Concerning Overpowered Players and Encounters

[Waifu]

So I am DMing a semi-fresh campaign (this one builds off my previous campaign-or maybe my last one builds off this one? It is a prequel after all), and I have one fear.
Despite putting my players through the funnel last campaign, they still managed to be much, much more powerful than I thought they would. That campaign drastically slowed down since I hesitated to throw encounters at them-I wanted it to be a challenge, but they would always berate me whenever their characters felt threatened. Eventually, I found a temporary fix in throwing a murder mystery at them, but it still went downhill from there.
This campaign is still in the funnel stage (despite power-gaming, they do seem to enjoy that part), and I do not want a repeat of the last campaign. I'm thinking about making it much more intrigue-based, but I know I will have to throw combat at them to spice things up.
So, how does one make a challenging encounter without ramping up the enemies' power level or by making enemies who semi-counter the players? I've entertained the idea of traps and environmental dangers, but surely there must be more things I can do...?

[Sigreid]

Numbers of enemies. There's an old saying that quantity has a quality all its own. For an intrigue campaign, after doing their due dillagence on the party, the thieves guild, rival noble, secret society, whatever arranges to have a group attack them. A mix of ranged and melee with the melee grouped next to the PCs to minimize AoE potential and the ranged spread out. Possibly shooting from multiple 2nd and 3rd story windows. Control spells also work just as well on the party as they do on the mobs.

[LudicSavant]

Drop the expectation that enemies of equal CR are a challenge for players. Monster difficulty is dialed way down in 5e (which probably contributes in part to the illusion that it's hard to make a weak character build), and 8 Medium-Hard (e.g. a bit above CR) encounters are expected to be a merely average day's challenge for a merely average set of players with no magic items at all. If you want to have fewer encounters per Long Rest you shouldn't be afraid to throw "Deadly" encounters at the party.

[Pex]

Whatever you do be careful not to overcompensate to making a TPK fight when the players do nothing wrong for the combat, i. e. you just made it too hard.

[Sigreid]

Whatever you do be careful not to overcompensate to making a TPK fight when the players do nothing wrong for the combat, i. e. you just made it too hard.

Sometimes parties need to retreat. You can go harder while you calibrate if you make sure that is an option.

[Armored Walrus]

they would always berate me whenever their characters felt threatened. Eventually, I found a temporary fix in throwing a murder mystery at them, but it still went downhill from there.

This doesn't sound like an encounter design question. Sounds to me like you and the players have different ideas of what kind of game you want to play.

That being said, anything Hard or lower based on encounter math (after 2nd level) has a very low chance of threatening the average party with any deaths, unless the players are just bad at combat.

Edit: Just realized your question is how to make a challenging encounter, without actually threatening the characters. As you said, terrain and environmental effects are one way. Adding ways to "fail" the encounter other than character death is another way. Maybe the challenge isn't to defeat the Medium encounter, but to defeat it before they can get away with the McGuffin. Maybe the challenge isn't to destroy the dragon, but to distract it long enough that it doesn't notice one party member stealing its egg. etc.

[CTurbo]

Don't let them have a lot of long rests. I've seen new DMs make that mistake a lot. If they're going into every encounter fully rested, they are going to seem OP.

[Davrix]

The best thing to do is make fights in stages / phases.

Make a cheat sheet that has the characters total AC / HP / Perception skill / Sv's and Avg dmg

Make a medium encounter via the DMG rules then make a easy encounter and another medium encounter. You toss the first medium encounter in and then have the next 2 as back up units / re-enforcement at times. Or simply plan on having stages to the encounter. Nothing makes the party crap their pants more then 2 assassins suddenly appearing and backstabbing the casters.

This is why its good to know the Party total HP. You can either roll or have surprise attacks and just pretend to roll and toss out a number. Its way easier to avoid TPK if you can pull back on attacks sometimes. Not saying you should all the time. The dice gods will kill people from time to time. But I usually reserve that for high stakes fight. Not the goblin ambush on the side of the road.

[Unoriginal]

So I am DMing a semi-fresh campaign (this one builds off my previous campaign-or maybe my last one builds off this one? It is a prequel after all), and I have one fear.
Despite putting my players through the funnel last campaign, they still managed to be much, much more powerful than I thought they would. That campaign drastically slowed down since I hesitated to throw encounters at them-I wanted it to be a challenge, but they would always berate me whenever their characters felt threatened. Eventually, I found a temporary fix in throwing a murder mystery at them, but it still went downhill from there.
This campaign is still in the funnel stage (despite power-gaming, they do seem to enjoy that part), and I do not want a repeat of the last campaign. I'm thinking about making it much more intrigue-based, but I know I will have to throw combat at them to spice things up.
So, how does one make a challenging encounter without ramping up the enemies' power level or by making enemies who semi-counter the players? I've entertained the idea of traps and environmental dangers, but surely there must be more things I can do...?

First, don't let your players berate you when their characters are threatening. If they tell you it's hard, say "good".

Second, as mentioned by others, adding more enemies augment the difficulty. In 5e, number is a crucial advantage.

Third, ressource management is the key. Characters are strong when they're pristine and with all their abilities to spend. After several encounters they had to spend spells and ki points and HDs and the like? Not so much.

[Malifice]

So I am DMing a semi-fresh campaign (this one builds off my previous campaign-or maybe my last one builds off this one? It is a prequel after all), and I have one fear.
Despite putting my players through the funnel last campaign, they still managed to be much, much more powerful than I thought they would. That campaign drastically slowed down since I hesitated to throw encounters at them-I wanted it to be a challenge, but they would always berate me whenever their characters felt threatened. Eventually, I found a temporary fix in throwing a murder mystery at them, but it still went downhill from there.
This campaign is still in the funnel stage (despite power-gaming, they do seem to enjoy that part), and I do not want a repeat of the last campaign. I'm thinking about making it much more intrigue-based, but I know I will have to throw combat at them to spice things up.
So, how does one make a challenging encounter without ramping up the enemies' power level or by making enemies who semi-counter the players? I've entertained the idea of traps and environmental dangers, but surely there must be more things I can do...?

You're making the classic mistake in 5e. You are ramping up encounter difficulty in order to challenge players.

Instead of increasing difficulty, throw more encounters at them in between long rests.

[Pex]

Sometimes parties need to retreat. You can go harder while you calibrate if you make sure that is an option.

Of course. Sometimes a threat is on purpose overwhelming the party is not supposed to fight it and hopefully the players pick up on that. Other times bad player planning, tactics, or luck make a combat they could have won into a loss and should get out of there.

[Malifice]

Drop the expectation that enemies of equal CR are a challenge for players.

An even better idea as its a third edition rule and not contained in fifth.

Fifth edition uses an XP budget; it doesn't use CR.

CR only exists as a rough guideline. A solo CR X monster against 4-5 X level player characters is generally only an easy or medium encounter. The expectation is the player characters will steamroll it with little to no resource expenditure. If those same player characters have magic items, they will certainly steamroll it with little to no resource expenditure.

Generally for a solo encounter to be hard it is challenge rating must be 2 or 3 points higher than the player characters average level. It should also be a legendary monster with multiple actions.

[BillyBobShorton]

Challenge them by doing things they haven't seen. Sit down and make yourself a list of things that make great movie/book/TV encounters even better...

...are the hero and villain just slugging it out in an empty ballpark, or are they in a building during an earthquake as ceilings collapse and hazardous furniture is sliding around as neutral threats to both?

I'm not going to type 100 suggestions here or a system how to work them but outside forces almost ALWAYS make encounters interesting, unpredictible, challenging, and memorable.

Spewing Lava, bad weather, random floor tiles opening up, insect swarms, waves of enemies to drain resources, terrain, buildings, unreachable enemies high above, damsel hanging over spikes as her rope slowly burns, etc.

If that's not exactly what you meant, then forget the stupid CR system exists, read through the MM, study some Volo's, get the Tome of Beasts, and find some monsters that seem interesting, and design an encounter around them that doesn't become a curb stomp after 2 rounds.

[Unoriginal]

Players will always be under-challenged as long as the DM let themselves be berated for threatening the PCs.

[Coec]

Of course. Sometimes a threat is on purpose overwhelming the party is not supposed to fight it and hopefully the players pick up on that. Other times bad player planning, tactics, or luck make a combat they could have won into a loss and should get out of there.

And sometimes the players go head long into combat against a foe that they shouldn't fight and refuse to retreat. It's not your fault.

Like the example of distracting the dragon long enough for a player to steal an egg. If the egg is stolen but the players continue to fight the dragon and eventually die, that's on them. And if they argue about their character deaths, then remind them that they chose to continue the fight.

[Waifu]

Thank you for all the help! If I use these suggestions, then I think my encounters will be a lot more challenging. One thing I am worried about is that my players don't exactly know when to fight and when to run unless if I explicitly tell them (in the last campaign we did, they were level three, challenging a group of guards who had Force Cage. Needless to say it did not end well for them).
Since we are in a club, I'm not the only one who DMs, and DMPCs are fairly common. I was thinking that, maybe at some point in time, my DMPC will betray them (they'll be a character of the party's same level, so it shouldn't be that bad)

[Pex]

And sometimes the players go head long into combat against a foe that they shouldn't fight and refuse to retreat. It's not your fault.

Like the example of distracting the dragon long enough for a player to steal an egg. If the egg is stolen but the players continue to fight the dragon and eventually die, that's on them. And if they argue about their character deaths, then remind them that they chose to continue the fight.

I know that feeling. Just yesterday the party was to enter a mindflayer city to recover stolen dragon eggs. We had an army of githyanki helping us as a distraction with our own small army of undead in a bag of holding to use when we needed it. Long story. We were supposed to find the eggs and teleport out. We found the eggs and used the undead army against the guardians, which killed the mooks as the mind flayers plane shifted to escape. We grabbed the eggs but instead of teleporting away some party members wanted to use the undead to fight the Elder Brain. We're 6-9th level with skeleton warriors and wights. The Elder Brain would be CR 20 as the DM told us afterwards. I had to nag the players to get out of there already.

When players have stupid egos of invincibility they're their own worst enemy.

[WereRabbitz]

Some ideas to help:

1. Quantity - I once stuck 4 level 8 characters who were being too successful in a large puzzle room with 10 entrances.. 8 of which a kobold would come out of every round. They could easily mow these guys down, but were forced to expend their abilities slowly draining them to keep from being overran by these low CR creatures. All the while the only way to get out was to solve a mechanical puzzle while facing the onslight.

2. Wage a political war where they have to perform espionage to help over throw another group.

3. Wars... I once stuck my adventurers in a special missions team during a city assault giving them a list of objectives to complete in a small time frame. This included sneaking cannons through the marsh to open a hole in the wall (while a fake assault came from a different direction) (cannon damage is fun to roll btw...) and then taking a tunnel to sneak into the keep and taking it from the inside while being shot at by friendly's from outside.

4. Steal their stuff.... Rob them, Enchant them, Imprison them... have them be the target of a high level bounty hunter who takes their stuff and then when the mistake is realized thery are turned loose and have to break back in with what ever gear they can find to secure their loot back.

5. Over Enchanted Maze:... Put them in a dungeon where there characters go through a mystical portal and come out a random race/class on the other side (temporarily...) or a gem that does a freaky friday effect forcing them to switch bodies...

6. They don't like encounters?? Give them TRAPS!! I personally love dungeons that have traps that activate but also activate another trap ( like releasing a huge boulder) that may take 5 or 10 mins to catch up to them. Nothing like picking a lock before a 2 ton boulder crushes you.

7. Make a one off session and let the one that gives you the hardest time host it so you can play while they get some perspective.

8. Capture and Hold Mission... Send them with a few NPC's to fortify a road or building and they have to hold it Alamo style until sundown, then make their escape.


hope these help