PC's finding encounters too hard?

[Ignominia]

OK, so I've been running my group through the Pre-printed Eberron adventures that begins with The Forgotten Forge and ends with The Grasp of the Emerald Claw... There have been a few fights that seem to have been especially tough on them. So much so, that Im starting to wonder if the adventures are too hard, or if Im not awarding enough extra gear or xp. I have followed the xp awards and gear that the adventure assumes the PC's receive to a "T" and each time I've started a new Mod they are starting at the recommended starting level. Leading me to believe that they are an appropriate level for the encounters.

First a little background: We have 6 players, A Human Druid with a Dog Animal Companion (that she NEVER sends into battle because she afraid it will die), A Human Fighter/Rogue, A Human Rogue/Fighter (Who died and has been replaced with a Dwarven Cleric), A Half Elf Sorcerer and a Human Monk (Who has also died and been replaced with a Changling Bard).

There were 3 specific encounters that seemed to take their toll:

1)The fight against Lucan (EL 8)at the end of Whispers of the Vampires Blade: The group almost had a TPK. They were level 5 at this point. The big danger here was Lucan's level drain. He could (potentially) give 2 Negative Levels/turn. Dropping someone in just 3 rounds. Plus he dominated the Rogue/fighter at the beginning of the combat. (poor rolls on the rog/ftr's behalf) What got me was that Lucan seemed to have a fairly strong change of hitting and the fort save vs the negative levels seemed to be fairly strong as well. They ended up winning because I gave them a 1 in a Million chance of "Staking" Lucan (roll a natural 20 to drive the stake into his heart, killing him) and they succeeded. Between his DR, ER and fast healing they were having trouble doing any real damage.

2) About a third of the way through Grasp of the Emerald Claw the PC's stumbled across a Bodak (CR8) the group was level 6 at this point. As you know, the Bodak is a pretty weak combatant with the exception of its death gaze attack. The party had to make their saves, and unfortunately 2 of them rolled 1's (The Monk and the Rogue/Fighter). Everyone else made the save, however. with a Fort Save DC of 15 the group had little better than 50% chance to make the save (most of their fort saves were around 7-8 tops) and they had to make that every round? (unless of course they averted their eyes or closed them out right)

3) The Last one they had trouble with (or at least they would have if not for some quick thinking on the Sorcerers behalf) was the Gargantuan Scorpion (CR 10) in the latter half of Grasp of the Emerald Claw The Group was level 7. This seems to be a common balance issue I find with a lot of creatures. The grapple modifier for the Scorp is +37! There is no way its NOT going to succeed on a grapple check on any reasonably leveled PC. Even if you prepped a character for grappling before hand (grease, enlarge which is a +15) and the character was already super buff (20 str, for a +5) and had a base attack bonus of +7 (which no one did as we had no pure fighters), even then the scorpion still has an extra 10 points on his grapple over the PC. Is there something Im missing about grapple attacks? They ALWAYS seem to be ridiculously high compared to my group and often are tied to Improved Grapple abilities that give them free grapples.

So the question I have is:
Are my PC's under developed? Should I be throwing out more Loot or XP to buff them up? Or is it just that they are not thinking tactically enough and the encounters would be far easier if they just took the time to think out what they will be doing?

[Kafana]

2) About a third of the way through Grasp of the Emerald Claw the PC's stumbled across a Bodak (CR8) the group was level 6 at this point. As you know, the Bodak is a pretty weak combatant with the exception of its death gaze attack. The party had to make their saves, and unfortunately 2 of them rolled 1's (The Monk and the Rogue/Fighter). Everyone else made the save, however. with a Fort Save DC of 15 the group had little better than 50% chance to make the save (most of their fort saves were around 7-8 tops) and they had to make that every round? (unless of course they averted their eyes or closed them out right)

The party should resort to blind fighting on occasion, that's how these encounters are supposed to be dealt with. The tank blind fights, while others strike from range, making almost all creatures with gaze attacks a piece of cake. I mean the Medusa is CR 7, and it can go down with one hit from a scorching ray of the same caster level.



3) The Last one they had trouble with (or at least they would have if not for some quick thinking on the Sorcerers behalf) was the Gargantuan Scorpion (CR 10) in the latter half of Grasp of the Emerald Claw The Group was level 7. This seems to be a common balance issue I find with a lot of creatures. The grapple modifier for the Scorp is +37! There is no way its NOT going to succeed on a grapple check on any reasonably leveled PC. Even if you prepped a character for grappling before hand (grease, enlarge which is a +15) and the character was already super buff (20 str, for a +5) and had a base attack bonus of +7 (which no one did as we had no pure fighters), even then the scorpion still has an extra 10 points on his grapple over the PC. Is there something Im missing about grapple attacks? They ALWAYS seem to be ridiculously high compared to my group and often are tied to Improved Grapple abilities that give them free grapples.

At this level the party should have access to freedom of movement.

[RaviStrife]

Pardon the sloppy formatting here- I'm on my phone.

To your point about the scorpions Grapple check being far outside of the party members check; That's the point. No regular "mortal" character can out-wrestle a gargantuan scorpion. Yes, it's a tough foe, but that's because of what it is; literally, a GIANT SCORPION.


Failing a buffed assault from all the players, there are several outside of the box solutions for said scorpion problem

1) druid casts entangle (possibly repeatedy) scorpion burns its standard actions to escape while the party ranges it down.

2) Cleric can take a page out of the bad guys book, raise a horde of undead to take out the scorpion (which he can do solo)

3) sorcerer has all manner of arcane hijinks that can be pulled. Personally, I would have polymorphed the strongest fighter into an 8 headed hydra. Two full attacks later, the fight would be over.

My point being, your players don't think like this. They will need to either learn better tactics (unlikely), die against the current power level repeatedly (again, likely), or have their level inflated to deal with the lack of expertise.
Hard thing to have to fix. Best of luck.

[Alabenson]

I think you're looking at a combination of a couple factors regarding the issues you're party has been facing.
1) Based on what you've told us about your party, I'm going to guess that the players aren't particularly adept at optimization. While this isn't a bad thing per se, it would be a contributing factor to your party having issues with difficult combats.
2) All of the fights your party had issues with have two things in common;
a) They were 2-3 levels above the level of the party.
b) They all involved SoD or SoL abilities (I'd call the grapple of a Gargantuan creature with Improved Grab to be essentially a SoL).
Assuming the levels of optimization assumed in the DMG, an encounter 2-3 levels higher than the party should be very difficult and potentially lethal.

Going by this, I'd say the issue is not that your party has been gimped in some way by you, but that they've simply had issues with encounters that were supposed to be extremely difficult.

[icefractal]

I can't tell without more info, but from the classes you mentioned, and the Druid never using her animal companion, it's possible that the characters are a bit underpowered - in terms of build choices and tactics.

[Madwand99]

It sounds like your players are newbies to the game, with unoptimized PCs, going up against somewhat tough encounters that require optimization and good tactics to defeat. It's really hard to "fix" inexperience, but here is what you can do:

1) Help the players optimize. You first have to know yourself how to optimize. If you don't, ask on these forums. Sit down with the players that have the most under-performing PCs and suggest feats, spells, tactics, etc. for improving their playstyle. If they are really interested, point them to appropriate resources (i.e. threads on how to optimize their specific class). For example... that druid really needs to start using her animal companion ability properly. Allow the players to rebuild and/or retrain their PCs, choose different feats etc. Encourage this, in fact.

2) Tactics are hard to fix without a lot of experience in the game. Do any of your players have good knowledge checks (bardic knowledge, for example)? Have them roll them at the start of the encounter, and use them as an excuse to tell them appropriate tactics. For example, for the Bodak you can tell them it has a powerful gaze weapon, and the best way to be immune is to close your eyes. They might not roll high enough to identify the scorpion, but you can still tell them "This is a colossal creature. You don't know the specifics of how it fights, but typically very large creatures are very good at grappling. You need to be immune to grappling, be prepared to be squeezed to death, or fight from range with a creature like that. Fly would be a great spell to cast." Tell them what they need to know.

Of course, for point #2, you need to know how your PCs should be able to defeat the monster. If you don't, ask on this forum, or use a different monster.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Opinions may differ but imo one or two really challenging fights per adventure are pretty much ideal. As long as you don't get a TPK every other session i see no problem.

[Ignominia]

Thanks for the response gang,

Yeah, we have a VERY inexperienced group. Aside from myself and the Cleric, everyone else are brand new to the game.

Im generally not a huge fan of "optimization" I feel it flys in the face of what D&D should be (or at least what I want it to be, I don't mean to say that people who optimize are playing it wrong :smallwink:) I think that unless you are TRYING to build a broken character most options should work just fine. Its not like anyone has taken any useless feats, they just are not building specific optimized characters. It should really be said that my group has no real optimization at all. One of our players, (the Cleric and former rogue/fighter) is the closest we come to having an optimized build... however he thinks the solution to everything is "More AC".

I think ideally, what I need to do is buff them slightly (nothing overboard, just give them a few more pieces of character specific loot) and be more generous with information regarding what they are facing and how to deal with it. Help them learn the game and how it should be played. I've focused too much on denying them info (due to knowledge checks) and wanting to be fair, but Ive forgotten that they are NEW and don't know that "Big creatures are grabby!" or "Heavily armored foes have low touch AC" etc etc etc...

Thanks again Gang... Giantitp really has the best community for D&D and Im proud to be a part of it :smallbiggrin:

[Lafaellar]

I'm not very familiar with the official adventures but the ones I took a look at seemed to pretty much require having strong characters when played at the suggested levels.

So basically, if your party cannot win the encounters, they are doing something wrong and by wrong I mean "not doing the thing that is the best thing you can do in this situation" and I don't mean this as an insult.
It's just that from my point of view these adventures require to be optimised or overleveled.

So there are two possibilities.

1. You help them optimise their characters. If they want that, go for it.
However maybe they don't want to.

2. Reduce the difficulty of the fight, you have several options.
- Increase the level of the party
- Give them more powerful items
- Reduce the power of the monster
- Cheat ("Oh I rolled a 20 here behind my DM screen, let's turn that into an 18... no critical hit")

It largely depends on how you play D&D but if I were to kill characters on a regular basis my group would probably strangle me - doesn't mean they don't fear the monsters, they play that out very well.

[Madwand99]

Im generally not a huge fan of "optimization" I feel it flys in the face of what D&D should be (or at least what I want it to be, I don't mean to say that people who optimize are playing it wrong :smallwink:) I think that unless you are TRYING to build a broken character most options should work just fine.

Unfortunately, if you want a game in which "most options just work", D&D 3.x and Pathfinder are not it. They just aren't. Some games can do that... Legend comes to mind, and D&D 4e. It's just a fact that in 3.x/PF, some options are vastly better than others, and inexperienced players can walk into traps and create terribly ineffective PCs. The opposite is possible too... an inexperienced player can create an overpowered PC unintentionally also, though this is rarer.

The character creation minigame is really important in 3.x/PF. It is the second most important factor in determining the effectiveness of a PC when contributing to the game (after player skill, always the most important factor). It is really important for you to encourage your players to focus a bit more on this part of the game for them to get the most out of their playtime and not feel discouraged when they come up against real challenges. Not every game needs optimized PCs, but yours does, as your PCs are suffering in combat.

So, please try to overcome any bias you may have against optimization and embrace it as part of the game. Because it is, and because your players will probably enjoy the game more if they feel like they are real heroes who can handle whatever evil they encounter.

[kaminiwa]

I'd point out that in two of the three fights, a part of the issue was "low saves". A cloak of resistance might help a little :)

With an un-optimized party, especially with new players, I'd say a fight 3 levels above them has a good 50/50 chance of a TPK. You could just give them an extra level, if you're running modules that routinely suffer from this issue. That might make the rest of the module unpleasantly easy, though.

[Beleron]

Do your players have any idea about battlefield control yet? Just having the casters concentrate more on such spells instead of the more obvious but much weaker direst damage spells that newer players tend to be attracted to will help greatly, even if the general level of optimization is low.

[HalfQuart]

The other piece that hasn't really been mentioned yet, is to be sure that you play the monsters with the tactics described in their entries. I'm not saying this is what you've done, but sometimes DMs will play them differently because it makes sense given their abilities/intelligence, but the CR is generally given assuming they will use the tactics given in the Combat section. For example the red dragon description says:

A red dragon lands to attack small, weak creatures with its claws and bite rather than obliterating them with its breath weapon, so as not to destroy any treasure they might be carrying.
That's often not the optimal tactic for a dragon to defeat PCs -- they have a decent breath weapon, SR, and some spells, and would often be better off being sneaky or strafing -- but that's generally how they should be played for the CR to be correct. So just be sure you're playing the monsters as intended.

In your case though, I do think the main problem is primarily poor PC tactics (caused largely by inexperience), compounded by low optimization. I'd focus your efforts on teaching better tactics and getting them to think outside the box, rather than worrying too much about the level of optimization just now.

I do think Madwand99's suggestion about using knowledge checks is really spot-on. With experienced players you have to worry about metagaming and players using more knowledge than would be reasonable for the characters... but with newbie players (and even sometimes experience players with very intelligent characters), you instead have to worry about the players that know less than their characters would reasonably know... and help out with knowledge checks or level checks or something.

[Diarmuid]

Another thing to consider is that 6 players at the suggested level to start a module may do well at the beginning, but as the module begins accounting for the party to be certain levels the larger party may be lagging behind as they're diluting the "XP river" that the module is providing more than expected. The same can be said about the money/items/etc that are provided by the module, especially if the party doesnt have the luxury of selling less useful items to concentrate on things more tailored to their strengths.

Numbers generally help against a horde of little guys, but certain boss type fights are tuned assuming the PC's have certain HP, Saves, AC, etc.

I will also say that from my experience running/playing modules that it seems some of the 3.5 stuff is just generally harder than I remember modules being in other editions.

[Ignominia]

That is an incredibly valid point Diarmuid... I knew they would be getting less xp...but I didn't stop to consider how it would effect the groups efficiency. I may have to readjust the amount of xp I'm handing out to compensate.

On a side note, I played last night with the group and made a few changes... Giving them more direction in combat based off of their knowledge checks, cautioned them about using spells or abilities that their characters know should or should not work, and it seemed to help. They still didn't perform flawlessly, but at least no one died :smallbiggrin: