NPC Bossfight/Kill Team, CR, and how to be fair to the players

[Kabalite]

Hi All,

So it's been almost five years since I have DMed/played Dungeons & Dragons and I'm fairly rusty. I am also trying teach/lead our intrepid (and new) adventurers without killing them. I do want to foster the feeling that the "true enemy" is formidable and has competent foot soldiers. This is what I have:

Party
4 Drow Barbarian (charger, tank, frenzy)
4 Drow Sorcerer
4 Drow Cleric (Knowledge)
4 Drow Rogue (socially oriented)
4 Drow Ranger (range/stealth oriented)
*I let all characters have a feat at level 1.
*Constructed using 27 point buy.
*First Level Kit

The Boss(es)
5 Drow Sorcerer
Has Alert Feat. Has converted Spell slots into Sorcery Points for Quicken
MO

Cast Quickened Haste on Fighter; Cast Scorching Ray on Ranger or Sorcerer
Cast Quickened Scorching Ray at Ranger Sorcerer, Move, Attack
Quicken Burning Hands on Barbarian/Cleric, Attack
Quicken Invisibility, Escape


4 Human Fighter
Has Alert and Great Weapon Mastery Feats. Battle Master with Precision Strike, Disarm, and Riposte. Great Weapon Fighting.
MO

Action Surge and attack Barbarian 3 times. 1st Disarm, 2nd & 3rd Precision with Great Weapon Fighting
Disarm, Riposte, or Precision with Great Weapon Mastery as needed against Barbarian/Cleric
Melee attack until at 25% health or Drow escapes. Attempt escape or surrender.



Possible Addition
If the party is flying high, can introduce a level 2 fighter with the Protection Fighting Style. Sorcerer Twin's Haste so Shield Mate has AC 19 and Great Weapon guy has 17 plus disadvantage against the Barbarian's melee attacks. Obviously changes Sorcerer's casting/attack sequence.

Concerns
Depending on how smart/aggressive the players are during their prison rescue, they may have depleted resources. Typical guard is a 2nd level fighter with a glaive & crossbow and they move in patrols of 2-3. If the players are clever, they might have to fight as few as 2 such patrols but the facility has about 100 guards in total.

There is the possibility that one of the PC's may just be brutally nuked to death with the Scorching Rays. My intent is to scare the backfielders more than anything. Provided the Barbarian has a rage left, I expect she can withstand the Figther's brutal onslaught but I don't know about the Cleric. If the Barbarian does not a rage, I may not cast Haste and not go with the Precision Strike/Two Handed Mastery combo.

Sorcerer has not picked his spells for real yet (2nd session) so I am unsure what to do.

Advice? Thoughts? Criticisms? Thanks!

[Ninja_Prawn]

Advice? Thoughts? Criticisms? Thanks!

My biggest concern is that you're using monsters with PC classes and feats. This is usually a bad idea, because PCs deal lots of damage but don't have much HP - monsters should be the other way around. Also, PCs have lots of fiddly abilities that you don't want to be managing as a DM (and that are balanced against an encounters/day structure that doesn't apply to monsters). It's also hard to accurately calculate the CR of a PC, because they're such glass cannons.

Also, giving both monsters the Alert feat seems to me to be unfairly targetting the rogue. Are you worried that they'll dominate the encounter otherwise? Honestly, I'd just stay away from giving monsters any feats at all.

Looking at CRs, your deadly threshold is 2,500. 1x CR 4 and 1x CR 3 is 2,700, so that's an option, or if you want three monsters, you're looking at 3x CR 2s (also 2,700). If you're set on the sorcerer's main offense being Scorching Ray, I'd actually keep the Quicken metamagic. You'll probably need it to hit CR 4.

You probably don't need tactical advice from me, but at a glance, I think your monsters have a manoeuvrability problem. When the barbarian ties down your fighter, it'll be four-on-one against the sorcerer. Have you considered the terrain you'll be using for this battle?

Other thoughts:
100 guards sounds boring as hell. I hope they don't end up fighting them all.

You can't cast Quickened Haste and Scorching Ray on the same turn. See PHB page 202.

[Longcat]

The fight is probably too easy. 5 PCs vs 2 NPCs have a massive action economy advantage, allowing them to potentially take out the boss before he even gets to act. This is the reason why solo bosses tend to have Legendary Actions in 5E.

[Flashy]

Has converted Spell slots into Sorcery Points for Quicken
MO

Cast Quickened Haste on Fighter; Cast Scorching Ray on Ranger or Sorcerer
Cast Quickened Scorching Ray at Ranger Sorcerer, Move, Attack
Quicken Burning Hands on Barbarian/Cleric, Attack
Quicken Invisibility, Escape



Sorcery points don't work like that. You can never have more sorcery points than is listed in the table for your character's level. See the Sorcery Points entry on PHB 101. The max pool for a 5th level sorcerer is 5, so he'd have to spend bonus actions during the fight to generate more. Ninja_Prawn already pointed out that you can't cast two leveled spells in the same turn.

Your side is also pretty reliant on winning initiative. What is your plan if the rogue, ranger, and sorcerer go before your NPCs? A 5th level sorcerer probably has somewhere in the vicinity of 35 HP and isn't super great at making Wisdom saving throws, so there's a fairly reasonable chance it'll be dead or suppressed. Are you sure it can survive three character's worth of concentrated fire? Five? I'm also wondering what you plan is if, after casting Haste, your sorcerer loses concentration? How are you going to deal with the Fighter losing a turn?

My advice is to ditch the PC class characters and look for monster statblocks that can easily be reflavored in about the correct range. If you want a CR 4 fire themed caster you basically can't go wrong with the Flameskull on MM 134. Change the creature type to humanoid, remove the rejuvenation and illumination features (which do not impact CR), give it a walk speed, and describe it as your drow sorcerer. It's even already a 5th level caster, and it gets scorching rays at will. If you're dead set on Haste you can swap that out for Fireball. The Fighter probably works well enough as is, but could also easily be represented as a CR 3 drow Veteran, using the statblock on MM 350 with appropriate changes.

[Ninja_Prawn]

If you want a CR 4 fire themed caster you basically can't go wrong with the Flameskull on MM 134. Change the creature type to humanoid, remove the rejuvenation and illumination features (which do not impact CR), give it a walk speed, and describe it as your drow sorcerer. It's even already a 5th level caster, and it gets scorching rays at will. If you're dead set on Haste you can swap that out for Fireball. The Fighter probably works well enough as is, but could also easily be represented as a CR 3 drow Veteran, using the statblock on MM 350 with appropriate changes.

I like this. Flameskull + veteran is a decent team, though 2v5 could still be a problem. Using terrain to prevent the PCs getting to the flameskull quickly feels almost necessary to me.