Are we getting screwed by our DM, or are we just bad at D&D?

[Vaz]

This is a bit of a question into the game continuing from the Warlock thread and putting some thought into the last few combats.

The fights we have been engaging in have felt excessively brutal to the stage where my Character, a Tomelock has been forced into situations to Spare the Dying very frequently; in 3 engagements, 8 times, although some of those were NPC bodyguards to another party members guest for the night.

We are a party of 6, at level 6 although fairly spread out in XP totals; and owe nly have a single healer; a Druid. Outside of that, there is myself to bring people back from unconciousness.

The fights have been so brutal that we find it hard to progress more than 2 fights before a lon rest; the first fight often taking much of our Hit Dice, and many of our potions are gone now. I think we have maybe 3 in the party.

My original complaint was with the warlock in actual game play never really getting to use those extra spells, because of the lethality preventing other party members from aiding in that. 2/3rds of the Druid spells are equivalently high level in combat healing, and we have an NPC who we have rescued who is blasting with low level spells as we attempt to retrieve his gear to empower him once more. The rest of the parties HP is blown.

The combats we fight leave us with around 1000-1300 XP each, but we typically fight with 5-9 opponents.

Going by my maths, that's 7000-8200XP, halved to 3500/4100; in other words, 500 to 600 XP on average (7) per monster. That's a Hard to Deadly fight, and we should be able to do more than those two fights in a day; i.e, another one to two, which I don't think is a possibility.

I could contribute to one of those with a second short rest, but the rest of the party can't thanks to tapped out long rest resources.

Given that it's typically a boss monster, with some adds, that feels like it should be say 6*400 and a 1*600EXP monster for the budget.

The monsters (homebrewed) seem to have HP's of 85, AC's of 15, 2 attacks, 40ft swim speed and deal around 20 damage in a turn thanks to gaining advantage on anything not at full HP. Given also that outside of myself the rest of the party don't have Swim Speeds except myself, and most combats have been underwater until recently (and do not foresee more to be fair), and the boss monsters are even more deadly (say 1.5*) and that there is an actual BBEG coming, and there are now recently other Adds like 15ft reach Grapplers, antimagic field traps, and reverse gravity traps...

Does that seem a fair amount of XP to receive? 2000+ XP a day, tied in two fights at 6th level that we cannot physically progress any further?

Alternatively, wtf are we doing wrong?

[ShikomeKidoMi]

Well, there's a couple things I'd like to say. One is that, as a group grows larger, it gets harder for the DM to balance encounters so they aren't too easy or too hard. The default assumption is four PCs, so it's possible your DM is overcompensating for the two extra people.

It's also possible that he has different ideas about how hard the game 'should' be from the players. Battles that nearly kill everyone can be fun if everyone is in the mood for them and he might not realize how frustrated some of you are getting.

Clear communication is probably the best solution if your issues stem from either or both of these causes.
(Although, as an aside, it's entirely possible the NPC bodyguards were meant to die as ablative armor for your party and you weren't meant to stress over keeping them alive).

[MrStabby]

Are you getting screwed? Well yes and no.

The party is having difficulty and the DM is running a hard campaign. A hard campaign isn't wrong - as long as it is fun. Likewise don't worry about the XP. Some DMs want the party to progress a bit more slowly at some stages and faster at others. I would relax about this.

On the other hand their structuring of the adventuring day seems pretty terrible. You should be expecting 6 to 8 encounters across two short rests per day. Their adventuring day is really far from what the game recommends.

The DM, by making all fights hard has made the party use all their resources. More, easier fights that make the challenge conserving enough resources for the hard fights is just as hard but needs a different playstyle.

Likewise an error that a lot of new DMs make is handing all the initiative to the players. The players are the attackers and the monsters defend their lairs. If the PCs were attacked a few hours into a long rest then this would change the dynamics considerably. Short rest abilities would be recharges and the PCs couldn't just burn all their resources ASAP and just assume they can rest to get them back.

If the DM is willing to accept a greater margin of victory by the PCs then this gives them more space to extend the adventuring day with a low risk of a TPK and to be able to reward conservation/recovery of resources.

The DM's encounters are not by their nature bad, but if this is the only kind of adventuring day you have then you have a bit of a one-dimensional campaign.