters.

Also, from the sounds of things they're optimized well enough that the CR system breaks down as a good measure of challenge (even with the two underpowered mooks, the sorceror alone should have been able to deal a little more damage than that) - so you can let loose a little more powerful encounters.

Run something with a melee threat that outclasses even the big meat shields, but is vulnerable to will saves magic (Pair of Hill Giants, or a single Fire Giant would be good for this, anything the Beguiler would have a chance of single-handedly negating from the battle) - combined with a large number of smaller mooks (Goblins, orcs, etc. 6+ CR 3-4 mooks) - AND a magic user (Wizard\Sorc\Cleric) hanging out in back, buffing and blasting. The goal is to make the non-caster threat immediate enough, and the caster protected enough, that the party can't just charge through the encounter to end the caster in one round.

Aidan305
2011-02-01, 07:47 PM
One thing to remember is that encounters in 3rd ed aren't about who has the bigger boomstick. Even an epic level wizard can be taken down by a low level mook. A group of mooks makes it even easier.

Think more about the capabilities of your party and how to handle them. Casters are powerful, but can be disrupted or countered. Consider sending large-sized creatures against casters to benefit most from AoO and interrupting spells. Constructs, Undead and Oozes work well against anyone who make use of crit or sneak-attacking abilities.

HP means nothing with spells like phantasmal killer around, but it should still be decently high. Enough to take a few hits without going down and to give the person time to act. A single monster at those levels will probably take upwards of 90 damage in a round, and that's pretty much minimum. `either force them to spread that damage or boost your own ability to soak it with spells like Stoneskin, protection from energy and the like.

Don't open up with a caster. Player's tend to target the first enemy they see and casters are fragile creatures. Send in a heavy that can take a few hits while your rogue-types attack the flanks. Use your casters to disrupt the party's ability to function. Terrain control and pin-point attacks are what they're best at.

Finally, make use of terrain. Drop monsters from a darkened roof, have them burrow up from the earth, go invisible or dodge behind walls. Not only will this make the encounter more challenging, but it will also make it more dynamic as the players work to keep an eye on what's happening around them.

G3N3R3L GHOST
2011-02-01, 08:07 PM
I've found that when players outnumber the enemy the fight is almost always really easy. These days I try to have a 1-1 ratio of mooks to party members before I add in special guys like enemy spellcasters or big monsters. It helps a lot.

This. And having a clear boss just allows everyone to gang up on him first then making your mooks just kinda...there. Either spread the party out in some way preventing the gang bang tactic. Or don't really show who the boss is. I am sure you cuold not pick hector out of a huge crowd of trojans but he obviously kicked ass. In your descriptions of the battle allow things to be close enough sometimes to where the party will converge on a mook while the actual big bad guy is about to nova all over them.

The best example I can think of is a game I played in where the DM described two men causing a ruckus in a bar. One was a tall yet gentle looking man (Who happened to be a pretty kick ass ranger) and another who stumbled around the bar drunk off his socks. Swayed around one of the patrons and knocked him out cold with a stone hard fist. The whole party was like OH NO DRUNKEN MASTER and went after that guy. Turns out he was a level 1 commoner with Improved unarmed strike and just happened to get lucky on his rolls as we walked in. That one round of combat can make a lot of difference in your big boss doing some nasty damage to the party or not.

Heliomance
2011-02-02, 03:05 AM
The setting precludes the use of a lot of the more monstrous monsters on a regular basis. There simply aren't that many monsters around. Most of their enemies are humans with class levels. Also, so far I've been mostly adhering to the "one powerful enemy" paradigm - probably a mistake, but it makes sense. If high-level characters are fairly rare, then you're more likely to see one powerful guy backed up by mostly mooks. The action economy keeps kicking their ass, though, so I think I'll have to start increasing numbers. The tactics thing also makes a lot of sense; I'll try that.

Scarlet-Devil
2011-02-02, 03:26 AM
Well, once they're a few levels higher, and if they've managed to piss off a devil, you could always send a Dogai after them.

Dr.Epic
2011-02-02, 03:27 AM
Have you thought about adding a time limit element? Like the ceiling is collapsing the players have to fight a horde of baddies at the same time? Or they have to escape a collapsing castle and have to fight through undead henchmen.

Aidan305
2011-02-02, 04:48 AM
The setting precludes the use of a lot of the more monstrous monsters on a regular basis. There simply aren't that many monsters around. Most of their enemies are humans with class levels. Also, so far I've been mostly adhering to the "one powerful enemy" paradigm - probably a mistake, but it makes sense. If high-level characters are fairly rare, then you're more likely to see one powerful guy backed up by mostly mooks. The action economy keeps kicking their ass, though, so I think I'll have to start increasing numbers. The tactics thing also makes a lot of sense; I'll try that.

Consider beefing up the HP of the humans as well. A handy little feature of 4th ed is the Elite or Solo mobs, which have between 2 and 3 times the number of HP that a regular mob would have. This stops them from getting killed as quickly (generally)

Runestar
2011-02-02, 05:10 AM
With that many players, you have to be prepared for the possibility of going dead last and being subject to focus fire as a result.

Cr assumes a fair fight against 4 players, with 6 players, you may want to simply double the number of foes. So you want 2 cr6 foes, or an EL8 encounter to count as a fair fight.

If you want a challenging fight, be prepared to go up to EL10, perhaps comprising of multiple weaker foes (since a single cr10 foe may have too tough defenses to overcome).

So in your case, for a reasonable encounter, maybe 4 cr4 bodyguards and 2 cr6 spellcasters? A sample encounter might comprise of 4 young white dragons (prebuffed with mage armour and bull's str; haste in 1st round of combat) and 2 drider sorcs/wiz (supporting with dispel magic, glitterdust or slow, and direct damage to pick off stragglers). Since they have additional movement modes, maybe throw in difficult terrain to stymie the players? :smallsmile:

Eldariel
2011-02-02, 05:14 AM
Your players never hit a mirror image; the probabilities of it working out like that are pretty damn low. They got lucky. Also, Mirror Image (and in general, defensive spells) are a losing proposition if you're vastly outactioned (if Beguiler AND Warblade AND Dragon Shaman AND Monk can take one action for each of Sorc's actions and all those actions can be directed at the Sorc, the Sorc will go down without precast wards); Invisibility or so would be far superior.

quiet1mi
2011-02-02, 10:12 AM
I will post more soon, I got to get to Class...

For now look into support characters for your bad guys...

Thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=182268) about my support character unbalancing combat, there are a lot of tactics that are helpful if you read it all

claricorp
2011-02-02, 12:50 PM
If your going to have some big baddy enemies around give them a bit of support by a horde of mooks or my personal preference, a small group of low level casters.

2 or 3 wizard/sorcerer/clerics chilling just behind the big boss buffing him up with stuff like haste and defensive spells while sending teams of summoned baddies and a few magic missiles, scorching rays and fireballs at the party make it interesting.

having them all around level 3 or 4 can make a battle incredibly fun.

For example I have a pretty large (level 11-12)pathfinder party who is about to fight 2 remorhaz's with a couple casters behind them.

Also using terrain in a smart way can make the battles very fun.

In that same fight above, the remorhaz are going to bull rush and awesome blow the group into a sloped/greased pit. where the small group of casters will pelt them with spells.

And in general start doing some tests with random encounters, playing with what CR of creatures are doing to the group.

aquaticrna
2011-02-02, 01:02 PM
i've run into similar problems in the past, due to heavy optimization rather than large numbers of players but the end result is the same. My solutions has been to double all the hit points of the enemies (in addition to having 1:1 ratios at LEAST) i'v found it far more effective than just using higher cr enemies because the party is still taking appropriate amounts of damage while needing about twice as many rounds to take everyone down.