My first session as DM is over. I think I need to up the difficulty.

[th3g0dc0mp13x]

First things first, I really need to have a Real session zero next time. I tried to start them in a tavern and it basically ended up with 2 pc's staring down their noses at each other and not moving Aasimar and tiefling (who thinks he's a demon.) I ended up retconning that nonsense and had them start escorting a caravan to a Port City (much, much smoother.).

I just had them go through four deadly encounters and there was exactly one point where the cleric went down. Everyone else got maybe 10 damage each over the course of 2 days battles.

Training solo battle while waiting for everyone. Each person faced off against 2 monodrones. They got hit a little bit at level one but nothing huge. The barbarian could probably take 6 tbh.

Larger arena fight 8 Duodrones vs. 4 pcs (basically each duodrone respawned at it's starting location after it's first death.) A few minor hits but nothing huge.

2 Blink Dogs, 1 Orc, and a 1/2 ogre: This one did have the cleric go down temporarily when both blink dogs had him flanked and took him from full to 0 in one turn. The Barbarian critted with his greatsword against the ogre and took most of it's hp in a single swing.

Small skeleton encounter with no damage taken by the pcs.

Level two and a long rest.

I originally planned for this to happen at level one but after running some tests thought that would kill them. Thanks Maxwilson and unoriginal for the help.
12 skeletons vs 6. guards with the party coming upon them from the back. 0 damage taken by any party member. 2 guards died though. (I will never ever run a combat with 22 creatures again though I still have a headache 5 hours later.)

Ogre Zombie, Minotaur Skeleton, 4 skeletons: Paladin took 12 damage and the Barbarian took 5 which he chose not to reduce further.


TL;DR: my pc's are way tougher then I thought and I need to up the challenge a little or they are going to get bored. Is level 3 too early to face a beholder zombie?

[Unoriginal]

How many PCs do you have?

[Colbymunro]

I only read the TL;DR so forgive me if this is a little blunt: Challenge Ratings are dumb and you shouldn't really worry about them. Game balance is also dumb and not really anything to worry about. Players love having a battle where they wipe the floor with your monsters, and ultimately your job as a DM is to facilitate their fun. The problem here is that you can't do this every fight or you lose all sense of stakes for the adventure. Ultimately you should be trying to create realistic and memorable encounters rather than trying to ballance the game for the fights. Inversely if the fights work in service to the story, then you never really need to worry about something being too dificult. Some monsters are just stronger than the party, and it feels all that much more like an accomplishment as a player to defeat a creature like that because you used teamwork and clever problemsolving.

Here's the patented Colby Munro method of seeing if you're party is gonna wipe or someone is gonna go down:
Firstly, you should try to assess the action economy more than their actual challenge rating. If your creatures have less total attacks or actions than the party, then its generally gonna feel like they're getting ganged up on. If your creatures have more total attacks or actions than the party, then it's gonna be more of an uphill battle.

Then see if any of the creature's attacks can one-shot any of the party members. Players hate this if it happens and they tend to feel cheated. If you're gonna down a player with one attack, you better be sure that creature is relevant to the plot and they were warned not to fight it before hand (by an NPC, not you asking "are you sure you want to do this?". Obviously sometimes a crit is gonna sneak in there every once in a while, and when that happens just be sure to announce it was a crit and the players will tend to let the dice fall where they did.

After that, you can throw pretty much any challenge rating creatures at a player and have a good sense of if it's survivable or not. Also, I hesitate to tell you to do this, but the DM screen exists for a reason, and sometimes it's alright to fudge a miss, a hit or nerf some damage (BUT PLEASE USE SPARINGLY, PLAYERS CATCH ON FAST)

[th3g0dc0mp13x]

How many PCs do you have?

4 as of now: they all have good stats as I was pretty lenient when rolling. 4d6 pick an array with seven people rolling. I'm not doing that again.

Paladin
War cleric
Hexblade
Barbarian




Thanks for the information here, I'll keep this in mind when I'm designing the next session.

Oddly enough, the blink dog fight was the one they liked the most. I think having teleporting zombie wolves that leave dead grass behind leaves an impression.

[Colbymunro]

4 as of now: they all have good stats as I was pretty lenient when rolling. 4d6 pick an array with seven people rolling. I'm not doing that again.

Paladin
War cleric
Hexblade
Barbarian



Thanks for the information here, I'll keep this in mind when I'm designing the next session.

Oddly enough, the blink dog fight was the one they liked the most. I think having teleporting zombie wolves that leave dead grass behind leaves an impression.

They've got two healers and two tanks, they'll be fine if you throw some pretty challenging monsters at them.

[opaopajr]

Make smart monsters behave smart. Make beasts behave with survival in mind (run away!). Make wimps use kiting tactics and cowardice. Make tricksters & puppeteers behave with friendship and guile. :smallcool:

Make overconfident, burly heavy hitters be this party's easy battles. But everything else will be their achilles' heel. They won't be able to coordinate AND suffer the cost of their depreciating widgets from so many fruitless battles. Throw in factions, divided loyalties, and splitting up, and no party can juggle that all... They're not supposed to; the setting world should always be too big.

Self-preservation and playing up one's strengths means NO SANE MONSTER WILL EVER CHOOSE A FAIR FIGHT -- LET ALONE DIE MINDLESSLY IN ONE. :smallamused: Neither should your players. :smallamused: Stop playing with perfect morale zombies and start playing with actual monsters who want to win, or at least live. :smallwink:

And now your world just got way more interesting. You're welcome. :smallsmile:

(Also alternative forms of XP help. If fights to the death are the sole means to power, well then don't be surprised by the players' focus.)

[Contrast]

Larger arena fight 8 Duodrones vs. 4 pcs (basically each duodrone respawned at it's starting location after it's first death.) A few minor hits but nothing huge.

I'm surprised here. And you say they were still at level 1? I would have expected this to be a very difficult fight even accounting for it being 4v4 with reinforcements.


That said, one thing to point out is that deadly typically means 'has a chance of killing someone' which doesn't mean 'is going to kill someone' - the game isn't balanced to assume PC deaths are going to be a common thing unless the DM makes it that way. If the PCs expend resources it can make a fight much less dangerous (a fireball can turn a deadly encounter into a cakewalk in a single explosion). That doesn't mean the encounter didn't have a chance of killing someone - after all the next encounter they will have one less spell slot or may be out entirely...

That said if you are worried about how resilient your PCs are you may want to have a look at some of the other rest variants - some of them allow you to space out your encounters a bit more time wise without the PCs always having full HP and spell slots.

[Beelzebubba]

Start mixing it up occasionally with monsters that inflict status conditions.

Once a couple of them start throwing their dice with disadvantage, or a couple of them are taken out of action for a round due to being confused or stunned, that really ups the feeling of danger, even if the actual danger isn't that much more.

[Lunali]

There are basically two ways I've seen adventuring days go. The first is the one suggested by the rules, 6-7 relatively easy fights to use up resources with 1-2 fairly difficult ones to provide actual danger. The second is 1-2 very difficult fights, using milestone or non-combat xp to keep leveling at a decent rate. The main deciding factor in which to use is usually time, games that last most of the day usually use the former while games with shorter sessions typically end up as the latter.

[Malifice]

4 as of now: they all have good stats as I was pretty lenient when rolling. 4d6 pick an array with seven people rolling. I'm not doing that again.

Paladin
War cleric
Hexblade
Barbarian



Thanks for the information here, I'll keep this in mind when I'm designing the next session.

Oddly enough, the blink dog fight was the one they liked the most. I think having teleporting zombie wolves that leave dead grass behind leaves an impression.

How many encounters are they getting between long rests?

And how many short rests between long rests?

[Zippdementia]

Really the only way to know how strong your party is is to throw very difficult combats at them. Try something you are sure will probably wipe the floor with them. But don’t be afraid to tweak it on the go if the fight really does get too hard: make the enemy use dumb tactics, or get cocky and spend a turn taunting. Have it run away at half health and become a reoccuring villain/monster. Lots of ways to make a tough fight easier on the fly and it tells you A LOT about what your party should be facing for optimal challenge!

[Aett_Thorn]

How many encounters are they getting between long rests?

And how many short rests between long rests?

At levels 1-2, this shouldn’t really be too big of a deal. I do have to wonder how this party is taking such little damage from some of these enemies, though. What kind of equipment do they have at level 1 where an Ogre Zombie isn’t much of a threat?

[Malifice]

At levels 1-2, this shouldn’t really be too big of a deal. I do have to wonder how this party is taking such little damage from some of these enemies, though. What kind of equipment do they have at level 1 where an Ogre Zombie isn’t much of a threat?

It is a little bit.

There needs to be enough so the Barbarian isnt auto-raging, and the cleric is holding back on slot expenditure.

But I do tend to agree. I think the problem lies with the DM most likely.

Or maybe just bad rolls from the DM.

[Unoriginal]

Training solo battle while waiting for everyone. Each person faced off against 2 monodrones. They got hit a little bit at level one but nothing huge. The barbarian could probably take 6 tbh.

Monodrone: CR 1/8, 25 XPs

2 Monodrones vs 1 PC: (25*2)*1.5 = 75.

It's not a Deadly encounter, it's a Hard encounter.



Larger arena fight 8 Duodrones vs. 4 pcs (basically each duodrone respawned at it's starting location after it's first death.) A few minor hits but nothing huge.

Do you mean they fought 4 duodrones, twice, or that they fought 8 duodrones twice?

In either case:

Duodrone: CR 1/4, 50 XPs

4 duodrones vs 4 PCs: (50*4)*2 = 400, divided by 4 because 4 PCs: 100 per PC.

This one is just Deadly.

If they expended ressources, it'd be logical they only got hurt a bit.



2 Blink Dogs, 1 Orc, and a 1/2 ogre


Half-Ogre: CR 1, 200 XP

1 Orc: CR 1/2, 100 XP

Blink Dog: CR 1/4, 50 XP

Fight: (200+100+(50*2))*2 = 800, divided by 4: 200 per players.

This one is deadly, the Half-Ogre getting critted was lucky, but the cleric going down show that the difficulty level matched the facts. Things would probably have been very different without that crit.



I will never ever run a combat with 22 creatures again though I still have a headache 5 hours later.

Sorry about that.



Ogre Zombie, Minotaur Skeleton, 4 skeletons: Paladin took 12 damage and the Barbarian took 5 which he chose not to reduce further.

450+450 + 200 = 1100, divided per 4 = 275.

This one is just above deadly for lvl 2 characters. A bit surprised they didn't get hurt more. Did the enemies keep missing attacks?

Just to know, how much ressources do they use per fight?

Funnily enough, this party of 4 might be advantaged by a few strong encounters per day rather than more weaker encounters per day.

Basically all of them have powers that are really useful if you can unleash them on a couple encounters and then rest.


4 as of now: they all have good stats as I was pretty lenient when rolling. 4d6 pick an array with seven people rolling.

What do you mean, 4d6 pick an array?

You let them keepall the 4 dice's result?


Challenge Ratings are dumb

Challenge Ratings are not dumb if you use them the way they're intended to be used.

[Lunali]

What do you mean, 4d6 pick an array?

You let them keepall the 4 dice's result?

That generally means each person does 4d6 drop the lowest as normal, but after they're all rolled, anyone can use any of the sets of numbers rolled

[Fnissalot]

They sound like 4 close combat characters? How many turns have the fights lasted?

If they charge up and win quickly you can start the fight further away so they need to close the distance during the first turns and just cannot start wailing away. Throw ranged enemies at them and use the environment against them. For example, place terrain between them so they cannot run straight up, create choke points of bridges and walls or place the enemy javelin throwers at cliffs above your PCs.

If the fights are longer and it mostly is an issue of not getting good enough attack rolls, you can select enemies with higher AC and higher to hit bonus.

If that doesn't work, throw in a spellcaster in the mix with one or two casts of spells like sleep, Tasha's hideous laughter(not on the cleric), bless or similar. Magical buffs and cheesy crowd control can easily turn the tides early on. Sleep is devastating early on since it goes of based on HP. Hideous laughter forces a character to at least lose 1 turn. Heat metal is stupidly good at killing characters in armor.

That said, it sounds like that they had a much easier time that they should have had.

[ad_hoc]

There are basically two ways I've seen adventuring days go. The first is the one suggested by the rules, 6-7 relatively easy fights to use up resources with 1-2 fairly difficult ones to provide actual danger. The second is 1-2 very difficult fights, using milestone or non-combat xp to keep leveling at a decent rate. The main deciding factor in which to use is usually time, games that last most of the day usually use the former while games with shorter sessions typically end up as the latter.

Adventuring day is not the same as out of game day. Short sessions can still result in actual adventuring days, they just might take 3 sessions.

[Lunali]

Adventuring day is not the same as out of game day. Short sessions can still result in actual adventuring days, they just might take 3 sessions.

True, it just doesn't seem to work out that way in my experience.

[th3g0dc0mp13x]

(Also alternative forms of XP help. If fights to the death are the sole means to power, well then don't be surprised by the players' focus.) I'm playing this set of undead as under direct control so the further away from the source of the power the less intelligently they fight. As they get closer ambushes and more tactics will happen.



That said, one thing to point out is that deadly typically means 'has a chance of killing someone' which doesn't mean 'is going to kill someone' - the game isn't balanced to assume PC deaths are going to be a common thing unless the DM makes it that way. If the PCs expend resources it can make a fight much less dangerous (a fireball can turn a deadly encounter into a cakewalk in a single explosion). That doesn't mean the encounter didn't have a chance of killing someone - after all the next encounter they will have one less spell slot or may be out entirely...

That said if you are worried about how resilient your PCs are you may want to have a look at some of the other rest variants - some of them allow you to space out your encounters a bit more time wise without the PCs always having full HP and spell slots.

I don't really want to add to much mechanical shenanigans that they have to worry about with regard to rests as they are still figuring out what is going on. If I keep having this issue 2-3 sessions down the road I'll keep this in mind.


Start mixing it up occasionally with monsters that inflict status conditions.

Once a couple of them start throwing their dice with disadvantage, or a couple of them are taken out of action for a round due to being confused or stunned, that really ups the feeling of danger, even if the actual danger isn't that much more. I've got Ghouls planned for next week so I think the paralysis will be a switch. I meant to throw it in this week but spaced it.


There are basically two ways I've seen adventuring days go. The first is the one suggested by the rules, 6-7 relatively easy fights to use up resources with 1-2 fairly difficult ones to provide actual danger. The second is 1-2 very difficult fights, using milestone or non-combat xp to keep leveling at a decent rate. The main deciding factor in which to use is usually time, games that last most of the day usually use the former while games with shorter sessions typically end up as the latter. I'm trying xp for right now as my other games as a player used milestone and I don't really like it much. I'm planning on switching between the two types of fights. The next adventuring day is "hopefully" going to be them going to hunt what's causing the undead to attack this town. So I'm going to have them run into 5-6 battles with undead and maybe have some random forest encounters.


Really the only way to know how strong your party is is to throw very difficult combats at them. Try something you are sure will probably wipe the floor with them. But don’t be afraid to tweak it on the go if the fight really does get too hard: make the enemy use dumb tactics, or get cocky and spend a turn taunting. Have it run away at half health and become a reoccuring villain/monster. Lots of ways to make a tough fight easier on the fly and it tells you A LOT about what your party should be facing for optimal challenge! That is what I was doing with the ogre zombie and minotaur skeleton. Originally that fight was supposed to be the minotaur with some small backup. But after they ripped through the 12 skeletons without issue I decided to up the ante.


At levels 1-2, this shouldn’t really be too big of a deal. I do have to wonder how this party is taking such little damage from some of these enemies, though. What kind of equipment do they have at level 1 where an Ogre Zombie isn’t much of a threat?
PHB Starting equipment

Chain mail and shield for the cleric
Chain mail and a Maul for the Pally
18 con 16 dex for the Barbarian no shield so far.
Leather armor and a whip for the Hexblade (He really wanted a whip so I dropped his second weapon for this one.)


Monodrone: CR 1/8, 25 XPs

2 Monodrones vs 1 PC: (25*2)*1.5 = 75.

It's not a Deadly encounter, it's a Hard encounter.

KFC shows this at 100 xp, Are you forgetting to step the multiplier to the next level for a smaller party?


Do you mean they fought 4 duodrones, twice, or that they fought 8 duodrones twice?

In either case: Duodrone: CR 1/4, 50 XPs

4 duodrones vs 4 PCs: (50*4)*2 = 400, divided by 4 because 4 PCs: 100 per PC.

This one is just Deadly.

If they expended ressources, it'd be logical they only got hurt a bit.

They started off with 4 enemies and when one was defeated it reappeared at initiative count 20. I wasn't sure the proper way to calculate this tbh because it's kind of waves but at no point wasn't there an enemy on the field.




Half-Ogre: CR 1, 200 XP

1 Orc: CR 1/2, 100 XP

Blink Dog: CR 1/4, 50 XP

Fight: (200+100+(50*2))*2 = 800, divided by 4: 200 per players.

This one is deadly, the Half-Ogre getting critted was lucky, but the cleric going down show that the difficulty level matched the facts. Things would probably have been very different without that crit.

I played this one smarter then I played the others, as the blink dogs were supposed to retain some of their fey intelligence. Made it a lot tought when the dogs blinked to the support and ripped him up.




450+450 + 200 = 1100, divided per 4 = 275.

This one is just above deadly for lvl 2 characters. A bit surprised they didn't get hurt more. Did the enemies keep missing attacks?

Yes, The ogre hit on the first strike and then missed the next three. The minotaur tried to gore the cleric but missed and then got ganged up on and finished off by a smite.



Just to know, how much resources do they use per fight?

It's weird, in the first fight there was a single bless spell. In the big fight they dropped a rage, 2 cleric spells, and 2 divine smites. So they did unload nearly everything, except the hexblade he didn't use any.



Funnily enough, this party of 4 might be advantaged by a few strong encounters per day rather than more weaker encounters per day.

Basically all of them have powers that are really useful if you can unleash them on a couple encounters and then rest.

I'm going to try for 2 fights per short rest on the next adventuring day.




What do you mean, 4d6 pick an array?

You let them keepall the 4 dice's result?


What Lunali said.


They sound like 4 close combat characters? How many turns have the fights lasted?

If they charge up and win quickly you can start the fight further away so they need to close the distance during the first turns and just cannot start wailing away. Throw ranged enemies at them and use the environment against them. For example, place terrain between them so they cannot run straight up, create choke points of bridges and walls or place the enemy javelin throwers at cliffs above your PCs.

If the fights are longer and it mostly is an issue of not getting good enough attack rolls, you can select enemies with higher AC and higher to hit bonus.

If that doesn't work, throw in a spellcaster in the mix with one or two casts of spells like sleep, Tasha's hideous laughter(not on the cleric), bless or similar. Magical buffs and cheesy crowd control can easily turn the tides early on. Sleep is devastating early on since it goes of based on HP. Hideous laughter forces a character to at least lose 1 turn. Heat metal is stupidly good at killing characters in armor.

That said, it sounds like that they had a much easier time that they should have had.

Depended heavily on the fight, The skeleton/guard fight took three rounds. The ogre/Minotaur took 4 thanks to undead resilience. The duodrone fight took 9-10 as everyone kept missing.


Adventuring day is not the same as out of game day. Short sessions can still result in actual adventuring days, they just might take 3 sessions.

DnD is replacing our normal Risk night so we're playing for 6-8 hours generally. Between breaks, tech issues and general antics we got about 4 hours of actual playtime.

[NaughtyTiger]

This doesn't make sense.

at level 1
a half ogre does 14 on a hit. that should one-shot anyone except the barbarian.

at level 2,
ogre zombie does 13 on a hit. that should two-shot anyone . (and they have 85 hit points, it should take several rounds to drop one)
minotaur skeleton does 26 on a hit (2d12+2d8+4). that should two -shot anyone. (and they have 67 hit points, it should take several rounds to drop one)
4 players should only be able to do about 150 points of damage in 4 rounds (if everything hits).
the combined hp is over 200.

all are +6 to hit, so you only need a 10 to hit them



in the future, they did all roll high on their stats, so you need to treat them as 1 level higher.

[ad_hoc]

DnD is replacing our normal Risk night so we're playing for 6-8 hours generally. Between breaks, tech issues and general antics we got about 4 hours of actual playtime.

You seem to have missed the point here.

The length of the session itself doesn't have an impact on the time in the game. An adventuring day in the game is the same regardless of whether the group plays for 1 hour or 10 hours at a time.

[Unoriginal]

You seem to have missed the point here.

The length of the session itself doesn't have an impact on the time in the game. An adventuring day in the game is the same regardless of whether the group plays for 1 hour or 10 hours at a time.

Indeed. And an adventure day's length is variable depending on what happens during those sessions.

You can spend 10 sessions of one hour each on the same adventuring day, you can spend three hours with one session and three separate adventuring days.

[Malifice]

OP - Before you increase difficulty, increase the number of encounters for the adventuring day.

To frame your adventure, put the PCs on a 'doom clock' (they must rescue a NPC by midnight, or stop the ritual by the same time, or recover the macguffin by time X or whatever). Set conditions for failure (if they fail, bad thing Y happens... or if they succeed, they get reward Z)

Within that time-frame, set a series of 6 or so encounters of medium-hard difficulty (maybe one easy encounter, and maybe one encounter that is just into 'deadly').

Ensure the PCs have enough time for 2 short rests - maybe three if they really hurry before the clock strikes midnight.

Trust me, if you ramp up encounter difficulty, you'll invalidate half the classes in the game (fighters, monks, warlocks and others) and you'll also turn your game into boring rocket tag. Eventually you'll wind up with a TPK.

Police your adventuring day. The challenge should be to defeat a series of encounters, not a single encounter. Spell slots and resources are not designed to last for only the one encounter, but over a series of them during the same adventuring day.