Encounter difficulty?

[Citadel97501]

Hello all,
I am trying to make sure I got this right. I recently ran a quick little tactical scenario for a single player and I used the encounter chart in the DM. Did I make an error as she seemed to breeze right through it as a level 3 Bladesinger Wizard (Great stats on her part). I set it up as 2 encounters followed by a mini-boss after a short rest?

3 Goblins: 300 exp
3 Acolytes: 300 exp
1 Quasit (gave 10 extra hit points): 200+ exp

[Theron_the_slim]

Well, two things come to mind.

First, especially at lower levels, higher rolled stats make some pretty big differences. Potentially multiple ASI, that´s nothing to be scoffed at ... there is a reason fighters like to have the most of those.

But more important, not all Monsters are created equal. Some are niche, some are just worse in general, compared to monsters of similar CR.

You actually picked some particular weak ones.
Acolytes are pure support minions. They have pretty cool spells to support a low level group of monsters (or even players), but without that. I mean, one shatter is probably enough to kill the whole encounter.
How weak quasits are is also probably a meme at this point. They are bad imps with a fear effect that only is useful in group fights (as it doesn´t really warrant the action in a 1 on 1 combat)

Goblins are a different kind of niche. They actually are pretty awesome monsters and a good way to challenge a low level group, but you should consider a question.
Did you play them like goblins? Were they split up, with cover to hide? Did they got their use of their bonus action hide, requiring the character to make his perception checks every time they beat her passive perception.

Not all monsters are brutes that use their full potential by just charge in and hit things.
They should be playing into their strengths, especially with 5e being as much in the favour of the players as it most of the time is^^

[Contrast]

Is there just a single PC? The challenge rating system is wonky at best but breaks down more as you vary from its expectations. You're also always going to have a problem with 1 PC whereby you have to play with kid gloves as if anything goes wrong they're just dead. I'd suggest giving her companions. If you don't want NPCs an automaton/animal companion with the stats of a fighter or something may help.

In terms of balance - remember encounters are meant to drain resources and there are resources other than HP. I'm betting your wizard spent spell slots to breeze through those encounters. A hard encounter is described as one with a slim chance of killing someone. Thinking about your 3 goblins. With +6 stealth they have a decent chance of pulling off an ambush giving them a surprise round.

So thats maybe three attacks with advantage if they were hiding, plus potentially more if they can rehide and depending how the initiative rolls went. Lets say you lose initiative so they get a full six attacks. Your AC is 15 with mage armour giving them ~50% chance to hit but some will be made with adv so lets approx 2/3rds (4/6) and say one gets a crit. So thats 5d6+8 damage (25.5). Your average 3rd level wizard has 19HP meaning they just died.

Two flubbed rolls, perception and initiative and you're dead. Admittedly some of the numbers above may be off if you say they rolled well on stats.

An alternative scenario - wizard spots them/they aren't hiding and wins initiative. Casts Thunderwave catching all of them for 2d8 (9) damage, instantly killing all of them. I assume this is more along the lines of what happened to you. Combats with single characters are going to be swingy and you should be grateful it swung this way rather than above.

[Citadel97501]

Is there just a single PC? The challenge rating system is wonky at best but breaks down more as you vary from its expectations. You're also always going to have a problem with 1 PC whereby you have to play with kid gloves as if anything goes wrong they're just dead. I'd suggest giving her companions. If you don't want NPCs an automaton/animal companion with the stats of a fighter or something may help.

In terms of balance - remember encounters are meant to drain resources and there are resources other than HP. I'm betting your wizard spent spell slots to breeze through those encounters. A hard encounter is described as one with a slim chance of killing someone. Thinking about your 3 goblins. With +6 stealth they have a decent chance of pulling off an ambush giving them a surprise round.

So thats maybe three attacks with advantage if they were hiding, plus potentially more if they can rehide and depending how the initiative rolls went. Lets say you lose initiative so they get a full six attacks. Your AC is 15 with mage armour giving them ~50% chance to hit but some will be made with adv so lets approx 2/3rds (4/6) and say one gets a crit. So thats 5d6+8 damage (25.5). Your average 3rd level wizard has 19HP meaning they just died.

Two flubbed rolls, perception and initiative and you're dead. Admittedly some of the numbers above may be off if you say they rolled well on stats.

An alternative scenario - wizard spots them/they aren't hiding and wins initiative. Casts Thunderwave catching all of them for 2d8 (9) damage, instantly killing all of them. I assume this is more along the lines of what happened to you. Combats with single characters are going to be swingy and you should be grateful it swung this way rather than above.

Yes, that is exactly what happened to the acolytes both she and they botched a perception roll, but she won initiative and just spanked them with a Thunderwave. The Goblins got caught by her stealthing up and then casting sleep followed by GFB stabbing...auto-crit nasty on squishies...The Quasit tried to hit her with scare and then proceeded to be invisible while dropping traps and other irritating crap on her, before she once again Thunderwaved his poor but off of perception rolls to get a rough direction of where he was.

However, this was mainly to teach a player who hasn't played much and never a wizard how to use their spells effectively.

[Man_Over_Game]

I mean, "I cast Thunderwave 2-3 times" isn't exactly strategy.

The main concern of a full caster is knowing when to spend and when to conserve. Big fights aren't usually a problem, the problem comes up when the first room of a dungeon is tough, and you still have the rest of the dungeon to go.

If a Wizard is allowed to blow everything into a single fight, especially at low levels, then it'll almost always be a breeze for them.

For another challenge, I'd recommend 3 fights in succession, with varying challenges. The first is an encounter of about 2 hiding goblins using ranged attacks, and a single hobgoblin. The second is a single difficult enemy (A gladiator?). The third is 3 melee goblins and two acolytes. Allow them to short rest between each fight.

The bladesinger has a special resource that most wizards don't have, which is a ludicrously high AC and sustained damage. The fact that they didn't need to rely on those features to defeat the challenge indicates that it was probably too easy.

Also, due to the fact that AoE attacks are generally higher level than single target ones, putting a "swarm" battle at the end will generally be more difficult, since players will have fewer higher level spell slots to spend to wipe them out. Swarms are easy if you can afford to kill them quickly (like in your example), but they are excruciating in any other circumstance.