Spoilers! Question about published adventures.

[Dudewithknives]

The thing I always heard before we started using the published 5e adventures was that they were brutally hard and challenging.

So far that had not been the case at all.

We are playing Out of the Abyss which I was told is the hardest one, and it has been a total cakewalk so far.

We do not even have anyone with more than a d8 hd, and no fighter, paladin, barbarian or ranger.

We have a Lore bard, a death cleric, a lizardfolk moon druid who has not even bothered to change shapes yet, he just bites and shillelaghs people, and an odd version of a strength based monk.

When we escaped the first after the demon invasion we killed the level 5 cleric lady that was in her room.

The random encounters have been a joke.
The fight with the Spectator was only slightly challenging because we have no archer and 3 full casters. Once we got the thing pulled to the ground it died in 1 turn.

At the koatoa village the whole group took a total of 6 damage.

I am either thinking our DM is taking it very easy on us or these things are a ton easier than I thought they were.

Am I just way off base here?

[mgshamster]

The books are as easy or hard as your DM makes it. If you think they're a joke, it's because your DM allows it to be easy.

My players found it rather challenging, but not insanely so. But I could easily run it to make it very deadly with lots of PC turnover. All it requires is to play the enemies with intelligence and tactics.

For example, it should be nearly impossible to win a fight against the drow priestess from Velkynvelve with four level 1 or 2 PCs. She has spells that can cause a party wipe in one round, and you can't do enough damage to her in a single round to stop her - presuming she even let's you get close to her.

Even without spells, she's doing 5d6 damage per hit with two attacks per round. No way you should have survived that.

Your DM is making it easy.

[Waterdeep Merch]

From what I've seen from the adventure books I've read, the DM has a lot of leeway to tweak the challenges, either by deciding more or less potential reinforcements enter a battle, the enemies start acting intelligently or not once there's reason to believe the players are around, or simply in the tactics each monster employs. Then there's the players- some are simply better at the game than others, and will skip right through battles where less capable players may struggle, or specific builds might allow for an easier time in the right circumstances.

Mgshamster has it right, it depends entirely on your DM. My players found the published adventures challenging, but not as hard as my usual material. The newbies I've played with spent a lot of time unconscious or as corpses. I took things easy on them in some places and harder in others.

Like a chef that is trying to get you to eat extremely spicy food, but needs to make sure you'll swallow it first.

[Dudewithknives]

The books are as easy or hard as your DM makes it. If you think they're a joke, it's because your DM allows it to be easy.

My players found it rather challenging, but not insanely so. But I could easily run it to make it very deadly with lots of PC turnover. All it requires is to play the enemies with intelligence and tactics.

For example, it should be nearly impossible to win a fight against the drow priestess from Velkynvelve with four level 1 or 2 PCs. She has spells that can cause a party wipe in one round, and you can't do enough damage to her in a single round to stop her - presuming she even let's you get close to her.

Even without spells, she's doing 5d6 damage per hit with two attacks per round. No way you should have survived that.

Your DM is making it easy.

I am horrible with names, but it was not the high priestess of velkenvelv, it was her subordinate, the first thing that happened was that the rogue in the party at the time snuck up on her and took her mace.

The giant spider in the room was a bigger issue than she was.

Only one person has died so far and he was killed by another PC who was corrupted with madness.

[mgshamster]

To give you an idea of the differences between DMs, here's how I ran the Kuo-toa village:

They entered the village thinking they were finally in a safe location to rest up, only to find two religious factions nearly at arm's with each other. Each side of the faction was trying to convince them to join their side against the other.

Finally, one side kidnapped an NPC in the party to sacrifice him to their two-headed god. The PCs had to fight their way through kuo-toa to save him, and during the fight, Demogorgon shows up.

His massive size caused a small surge of water to push up into the shore, and pulled tons of kuo-toa into the waters where he would swipe up tens of them at a time and consume them.

When he got to shore, he casually knocked down buildings, and the entire city became a race against being crushed by falling rubble. They had to wind their way through the streets while avoiding Demogorgon, fighting insane kuo-toa, rescuing others (even had a tense scene where they reached a child just before a building landed on it), and make their escape.

A single hit from Demogorgon would do an average of 35 damage and reduce your max HP by the same amount. He got two hits per round, so you really want to avoid facing him at that level.

It was a fast pace, high intensity scene, and it all happened in a single session.

[Pex]

To give you an idea of the differences between DMs, here's how I ran the Kuo-toa village:

They entered the village thinking they were finally in a safe location to rest up, only to find two religious factions nearly at arm's with each other. Each side of the faction was trying to convince them to join their side against the other.

Finally, one side kidnapped an NPC in the party to sacrifice him to their two-headed god. The PCs had to fight their way through kuo-toa to save him, and during the fight, Demogorgon shows up.

His massive size caused a small surge of water to push up into the shore, and pulled tons of kuo-toa into the waters where he would swipe up tens of them at a time and consume them.

When he got to shore, he casually knocked down buildings, and the entire city became a race against being crushed by falling rubble. They had to wind their way through the streets while avoiding Demogorgon, fighting insane kuo-toa, rescuing others (even had a tense scene where they reached a child just before a building landed on it), and make their escape.

A single hit from Demogorgon would do an average of 35 damage and reduce your max HP by the same amount. He got two hits per round, so you really want to avoid facing him at that level.

It was a fast pace, high intensity scene, and it all happened in a single session.

Did they use Fireball or Protection spell?

[Foxhound438]

there's also the bit with the CR6 vrock right at the start. You should be L1 there, so its average 24 damage is way more than enough to one shot you if your DM decides to actually sick it on you.

But HotDQ ran strictly is actually way harder. The first day is practically impossible to do all the things they want you to do, and since you're L1 the whole time with no chance at getting a long rest, you're struggling to stay alive after the first few fights. Worse yet is the CR 32 random encounter at a point where your party is supposed to be L4. Yes, 32, as in 4 CR 8 assassins.

[JackPhoenix]

But HotDQ ran strictly is actually way harder. The first day is practically impossible to do all the things they want you to do, and since you're L1 the whole time with no chance at getting a long rest, you're struggling to stay alive after the first few fights. Worse yet is the CR 32 random encounter at a point where your party is supposed to be L4. Yes, 32, as in 4 CR 8 assassins.

That's not how CR works. 4 CR 8 enemies are in no way equivalent to CR 32 (not mentioning that CR goes only up to 30) enemy. Yes, it is 15x deadly challenge for 4 level 4 characters. That's about comparable to single CR 21 creature

[SiCK_Boy]

And the official errata for HotDQ did replace these assassins with veterans instead.

The module was written as they were finalizing the rules, and this encounter was a mistake that slipped through.

[Sariel Vailo]

my pcs killed her but not in the normal way they used tactics.double orc grapple tactics. And they threw off where ront is thrown.