Out of the Abyss Final Encounter: Lessons Learned

[PeteNutButter]

So in case you got this far... seriously SPOILER. I'm obviously talking about the final encounter in a campaign which many may have not completed. So don't ruin it for yourself.

Bottom line up front is high level 5e is broken, but like so much more broken than high level play in previous editions.

Ok so really I'm not talking about the final encounter, I'm talking about the Demon Lord fight. My DM said the book had the option of letting the PCs each control one of the Demon Lords and then the winner would be the one the party fought.

So photocopied stat blocks were handed out and we all looked at our new demon babies with a sort of christmas glee, studying the various overpowered abilities of our new pets.

I got Orcus, and reading over his abilities I was largely unimpressed until I read the once a day he can summon 500 hit points worth of undead minions. Creating minions based on hps is a flawed mechanic so I naturally went right for the monsters with the fewest hps but highest CRs. DEMI-LICHES I thought, and with a quick decesion I summoned 6 of those CR 18 beasties. This would have surely annihilated any party, but turned out to be a poor decision against demon lords.

The fight was a mess, as one would expect for high level monsters smashing into each other like GI Joes. The "number crunch" of 5e made rolling nearly a waste of time. All the ACs and DCs are set at 18-20 or low 20s, with attack and saving throw modifiers in the high teens. Whoever was rolling the die had such a high chance of succeeding it was silly, especially with all of them having advantage against magic. My Demi-liches didn't do a thing, since throwing six saving throws at an enemy a round is useless when they either have to roll obscenely low on both dice or literally can't even fail. 38 skeletons would have been better, and there are much better choices.

I've seen this same problem with mid-high level PCs. Numbers are super swingy early game and dice are pointless at high level.

[Mrglee]

Who won?

Anyhow, yeah, high level 5e is kinda silly.

Death Knights might have been better uses of Orcus' power. I believe those things are monsters. It was that or Death Tyrants.

[PeteNutButter]

Who won?

Anyhow, yeah, high level 5e is kinda silly.

Death Knights might have been better uses of Orcus' power. I believe those things are monsters. It was that or Death Tyrants.


Death Tryants would have been just as bad. The problem with the Demi-liches is it was all saving throws. I need to attack.

Graz'zt won via being the guy no one bothered with. He turned out to be a bit of a joke for the party afterwards.

[supergoji18]

Just because a creature has a high CR doesn't mean it will be difficult for other creatures to fight it. The only reason the Demilich has such a high CR is because it has a bunch of "Save or Die" effects that are difficult for PLAYERS to make, not lords of the very plane of chaos and evil itself.
A much better use of those HP would have been to summon 2 Death Knights and a Lich. Each one of them is strong enough on its own that it could at least knock off 1/3 of the HP of a demon lord before going down itself. Put them together and I'm almost certain that they could take down Demogorgon himself, albeit with a bit of difficulty. With Orcus's assistance, Demogorgon is as easy as the rest of them.

That being said, this isn't so much an issue of high level 5e being broken as much as it is that 5e was not designed with monster vs monster combats in mind.

[Kane0]

Just gonna say, the mental image of that throwdown in my head is amazing.

[MaxWilson]

I'd probably go with

Three Mummy Lords spamming Spiritual Hammer + four Rotting Fists / round each, plus 13 Shadows draining Strength. It would be tempting to draft Liches instead of Mummy Lords, except that the spell list for liches is so terrible and I wouldn't expect to be able to change the default list as Orcus--I expect that you just get what you get from the default MM entry. Otherwise, three liches (take turns True Polymorphing into ancient Black Dragons, while other liches spam support spells like Evard's Black Tentacles, Wall of Force, Otto's Irresistible Dance, and Forcecage; Legendary Actions will go towards Blade Ward among other cantrips) and five shadows (cannot be restrained by Evard's Black Tentacles) would be my pick.

[ShikomeKidoMi]

Just because a creature has a high CR doesn't mean it will be difficult for other creatures to fight it. The only reason the Demilich has such a high CR is because it has a bunch of "Save or Die" effects that are difficult for PLAYERS to make, not lords of the very plane of chaos and evil itself.
A much better use of those HP would have been to summon 2 Death Knights and a Lich. Each one of them is strong enough on its own that it could at least knock off 1/3 of the HP of a demon lord before going down itself. Put them together and I'm almost certain that they could take down Demogorgon himself, albeit with a bit of difficulty. With Orcus's assistance, Demogorgon is as easy as the rest of them.

That being said, this isn't so much an issue of high level 5e being broken as much as it is that 5e was not designed with monster vs monster combats in mind.


This was also true in 3rd edition, for that matter. Many monsters of roughly equivalent CR would end up having totally one-sided stomps if they fought each other, rather than battles because the monsters are not rated for fighting each other, they're rated for fighting player races with class levels. Heck, many lower CR monsters could destroy higher CR ones (Shadow vs T-Rex, anyone?), so claiming it's nothing new to 5th edition.

Actually, the same issue existed in 2nd edition, for that matter, and I'm willing to bet it dates all the way back to 1st.

[supergoji18]

This was also true in 3rd edition, for that matter. Many monsters of roughly equivalent CR would end up having totally one-sided stomps if they fought each other, rather than battles because the monsters are not rated for fighting each other, they're rated for fighting player races with class levels. Heck, many lower CR monsters could destroy higher CR ones (Shadow vs T-Rex, anyone?), so claiming it's nothing new to 5th edition.

Actually, the same issue existed in 2nd edition, for that matter, and I'm willing to bet it dates all the way back to 1st.

Considering how similar 1st and 2nd edition were i don't doubt it. Overall it's just an issue of the game designers not really taking monster vs monster scenarios into consideration as a major element of the game.

And who can blame them? Could you imagine how much time they would have to spend to balance the monsters against themselves in addition to against the players? It would get so complicated and confusing at some points that it just wouldn't be worth the effort.

[SharkForce]

haven't seen the stat blocks for those archdemons, but i bet they each have at least one save that isn't as amazing, which properly targeted could have led to a few failed saves. consistently failing saves? well, probably not. what do you expect for creatures with a CR lower than 20 vs creatures with a CR of 30 or so? no edition of D&D favours weaker creatures being put up against stronger creatures, really. and i bet if you had summoned a horde of skeletons, most demon lords would have some means of rapidly clearing them out.

[PeteNutButter]

I totally understand that monsters are not balanced to fight each other. I am just saying that capping monster AC at the low twenties (unlike 3.5/p) means its impossible to have it balanced. There were some monsters at least that had extremely high ACs. For instance a great wyrm red dragon would have an AC of 41. That AC was designed for players, sure. Another great wyrm would have no trouble hitting it either, but it was at least balanced to the point of no player of significantly lower level would easily kill it.

We were only level 11 and our demon lord fell like a minion of the week. The DM even cheated his hps up so he didn't nearly die on the first round since me and the fighter hit it so hard on round one. My paladorc did 153 (7.5 over my average) damage (BB, quickened BB, haste attack, 4th lvl smite on each one). The fighter also hit w 3 attacks dealing around 65 via GWM. With 20 str, bless, and the Dawnbringer I had +11+1d4 to hit his AC (what was it 19? 20?). That's pretty good odds to hit, despite me attacking something that should absolutely destroy our party according to the CR system.

I know it's the way 5e is "balanced" but in practice playing a few campaigns, I've noticed that once PCs can reasonably hit AC 20 and have a moderate pool of hps they are no longer afraid of anything. Around level 11 the game just breaks down, which is considerably sooner than previous editions.

[MaxWilson]

I know it's the way 5e is "balanced" but in practice playing a few campaigns, I've noticed that once PCs can reasonably hit AC 20 and have a moderate pool of hps they are no longer afraid of anything. Around level 11 the game just breaks down, which is considerably sooner than previous editions.

If by "breaks down" you mean "players are rarely in danger of losing," that's true from level 1. There's a fairly simple solution though: do harder stuff.

This could mean "fight higher-CR foes" or it could mean "fight smarter foes," or potentially even both. Also "fight foes in more difficult terrain" and "fight more foes at a time/in a row."

You can routinely take on Deadly fights in 5E from first level onwards. My experience is that Deadly x3-4 is approximately the point at which the fight becomes "fair" in the sense of "hard to predict who will win if both sides fight about equally smart." (One reason you might want a risky "fair fight" is if you want the players to think hard about whether they really want to fight, e.g. a treasure convoy that yields great reward if they ambush it, but could get them killed, or a dragon that they could fight and maybe even beat, but could also just cooperate and do what it asks, or try to trick it/negotiate with it/hide from it/etc.)

In the OOTA case, you could run the campaign in such a way that the ritual to bring all the Demon Lords together so you can kill them doesn't work, and the PCs instead need to take them on one at a time in their lairs. If you want a really killer campaign, you could instead force the players to take them all on at once. I can imagine ways to do that, especially at 17th-20th level, and it would be epic with a high chance of failure.