Some invaluable advice for 5e DMs

[Soarel]

Just because the party is higher level doesn't mean low level monsters just stop appearing.

No, this is your excuse to use more.

Remember the hobgoblin war chief your fighter killed when the party was 3rd level? Well now the hobgoblin overlord's caught rumor of his presence, and he's mad. Prepare for a massive army of hobgoblins on your trail, led by a 12th level hobgoblin paladin of Maglubiyet.

[Shining Wrath]

Unfortunately, while story-wise hordes of low level monsters are great, game mechanics don't support fights with dozens of combatants.

[DireSickFish]

It gets tedious to keep track of more than a dozen monsters. Hitpoints, position, making all there attacks, special abilities. If you're using more than one type of monster it gets worse. I agree they present a good challenging combat but it just gets tiring.

[RebelRogue]

It's probably a good idea to treat hordes of low-level monsters as 4e minions. I.e. 1 hp and fixed damage. Also, keeping clear of complicated special abilities is probably good too.

[MaxWilson]

Unfortunately, while story-wise hordes of low level monsters are great, game mechanics don't support fights with dozens of combatants.

Sure they do.

Tool support is a little lacking, unless you do Theatre of the Mind, so if you're doing grid battles you may make simplifying assumptions like using group initiative, but that's about all you really need to do differently. It's not exactly hard to roll 48d20 and pick out all the successes, then roll damage.

Now I want to run a mock combat with 4 20th level PCs and 50 Hobgoblins, 1 Hobgoblin Warlord, and 2 Hobgoblin Captains. It's a Deadly combat but I predict a bloodbath in favor of the mock PCs. I would probably need to add in some, I dunno, Ettercaps or Giant Spiders or something that can change it up a bit. Maybe Smoke Mephits would be good.

[Rummy]

I ran an epic fight with the party of four 5th level Heros wiping out a vanguard of 42 Gnolls. It was fantastic.

[Easy_Lee]

I ran an epic fight with the party of four 5th level Heros wiping out a vanguard of 42 Gnolls. It was fantastic.

Ah, so many good memories of blackburrow from classic Everquest. Thanks for that.

[MaxWilson]

I ran an epic fight with the party of four 5th level Heros wiping out a vanguard of 42 Gnolls. It was fantastic.

Congratulations to the PCs! They just went 4x over the Deadly difficulty threshold for encounters, well into Ludicrous territory. Nice job! Sounds awesome.

[Mellack]

Sure they do.

Tool support is a little lacking, unless you do Theatre of the Mind, so if you're doing grid battles you may make simplifying assumptions like using group initiative, but that's about all you really need to do differently. It's not exactly hard to roll 48d20 and pick out all the successes, then roll damage.

Now I want to run a mock combat with 4 20th level PCs and 50 Hobgoblins, 1 Hobgoblin Warlord, and 2 Hobgoblin Captains. It's a Deadly combat but I predict a bloodbath in favor of the mock PCs. I would probably need to add in some, I dunno, Ettercaps or Giant Spiders or something that can change it up a bit. Maybe Smoke Mephits would be good.

It can very quickly get too difficult to run smoothly. Caster puts down a web/black tentacles/sleet storm/etc. Now you have to keep track of which have made their saves or not. Which of those 48d20 were the ones at disadvantage? Was that goblin at full or had it lost hp? Just tracking hp if they are not one-hit kills would be a pain.

[MaxWilson]

It can very quickly get too difficult to run smoothly. Caster puts down a web/black tentacles/sleet storm/etc. Now you have to keep track of which have made their saves or not. Which of those 48d20 were the ones at disadvantage? Was that goblin at full or had it lost hp? Just tracking hp if they are not one-hit kills would be a pain.

I just write a little notation next to the goblin's stats that says "Webbed" or "Tentacles" or something. Then when they make their save I cross it off. Same for HP. I probably wouldn't roll attacks-at-disadvantage for the restrained goblins, they'd be too busy trying to break free instead so they don't die. (Maybe super-disciplined hobgoblins would attack instead of trying to save themselves, but if so it's not hard to just roll those guys separately. If all 48 were at disadvantage though I admit that would be a pain, possibly enough for me to write a few lines of F# to do the rolling for me.)

Again, this is easier with TOTM, but with the right tools it can be done in grid-land too.

Anyway, my point was that D&D 5E is very linearizable and easy to run at large scale, unlike systems like (say) GURPS GULLIVER where you have to keep track of who's used their Retreat already, who still has a Block left, how many parries each defender has made, and then each time you attack it has to be resisted by the appropriate difficulty of Parry/Block/Dodge modified by the Strength of the attacker and any Feints from previous rounds... in 5E you just roll all the attacks and count up the damage, modulo any Reaction abilities (which are rare except for PCs). Don't get me wrong, I love the tactical complexity GURPS offers, but the point remains that simpler combat scales more easily.

[Tenmujiin]

Just to one-up everyone else's hordes: I had my PCs take on 100 dwarves














They only fought about 15 of them directly and those 15 were about 1/2 health by that point but the players were still responsible for all 100 deaths.

[MunkeeGamer]

Just to one-up everyone else's hordes: I had my PCs take on 100 dwarves











They only fought about 15 of them directly and those 15 were about 1/2 health by that point but the players were still responsible for all 100 deaths.


Poor dwarves. :\

[Slipperychicken]

I imagine that hordes should be a little easier with DMG morale rules. That way you don't have to kill every last mook; just inflicting like 10-30% casualties without breaking a sweat should be enough to make the rest run away.

[Tenmujiin]

I imagine that hordes should be a little easier with DMG morale rules. That way you don't have to kill every last mook; just inflicting like 10-30% casualties without breaking a sweat should be enough to make the rest run away.

Along with all your precious kill XP :belkar:

[Rummy]

I was using morale all the time last session. I was just winging it, but it worked. Morale is n/a for Gnolls in my campaign tho... They are all possessed by demons and immune to morale failures.

[Gnomes2169]

Along with all your precious kill XP :belkar:

Don't need to kill them. Just need to beat them. :smalltongue:

[Inevitability]

Congratulations to the PCs! They just went 4x over the Deadly difficulty threshold for encounters, well into Ludicrous territory. Nice job! Sounds awesome.

Well, 5th-level is where you first get fireball...

[MaxWilson]

Well, 5th-level is where you first get fireball...

Somehow I suspect that the encounter consisted of more than just 42 gnolls packed into a circular cluster 40' in diameter, waiting for someone to sneak up and Fireball them all simultaneously. :) Fireball is great, and so are extra attacks, and I'm not underestimating them--but congrats to anyone who manages to overperform RAW expectations by so much. In my mind that's the only reason for having those encounter-building guidelines in the first place, so that you know when you've outperformed them. There's nothing like finishing a hard fight and then realizing that you just beat enemies that would be a Hard encounter for a party five levels higher than you, it feels great.

Edit:

I've been thinking recently about appropriate challenges for 20th level parties, and I've tentatively concluded that balancing on a per-encounter basis is wrongheaded, or at least incomplete. An appropriate challenge for 20th level characters shouldn't really be a tactical, "suddenly there are 60 hobgoblins in front of you." It should be strategic, "The Bloodfist Legion finally made its move--they've just crossed the border with 10,000 hobgoblin troops. General Dalinar has asked you to lead the mobile resistance elements, which unfortunately are minimal: 100 veteran troops with survival skills and your party. What do you do?" Then the tactical encounters take place within that context: you're picking off 60 hobgoblins at a time because they got separated from the main force, or they're guarding a supply line. Or you're sneaking into the enemy camp at night (in the middle of 300 hobgoblins) to poison the supplies so that you and your 100 guys can beat them all the next morning. (You might or might not even choose to play out the battle, once the enemy is all poisoned. Might just assume that it's a total rout.) Or you're causing dissension in the enemy ranks by using illusions and Magic Jar to make it look like the Legion's 2nd in command is trying to stage a coup with the support of the Ogre elements. In other words, even when you're fighting 60 hobgoblins in one encounter, it should be in the context of an even larger element of troops or other threat.

And of course you always want to complicate things a bit. Hilly terrain, hostile mages, fortifications, night time/bad weather/restricted visibility, other hostile creatures (not a beholder under every bush, but maybe one in the Legion that the PCs always have to keep in the back of their mind), and even third parties (opportunistic robbers, ambitious traitorous nobles, a dragon who lives in the mountain) are worth planning for too. You wouldn't want it to get boring.

Anyway, those are some thoughts as I'm trying to design high-level challenges, and since it's relevant to the OP in this thread hopefully some of you will benefit from those thoughts.

[Rummy]

Well, 5th-level is where you first get fireball...

It would have been a lot easier if any of the PCs had fireball. They had to settle for Hunger of Hadar, and it just wasn't the same. They were able to ambush the gnolls at the river fording, which made it possible in the first place.

[DDogwood]

It's worth working up "swarm" rules for large groups of monsters. There are several ways to do it, but it makes it easier to run a whole bunch of footsoldiers fighting the PCs.

[mr_odd]

I was using morale all the time last session. I was just winging it, but it worked. Morale is n/a for Gnolls in my campaign tho... They are all possessed by demons and immune to morale failures.

Ironically Gnolls will be somewhat civilized members of the state in my 5e setting.

As for the thread, I would say 5e encourages using low level monsters as players increase in level. This is probably why we have a ton of lower level monsters and not a ton of higher level monsters (yes, I finally got my MM).