Difficult but Fair (or only slightly unfair) challenges for Level 5+ PCs

[vonkraush]

I'm preparing to DM my first game and I have a setting in mind I really want to bring to life perfectly. I am worried I may be overambitious but I'm very excited about it and have already spent a chunk of my holiday break drafting things out. The general contours of the setting, story, dungeons etc have been worked out at this point, but now I need to work on the actual encounters and combat.

In my setting if players die (up to a certain number of times) they come back to life with a penalty which starts small but increases with each death. There are ways to eventually cure this penalty etc, and I think its large enough to prove a hinderance while also small enough to not be overly punishing.

To take advantage of this I want to throw challenges at the party where they will hopefully just barely survive, but there is a possibility one or two of them could die. At the same point I'd like to avoid full-party wipes because those would be overly punishing and honestly still unfun.

The party will be composed of 4-6 level 5 adventurers (it might vary based on session to session attendance, I expect an average of 5), its not quite complete but I believe it will be relatively balanced, and all of the players are experienced enough to know what they are doing. Would anyone have any good suggestions for challenging encounters, any personal favorites of yours? I would also love recommendations on pre-built campaigns by WoTC or groups like DMs Guild which have a number of encounters suitable to parties of this level: I could draw inspiration from them, copy certain parts and/or reskin others.

[hellgrammite]

I would also love recommendations on pre-built campaigns by WoTC or groups like DMs Guild which have a number of encounters suitable to parties of this level: I could draw inspiration from them, copy certain parts and/or reskin others.

Your literally asking for what campaign you should run. There are a zillion materials out there. You may want to figure out what type of setting you want first, and what type of campaign you might want to run, and then we can help with specifics. Also without knowing experience level, its hard to recommend if things like Dark Sun or Eberron would be appropriate. Is it an underdark campaign? A city campaign?

You might want to just run a few one-off sessions with your players to get a feel of what type of campaign they might like playing. You coming up with your own first encounter will likely be better than most things out there.

[vonkraush]

Your literally asking for what campaign you should run. There are a zillion materials out there. You may want to figure out what type of setting you want first, and what type of campaign you might want to run, and then we can help with specifics. Also without knowing experience level, its hard to recommend if things like Dark Sun or Eberron would be appropriate. Is it an underdark campaign? A city campaign?

You might want to just run a few one-off sessions with your players to get a feel of what type of campaign they might like playing. You coming up with your own first encounter will likely be better than most things out there.

I'm not really asking that, as I mentioned I have put in a large amount of work designing a custom campaign, I'm just looking for recommendations pre-made campaigns so I can use encounters in them to fine-tune the difficulty of my own campaign.

My campaign will involve a lot of different areas rather than just focus on an urban, underdark, forrest setting etc. Any campaign recommendations are fine because I can pick and choose what works and what doesn't.

As for experience level: As mentioned in my opening post this group is largely experienced and knows what they are doing. I would put them at about an average level of experience.

[Feddlefew]

Word of warning: The difficulty of an encounter can drop dramatically when you go from 5 to 6 players.

My only suggestion with the information given is that you're better of creating a series of one- and two-shot adventures that share a common setting, like they all take place in and around the same town. Maybe make a board of flyers with bounties on them or something.

Most groups can go through 5 encounters (Traps, combats, NPC interactions, and so on) in one 3-4 hour session. So groups are faster, some are much slower. Be prepared to shuffle content around so that a satisfying conclusion can be reached by the end of the game session.

I usually find the best oneshots for pickup games are 5 room dungeons, and I generally design combat encounters so that I can add or remove monsters. Because some days you might have only three players and have to swap a bugbears out for goblins, and sometimes you have 8 player and need to add a second troll.

You may also want to have some Schrodinger's healing potions and magic scrolls in your treasure table, just in case an encounter goes south.

[vonkraush]

Word of warning: The difficulty of an encounter can drop dramatically when you go from 5 to 6 players.

My only suggestion with the information given is that you're better of creating a series of one- and two-shot adventures that share a common setting, like they all take place in and around the same town. Maybe make a board of flyers with bounties on them or something.

Most groups can go through 5 encounters (Traps, combats, NPC interactions, and so on) in one 3-4 hour session. So groups are faster, some are much slower. Be prepared to shuffle content around so that a satisfying conclusion can be reached by the end of the game session.

I usually find the best oneshots for pickup games are 5 room dungeons, and I generally design combat encounters so that I can add or remove monsters. Because some days you might have only three players and have to swap a bugbears out for goblins, and sometimes you have 8 player and need to add a second troll.

You may also want to have some Schrodinger's healing potions and magic scrolls in your treasure table, just in case an encounter goes south.

One shot dungeons would actually be perfect inspirational material for me. Do you know of any good ones off the top of your head?

Also: yeah i think i need to take it easy with the first two encounters and then jack up the difficulty once I'm comfortable.

[Davrix]

It sort of depend on the group. As mentioned above, some will be Rp heavy some want to smash and grab. You need to see what kind of players you have and balance around that. This is why its a good idea to start off small. I always tend to take small one shot adventures and re-skin them to fit my world setting and use that as a good base to see how things stack up. Its simple for the first session or two but it will let you see how you players react. The other thing is group size will really screw with the math and encounter building if you cant keep it consistent. If you plan for 5 and six show up there going to curb stomp. If you plan for 6 and 5 or 4 show up there going to be hosed.

Now this being said what you really want to aim for here is dynamic fights. Have patrols, traps (not to many and make them clever and make sense for the environment and who makes it) Start off combat with enemies behind fortification or have a group of say 3 because of your large party size normally id say 1 or 2. If they cant lock them down quickly have one run for back up or trigger a room trap that causes an effect to happen like it begins to fill with a gas or turns the lights out. Your key to success here will be tactical and fluid with combat rather than planning it out from the get go because you wont be able to predict who is going to show up.

Also on a side note get all of there HP AC and saves down on a sheet and balance your monsters around that if you want to dance the edge of how hard you can hit and make them feel like it might kill them.

[Unoriginal]

Who will be the main bad guys in the area the PCs are starting in?

[Feddlefew]

Who will be the main bad guys in the area the PCs are starting in?

Adding to this, are there any interesting landmarks / abandoned places / natural disasters within a day's travel?

[Unoriginal]

Adding to this, are there any interesting landmarks / abandoned places / natural disasters within a day's travel?

Oh, that's good question indeed.

[Feddlefew]

Starting with a bunch of interesting locations and events on a map is the best way to run a D&D campaign, IMO.

My only successful long campaign (1.5 years, D&D 3.5/Pathfinder, Lv 3 to 14/15) was 60% hexcrawl, with major quests being given by the bounty hunting organization the PCs belonged to based on what town they were in.

The nice thing about hexcrawls is a few weeks spent building a regional map with 1-2 major cities and about 40 major adventure sites (with associate rumors) gave me enough content to run D&D for years. The downside is that the initial prep is a nightmare, and if your players aren't proactive about looking for quests then it really isn't the right fit for your group.

I'd also advise against going full-sandbox. It's better to have a central, open-ended goal, like kill the evil lich-emperor, or get the party's favorite tavern out of debt before the crown repossesses the building - and then design quests that let your players reach that goal and explore the map. If the players think the dwarves of the black mountain might pay them or supply arms and armaments if they clear the fiendish elephants from the lost admantium mines of Boatmurdered, then that's what their next quest should be about.

And if you need more time to prepare, just have something interesting come up while their en route, like a bandit raid on an un-marked hamlet, or a mysterious abandoned farmhouse that stalks the party through the country side.