Help with encounters

[TheLastSpectre]

I'm new to DM'ing, so when I was reading up in the monster manual, I noticed that many of the high challenge rank monsters had a crapload of hp. I understand that, they're high CR. But as I read the Players Handbook, and checked the mundane weapons list, the weapons seemed to do so little damage compares to the monsters HP ( A beholder, for example) that it seemed that, barring the odd magical weapon, melee attacks seem to be ineffective against such monsters. So, does primary combat just fall to spellcasters, and if so, what's the point of being a warrior or monk? Or am I missing something here?

[KorvinStarmast]

I'm new to DM'ing, so when I was reading up in the monster manual, I noticed that many of the high challenge rank monsters had a crapload of hp. I understand that, they're high CR. But as I read the Players Handbook, and checked the mundane weapons list, the weapons seemed to do so little damage compares to the monsters HP ( A beholder, for example) that it seemed that, barring the odd magical weapon, melee attacks seem to be ineffective against such monsters. So, does primary combat just fall to spellcasters, and if so, what's the point of being a warrior or monk? Or am I missing something here?
On the bright side, at higher levels, martials have 3, 4, or 5 attacks per round.
Beyond that, I'll not get into the martial/caster rants this site if famous for.

[TheLastSpectre]

On the bright side, at higher levels, martials have 3, 4, or 5 attacks per round.
Beyond that, I'll not get into the martial/caster rants this site if famous for.

The only major issue I have with this combat is the you cannot obtain better armour and weapons than the ones in the game ( i.e weapons and armour don't scale with level, no tangible attack bonuses)

I get that armour and weapons wouldn't grow stronger with you; they're just weapons. But without some sort of mechanic like that, I can't see any actual bonuses to melee stack for classes like warrior, barbarian, and just make them less and less useful.

[Bubzors]

Check out one of the dozens of DPR threads on this site. You will see melee definitely does not fall behind in damage compared to casters. Between class features or the odd buff spell they deal plenty. My experience as a DM is that the numbers you are considering large for HP get eaten up fairly quickly

[Kane0]

In fact there are threads saying the opposite, that damage boosts (GWM and Sharpshooter specifically) throws off the math and makes dealing HP damage too quick compared to opponent HP.

[TheLastSpectre]

Thank you all for your advice.

[MaxWilson]

I'm new to DM'ing, so when I was reading up in the monster manual, I noticed that many of the high challenge rank monsters had a crapload of hp. I understand that, they're high CR. But as I read the Players Handbook, and checked the mundane weapons list, the weapons seemed to do so little damage compares to the monsters HP ( A beholder, for example) that it seemed that, barring the odd magical weapon, melee attacks seem to be ineffective against such monsters. So, does primary combat just fall to spellcasters, and if so, what's the point of being a warrior or monk? Or am I missing something here?

What you're missing is that the dominant paradigm of the MM for high-CR monsters is "one tough monster vs. 4 PCs for about three rounds of combat." I'm not saying that's a good assumption in actual play, just that that's kind of how 5E monsters are designed, when you look at the MM. So if you have one bog-standard Fighter hitting attacking three times a round and getting two hits, that's 20 points of damage from that fighter. x4 for four PCs is 80 HP, which means the beholder is going to last about two rounds.

Obviously it's possible to get even more damage than that--if it's a Battlemaster fighter with Precise Strike, Great Weapon Master, and Polearm Master, he could be hitting with approximately all of his attacks (4 hits for d10 + 15 (20ish) damage each) and then action surging for another 3 attacks, thus doing 140ish HP of damage by himself in one round. That's him blowing everything he's got in one giant nova against a beholder so that he doesn't get disintegrated next turn.

So anyway, your intuition is off. Melee fighters will do more damage than just about anyone, if they can manage to get into melee range in the first place.

[Ninja_Prawn]

So anyway, your intuition is off.

Yep. As a rule of thumb, you can trust the books to be balanced most of the time, even if they look wonky at first glance.

In this case, look again at each martial/half-caster class. All of them have options for dealing damage: fighters get more attacks, superiority dice or improved critical. Rogues get sneak attack. Paladins get smite. Rangers get Hunter's Mark and horde breaker or colossus slayer (beastmasters are a little problematic). Monks get flurry of blows and various other nice things. Barbarians get rage, reckless attack and crazy high strength scores (though barbarians are better tanks than damage dealers).

So for most people, the weapon's damage dice are largely irrelevant. A level 5 rogue with a dagger does 1d4+3d6+Dex; with a rapier they do 1d8+3d6+Dex. Either way, it's the 3d6+Dex that they care about.