Is combat at higher levels truly scary?

[CrackedChair]

So flipping through the Monster Manual, I noticed that there is several monsters that would most likely outclass a character even with a PC at high levels.

Let's say compare a Hill Giant to a level 8 Fighter. This Fighter by himself might be in severe trouble despite the giant being CR 5, mainly due to the additional damage that can be done by the great club alone with the fact they can multi attack, giving them essentially 6d8+10 damage, while a Fighter would most likely, even win a great sword and with 18 strength, dealing 4d6+8 damage, if all attacks connect.

Is combat at higher levels truly frightening?

[Malifice]

So flipping through the Monster Manual, I noticed that there is several monsters that would most likely outclass a character even with a PC at high levels.

Let's say compare a Hill Giant to a level 8 Fighter. This Fighter by himself might be in severe trouble despite the giant being CR 5, mainly due to the additional damage that can be done by the great club alone with the fact they can multi attack, giving them essentially 6d8+10 damage, while a Fighter would most likely, even win a great sword and with 18 strength, dealing 4d6+8 damage, if all attacks connect.

Is combat at higher levels truly frightening?

The Fighter also has action surge, superiority dice and feats (GWM is perfect against bag-o-hp, lowish AC critters like the hill giant). These are all class features of the (BM) fighter that are either at will or available every encounter or two.

Also, why is the Fighter fighting it alone? He should have 4 or so other PCs next to him, including a cleric to Bless him and heal him (and whack the giant), a Wizard to blast the giant, and a Rogue (who at 8th level is dealing 30+ damage per round with sneak attack).

The cleric has Revivify (online from 5th) allowing him to bring back any dead PCs anyway.

In 5e 'permadeath' is quite rare due to instant death not kicking in unless you get knocked to 0 HP (and there is damage left over that reduces you to - max HP) and thanks to an abundance of raise dead spells and effects.

I just TPK'd a party of 13-16th level PCs with an Ancient Green Dragon, but that was more due to its breath weapon respawning every round, and it using legendary actions to wail on downed PCs.

The Swashbuckler got away, but now he's kinda stuck in a demiplane with no way out.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Really depends on the party's abilities. I generally find high level play to be easier because you've got a ton of options that can turn any encounter in your favor, so long as you do it before your enemies successfully unleash their own tricks. Then there's regular access to resurrection magics, big nova abilities, the likely high level magic items, and contingency abilities and spells that can be used by clever parties to, in tandem, shut down virtually anything.

It does require teamwork and a good understanding of your own abilities, however.

[DragonSorcererX]

Also, why is the Fighter fighting it alone? He should have 4 or so other PCs next to him, including a cleric to Bless him and heal him (and whack the giant), a Wizard to blast the giant, and a Rogue (who at 8th level is dealing 30+ damage per round with sneak attack).

In his defense, he probably did the math or looked on some encounter calculator that a CR 5 creature is inside a level 8 character xp budget, but he probably didn't realise that it is a DEADLY encounter...

[Sigreid]

In his defense, he probably did the math or looked on some encounter calculator that a CR 5 creature is inside a level 8 character xp budget, but he probably didn't realise that it is a DEADLY encounter...

Yep. Something to keep in mind is that the CR is essentially an approximation of what gives a decent, but almost certainly winnable, fight to a party of for characters of the equivalent level.

[DragonSorcererX]

Yep. Something to keep in mind is that the CR is essentially an approximation of what gives a decent, but almost certainly winnable, fight to a party of for characters of the equivalent level.

About this specific fight, unless he goes Goliath or Half-Orc Fighter (Samurai) or some other tanky build like that, I don't think he will be able to win...

[90sMusic]

About the scariest thing you can run into honestly is a dragon and it is purely because they have 3 very high damage multiattacks and have a breath weapon that is insane. A red dragon for instance is going to hit the entire party with it's breath weapon every time it uses it unless you are intentionally playing poorly to give your players better odds and it will deal 22-132 fire damage to all of them. They also move very fast, especially when they can fly, and out in the open they can just swoop down with a breath attack on your whole party then fly out of range of the majority of your attacks for a few rounds while the breath weapon recharges.

An intelligent dragon is immensely difficult to deal with, DM's almost universally play their dragons like morons because if they used proper tactics, they'd never die and would TPK your group unless they had planned out very, very good strategies in advance and fully prepared for all contingencies.

But... Groups are very strong and deal a lot of damage. Each player is more than likely going to be dealing over 10% of it's total health in damage every round and since you're going to have 4-6 players generally that means that dragon is going to die in less than 3 of it's rounds if it just stands there and fights. That is true for all enemies, if they just stand and fight until they are dead they will die insanely quick because players deal absurd amounts of damage. That is why legendary actions and lair actions exist, to give them the chance to actually do something before dying.

Creatures are only really dangerous when DM's mess with them. if you give them more damage, more resists, higher DCs, quicker breath cooldowns, more hitpoints, etc it can quickly turn a relatively easy encounter into certain death.

About the most dangerous creature in the entire game is an intellect devourer. Those little bastards will ruin you at ANY level. You need to make a 12 DC intelligence save to resist their Devour Intellect ability. Rogue, Wizard, and Druid are the only classes that get proficiency in intelligence saves and almost everyone uses intelligence as one of their lower stats or totally as a dump stat because it is mechanically useless for 99% of the game. So whether you're level 1 or level 20, assuming you have 10 intelligence, you only have a 40% chance to resist devour intellect when it is used on you for the majority of characters. Then it rolls 3d6 and if that result equals of surpasses the target's intelligence score, it goes brain dead instantly and once again if you are at 10 intelligence that has a high probability of occuring because the average result from 3d6 is 10.5

And if you're brain dead, the next round you're probably going to become full dead because it will do an intelligence contest against you and if it wins, you instantly die. So it gets a +1 to it's intelligence contest and you get a -5 because your intelligence is sitting at 0.

Those things are NASTY, nasty, nasty enemies. They are only CR 2 but a handful of them can kill a couple of members of a level 20 party.

[CrackedChair]

About the scariest thing you can run into honestly is a dragon and it is purely because they have 3 very high damage multiattacks and have a breath weapon that is insane. A red dragon for instance is going to hit the entire party with it's breath weapon every time it uses it unless you are intentionally playing poorly to give your players better odds and it will deal 22-132 fire damage to all of them. They also move very fast, especially when they can fly, and out in the open they can just swoop down with a breath attack on your whole party then fly out of range of the majority of your attacks for a few rounds while the breath weapon recharges.

An intelligent dragon is immensely difficult to deal with, DM's almost universally play their dragons like morons because if they used proper tactics, they'd never die and would TPK your group unless they had planned out very, very good strategies in advance and fully prepared for all contingencies.

But... Groups are very strong and deal a lot of damage. Each player is more than likely going to be dealing over 10% of it's total health in damage every round and since you're going to have 4-6 players generally that means that dragon is going to die in less than 3 of it's rounds if it just stands there and fights. That is true for all enemies, if they just stand and fight until they are dead they will die insanely quick because players deal absurd amounts of damage. That is why legendary actions and lair actions exist, to give them the chance to actually do something before dying.

Creatures are only really dangerous when DM's mess with them. if you give them more damage, more resists, higher DCs, quicker breath cooldowns, more hitpoints, etc it can quickly turn a relatively easy encounter into certain death.

About the most dangerous creature in the entire game is an intellect devourer. Those little bastards will ruin you at ANY level. You need to make a 12 DC intelligence save to resist their Devour Intellect ability. Rogue, Wizard, and Druid are the only classes that get proficiency in intelligence saves and almost everyone uses intelligence as one of their lower stats or totally as a dump stat because it is mechanically useless for 99% of the game. So whether you're level 1 or level 20, assuming you have 10 intelligence, you only have a 40% chance to resist devour intellect when it is used on you for the majority of characters. Then it rolls 3d6 and if that result equals of surpasses the target's intelligence score, it goes brain dead instantly and once again if you are at 10 intelligence that has a high probability of occuring because the average result from 3d6 is 10.5

And if you're brain dead, the next round you're probably going to become full dead because it will do an intelligence contest against you and if it wins, you instantly die. So it gets a +1 to it's intelligence contest and you get a -5 because your intelligence is sitting at 0.

Those things are NASTY, nasty, nasty enemies. They are only CR 2 but a handful of them can kill a couple of members of a level 20 party.

Gawd, both of those sounds horrifying. Especially those things called intellect devourers. Why would any DN use those things when they can kill things in one hit, and have the kill be horrifying at the same time?

[DragonSorcererX]

About the scariest thing you can run into honestly is a dragon and it is purely because they have 3 very high damage multiattacks and have a breath weapon that is insane. A red dragon for instance is going to hit the entire party with it's breath weapon every time it uses it unless you are intentionally playing poorly to give your players better odds and it will deal 22-132 fire damage to all of them. They also move very fast, especially when they can fly, and out in the open they can just swoop down with a breath attack on your whole party then fly out of range of the majority of your attacks for a few rounds while the breath weapon recharges.

An intelligent dragon is immensely difficult to deal with, DM's almost universally play their dragons like morons because if they used proper tactics, they'd never die and would TPK your group unless they had planned out very, very good strategies in advance and fully prepared for all contingencies.

Yeah, if the Rathalos, who would have an Int around 4 or something like that in D&D, is a son of bitch... imagine an intelligent dragon... now, being prideful and so full of themselves as dragons normally are is their only weakness and if the players go full "Monster Hunter" they can probably have a proper fight even with a true intelligent dragon...

[CrackedChair]

Yeah, if the Rathalos, who would have an Int around 4 or something like that in D&D, is a son of bitch... imagine an intelligent dragon... now, being prideful and so full of themselves as dragons normally are is their only weakness and if the players go full "Monster Hunter" they can probably have a proper fight even with a true intelligent dragon...

The one thing I can be grateful for is Metallic dragons, who most certainly would be played intelligently and would be siding with a good hearted party in most cases...

[Sir cryosin]

So flipping through the Monster Manual, I noticed that there is several monsters that would most likely outclass a character even with a PC at high levels.

Let's say compare a Hill Giant to a level 8 Fighter. This Fighter by himself might be in severe trouble despite the giant being CR 5, mainly due to the additional damage that can be done by the great club alone with the fact they can multi attack, giving them essentially 6d8+10 damage, while a Fighter would most likely, even win a great sword and with 18 strength, dealing 4d6+8 damage, if all attacks connect.

Is combat at higher levels truly frightening?

The other night me a shaperd Druid,Gunsmith Artificer and a assassin rogue at lv 10. We one round shot a ancient blue dragon.

[Unoriginal]

The other night me a shaperd Druid,Gunsmith Artificer and a assassin rogue at lv 10. We one round shot a ancient blue dragon.

How did you do that?

[DragonSorcererX]

How did you do that?

Yeah, even with the auto-crit sneak attack, the thunder cannon + thunder monger and the magical pets of the druid you can't kill a monster with 481 hp in one round...

[Unoriginal]

Yeah, even with the auto-crit sneak attack, the thunder cannon + thunder monger and the magical pets of the druid you can't kill a monster with 481 hp in one round...

Well, maybe if you use a trap or the environment...

[Gtdead]

There are builds that can go toe to toe with any monster in the manual stats wise. This distinction is important because it may be easy to beat a dragon for some builds, but he can fly and ruin your day that way. There are others that assume a more supportive role.

For example, a sorcadin has good chances at soloing deadly single monster encounters by himself across the level curve. It has an extremely strong chassis and all the tools that are useful when fighting monsters, high AC with defensive advantage, good average dpr.

A wizard can do this only at higher levels, while a barbarian only at lower to mid levels.
A fighter is generally bad at doing stuff by himself, but with good enough support, he can end encounters in a single round.

[DragonSorcererX]

Well, maybe if you use a trap or the environment...

Unless you are throwing a Sharknado that has acid instead of water and instead of sharks it has spheres of annihilation at the ANCIENT dragon, I don't believe you can kill in one round something that has 400+ HP at level 10 with a party of 3...

[Unoriginal]

Unless you are throwing a Sharknado that has acid instead of water and instead of sharks it has spheres of annihilation at the ANCIENT dragon, I don't believe you can kill in one round something that has 400+ HP at level 10 with a party of 3...

A cave-in might do it.

[JAL_1138]

Gawd, both of those sounds horrifying. Especially those things called intellect devourers. Why would any DN use those things when they can kill things in one hit, and have the kill be horrifying at the same time?

I think you mean "why wouldn't any DM use those things." Horrifying instant death used to be common back in the old days of AD&D. If an adventurer wanted to live, they became a paranoid, hypercautious, overprepared nutcase with a 10ft pole. And we liked it that way!
Now git off my lawn, dagnabbit! :smalltongue:

[Sir cryosin]

Unless you are throwing a Sharknado that has acid instead of water and instead of sharks it has spheres of annihilation at the ANCIENT dragon, I don't believe you can kill in one round something that has 400+ HP at level 10 with a party of 3...

At the end of storm kings thunder. King Hackintosh gives you a potion of giant and a silver dragon claw. The potions gives you x2 max HP, x3 weapon damage, size huge, and str of 25. Then the claw gives you res to all dragons breath weapons. And if you spend 8 hours inscribing the rune on to something any dragon with in 30ft radius of the rune has a fly speed of 10 and disadvantage on all on all checks, saves. And the Artificer's construct had a dragon Slayer weapon. We also go super lucky and the rouge got to auto crit the Artificer crit on his attacks but missed one and I gave my potion to my wood woard making his magic mace attack go from 4d4+4 to 12d4+4x2.

[DragonSorcererX]

At the end of storm kings thunder. King Hackintosh gives you a potion of giant and a silver dragon claw. The potions gives you x2 max HP, x3 weapon damage, size huge, and str of 25. Then the claw gives you res to all dragons breath weapons. And if you spend 8 hours inscribing the rune on to something any dragon with in 30ft radius of the rune has a fly speed of 10 and disadvantage on all on all checks, saves. And the Artificer's construct had a dragon Slayer weapon. We also go super lucky and the rouge got to auto crit the Artificer crit on his attacks but missed one and I gave my potion to my wood woard making his magic mace attack go from 4d4+4 to 12d4+4x2.

I imagined it was this fight, but I didn't want to talk about it because it is a giant SPOILER!

Still, you guys managed to bring 450+ hp to 0 in one round at 10th level? Even with the giant's help and the overload of magic items,...

[cotofpoffee]

At the end of storm kings thunder. King Hackintosh gives you a potion of giant and a silver dragon claw. The potions gives you x2 max HP, x3 weapon damage, size huge, and str of 25. Then the claw gives you res to all dragons breath weapons. And if you spend 8 hours inscribing the rune on to something any dragon with in 30ft radius of the rune has a fly speed of 10 and disadvantage on all on all checks, saves. And the Artificer's construct had a dragon Slayer weapon. We also go super lucky and the rouge got to auto crit the Artificer crit on his attacks but missed one and I gave my potion to my wood woard making his magic mace attack go from 4d4+4 to 12d4+4x2. I played through the end of SKT and I felt like the things they gave you were overkill. We took down the dragon so easily it was kind of anticlimactic. Not only do you have the items that superbuff you, but you had 5 storm giants with you. Just the giants alone could've taken down the dragon, especially since they were immune to her breath weapon so she couldn't even do strafing runs with her super long range lightning breath. Our group managed to bring the dragon down to single digits health in a single round. We didn't even have stuff like dragonslaying weapons - most of it was nonmagical.

[Spiritchaser]

I think you mean "why wouldn't any DM use those things." Horrifying instant death used to be common back in the old days of AD&D. If an adventurer wanted to live, they became a paranoid, hypercautious, overprepared nutcase with a 10ft pole. And we liked it that way!
Now git off my lawn, dagnabbit! :smalltongue:

Heh... I remember back in the 80s and 90s layering on protective spell after protective spell...

I remember thought experiments to find gaps in my magical defences... Followed by submitting new spell proposals to the DM, which were actually pretty innocent on their own but which shored up smaller weaknesses in my other spells
I remember always being invisible and having an illusionary version of my character go in first

I'm not so sure that the old way was better

[Mochan]

So flipping through the Monster Manual, I noticed that there is several monsters that would most likely outclass a character even with a PC at high levels.

Let's say compare a Hill Giant to a level 8 Fighter. This Fighter by himself might be in severe trouble despite the giant being CR 5, mainly due to the additional damage that can be done by the great club alone with the fact they can multi attack, giving them essentially 6d8+10 damage, while a Fighter would most likely, even win a great sword and with 18 strength, dealing 4d6+8 damage, if all attacks connect.

Is combat at higher levels truly frightening?

Fighting giants isn't as bad as you'd think.

I'm going through a Storm King's Thunder campaign right now and am only Level 6, but have already survived and even dominated 3 giant encounters to date.

We have a party of 4, we're nothing special, and don't have much in the way of magic items. Even as is, we plowed through an encounter with a Fire Giant and a bunch of ogres, goblins and hobgoblins, did fairly well against 3 frost giants and winter wolves, and utterly decimated a single frost giant.

Smart role-playing and clever use of resources like Suggestion can make the fights a lot easier than you'd think if you play your cards right. Hill Giants aren't even as scary as Frost Giants and Fire Giants are even stronger, and we conquered them at level 6 and lower.



The more problematic opponents are the ones with big AOE and crowd control effects they can use over and over, and the ones with Lair and Legendary actions. Those are a pain in the ass. That means Dragons for the most part, and other stuff like Beholders, etc.

The main problem at higher levels is that the monsters are pretty much bound to hit you unless you have godly AC, which is hard to do in 5E, and AOE attacks that deal lots of damage even on a successful save.

On the flipside, at high levels you have broken options of your own that can turn the encounter in your favor easily, for martial types it's nova damage that can decimate an opponent's HP to nothing in one turn, for caster types it's usually a very nasty spell.

So high-level combat isn't all that bad. It's nowhere as bad as it was in early editions where a lot of high-level encounters had opponents that could kill you with a single failed saving throw.

[MaxWilson]

About this specific fight, unless he goes Goliath or Half-Orc Fighter (Samurai) or some other tanky build like that, I don't think he will be able to win...

I did a quick sim of an Eldritch Knight 8 (Str 18, melee-oriented, plate armor, sword-and-shield, Defense style, significant spells Blur and Shield, feat Warcaster) vs. a Hill Giant. The Hill Giant won initiative and got lucky, splatting him for 18 points of damage (would have been 35 if he hadn't managed to barely Shield against the second) hit. Then the Fighter Action Surged Blur + 2 attacks.

On the 10th round of combat, the Fighter finally knocked out the Hill Giant, just before Blur ran out. Also on the 2nd round of combat, the Hill Giant almost hit him again, and he had to Shield. The fighter was down 8 HP, one Action Surge, one Second Wind (10 HP regained), and 7 spell points. It wasn't even close, really, and Action Surging was probably a mistake since it didn't really affect the fight's outcome at all.

Three points:

(1) If he'd known Booming Blade and I had thought to use War Magic, the Fighter would have won around round 7 instead of 10, due to the extra d8 per round. (16 DPR instead of 12, after accounting for to-hit.)

(2) An Eldritch Knight archer would have cleaned the giant's clock without even needing any Blur spells, just Expeditious Retreat--the giant has only short-ranged attacks, and it throws boulders at only half the rate of its melee attacks. I didn't bother simulating that fight because it's easy and uninteresting and terrain-dependent.

(3) Even using point-buy as a base (point-buy is generally 1-2 points weaker than rolled stats), I can afford 18 Str and Warcaster plus two more ASIs. With e.g. Lucky and Defensive Duelist in your back pocket, the fight wouldn't even be tense.

[DragonSorcererX]

I did a quick sim of an Eldritch Knight 8 (Str 18, melee-oriented, plate armor, sword-and-shield, Defense style, significant spells Blur and Shield, feat Warcaster) vs. a Hill Giant. The Hill Giant won initiative and got lucky, splatting him for 18 points of damage (would have been 35 if he hadn't managed to barely Shield against the second) hit. Then the Fighter Action Surged Blur + 2 attacks.

On the 10th round of combat, the Fighter finally knocked out the Hill Giant, just before Blur ran out. Also on the 2nd round of combat, the Hill Giant almost hit him again, and he had to Shield. The fighter was down 8 HP, one Action Surge, one Second Wind (10 HP regained), and 7 spell points. It wasn't even close, really, and Action Surging was probably a mistake since it didn't really affect the fight's outcome at all.

Three points:

(1) If he'd known Booming Blade and I had thought to use War Magic, the Fighter would have won around round 7 instead of 10, due to the extra d8 per round. (16 DPR instead of 12, after accounting for to-hit.)

(2) An Eldritch Knight archer would have cleaned the giant's clock without even needing any Blur spells, just Expeditious Retreat--the giant has only short-ranged attacks, and it throws boulders at only half the rate of its melee attacks. I didn't bother simulating that fight because it's easy and uninteresting and terrain-dependent.

(3) Even using point-buy as a base (point-buy is generally 1-2 points weaker than rolled stats), I can afford 18 Str and Warcaster plus two more ASIs. With e.g. Lucky and Defensive Duelist in your back pocket, the fight wouldn't even be tense.

As a supporter of Spellcasters and Spell Points I approve of this history! Keep up the good work Sir Wilson! (When I don't have a proper answer here in the forum I roleplay)