Guidance on creating higher level (tier 3 and 4) encounters

[Requilac]

For those of you who are playing in my campaign Eldritch Dissonance I would advise against looking in this thread as it may reveal spoilers.

Hello Playground, I have come here once again to request advice from those who are more experienced than I. Recently I had my first 5e campaign reach level 11, which is at a higher level than I have ever DMed for before. It has come to my attention that the players seem to be steamrolling their way through every encounter I pit against them, even if that combat is hard or deadly. Despite my attempts to challenge my players, regardless of the enemy they seem to be able to conquer it quite easily. As the levels go on I see things not getting harder but in fact getting much easier for them. So far I have been able to keep them occupied with narrative quality and rich descriptions, but they seem disappointing by the ease in which they stop things. I am certain that this is at least partially my fault, but I cannot quite tell where I am going wrong. It is probably because I am throwing too little encounters per rest at them, but this is a PbP game (that lasted for an amazingly long amount of time) so the process of having them meat grind through eight encounters per long rest is going to become unbearable. I want to be able to still create a decent challenge for my players, but I am afraid that the amount of medium encounters in an adventuring day that the DMG requests of me could very well prove to be fatal to the campaign. I know that I can get around this by throwing higher difficulty challenges at them of course, but the only issue is I have no idea how many to pit against them to be balanced. And even then, I have the distinct fear that regardless of difficulty they could still plow through anything that gets in their way unless the threat is TPK level tough. This is especially made more frustrating by the fact that the agreed upon death rate for players should be low, so I do not want to put them up against the Tomb of Horrors. For those of you have been in a game which reached tier 3 and 4, how do you balance your encounters so that your players are still challenged but they are not constantly dropping? Any help in this matter is very appreciated.

This will be in a homebrew campaign with the following players, each of which who are level 11...

-A fallen aasimar blades bard/celestial warlock multi-class (patron is dead)
-A human eldritch knight
-A human war wizard
-A human rogue (undecided sub-class)/lore bard multi-class
-A human abjurerer wizard
-A human great old one warlock

[Sjappo]

I am curious how having more encounters between long rests would kill the campaign. How is that grinding? It's the same amount of encounters but without a recharge. It would mean the players would have to manage their resources better.

I think your problem lies right there. The players can nova and trivialise every encounter. But as soon as you make the encounter to hard and they cannot nova their way through it, they'll be dead. Because their auto-attack is to weak to finish the encounter.

You've essentially removed some tactical decisions from the game. When do we rest, do I expend this spell slot or save it for the next encounter.

I'd say, talk it over with your players, try to put some time constraint on their missions and aim for the 6 encounter workday.

[DeTess]

This is talking from my experiences as a player in a 5e game that has just reached level 12, not as a DM, so take it with a pinch of salt.

Our DM has been throwing less than the 5-6 daily encounters at us, but using significantly more difficult encounters instead. Our party has been plowing through most of those, even when they where encounters that where meant to scare us into looking for a way out. To find what would be an appropriate encounter for us, he's been steadily scaling up the threat-level of encounters to try and find the point where we are evenly matched. By making the steps small enough there was only a small risk of us getting accidentally TPK'd. I suggest doing the same thing here.

I also suggest running around three encounters a day if you can manage it, with some exploration time in between. That forces the long-rest classes to expend some resources before the big final fight. For example, an encounter set we ran through recently, which proved a tough challenge for the three of us (note that we have some very powerful magic gear):

Encounter 1: 3 kobold scale sorcerer's, 12 Kobold dragon shields
Encounter 2: 2 wyrmling red dragons, 2 young red dragons
Encounter 3: Ancient red dragon

Now, before he threw this one at us, we had had some other dragon encounters on previous days, the most notable one being an adult green dragon with three kobold scale sorcerers, which he used to test the waters to see just how much dragon we could handle. If you've got an idea for a big climactic fight against a kind of creature, trying to test your group while they are travelling towards it with lesser encounters with similar creatures should allow you to estimate the power level your party can handle.

Edit:


I am curious how having more encounters between long rests would kill the campaign. How is that grinding? It's the same amount of encounters but without a recharge. It would mean the players would have to manage their resources better.


I think this has to do with this being a PbP campaign. Combats would likely take a long time (days, if not weeks) to resolve, while any other kind of encounter can progress the plot far quicker. I think the OP fears that spending half a year on a single adventuring day's worth of fights would kill interest.

[Sjappo]

I think this has to do with this being a PbP campaign. Combats would likely take a long time (days, if not weeks) to resolve, while any other kind of encounter can progress the plot far quicker. I think the OP fears that spending half a year on a single adventuring day's worth of fights would kill interest.
I fail to see the point. Yes, PbP is low. But spending half a year on 6 encounters doesn't change if those encounters happen in one day or one week. Only the available resources change.

Unless the PC's need to travel huge distances in which case you could go for the gritty realism variant and have a nights sleep be a short rest and a week vacation be a long rest. Or something like that.

[DeTess]

I fail to see the point. Yes, PbP is low. But spending half a year on 6 encounters doesn't change if those encounters happen in one day or one week. Only the available resources change.

Unless the PC's need to travel huge distances in which case you could go for the gritty realism variant and have a nights sleep be a short rest and a week vacation be a long rest. Or something like that.

It's not that half a year on 6 encounters would be a problem, it's that half a year spent on those encounters could be a problem if there's not much else in between. If you do those in a single day, then that entire 6 months is going to be dungeon-crawl. If it's spread over a week or more, there's time for camp-scenes, investigations and assorted social play in between. Anyway, this is just me guessing at the OP's problem. I have only ever done free-form PbP myself, as all my 5e has been done in person.

That having been said, switching to the gritty realism rest-system could be a good idea to make things more challenging.

[Requilac]

It's not that half a year on 6 encounters would be a problem, it's that half a year spent on those encounters could be a problem if there's not much else in between. If you do those in a single day, then that entire 6 months is going to be dungeon-crawl. If it's spread over a week or more, there's time for camp-scenes, investigations and assorted social play in between. Anyway, this is just me guessing at the OP's problem. I have only ever done free-form PbP myself, as all my 5e has been done in person.

That having been said, switching to the gritty realism rest-system could be a good idea to make things more challenging.

Randuir got my problem spot on. My problem is not net total of encounters, it is how close together they are. Having six fights in one day limits the amount of other elements of the game in between them more than six fights over half a week, even though they both technically have the same amount of in-combat time.

That being said, the gritty realism rest variant could work out well. Making the plot revolve around the fact that the party must rest for a week to complete a long rest sounds difficult, but it is a far easier problem to solve than the one I currently am experiencing. I am not convinced that will solve all of my problems though.

[Davrix]

Some things I can suggestion.

Look for monsters that deal stat drain's and augment around that.
Think of environments and how monsters can have an advantage in them over the players.
Do multiple layer encounters sometimes to throw them off balance with how they manage resources.
The biggest thing is look at what they are doing and try to find or creature monsters that bucks that trend. If they are very nova create monsters using the angry DM's paragon feature. its very handy for this. If you have them making creative combats where they outsmart the bad guys, well one that's great and reward them for that. But maybe start having some more gorilla hit and run tactics from enemies. Nothing beats a good assassin in a crowded street in a city.

I have to ask why is everyone a human though? Did everyone just pick it for the extra feat at lv 1? cause if so that's just... it makes me sad on the inside.

[Requilac]

I have to ask why is everyone a human though? Did everyone just pick it for the extra feat at lv 1? cause if so that's just... it makes me sad on the inside.

3/5 of them are basic humans, so it certainly wasn’t for the feat thing. I told them ahead of time that it would be a low fantasy setting with mostly humans, and they just did that to adapt to the game apparently. Not that they can’t get more than a little “power player” of course, but that was not the reason they chose human.