Experience with Deadly++++ encounters

[Cespenar]

Spoilers ahead.

Okay, we all know that the CR system is more a guideline than an exact formula, and there will be lots of internal and external factors that will skew the balance to one side or another.

That said, what are the craziest battles you or your players had that when you went back afterwards and estimated/calculated the CR, it equaled to way above Deadly, yet you still won?

For some needless math, I have two different methods to estimate stuff above Deadly:

a) Just divide the final XP by your Deadly mark, and it becomes something like Deadly x3.
b) Or, calculate the difference between Deadly and Hard, and extrapolate as if all of the higher difficulty tiers had the same progression. For example:

Hard: 4500
Deadly: 6000
Your encounter: 10000

By Method b, 7500 would be Deadly+, 9000 would be Deadly+2, 10500 would be Deadly+3, so your encounter is Deadly+2.
If done by Method a, it would simply be Deadly.

Admittedly, I like Method B a bit better.

To start it off:

1) Out of the Abyss, Ilvara and the gang were finally catching up with us right before our escape from the Underdark.

Group: 4 level 5s + 1 Earth Elemental
NPCs: 4 lowly Deep Gnome patrolmen

Opposition: Drow Cleric, Drow Mage, 2 Drow Elite, 4 Drow

Estimation: Assuming the Elemental + 4 Deep Gnomes are roughly as strong as 2 more level 5 PCs, this comes down to either Deadly x3, or Deadly+6.

2) Curse of Strahd, 3 Vampire Spawn sisters jump on us while Strahd is waking up from his coffin.

Trickiness Factor: Strahd joins the battle 1 round later, so there was a slight advantage in whittling the Spawns down.

Group: 3 level 8s
NPCs: Esmeralda

Opposition: Strahd + 3 Vampire Spawns

Estimation: Assuming Esmeralda is as strong as a tricked out level 8 PC, this comes down to either Deadly x4, or Deadly+10.

Yeah, as you can see, there are many factors in any given battle that are almost impossible to translate to a specific CR, but shoot away with your own estimations and experiences.

[prototype00]

Hartkiller’s Horn: The Beast of Talos. ‘Nuff said.

The first lightning breath took out half the party. I’m stil not sure how we survived that.

[Lombra]

The guidelines for the encounters are based on XP not on CR, so it's not CR itself that makes encounters hard, it's the experience points that the monsters give. That being said, our DM sent our characters (lv.9 shadow monk; knowledge cleric 1/ divination wizard 8; assassin 5/battlemaster 4; and a lv.9 wild sorcerer) hunting a Dragon Turtle.

We had two ships, both armed with ballistae, and one had a couple magic cannons that fired I think 8d10 of damage. The DM later told me that since we had such good backups he maxed the Dragon Turtle's HP for the fight.

We all had waterbreathing preemptively cast on us earlier that day.

The fight started with the dragon turtle attacking the main ship, the wizard slowed the monster significantly making it loose two turns with Hypnotic Pattern, enaugh to allow the main ship to reposition itself in order to fight with the main cannons. The Dragon Turtle then moved towards the second, smaller ship that in the mean time was vexing it with its ballistae, the sorcerer flew up and started raining down fire (he has elemental adept so resistances weren't an issue), the monk drank a Stone Giant's Strength potion and climbed over the monster, pummeling it for good damage and stunning it for two turns straight. The fighter/rogue attacked the monster from the smaller ship with a crossbow. Meanwhile the magic cannons were putting in work, when the monster stopped being stunned, it flung the monk away from it's shell with a tail attack, then exhaled the steaming breath over the smaller ship, almost sinking it and nearly killing the rogue/fighter, another round of damage from the siege weapons made the monster flee, and we then proceeded in locating its nest and destroying it, forcing it to stay away for a long time.

We survived just because the ships tanked the damage while the party killed the monster, if we were characters only we would have been tpk'd probably.

[Quoz]

Level one, five characters. We snuck into a gnoll-infested castle through the privies to cover our scent. We end up in the top floor and can listen at the keyhole to the cult leader and two pack lord lietenants (fortunately our cleric speaks abysal).

We managed to get around the corner and miraculously nobody blew a stealth check so we got surprise and took out the lieutenants before they got an action (Our human GWM barbarian got a crit, if I recall). The cult leader, CR 4 on his own, dropped both our paladin and our warlock in single hits but our cleric got them back up (barely), my fighter was able to tank a few hits due to high AC and second wind, and our barbarian was still rolling hot with great weapon master. Fortunately many of the cult leader's abilities were to buff and grant attacks to allies and we got him alone or it would have been a total wipe.

So yeah, jumping to the boss fight in session one isn't that smart, but it is how you get halfway to level 3 from zero XP in one day.

[Cespenar]

Another one from Out of the Abyss. Sneaking through Wormwrithings as 4 level 9s, being very careful.

Somewhere, though, we didn't pick up the clues, didn't freeze just in time, so, in came an angry Purple Worm (CR 15).

I clutter its general area with 8 summoned wolves, the fighters do their damage, and we manage to hold our own.

When another Purple Worm appears. Our wizard goes "ah, eff it", and casts polymorph on it. I think it rolls a 1. The fighters finish the first one, we pick up the small tortoise, put it upside down on its shell, and bolt it out of there.


Hartkiller’s Horn: The Beast of Talos. ‘Nuff said.

The first lightning breath took out half the party. I’m stil not sure how we survived that.

Care to elaborate?

[prototype00]

Another one from Out of the Abyss. Sneaking through Wormwrithings as 4 level 9s, being very careful.

Somewhere, though, we didn't pick up the clues, didn't freeze just in time, so, in came an angry Purple Worm (CR 15).

I clutter its general area with 8 summoned wolves, the fighters do their damage, and we manage to hold our own.

When another Purple Worm appears. Our wizard goes "ah, eff it", and casts polymorph on it. I think it rolls a 1. The fighters finish the first one, we pick up the small tortoise, put it upside down on its shell, and bolt it out of there.



Care to elaborate?

Spoilers for the module, but Hartkillers Horn has a very heavily modified and extremely under CR Remhoraz that has an electric breath weapon sufficient to take down half the party (lvl 6 characters) in the first round. (15d10 or somesuch) it then uses Strahd wall-tactics of burrowing until it’s breath recharges or it swallows whole party members and stays underground until they fail all their death saves.

And nothing really indicates that you are about to face the end of your adventuring career.

[Cespenar]

Spoilers for the module, but Hartkillers Horn has a very heavily modified and extremely under CR Remhoraz that has an electric breath weapon sufficient to take down half the party (lvl 6 characters) in the first round. (15d10 or somesuch) it then uses Strahd wall-tactics of burrowing until it’s breath recharges or it swallows whole party members and stays underground until they fail all their death saves.

And nothing really indicates that you are about to face the end of your adventuring career.

Wow, 15d10 against level 6 chars? That's pretty... well designed. :smalltongue:

[prototype00]

I look forward to the day your DM springs it on you then. It should be an easy fight for an internet tough guy such as yourself.

[Cespenar]

I look forward to the day your DM springs it on you then. It should be an easy fight for an internet tough guy such as yourself.

I assume you have disabled the smilies/scripts on the forum, because there was one at the end of my post and I was basically agreeing with you on the absurdity of the encounter.

[prototype00]

I assume you have disabled the smilies/scripts on the forum, because there was one at the end of my post and I was basically agreeing with you on the absurdity of the encounter.

Ah, my apologies then. I misjudged what you had said (I did see the smiley, but misconstrued it as mocking, the hazards of electronic communication)

[Cespenar]

Ah, my apologies then. I misjudged what you had said (I did see the smiley, but misconstrued it as mocking, the hazards of electronic communication)

No problem, sarcasm is hard to convey online in the first place.

15d10 is absolutely bonkers, though. I start thinking about TPKs even when an enemy mage drops a fireball on the group at those levels, and that's almost triple that damage.

[Laserlight]

No problem, sarcasm is hard to convey online in the first place.

But everyone knows you use blue text for sarcasm!

Our party (assassin, bearbarian, tempest cleric, and my divination wizard) tackled the hill giant queen in her hall; I believe that was 4xDeadly, not counting the fact that all the monsters were doing max damage. We stayed in an antechamber for most of the fight, so they had to come to a funnel to get to us. We survived because of that plus fireballs, life transference to keep the bearbarian up, and polymorph the cleric from single digit HP into a T Rex. Good thing we started with full spell slots.