Are my players (or myself) doing something wrong?

[FunSize]

Combat in my game (for the most part) has been pretty easy on my players, until last night, where I put them up against two Earth Elementals.

For a party of 6 5th level characters, two CR5s should be between a medium and a hard encounter, but the encounter ended with the Paladin (who usually takes tanking duties) unconscious, several people under half health, and the majority of spell slots expended.

While I don't have an exact round by round, here's the summary of what happened:

Party lineup (all 5th level):
Devotion Paladin (protection fighting style)
Champion Fighter (two weapon fighting style)
Hunter Ranger (archery)
Arcane Trickster Rogue
Red Dragon Sorcerer
Fiend Warlock (Chain)

They usually have a Life Cleric with them, but he wasn't able to make it and I didn't have his character sheet.

Fight began with the party somewhat out of position (Rogue was by himself when the Elementals appeared, rest of party clustered elsewhere but within movement range. )

Paladin and fighter immediately enter melee, trying to isolate the two Elementals. Paladin shield bashes the first one to knock it down. Ranged attackers start plinging arrows and spells, but are rolling pretty poorly on their attack rolls, although Warlock gets her Hex off and does respectable damage to her target. Fighter and Paladin get hit pretty hard.

After the Paladin fails his shield bash on the next round, one of the Elementals uses its burrow ability to get out of melee with the Paladin and go after the squishies. Rogue takes a bad hit. Fighter novas the Elemental he's still in melee with with Action Surge, doing decent damage.

Next round most of the squishies disengage (Warlock spends her remaining spell slot to Misty Step away). Paladin resumes melee.

Straightforward slugfest continues, Rogue and Ranger continue rolling poorly. Some healing with Second Wind and potions. Eventually Paladin takes enough damage to fall to zero and is unconscious. Ranger starts melee with the Elemental not occupied by the fighter, and eventually they take them down.

So here's a couple problems I noticed:

Healer was absent, that's a given

Party was lacking magic weapons, except for a few +1 arrows that the Ranger and Rogue had. Resistance is bad.

Spellcasters were only using attack spells for the most part

Sorcerer and Paladin were hoarding resources (no Smites, Sorcery Points, or 3rd level slots

Ranger and Rogue rolled badly and the monsters rolled really well. Eventually I had them fudge a couple rolls (in addition to not using their "burrow and attack the squishies" strategy) just to get everything over with.

So there were some suboptimal tactics and bad luck, but I'm worried that what, according to the DMG, should be roughly "medium" difficulty proved very challenging. I plan on getting some more magic weapons available, but is there anything else I should do to keep the party from taking big losses from something that shouldn't be an appropriate encounter?

[Tarvil]

Well, if everybody survived, and only one person was downed, I'd say it perfectly match medium-hard encounter. Better this than bored, unkillable players, trust me.

[Toadkiller]

Yeah, nothing wrong with an epic struggle. It can also be pretty swingy if a couple players roll badly, which sounds like happened. My only suggestion really is to have copies of everyone's sheet. That way you can (if the group is ok with it) have a missing player'a character participate in a fairly passive way. Or have them name a backup player to play their character if they are down with that.

[CaptainSarathai]

You have a large party. My experience with using the CRs or CLs (whatever) in the guides to build encounters, is that they're meant for a party of 4. If you have more players, the encounters are meant to be specced as a 4-person encounter "core," and then add monsters to that in order to bring it up to budget.
Otherwise you end up with what you had: two high-level monsters who should fit the CR, but who can pile out more damage than a single character of equivalent CR is meant to handle.
This is not bad, as evidenced by your party winning a medium fight with no perma-death and only 1 KO even without a Healer, albeit with a little DM cheating - but it is worth noting.

[Citan]

Combat in my game (for the most part) has been pretty easy on my players, until last night, where I put them up against two Earth Elementals.

For a party of 6 5th level characters, two CR5s should be between a medium and a hard encounter, but the encounter ended with the Paladin (who usually takes tanking duties) unconscious, several people under half health, and the majority of spell slots expended.

While I don't have an exact round by round, here's the summary of what happened:

Party lineup (all 5th level):
Devotion Paladin (protection fighting style)
Champion Fighter (two weapon fighting style)
Hunter Ranger (archery)
Arcane Trickster Rogue
Red Dragon Sorcerer
Fiend Warlock (Chain)

They usually have a Life Cleric with them, but he wasn't able to make it and I didn't have his character sheet.

Fight began with the party somewhat out of position (Rogue was by himself when the Elementals appeared, rest of party clustered elsewhere but within movement range. )

Paladin and fighter immediately enter melee, trying to isolate the two Elementals. Paladin shield bashes the first one to knock it down. Ranged attackers start plinging arrows and spells, but are rolling pretty poorly on their attack rolls, although Warlock gets her Hex off and does respectable damage to her target. Fighter and Paladin get hit pretty hard.

After the Paladin fails his shield bash on the next round, one of the Elementals uses its burrow ability to get out of melee with the Paladin and go after the squishies. Rogue takes a bad hit. Fighter novas the Elemental he's still in melee with with Action Surge, doing decent damage.

Next round most of the squishies disengage (Warlock spends her remaining spell slot to Misty Step away). Paladin resumes melee.

Straightforward slugfest continues, Rogue and Ranger continue rolling poorly. Some healing with Second Wind and potions. Eventually Paladin takes enough damage to fall to zero and is unconscious. Ranger starts melee with the Elemental not occupied by the fighter, and eventually they take them down.

So here's a couple problems I noticed:

Healer was absent, that's a given

Party was lacking magic weapons, except for a few +1 arrows that the Ranger and Rogue had. Resistance is bad.

Spellcasters were only using attack spells for the most part

Sorcerer and Paladin were hoarding resources (no Smites, Sorcery Points, or 3rd level slots

Ranger and Rogue rolled badly and the monsters rolled really well. Eventually I had them fudge a couple rolls (in addition to not using their "burrow and attack the squishies" strategy) just to get everything over with.

So there were some suboptimal tactics and bad luck, but I'm worried that what, according to the DMG, should be roughly "medium" difficulty proved very challenging. I plan on getting some more magic weapons available, but is there anything else I should do to keep the party from taking big losses from something that shouldn't be an appropriate encounter?
Well, I think it went well, all things considered (my opinion based on the fact they had 100% resources when starting the fight).
- Paladin, after noticing he was making half-damage, should have cast Magic Weapon. Or maybe he didn't have it prepared. Well next time he'll know better. ;) He could also have cast Bless when fight started to help him, Fighter and one ranged attacker. Maybe would have made no difference, but is usually one of best moves you can do (especially if first of your group to act).
- Group probably was used to having the Life Cleric with, and maybe didn't adapt enough? Apart from that, without knowing spell known/prepared it's difficult to build an opinion...

And after all, you just can't do much around bad luck (another brilliant demonstration of why having 20 instead of 18 or even 16 does not always change the outcome ^^)... And you went out of your way to actually dampen the encounter on-the-fly to decrease the risk of total party kill, which allowed them to grasp a gritty but fulfilling victory.

Seems very good DMing to me. ;) Just check with your players that they enjoyed it in the end as well, and maybe, if you feel it necessary, give them a few chances to learn important information about the next dangerous creature they will face on upcoming days. If they do nothing about it, so be it. If they actively try and and look for it, then plan a tactic or look for equipment to prepare, help them make it happen. :)

[JakOfAllTirades]

That'll teach them not to hold back when things get tough; especially the Paladin.

Your characters' most powerful features won't help if you refuse to use them when they're most needed.

[Sir cryosin]

Why didn't the paladin take a turn to heal him self with lay on hands or cure wounds? And why didn't the palay cast magic weapon on someone?

Now the paladin and ranger both have access to healing spells. Paladin has cure wounds and lay on hands. The ranger has cure wounds and goodberry. The fighter was smart enough to use his Second wind good. And if they had pots that good to so. That fight could of gone better. That encounter was find to throw at them it just bad roll and not using resources well. Be if there still alive hey hopefully they learn something from it. Let them know it would behooves them to think about things. If I was in that group I'll tell everyone to take a turn dashing a away to heal and renegade. Having the casters pop spells at them well everybody recovers a bit.

[BillyBobShorton]

With no threat of danger, the game is not as rewarding when you survive. You can die, the players need to be aware of that as a constant danger, not because the DM misjudged an encounter they were supposed to ace.

Challenge is key. Deaths can and will happen. Clerics who torture for info can lose their powers. Warlock Gods can go batsh*t one day and force them to be evil. A thief can end up in jail and become an NPC if caught stealing or treaspassing. Real threats to keep players on their toes.

Killing a PC every few sessions in an encounter is just a DM power-tripping. One misjudged CR or bloody battle is normal. It helps the players learn caution and consider tactics while the DM grows in his understanding that monsters can ruin someone's session, but going lightly on the party is equally detrimental-because when they gonfrom slaughtering orcs and goblins to eating fire and wind, they feel overwhelmed.

Hope that helps.

[Mitth'raw'nuruo]

I'd say everything was fine.

Our party of 3 (monk, actually I do not know what the others are, warlock//spell-sword?), Bard? and a 5th level rogue who missed almost every attack (NPC) Took down a 12th level Fighter, a 3rd level fighter & a 4th level wizard, as well as 3 level 2 mooks.

The DM does not pull punches. We got lucky, and than ran away. Far, far away. We were supposed to be captured. Not win.

The whole party popped out big cooldowns like the burn phase of a Raid. First, door preventing reinforcements was jammed by the bard. We burned the wizard (presumed) first, between our lockouts he only got one spell off. General had heat metal cast on him ASAP, so he made every attack at disadvantage, and then we did out best to ensure he was tripped, or stunned every, single, round.

I went down with 2 Ki left, and not because I did not use it every round. The other melee guy (sword sage) went down.

Seems to be like the party under estimated the threat. We knew were were SOL, had been set up & ambushed, and rather expected to die. If we went down with unused abilities, it was because we hit 0 HP, not because we withheld them.
Your players misjudged the strength of their opposition, and nearly died from it.

[raspin]

They didn't expend their resources against worthy foes and got a bloody nose. For me the encounter was too easy maybe. I'd be happy with the same outcome if they had used smites and such.

If they horde resources vs opponents things should be very tough or the opponents may be too easy. Some people tend to have lots of smaller combats but I favour less moshes but harder ones as the smaller fights seem easy time wasters that do result in resources not really being used.

If you allow pcs to horde resources you will have issues when they unleash all that saved up power on your epic boss who goes down in 2 rounds.

[EvilAnagram]

They didn't use their resources when they faced opponents that demanded the use of resources, and they did poorly because of that. It sounds like this encounter was of an appropriate difficulty.

[Arkhios]

According to D&D 5th Edition Random Encounter Generator - Goblinist (http://tools.goblinist.com/5enc), for a group of 6 characters, all at 5th level, 2 Earth Elementals is a medium challenge. If most of them survived, then everything is alright. Combat is known to have casualties, you know. :smallwink:

[FunSize]

Well it's not like they didn't use -any- resources. Paladin and Ranger were both down a spell slot or two when the fight started, and there were lower level slots used, action surge, etc. And I think the Paladin did use lay on hands, but the net result was he negated the damage of a single attack.

All in all I appreciate the feedback, sounds like my doubts were mostly unfounded. Probably just got spooked because throughout quite a few sessions, nobody ever dropped to 0hp until now.