Advice on how to challenge a big, low level party, quickly

[Dragonkingofth]

Had a D&D game today, I DM secrets of sokol keep the group was 8 low level players, most level 1 or two.

The issue is that the investigation to get to the keep chewed up most of our time, so by the time we got to the fighting part of the module, we were running out of it.

The keep fighting part has three elements, two animate armors, maybe two ghouls and then a fight with two zombies, two skeletons and then the ghouls, in roughly that order.

The problem came when I ran that first fight. I knew two armors would be steam rollered by an 8 strong party of PC's, so I bumped it out six and it worked out about as well as I thought: the party chewed through them with no losses, some hit points down and the need to expend some spell slots so to heal up, hell they could have taken a short rest since the zombies were not going to go anywhere so all was fair. . .but it took an hour with 8 people making attack rolls, and six armors doing it in return. That was the only fight we did and so the black fists ended up trapped by the armors which patrolled around.

So what should the solution have been to both give a challenge, and make it fast. More enemy's means, it takes longer for the DM's turn and longer of players to ID and pick a target, but bigger enemy's tend to hit harder, and an ogre can in theory one shot a level one fighter just by rolling a six or higher on it's damage, so a low level party can lose members rapidly, and start losing faster be overwhelmed.

The other option of course is just ignore it: run only the boss fight and glamor it up, everything is either no challenge or boss fight. In the case of the keep pile on the undead, make it a proper scrap and, ignore the armors. . . but that sits wrong with me on some level, and the need to manage resources is a challenge all to it self that gets ignored if I did that.

So what is the option to both challenge a low level big party in a time efficient way?

[Vingelot]

If you really want to challenge them and make it real quick, an ancient dragon should do just fine.

On a more serious notes, you could contract fights together, (i.e. the zombies heard the fighting and come to investigate after two rounds). Combining fights of course increases their difficulty quite a lot, and from your description the party could handle that. So that would be a real challenge, and at the same time save some time because you only have one encounter instead of two. In my experience, combat starts slow (everyone needs to think about who to target, what strategy to use etc.) and then gets increasingly faster (people "do their thing", others die off, etc.).

[Neknoh]

First of all: start rolling hit dice and damage dice at the same time, that is going to cut down a lot on the time spent fighting, if you don't hit, ignore the damage dice, if you do not, the damage is right there.

Second: let the players track the damage they do, they're doing it anyhow. Let them take the damage down whilst you just keep a list of monster hit points, this gives them something to do when it's not their turn and keeps them engaged.

Third: you could increase the hit points of the monsters by 50% and maybe even double it so that the players don't blow through them with their superior action economy, don't add too many monsters in this case, just up the HP of all monsters by 50% or more.

Lastly: you could give all monsters +1 to hit and/or damage, this is not huge but does make them a bit more of a threat, however, don't swarm the players with monsters that have this bonus.

This way, an encounter can have six zombies with 50% extra hitpoints and +1 to hit for instance, with players rolling damage and hit dice at the same time and keeping track of how much damage they've done. All you have to do is check the HP against the total damage of the monsters.

If monsters have resistance, you keep track of the monster damage as well.

[MrStabby]

Give animate armour something like a single use of a shield spell each. It should slow the party down for a turn. No new die rolls just a simple binary effect.

Also an ambushes are good for speeding encounters. Surprised condition on a few PCs will slow things down just enough to let the enemies get a couple more hits in. One extra roll there for a pretty big effect.

If you want to be harsh add a burning hands ability to one enemy. 3d6 damage at level 1 or 2 is not to be sniffed at. It isn't likely to take anyone down by itself if it is focused on hitting front liners (who should have 14+ HP). It is pretty democratic in that it hurts the party more than an individual.

[Galactkaktus]

I whould split the party in two groups of 4. Should be a more enjoyabel experience.

[Malifice]

So what is the option to both challenge a low level big party in a time efficient way?

Put the players on the clock. When a players turn comes up, he has 3-5 seconds to declare to you what he does, or his PC takes the Dodge action and his turn ends (his character is ducking and weaving and avoiding threats, unsure about what to do).

You just turn to that player and say:

DM: OK [Steve] Its your turn, what do you do? (start slowly counting to 3).

How long are they getting at the moment?

[opaopajr]

This requires coordination and finesse, but the fastest way to challenge a large low level party is to split them up with competing, yet nearly simultaneous goals. You've probably seen variants in video games where a portion of the party needs to flip a switch, while another needs to delay a larger (usually unfightable) force, and a third needs to scout and coordinate the two without getting caught. You can mix any of the "3 Columns" of combat, explore, & social as you like. Also focus on XP from the encounter, with maybe small bonuses from the other columns if you think your table can handle it.

It's an advanced technique, but it helps diffuse concentrated focus fire into a dynamic encounter where cooperation matters more. It tends to flush out problem players (or their PCs) fast, too. This becomes important for future campaign challenges.