Encounter was difficult...for the DM

[BeefGood]

This post may just be a lament: DMing is hard.
Long version: I set up an encounter with an oni and a hag coven consisting of two greens and a night.i planned--I put all the spell info and monster stat blocks into OneNote on my laptop, and I thought ahead about how the battle might go. For example, if the players were to destroy the hag eye then the hags would be blind for 24 hours. I considered all their spells and determined which would still be useful if the caster were blind.
The result was inadequate, in my opinion. I do not think that I used the monsters capabilities anywhere close to their maximum effectiveness.
One difficulty was that each monster had several, or many, options every turn. The oni can move or fly, cast one of six spells, attack with its caws or glaive, and polymorph. And don't forget that itvregenerates hit points!
The hags are worse. Each hag can choose from the twelve coven spells and a few of its own. Don't forget to track the spell slots, or the number of times per day! And each hag has a few abilities each, plus attacks. And some of the spells impose conditions on the players that must be tracked.
Also there's the routine task of recalling monster AC, determining any modifier for saving throws (in case players attack with spells), tracking hp.
So at the micro level I do not think I was capable of quickly assessing the situation and choosing the optimum action for each monster. I recall thinking "there are four monsters--why aren't there four DMs?" Quickly is important because otherwise the game is less fun.
At the macro level, even though I did do some planning regarding overall strategy, it wasn't enough, and I'm not sure that I reasonably could have planned enough to account for all the different decisions the players might have made.
Here are some things I may do differently next time
Print, on a single old fashioned piece of paper, the stat blocks for all the monsters in the battle.
Acquire a full set of spell cards for myself, the DM, instead of calling spells up on the laptop.
(I still like the laptop and OneNote for planning purposes but there's only so much info that can fit on a screen at once, and it does take a little time to switch from this monsters stats to that monsters stats to this spell to that spell to the other spell, and the laptop screen takes ones eyes away from the players.)
Artificially limiting the monsters abilities, especially spells, so I don't have so many options to choose from in the midst of the encounter.
Limit the number of spell-capable monsters. (This idea is problematic because bag-of-hit-point monsters get boring.)
Get some apprentice DMs?
One more thing--if my experience is not unusual, then how can a sandbox style of play be possible? It must minimize combat, or have combat with simple monsters, because there's no opportunity to plan.
To anyone who read all that, thanks! I'd appreciate hearing others thoughts.

[Ruslan]

My gut feeling is - you may be overthinking it. Did the players have a fun encounter? That's what matters most. They likely don't care you didn't play the enemies to their full tactical capacity, just that they had a fun fight and won.

[Laserlight]

Print, on a single old fashioned piece of paper, the stat blocks for all the monsters in the battle.
Acquire a full set of spell cards for myself, the DM, instead of calling spells up on the laptop.
Artificially limiting the monsters abilities, especially spells, so I don't have so many options to choose from in the midst of the encounter.
Limit the number of spell-capable monsters. (This idea is problematic because bag-of-hit-point monsters get boring.)
One more thing--if my experience is not unusual, then how can a sandbox style of play be possible? It must minimize combat, or have combat with simple monsters, because there's no opportunity to plan.
To anyone who read all that, thanks! I'd appreciate hearing others thoughts.

I always print out 1-2 pages with the statblocks for the session's monsters, and I usually have a couple of Generic Encounters ready. ("If the party goes in an unexpected direction, they have an encounter with a patrol of kobold riflemen, or two wyverns, or snow apes)".

Non-caster monsters don't have to be boring, if you give them a function. This one will prone-and-trample, that one will grapple-and-restrain, that sort of thing. Of course, sometimes their function is just "be the speedbump that prevents you from walking straight to the caster".

I don't like the way caster monsters are set up. For a monster who has a lifespan of 3-4 rounds, I should list 15 spells and track their spell slots? Nonsense. For most monsters, I'd give them Battle Drills--predetermined responses to common situations. Decide their function (blaster, controller, etc), and then decide what they want to cast in a few situations: AoE, Buff, Combat, Defensive reaction, Escape. Give them 1 or 2 uses of each option.

If you decide a recurring villain needs to be especially flexible, at least break his spell list down into those categories, so you're not saying "which of these 20 spells do I want" but "which of these 3 AoEs do I want?"

[SilverStud]

Battle Drills idea is cool. It puts the enemies' abilitys into their proper perspective.

My suggestion is very similar.

If you've ever run a very good adventure module, you'll have noticed that many of the encounters have text like:
"If the heroes kill half of the goblins (or nearly half) in the first round, the remainder flee into the caves and try to set up ambushes."
or
"Highus Mageus is wary of spellcasters, and always saves a third-level slot for Counterspell. Otherwise, he maintains his distance and uses his various wall spells to box the party in while his golems kill them."

Do this! Do it! It has helped me so much. Remember, they aren't fighting 15 goblins, they're fighting the Bree-yark Goblins of the Twisted Caverns. They aren't fighting 1 oni and 2-greens-1-night hags, they're trying to slay Crelissa, Hystea, Dhonelle, and their oni henchman Duerth. Take a little extra time with your monsters (the intelligent ones) to give them a name and a single personality trait. Then decide how they fight.

Think of it this way.

Any physically fit human being is technically capable of performing any given martial arts move. Seriously. Our arsenal is huge. But a 6th Dahn black belt of kenpo isn't going to suddenly bust out Krav Maga moves, because he isn't familiar with those. Your hags certainly can cast all of the spells in their stat block, but which ones are they used to casting? Which ones do they like? Also, what kind of threats have they fought off before? Are they familiar with killing open-world-adventurers?

On open worlds:
You're dang right about that planning issue. When you try to make it so they can go anywhere, you're planning is spread thin for sure. Here are some tips to help out with that.


Get really good at improvising encounters.
Ok, so this is basically lesson 1 for open world games: The further you get, geographically, from the starting area, the less detail you do right now. How do you know where the players will go? You don't! So don't waste your effort detailing the villages with NPCs. Each village on your map should be like "Phandalin: frontier mining town. Lucrative mine recently reopened. Has general store, blacksmith, etc. etc."
Plan several possible plot/questlines they can follow.
An open world in D&D is very different from Skyrim. The biggest difference is that you are not a huge game producing company spending years planning and executing. The second biggest difference is that you don't have to do everything in advance.
In regards to the first difference: plan a few different plotlines, and give them the option for all those plot hooks. Players are suckers for interesting things, and they'll be embroiled before long. Make sure they understand their options though. DO NOT ever just be like "ok you're here, now what?" They should always have an objective, but with open worlds the objectives can be broad enough that they have to explore.
In regards to the second difference: each of your planned plotlines need a beginning and an ending, but the middle can be made up as you go.
Be very firm about what is and isn't there
Ok, so I prefer the term open world over sandbox, because of the players. A sandbox game is one where they players are the most powerful and they can go anywhere and fulfill any of their fantasies. Some people like that; I hate that. An open world means just that: open world. There is no game-ish reason to stay on a certain path, and the DM makes an effort to not railroad. So remember that you build this world, not the players. Be careful with how much stuff you create in reaction to their desired actions. "I find the nearest glassblower and buy glass and take those to the nearest lens-maker" does not have to be in any way successful. Does this town even have a glassblower?? OR a lens-maker for that matter? I dunno, but it is you, the DM, who makes that choice. If an option isn't available, tell them why. In an open world game, you walk a fine line between their freedom to act and their natural limitations. Don't say no simply because you don't like their idea. Say no because that simply cannot happen under these circumstances.

[Demonslayer666]

Been there, done that. DM'ing is hard (to say the least). There's always a lot going on when running a game.

I forget legendary actions, or even worse, legendary resistance. :P

I go back and rehash every encounter on the drive home after game, and kick myself for not doing better.

Don't sweat it too much. It's all part of running the game, and it actually makes you a better DM because you will try harder next time.

My advice to you is to stop and take a breath when things start moving too fast. Read over the spells and abilities quickly and eye the battle field. One thing I do that helps immensely is I have the monsters open on different tabs on my laptop. OrcPub is really good for this, because they have their pages in landscape format so you don't usually have to scroll. Much easier than bookmarking the MM and flipping back and forth.

[Beelzebubba]

One more thing--if my experience is not unusual, then how can a sandbox style of play be possible? It must minimize combat, or have combat with simple monsters, because there's no opportunity to plan.
To anyone who read all that, thanks! I'd appreciate hearing others thoughts.

Don't kick yourself. Your experience is typical for people that don't game as much as our 'ancestors'. :smalltongue:

From what a dude on another forum that was part of the group was saying (his nick was Old Geezer IIRC), they had a huge group of people that were constantly rotating characters in and out, sharing DM duties on one big shared world, and playing at least 4, usually 5 times a week. I think that's what it takes to master 'sandboxes'.

You're getting some great advice here. The only thing I would add: build up to encounters like that.

Start smaller, with one or two low level spellcasters with a lot of health, and a bunch of low-DC mooks to soak up some rounds of PC damage, and see how that plays out. Give one spellcaster all area control, and the other curses and denial spells. See how the party reacts. See how far you can push it without a total party kill.

Then, up the difficulty. Add a map with a really devious environmental challenge - like rushing rapids, and one monster has telekinesis, and start throwing characters in one at a time, and see how much that affects their teamwork. Stuff like that.

Try to 'ramp' the difficulty and complexity over a span of weeks, and I think you'll go into something like that with a lot better instincts to go along with the strategies suggested above.

All that said, I agree with someone else: your players probably didn't even notice.

[WarrentheHero]

I only sorta skimmed the rest of this thread so I may have missed if someone already suggested this, but I use index cards folded and hanging from my DM screen to keep track of initiative. Everyone can see where everyone goes in a the initiative, so players
I have optimal planning time for their own turn to speed up play, and if I get overwhelmed by all the minutia of an encounter and accidentally skip someone, the players can clearly see that and let me know.
On the outer (Player-Facing) side of the cards, I just have the PC names (and maybe race+class or a title or something) and monster names. Sometimes the monster names are obscured if I want there to be mystery, or a monster's card won't even be on the lineup if the OCs don't know it's a combatant.

The important part is the inner (DM-Facing) side. Of course I have the names, but I also have a mini statblock. For each creature in the combat, I have AC and HP listed, as well as a common attack if I can fit the space on half-an-index-card. That way I don't have to refer to the MM whenever a creature is attacked, or often when it makes an attack. Best part is, the cards can be saved for later use against that enemy type. It may not work for Hags, due to all of the spells, but it may save some time to glance at your DM screen for routine things like AC rather than pull up a doc on a laptop, flip through printed sheets, or worse, search the MM.

It's especially useful for bag-of-hitpoints monsters because they typically have one or two attacks (or multiattack), and then the statblock is just AC and HP. The only reason it doesn't work so well on more complex creatures is card space. If I had a long strip of paper I could have the full statblock on my side, but then it's more difficult to position and covers up vital stuff on the Screen like conditions.

[mephnick]

There's really no point to limit enemy spellcasters or track their spell slots. CR assumes they have all the spells listed and you'll only get a few off before they're killed anyway. I generally throw out their most powerful or coolest spell right away and then toss out a couple mid level spells over the next couple rounds. Then they die. Once you're a little familiar with the spells I find they're actually easier to use in combat than melee are, especially if there's odd terrain involved.

[Millface]

Phases are another good way. Example being an evil mirror of your party (because NPC Villains are the hardest to keep track of and play well) Phase one: Fighter starts strong, finding the meanest looking PC and action surging to gain their focus and hit them hard. Wizard begins to CC, Fog Cloud the ranged PCs or Holding the enemy caster. Cleric begins buffing. Rogue finds position/Aids fighter with sneak attacks.

Then, have a que for phase two, maybe the fighter drops to half or one of the baddies gets CCed, and go into another set of behaviors for that phase. Cleric begins to lay down heals, Rogue distracts and hampers, Wizard goes on the offensive to stagger focus and readies a counterspell to buy the cleric time, Fighter falls back and uses defensive abilities. All in all it sounds like a lot of prep but it's less than an hour for that encounter and that's the toughest example you'll ever deal with. Monsters become a cakewalk once you try piloting an entire party, having four times as much to keep track of as your players do.

Generally, three phases works. Phase one is the enemy group is confident and fresh, they behave a certain way. Phase two is pressure on, need some heals/defense/regroup, Phase three is imminent defeat, where they either unload their best offense or try for an escape, depending on alignment and temperament, but either way you'll have that all mapped out and can cycle between the phases seamlessly with maybe one full index card for the entire encounter.

[Snails]

I had a DM who was extremely fast at running big combats. He would design the encounters such that only one combatant per encounter was expected to be clever. He would spend time thinking about that combatants actions.

The rest he would have a very clear idea of what tactics they would apply when he designed the encounter. If something better did not occur to him with seconds, he just ran them on autopilot. If that turned out to be a bit stupid, he did not care, as not everyone cab be expected to be smart in reacting to things that happened within the last 6 or 12 seconds (1 or 2 rounds).

Keep in mind that he is not playing the monsters as purposefully stupid. But by not worrying about most of them he had the mental time to do enough cleverness to keep the players on their toes.

[malakav]

I think this question is relevant to the post:

Greetings DMs I wanted to ask how to balance CR in each level

I have 5 level 4 players, I have allowed Spells, Races and Class archetypes from Unearthed Arcana

Also their stats were determined with 4d6 removing the lowest dice, which made high stats easier

I am finding that fights have not been that challenging for them, I do not intend to kill them or make it impossible, just challenging fights

do you modify monsters, add more monsters, ignore the xp threshold, or what do you do to make a memorable experience?

For example I put 2 Trolls to the party and the Trolls could not even phase them (I seem to have sucked at the majority of the rolls) how do you handle your bad luck as a DM? (I am not using DM Screen because I do not like cheating)

[MrStabby]

To add further weight to what others have said:

DMing is hard
It sounds like you are doing a great job
The players probably didn't notice

In terms of simplification I do track spell slots but only for highest level spells. Say they can cast up to level 5 spells - then I track those but will happily use any level 3 or 4 spell slots without noting they are gone. I also try and limit concentration spells to one at a time - remembering which character has cast what on whom when it comes to making concentration saves is just another layer of difficulty.

Familiarity will help you. As you no longer need to look up spells as you know them or as you get to have a better feel with your monster's abilities more of your brainpower can go towards making smart decisions. You don't get time between other peoples turns to plan actions so these things coming as second nature to you will make them more effective.

[scalyfreak]

My gut feeling is - you may be overthinking it. Did the players have a fun encounter? That's what matters most. They likely don't care you didn't play the enemies to their full tactical capacity, just that they had a fun fight and won.

It's been a couple of decades since I DMed, and my absolute suckitude at it is why.

So I can't give any good advice for DMing, but I can second and confirm this from a player's perspective. We really just want to have fun with the game. If I can tell the DM is putting in effort, I will greatly appreciate that effort and as long as you makes a genuine effort to be fair and make it fun for everyone, everything else is, from my point of view, just details.

Besides, it's not all on you. As a player at the table I have an obligation to work with the group and the DM to make sure it remains fun. And that includes being patient and understanding, and perfectly happy to wait for however long it takes when the DM needs to look something up.

[Crusher]

This post may just be a lament: DMing is hard.
Long version: I set up an encounter with an oni and a hag coven consisting of two greens and a night.i planned--I put all the spell info and monster stat blocks into OneNote on my laptop, and I thought ahead about how the battle might go. For example, if the players were to destroy the hag eye then the hags would be blind for 24 hours. I considered all their spells and determined which would still be useful if the caster were blind.
The result was inadequate, in my opinion. I do not think that I used the monsters capabilities anywhere close to their maximum effectiveness.
One difficulty was that each monster had several, or many, options every turn. The oni can move or fly, cast one of six spells, attack with its caws or glaive, and polymorph. And don't forget that itvregenerates hit points!
The hags are worse. Each hag can choose from the twelve coven spells and a few of its own. Don't forget to track the spell slots, or the number of times per day! And each hag has a few abilities each, plus attacks. And some of the spells impose conditions on the players that must be tracked.
Also there's the routine task of recalling monster AC, determining any modifier for saving throws (in case players attack with spells), tracking hp.
So at the micro level I do not think I was capable of quickly assessing the situation and choosing the optimum action for each monster. I recall thinking "there are four monsters--why aren't there four DMs?" Quickly is important because otherwise the game is less fun.
At the macro level, even though I did do some planning regarding overall strategy, it wasn't enough, and I'm not sure that I reasonably could have planned enough to account for all the different decisions the players might have made.
Here are some things I may do differently next time
Print, on a single old fashioned piece of paper, the stat blocks for all the monsters in the battle.
Acquire a full set of spell cards for myself, the DM, instead of calling spells up on the laptop.
(I still like the laptop and OneNote for planning purposes but there's only so much info that can fit on a screen at once, and it does take a little time to switch from this monsters stats to that monsters stats to this spell to that spell to the other spell, and the laptop screen takes ones eyes away from the players.)
Artificially limiting the monsters abilities, especially spells, so I don't have so many options to choose from in the midst of the encounter.
Limit the number of spell-capable monsters. (This idea is problematic because bag-of-hit-point monsters get boring.)
Get some apprentice DMs?
One more thing--if my experience is not unusual, then how can a sandbox style of play be possible? It must minimize combat, or have combat with simple monsters, because there's no opportunity to plan.
To anyone who read all that, thanks! I'd appreciate hearing others thoughts.

Every time I DM an adventure, on the way to wherever we're playing I have almost a chant I repeat a bunch of times in my head before I get there to make sure I go in with the right mind-set. It goes:

"I'm not trying to do a perfect job of telling the story I want to tell, I'm trying to do a good job of giving everyone a fun time."

Because executing my mental plan perfectly is impossible (I always forget a rule, or a clever thing an NPC was going to say or properly foreshadow a future plot twist) yet its what I'll try to do unless I remind myself not to. And then I'll be bummed out afterwards listing all the things I did imperfectly.

But it turns out Im actually pretty good at creating a good time for everyone, and I can pull that off successfully like 90% of the time. And if I remember that's my goal, I'm almost always happy with how the evening went.

[Decstarr]

What everyone else here is said is entirely accurate! Don't stress yourself and just try to learn and improve.

As a new DM myself (started about 1 year ago), I can feel you. The first few times that I had several baddies with spells, I messed up pretty badly and felt totally overwhelmed. Now that my PCs are level 12 and the enemies get stronger, they have more spells and the encounter balance and preparation actually takes as much if not more time than the story preparation.

One thing that might be helpful if you want to perfect your DM combat skills: Use a reoccuring baddie. This way, you have several encounters to "perfect" this guy's spell utilization and general fighting style (and you have the excuse that he has been watching/faced the group before, therefore he's adapting to their style). Another thing that helped me immensely is: Run test rounds on the crucial combats. By now, you probably have a pretty decent idea of what your PCs are capable of and what their signature moves/standard behavior is. Instead of simply "preparing" for it, actually do the rolls several times and see how it works out. Sure, it IS even more effort to do that, but it'll help you greatly to react in a better way when you are running the fights (since you already ran the fight before). There is some people here who actually like to run mock combats and who might be willing to assist with this, so you could try setting up another thread with the fight specifics and see what happens.

And again, don't stress. If your players enjoyed the fight, there is no problem at all.

[scalyfreak]

There is some people here who actually like to run mock combats and who might be willing to assist with this, so you could try setting up another thread with the fight specifics and see what happens.

As a complete newbie to D&D 5e, and an almost-newbie to D&D in general, I would love the chance to read a thread like that, just to learn from it.

[Laserlight]

Use a reoccuring baddie. This way, you have several encounters to "perfect" this guy's spell utilization and general fighting style

Make sure he has a way to escape. My players tended to hunt down and kill my intended-to-be-reccurring villains the first time they met them, unless I made the villain grossly overpowered.

[MrStabby]

Worth noting that improvement takes time. A lot of time. Not let it put you off though.

I have been DMing for the past couple of years and I make loads of mistakes and constantly remember abilities and traits after combat that should have been used. Now my combats have become a lot more complex and each combatant is more complex as well - the more skill I have in managing an encounter the more complex I make the encounters so I am always challenged.

One thing I sometimes do for recurring factions or monster themes is to sketch out a "class". The idea being that a faction will take in recruits and teach them progressively more and more advanced skills. High level members of a faction will be able to do all the stuff PCs have seen them do before plus exciting new stuff. Likewise I will give each faction a fairly narrow spell list (although including some homebrew spells).

As a DM this means that I can become familiar with the special abilities and tactics a faction will employ as the campaign progresses. As I add more complexity it is on a base I already understand. In terms of building an existing theme it is also useful - the players can also learn and use appropriate tactics against these known enemies.