Certified beholder moment

@@alizard7617 nailed it bud!

Or they are just dumb. Its a 15ft cone. Also at level 3 if 22 damages insta kills you your hp has to be 11 or lower.

it's called challange rating, because the person grading the monsters has to be mentally challanged to screw up this bad

@@DiploRaptor or it a party of 6 wizard with less than 20 Hp

Screw challenge rating, real pro gamers choose enemies based off of how many languages they can speak

i hate chalenge rating because one core spawn crawler can wipe an entire party of level two players in two turns by rolling passibly well, its CR1 and was meant to be fodder. i dont use CR anymore....

@@dnd402 rule number one of using the tools is to never link the tools.

return to monke, and by that i mean OSR where creatures are deadly but also go down quickly, so strategy before a fight and picking your fights is imperative. also fleeing, lots and lots of fleeing.

@@berengeval05 nah, pick based off whether they can speak giant elk

I have a hard time believing any semi-competent party would wipe to a t-rex. Admittedly, at level 6, maybe if they play like garbage. At level 8 I just don't see it happening. (then again, it's D&D so the t-rex could always crit), but seeing as how much action economy should fck it Unless they were all out of everything. Or I suppose it was only a party of 2 or something.

@@dramaexterminatus also the context of the fight is important, we all now that pretty much everyone can go down to a goblin in the right/wrong situation

@@abeldelatorre1382 partially yes. If they have no spells slots they could lose admittedly. But seeing the largely used 1 fight 1 rest module it seems unlikely. But bad rolls can fuck over anyone, such as my dungeon boss duergar with +8 to hit who did not land A SINGLE attack against a level 3 party in 10 turns. He was a beast and yet utterly useless

THAT'S DEMONIC MAN, I LOVE IT!

My rogue had a similar experience except swap roles for the paladin and rogue (I was screaming in its mouth)

Exactly how you're supposed to use it

Thank you, was surprised at how tough half ogers were for my 2 friends both at level 3 but since they had an Imp familiar they did pretty good

That's actually really helpful!

I'm taking a screenshot of this comment, this is amazing

Thanks for the tip 😁

lost my first character to an intellect devourer lol

it one shots a level 20 barbarian with the same effectiveness as a level 5.

@@curtisbrown547 yeah shadows are just as bad except they affect str instead of int and kill you instead of incapacitate CR 1/2 lol

Book smart barbarian: uhhhh 21...you got to read this book on how using am axe can be beneficial to healthy lifestyle and wood craftsmanship.

my dm screaming in fear as Im immune to all psychic damage due to the ring of mind shielding

My group nearly TPK’d from the animated armor: he knocked out the Warlock in one hit and there were only 3 of us

@@aionicthunder saaame, only in my case he knocked out the fighter and mage

OMG SAME they immediately slammed the closet and ran out and ended up burring the house down.

This hits too close to home bro! Almost killed my sister in law with that broom! Narrow hallways is a b right?

@@dartsntoys8445 Oh thank god, glad to hear i'm not the only one that ended up burning the house down

That npc was fated by the gods to win

The simplicity of 5e is often its undoing. Challenge rating is one such place where it falls flat on its face because the challenge rating just do not mean shit. In general stay away from area attacks that have the potential to one-shot party members that fail their save and you should be fine. It is also best to not be upset when your party is easily clearing encounters that you set up to be "appropriate" for the party level. That is a good thing. Your goal should not be to kill them, but for them to have an enjoyable experience. After the session ask the players what they thought of the encounters if you felt they got through them too easily, if the players say they had fun, great you don't need to change anything, if they say it was too easy ask what they think would have made it more challenging and incorporate some of those ideas into future encounters (often the solution is just toss 2.5 to 1 odds at the party or give the monster an additional hit die or up the attack slightly).

I'd say to replace the 1d20 by 2d10, but then the maths don't work as well as modifiers become overpowered. So instead I'll say "Try another game". Star Wars: Edge of the Empire would be a nice one to look at. It predates a lot of the shitty movies.

what was the CR 1/4 friend?

@@kadenkeneal1608 a normal bandit.

Plays it just like I would

As someone who plays a sorc, I can confirm that we all play with this look on our faces... while we cause mass destruction by mistake.

Same! Made me lol a few times

i live with the sorcerer's braindead stare into the abyss with a smile on my face.

Its enthralling lol

There is also the Dice gods of DnD, who sometimes throw five Nat1s to one character in one combat encounter.

I remeber when I found this out when I was dming the first time.

Also by it's definition can't account for any kind of force multiplier abilities like mind control and summoning

also doesnt account for feats

Not to mention: Party Composition, Terrain, Phases of the Fight, And previous encounters in the day

have you still thought that at level 10?

I disagree.

The main determinate of combat: The dice rolls. If the party can't hit the enemy, they can't kill it. If the enemy can't miss, the party is doomed.

Only because of how damage focused 5e is. There's basically no point in CC because most combat is decided in the first 1-2 turns anyways. This is probably one of the hardest to balance, cuz a lot of players really don't like dragged out combat, but it would definitely balance the game and allow multi-turn effect spells with concentration to have more value over just fireball spamming and killing everything turn 1-2.

⁠@@anthonyfaiell3263lmao Fireball is sooo much worse in so many situations than using CC.

As a decently experienced DM, this is still me most sessions.

As a player who has yet to become a DM, this is our DM with us almost every session.

As a person who has never played but wishes to play, I have no comment apart from this one.

I'm currently running descent into avernus and ever single session my players are like "that fight needed to be toned down." They killed a cr 13 creature in one turn at level 5

This is why I've learned to tweak things on the fly

Ahh level 1.... when you stand a legitimate chance of being TPK'd by domestic cats.

Yup, level 7 party easily killed 2 venomous Trolls, not a sweat, nearly got killed by 6 goblins and a falling pit

My party slayed a dragon in passing, didn't even stop. Then a commoner cook woman armed with a frying pan nearly managed to bludgeon them into submission.

@@sharpfang ...doesn't sound like a commoner to me. Commoners have 4hp, and like... what, an attackmod of +0? With no proficiencties?

@@portlandbluewizard2520 It was WFRP so a little different rules. Primarily, max damage on crit hit is practically uncapped (after first two rolls where rules are more complex, you just keep rolling D6 and as long as you're getting '6' you keep adding 6 to the damage). She downed the tank of the team that way, one other fighting character bungled a negative crit so badly he almost suicided himself, the wizard was out of spell points (they were meant to stop to rest there, not start a burt!), and two other players were busy elsewhere.

I threw a Death knight at at party of 3 level 5's once A chance for them I forgot to use most of his abilities, otherwise they'd be dead. But, and that's the best part, they loved it ! It was a hard but technically beatable fight I was DMing at DnD5 for the first time(plenty of experience before that) and just decided to throw away action economy and CR and rather focus on making fun encounters

was in a session lately. dm threw us up against a wendigo as well, but he bomebrewed it a bit. 4 attacks per round, if they hit they delt around 20 - 25 damage a hit. we're all level 4 or something like that, and we only survived because I pissed it off enough to where it threw all its attacks at me while I dodged cause monks lol.

⁠@@Dracon350Uh huh. 17 AC. Dodged everything with your 4 ki. Uh huh.

@@burgernthemomrailer i had something like 19 AC, there were five of us wailing on the thing the entire time, and i only used my ki to use patient defense. that's 4 rounds of this thing swinging at disadvantage, with maybe one or two swipes being aimed at someone else. i don't need to justify my experience to some rando on the internet regardless, but sure man, you were there, i'm obviously just lying for them internet points.

@@Dracon350 Uh huh. 19 AC. 20 DEX and 18 WIS. At level 4. Uh huh.

This hat he has now is before the polymorph that turned it into a wizard's hat

Omg this story is fucking awesome!

But... it’s ice knife guys... it’s nothing like fireball.

@@cptn_n_cola9378 Exactly why fireball made him mad with power.

The lore 👁️👄👁️

Was looking for this comment! 😂

I would buy Bluetooth dice so I could do this IRL

Yet somehow still knows his rolls without looking at the dice

@@ricklawrence2515 He belives in heart of the dice.

That’s how I play too.

@@GKplus8 If only challenge ratings were that accurate AM I RIGHT :D

Why are you here ?.?

Hello there

@@someone_one_one General Kenobi? Is that you?

So true..

P A I N This hurts to read lol

@@syd6654 it's ok, a god showed up and dragged the ghost out of me 😂

Fun story, but RAW they'd have woken up after the first one, so. :P

@@Incurafy dont they only wake up if there is something we to wake them? Dead people don't make noise

@@Incurafy I did 12d4+12d6+4 damage, and we are all lvl7 with no tank, so the 2 I attacked were dead before I was halfway through punting up the damage. Nobody had any opportunities to make any noise, they were too busy being dead

It's more accurate

And at higher levels, only pcs could die with one hit

Glass Cannons: The Game

@@matttt60 just to be revived and die again on the next turn.

this is dnd showing its age more than anything. A staple of older rpgs, be they table top or vidya is same level matchups are fair, assuming you all minmaxed and everyone (pcs and npcs) rolls 10s everytime. RNG and poor optimization is a bitch.

Exactly, people forget that you're supposed to deal with 4-5 encounters of that CR before getting a chance to rest safely. That third group, when you're on fumes as a caster? That's when things get interesting. D&D is, and always has been, a game about resource management and having backup resources for when your big guns run out of ammo. People sometimes forget that. The MMO handles this well, with "rest shrines," which can only be used so often (or on higher difficulties, once per dungeon) and that forces casters especially to be mindful of their spells, or fighters to be careful about using action boosts, at least at lower levels.

Lol, I save everything for a rainy day :D

@@christophercheck1590 That's why I never use my necklace of fireballs XD

@@christophercheck1590 No one ever plays the game like that though, 5 big encounters like that back to back is almost never done.

@@Soulblast2 When we play there's barely one in a session.

(This part was the conclusion of my comment, but it was so much better than the comment itself, I'll put it as another post.) Best advice I can give GMs is to sprinkle their stories with encounters where PCs killing every monsters doesn't make it a "win". For example, you can put quite a few more monsters in if half or more of them are busy killing innocent people / beloved NPCs, guarding the BBEG, looting the caravan and leaving with the goods, etc.

*If you have to use up a noninfinite resource to overcome a challenge, the challenge still mattered.* It only matters in scenarios where PCs have no idea how many encounters they might face between rests (or a good idea the number is high). In a lot of scenarios, especially when players are in a dungeons with less intelligent foes (constructs, basic undeads, oozes...) or one that allows them to remain undetected or for whose detection doesn't truly matter, that Ice knife ain't really a cost at all. And even then, one use of one ability to win a level-appropriate encounter is an insanely good trade. Not counting how taxing it is to prep an encounter, map and everything to be done in less than 2 rounds.

@@fovarberma752 the average combat length is expected and calculated to be 3 rounds on average. Unless your players love to be constantly bogged down in combat I wouldn't constantly throw 5 to 10 round combats at them. It can become insanely boring for most players to spend over an hour in every combat. The idea is to sprinkle in multiple simple combats. You toss a new monster type in occasionally to make the players pump the brakes and figure out what is worth spending limited resources on. And the toughest fight doesn't always have to be the last. This can keep your players guessing. Sometimes the bad guys in the middle of the dungeon and they have to fight to escape. Suddenly a fight that was easy on the way in is now dangerous because the party is spent. The problem I find that people have with the system is that they don't design their encounters around the system. They break the system entirely then say the system is broke. Its definitely not perfect by any means, but after DMing in 5e for over 10 years, our group has had some incredible moments and encounters. As I said this does admittedly depend heavily on the DMs ability to plan and run encounters and knowing their players.

@@Splincir #1 Quote please. Bear in mind hyperlinks don't work on KZfaq, your comment gets auto-deleted. But a CTRL+C / CTRL+V would be appreciated. #2 I have never seen encounters going that fast, unless relatively low level with Great Weapon Master / Sharpshooter involved. I was the cause of both. Might also happen in niche situation with area spells, but even then... #3 Even when they did, #2 kinda ruined the fun. Not only for the reason I stated (building a map for 2 rounds of fight), but because there was no use for tactics, which we made builds for. How is our Warlock using a druid cantrip to force opponents in melee with him to tank gonna shine when 3 cantrips later, everything is vanquished? Now, I'm not saying core 4th edition lvl 22+ fights, which legit took hours each due to HP bloat, was better... but 2-to-4 rounds being the core of your distribution? Do not want.

aren't you the human pet guy?

Love new player stories, hope you're still playing dnd a year on from this comment :) P.s. as a dm for quite a while (6-7 years) it makes me smile hearing about people's first times in the game!

Was that ledge "ledge-endary"?

@@MonkeyJedi99 BOO, Boo this man, Boo. (to be fair that was punny, but, Boo)

bearer of the curse: same

One party I ran a game for consisted of 5 level 1 PCs and they died to two drunk kobolds because of bad player tactics and some lucky rolls from the drunken bastards. To be fair, those kobolds were memeshly called Bonny and Clyde and became a semi-bbeg for the next party

@@TrickyTrickyFox I really like how the victorious trash mobs got elevated importance due to a lucky fight against PCs. I need to borrow that idea!

Probably your own.

Your own, that of your first three children and the still beating heart of a virgin sacrificed on the full moon of the Autumnal Equinox on holy ground after three hours of ritualistic ping pong.

@cak01vej It's a challenge rating of 3... maybe 9 but possibly 2

Divination Wizards be like

That's not Xanathar's Guide, it's the Monster Manual (LE).

Looks at my 24 ac lv 1 wizard lv 2 pladin

@@erikburzinski8248 could start level one with around 19 to 20 ac in multiple race and class combos.

Like fireball?

Or party composition. Or items. And it's always taken as if it's a party of 4 people who are well rested.

So like I want to give your comment an updoot, but you're at 69 upgreats right now and I don't want to fuck that up.

And if they are inside a dungeon far from civilization, yeah.... they are fucked

Rot Grubs. Just Jesus what were they thinking? You literally have to know its weakness or die.

Just using 3 gas spores inside the dungeon for my 5 level 5 players.

There's another couple of monsters like this, I forgot their name, had something to do with maggots. They're like a mass of carnivorous worms and if you get hit or touch them, they will bite onto your skin and if you don't apply fire to the wound in 1 round, they will dig deeper and applying fire won't work anymore, only remove disease does. And what does it do? You take damage each round and uh, after a couple of rounds you literally die because they reach the heart or something. They're all CR 1/2 to 2 or something, it's an abomination of an encounter.

@@LupineShadowOmega oh my god these are awful. If no one kill the grubs they are more certainly dead

I simply abandoned 5E thanks to this. If the monster manual is not actually filled with information that enables building easy encounters, what's the value of it? I can make up my own monsters just as well as I can calculate the difference between the entries in MM, and what I actually need them to be. No time saved.

Ever tried running 8 shadows?

what's ice knife? it's not in the 5e player's handbook

@@zadime92 Just want to add that they still have to roll when the attack on the first target misses.

@@zadime92 That said, if the damage is higher than twice their hp they don't need to roll because they'd still die if they saved, have destroyed so many swarms of zombies with fireball due to that XD

@@Edmar_Thorn In case of Fireball then yes. But Ice Knife is a weird exception in that if you pass the save then you take no damage from the cold explosion. You're still very right about fireball but in this case i was making fun of the hilarity of most spellcasters forgetting to read their spells properly.

@@zadime92 *hit or miss* Idk why I thought of this I apologize for the horrendous actions that may be frowned upon in this ever growing democratic party we have and always will call/called 'society'

We actually fought a Hydra as a 6th level party about a month ago, went pretty well thanks to our celestial warlock's consistent fire damage and our bear totem barbarian's GWM. Buuuuut we were also using variant flanking, which the hexblade warlock could reliably give the barb so he wasn't always reckless attacking for advantage. Barb also had bracers of defense, so he was pretty damn tanky. Aaand we got pretty lucky, it still could've gone either way.

or like 3 quicklings

My lv4 party destroyed one

Cries in my Berserker barbarian player at level 5 one shotting all of my enemies with Great Reckless Greataxe attacks.

Well our lv5 party is gonna fight one next session. Wish us luck

Honestly my party have been steam rolling since they hit level 3 so I'm just gonna go at them HARD and fudge rolls if I need to. Phandelver has this weird curve where it starts hard and gets easier (in my experience, anyway)

So, DMing something like FATE is easy, and DMing D&D us too hard. In between you'll find stuff like Mutants and Masterminds, Gumshoe, Chronicles of Darkness. And way way WAY out to the right on the scale, way past D&D, you'll find exalted.

Use CR for suggestions, but fine tune it by measuring average damage per round against the PC's hit points. Repeat the process in reverse, and do a little math to make sure that after just a few rounds, the party's damage output meets the enemy's/enemies' HP but they take some healthy hits in turn without too many people dying. If you want to be REALLY thorough while using less effort, look up Improved Initiative (best tech DM tool EVER). Import the PCs' data and run combat as if they were at the table. 20-30 easy clicks and you should have a good idea how hard it'll really be.

if you really wanna be sure the party can take on an encounter. what i used to do when planning was to precalculate the stats of the party as if they were a single creature. mainly their total average damage, their average attack roll bonuses, their total exp and average armor class. it's really quick and simple. now you do the same with the group of enemies you wanna pit against them. and you already simplified your evaluation of a whole encounter to just judging a simple 1v1. next you got attack rolls and armor class. you can calculate the average hit rate of both groups on one another. and you know how often the party will hit and how often they'll get hit. multiply the hit rate with the average damage roll and you now have the average damage per turn. look at which group total hp will go down first at this rate. when those numbersare close, it means the encounter is roughly balanced damage wise, and what will make the difference is tactics and use of special effects. at this point, and if it's tactics that determine the outcome of the encounter you have a lot of leeway as a dm to make it harder or easier on the fly without cheating. if you feel it's getting too hard, just make the enemy fall for every combat tactic the party uses, if it's not enough you can still make an enemy do something really stupid but believable. if on the contrary you feel like it's too easy, just make the enemies more cunning, really try hard to get to the backliners of the party. the "they all start looking at the caster" always make people sweat and gives a lot of work to the martials, but is barely more of a threat.

I will not lie. I read that in Drew Carey's voice, and then had to go back and figure out A) Whose voice that was and B) Why.

I understood that reference.

Well in DnD 4 it wasn't made up. But for some reason nobody talks about it.

Amazing!

which is why they're CR19 in pathfinder

@@havokmusicinc pathfinder suxx dixx :3

*Howl cackles in Bodak*

My level 20 character who's fought ancient dragons, avatar of gods, and otherworldly beings bent on destroying the world, has a 55% chance of dying to a single banshee scream.

@@chroprs Holy shit

how in the world is 3 goblins a medium encounter with level 3 characters ? I know that party isa different size (we're 5) but we killed between 15 and 20 of those at level 1 How do you expect them to perform anything with level 3 characters ??? AND this is why I decided to not care at all about either CR, action economy, but rather design fun encounters (and usually making the enemy a bit too strong but that's more challenge for the players)

CHallenge rating asumes u have four players

​@@nessa-parmentier Most of the other numbers look good but 3 goblins isn't 375. They're 50 a piece so that's 150EXP. My guess is they edited something wrong.

@@TuberTugger if they outnumber you, their xp value goes up

@@nessa-parmentier Goblins are not all made equal. In this situation the Goblins were cr0.5. so for your 5 level 3 players, a deadly encounter would be 7 Goblins. 15 would be 3 tines the deadly threshold. However it is easy to make cr0.25 goblins

Literally only look at it once just to gauge it slightly to the level so no cr 21s for a level 6 group. But yeah it sucks. I had a level 7 character kill a cr 13 raksasha in 2 hits.

@@jerrin1528 That reminds me of the time I killed a chimera with the light spell at character level 2. Granted, the DM said after the battle that she made it weaker for us, but that thing still had a ton of health. It survived like 5 critical point blank ranged sneak attacks from the tiefling rogue soulknife (the player of which almost always had very good rolls).

@@KingNedya a lvl 3 party of a fighter (greataxe), rogue (dagger), cleric and wizard deal the *average* damage of 75 per round unloading everything they have on the target, wich is 2/3 of a chimera's health. Suposing the chimera downs the fighter in this same round, the party now has the average damage of 57 in the next round wich is enough to kill it That being said the chimera has an average initiative of 10

It means you have to do math

@@slayeroffurries1115 The way were were fighting it, we were dealing a lot less damage per round (and we were all level 2). Like 80% of the damage was from the tiefling, not even exaggerating. The fighter NPC was mostly tanking, not dealing much damage, the ranger was getting bad rolls, the warlock didn't know any spells and was also getting bad rolls, and I was watching from afar, coming up with various plans and tactics while providing light support. I only hit the chimera once, but that was all I needed for my plan.

Lol right? I'm over here like um hobgoblins? Orcs? More goblins?

@@miguelsuarez-solis5027 More goblins is always a valid solution.

A gold dragon wyrmling which has a challenge rating of 3 XD

@@razenburn just keep adding goblins until you get the mixture just right. You want variety? How about I throw in a goblin shaman, just for you

"Oh no, they killed my weak monster with an area attack. What if, instead of encountering three in a group, they were ambushed by THREE, each in a different direction?" Also, no DM should ever have a party fight a wolf pack. Those things are insane. when ambushing. I almost caused a TPK with three wolves once, narrowly avoided because the ranger said "Eyo, wolf, whats up?" and when he learned the wolves were hungry, he offered them food instead of the player bleeding out on the ground, screaming about his gaping wolf-wounds.

I would agree. Encounters need to be tailored for the party. A party with no or material requiring spells would not have an easy time escaping a prison cell.

Alot of Official encounters are also often unbalanced. They take on acount a party number total and lvl, but not the classes. (i may be msitaken on the last point)

​@@peterwhite6415 they don't need to account for classes, because supposedly the damage is balanced between them. of course it is never perfectly balanced, there's a bunch of asymmetrical choices and crazy combos, which means you can't even account for all that. so you bloat a monsters HP, that way it'll last a couple of rounds, and you reduce damage and definitely cut down on AoE, so a couple of people can be alive to take it down. voilá, that's every crunchy game in existence. once you've seen behind the curtain it feels like a complete slog.

@@pseudolemon8272 Pathfinder 2.0, Curse of Extinction, the first boss and the fight shortly after both enarly TPKed us because one was two water mephits, they cna each do acid arrow 1/day...we were all lvl 1. None of us had more than like 10hp. My bard and the ranger (who since retrained to fighter) were the only classes that could really take a hit...yeah...it was bad. And the first encounter with a single dinosaur and like something else KOed two of us. THen there was the damn halfing cultist and the enraged BEAR...nothing like almost getting party wiped almost every combat encounter. I took Familiar Master just so i could sue my familiar as a scout...the only saving grace was how cantrips work and the fact that as a spellscale I was able to sling Electric Arc for 1d4+1 with ability to arc to nearby foes. Oh, and kobold breath weapon.

@@ceilyurie856 how did you manage to all get below 10 hp? most race hp avrages around 8-10 and thats before aplying your level. i think some of the scrawniest races gives you only 6 hp but even with a worst case senario of 6 from class thats stil you at 12 hp

@@TheHarimir yeah wait what. who makes you roll hp for your first level?

are you able to run away from it and so the encounter becomes how many resources/how much health are you wasting on this creature before you figure out it's not going to go down ?

Wait what, what's that ??

What creature is that?

@@CountDVB any werecreature is immune to nonmagical damage. Probably a wererat

@@griffingillispie8875 Make it a weresparrow and you're in seeerious trouble.

This can be helpful for making up new monsters, too. Like I dm'd a ravnica campaign once and for some weird simic genetic monstrosities I just used adjusted stats from other monsters and described the attacks and whatnot totally differently

WHAT THE HELL HOW?!

@@deathzonekiller2261 creatures gas spore's disease kills sprout 2d4 baby gas spores that reach adulthood in a week.

@@LJCyrus1 Holy shit, thats scary

No one in the city has the ability to cure a disease? It's fairly simple

@@kaaghalaa Hopefully, if they catch it in time. I doubt even a high level healer would have enough slots to keep up with a disease that contagious and lethal if it managed to spread to even a small portion of the city.

Depends on the group. I fucking hate it whenever a DM tries to save my character, but I know that most of them do it because they think it will make me happy :) Gotta be clear in communication with people before you decide to commit to [insert amount of hours here] hours of hobbytime with 2-5 other people ^^

If it’s late into a campaign, I understand how heart wrenching a death can be, but early on I can understand why a dm may want to not jus straight up kill you all

@@Rinings well it was literally the first session.

@@Micras08 I hate that shit too. If you want to resurrect my dead ass character, and the party happen to has a spell on hand like revivify etc., go for it. If not, don’t patronize me by giving me a free res. If death is not a consequence than all the excitement it drained out of the game. It should be challenging enough to be suspenseful and thrilling. Seriously if the party wants my character back that bad, make them go on a quest to revive him.

@@lightning_bishop260 True, mostly how I feel about it as well. Have you tried Dungeon World btw? There's an awesome revive mechanic built into the system, any character can roll "at death's door" when they "die" and then they have 3 outcomes depending on the roll: A) below 6, you're dead B) 7-9 something offers to bring you back on some condition C) 10+ you pulled through all by yourself, explain how that happened :) I like that system a lot and that's one of the reasons.

Huh that sounds like it hurt 😅

I'd say half the party downed is a good way to emphatise the dangers of the underdark 🤷🏾‍♂️. I wish I had more of those and less "end campaign TPK's"

25' reach and parlyzing grab is a bitch.

had a party of level 8s. 4 Players and a strong NPC follower. Almost died to hobgoblins and ogres with catapult support. its crazy what you can do with a bunch of low CR bad guys and good tactics

@@TheGangsterKitten Pfff take well sized nest kobolds, average cr of 2 and give them perep time. Theyll eat a party on their mid teens

@@TheGangsterKitten Mhm! Vice versa, it’s really surprising how much players can do with the right tactics - I was in a level 5 party of 5 once who recruited 8 NPCS for hire, another NPC friend of the party’s - 14 people total - to siege a hobgoblin base with dens of zombies. Beforehand, the rogue and druid snuck in to sully their food supplies, which meant most of them would be sick the day of the siege While that’s almost definitely a war crime lmao, it translated to “almost everyone has disadvantage” With constant archer volleying and a few controlled fires here and there, we managed to kill a good uh. hundred or so enemies with only like- 2 NPC deaths. My archer character managed to corner an entire platoon of hobgoblins with spike growth, which was fun My character very nearly died though Had to distract a horde of zombies so they wouldn’t massacre the mercenary archers, and ended up being cornered a round before the rest of the party could arrive I got *really* lucky. The zombies rolled low on their hit dice. What could’ve been an instant death (or at least a few lost death saves) was one hit away from being knocked out Though maybe I just had a really forgiving dm... We also happened to assault it while the All-Powerful Terrifying Leader was gone, though that was definitely more narrative-building to introduce us to him rather than intentional strategy on our part

Yeah, shadows are really poorly balanced. Either they drop practically right away or it’s a TPK, I have never seen anything in between.

@@snuckytoes8427 Yeah one moonbeam can easily wipe out a swarm of shadows due to the radiant vunerability, spirit guardians also will crush them, clerics would turn undead are also great and a paladin that hits can divine smite to pretty much guarantee a kill on one most of the time. If you have none of those things and are ambushed and roll poorly on initiative things could turn out badly.

Just made my comment about shadows then I saw yours xD They're so ridiculous, I nearly lost my barb/ranger to a pack of them before she even knew what she was fighting - left her on 1 STR and completely out of the fight. CR 1/2 my ass lol.

The design of Shadows seriously confuses me. The Wight, a CR 3 monster, has an an attack that deals a measly 5 damage on average and only reduces max HP by that amount on a failed DC 13 CON save. Meanwhile, the Shadow, a CR 1/2 monster, has an attack that deals 9 damage on average AND reduces STR by 1d4 with NO saving throw. Personally I think the Shadow would be a cool monster even without any draining ability, but if I were to revamp its drain I'd definitely start by giving it a saving throw.

CRs...are measured...against...parties...of 3...to 5....adventurers.

@james Deer He pretty much stated that he simulated fights with the phb monsters. Though that was 5 months ago, a DM can improve a lot in that timeframe.

Specters are extreme spiral monsters. If you start losing you stay losing.

Incorporal dead take half damage from so much they basically have double the hit points.

_shadow joined the shat_

How big was the party? How many specters?

@@rattvisa During my first time DMing (2 months ago!), I nearly wiped my two players' level 1 rogue-only party in session 1 by throwing six Crawling Hands (CR 0) at them, thinking they were a fair fight since they're so weak. Then they won initiative. Three of them hit the first player, knocking them unconscious before they could act, and they started rushing the second player and their level 2 wizard companion (so glad I added this one in right before the session). They took a few hits, but managed to kill them all and heal back the first player. They came across a few skeletons that they dispatched at a ridiculous speed (even though they're higher CR!), before finally coming across... a lone CR 1/2 *shadow*. Towards the end of a 30 minutes fight, the first player had once again been knocked unconscious and was at 2 death saves failed and their companion wizard was also out. The last player standing attacked the shadow, hoping to finish it, but he rolled low on his damage, failing to kill it and leaving it with 2 hp because it resisted all their attacks. At this point, I was stressed out of my mind and trying to find a way for my players not to lose their characters on the first session. That's when a miracle happened. I rolled at nat 20 on the wizard's death save, bringing it back to consciousness with 1 hp, while the last player was being struck down. I'm not one to fudge rolls so, cold sweat running down my back, I threw the dice once more to try and Firebolt my own damn monster. I was ecstatic describing how just as the shadow loomed over them, the last player's rogue held on just long enough to consciousness to witness the wizard, still on the ground, point her finger towards the shadow and shooting it through the chest, smoking it instantly. A three-adventurer party averaging level 1.33 nearly lost against a 1/2 CR monster. Fuck shadows.

maybe it taught you a lesson about how not to dumb intelligence 😁 this alone is the reason i will include an intellect devourer in every game somewhere.

@@XpVersusVista Thats a bad lesson to teach. One stat is bound to be trash for most characters, especially if you roll poorly.Why are you punishing your players for wanting to play not intelligent characters? or, worse, punishing them for being forced to have int as their lowest stat given the class theyre playing and/or the stats they rolled?

@@XpVersusVista So you're intentionally punishing people for... A) Playing a class where Int is literally useless and not wanting to waste their precious stats. B) Players who want to have a low Int score to suit their character concepts. That doesn't sound all that engaging.

@@XpVersusVista Personally, I never play low-intelligence characters. I usually try to have it at least a decent score, sometimes favoring it over Constitution. Despite that, its still absurd to punish players for having a dump stat. Unless you roll amazing, you're always gonna have a generally lower stat on at least one attribute.

As someone who literally did the 4 Goblins ambush i can confirm

The goblin ambush that begins Lost Mine of Phandelver is often regarded as one of the most difficult combats in the module. And that includes enemies with multiattack at Level 2 and a Green Dragon. But on the other hand, a single Wizard with the spell Sleep just negates all problems with early combats *instantly*. D&D balance is weird.

@@KevinMacku I have toi admit, I went in a bit bold and underestimating it hard. now i read this especially^^

Two goblins vs two 1st PC. Six goblin killing a 6th level Monk.

@@KevinMacku tell me about it, phandelver was my very first dnd experience. And I got fucked by one of those goblins in a bush that rolled a nat 20. I didn't even get to do anything because that was the very first goblin

Sounds like an awesome cleric

@@zakur9622 Clerics can be scary powerful with the right spells and build. In one Pathfinder campaign I played, I had an Oracle who was basically a fantasy version of Thor by the time she was level 11. Between her class perks, meta-magic feats, and spell choice, she was a tempest of death.

The party: he must be at the chapel The cleric: Dead Or Alive you're coming with me

@@nispelsm id argue Thor is a fantasy version of Thor lol

Exactly. Burning a slot for Ice Knife only works as long as you have those spell slots available.

Nah, CR has been a joke for decades. Ever since it was introduced, the DMG has been explaining how you can use it to make easy/balanced/tough/hard encounters for your players, even has tables to show you how likely a player character is to die based on the CR they are facing. But in practice it does not work like the DMG has been explaining it for 3.5 editions now.

@@rogerwilco2 Yyyyyep. My DM is regularly throwing Deadly type encounters just so we can be on equal ground, just uses certain outlier creatures in specific circumstances.

Oh that's clever.

@@rogerwilco2 Except its does work. 3.5 had issues with template and type change calculations for CR but generally was DPR vs HP appropriate, but thats a T3+ problem or with some optional rules. 5e literally gives you a direct table and adjustment values per players that dont even need manual calculation except for if you give the monster a damage resistance relevant to the party. Now if you as the DM fuck up and put a adjusted CR 8 encounter vs 5 level 3s thats on you, much like its on the players if they didnt bother to spend 50gp each to be effectively immune to Int Devourers after already learning that the enemy is mind flayers AND having access to a church with clerics that can cast PfG/E.

can't stand these on fly "add more or subtract some" types of so called "advice" unless all your players are aware and okay with you doing that (I sure would not be) what you are doing is lying and breaking the trust of the DM and player relationship. my actions do not matter if you change things to get the outcome you want anyway. if you made a major mistake in an encounter build just stop the game apologize explain and ask the players if they want to stop and let you go back to the drawing board or play through.

@@wesleywyndam-pryce5305 Depends on what you focus on, as a person and as a group. I can respect that if you feel like the DM modifying things is taking away your agency. And I'll even say that it takes experience to actually know when it's fine or not to change numbers, fudge dice rolls or add/remove enemies. (And put quotation marks on advice if you want, it's genuine advice from a GM with 10 years of experience on various systems. It's not nececcarily right for everyone obviously) To me the main thing is : either be clear with the party that it can happen, or don't get caught doing it (which means not doing it too much at a time. Sometimes the party finds a very smart way to destroy your boss and that's okay.) I'm not going to apologize when I correct my mistakes on the go. Which is more fun to you : badly designing an encounter and stopping the session there to rework it, or badly designing an encounter and (as soon as you realize it) quicky correct it to make it more entertaining to the players (be it by being less frustrating, harder if they were supposed to struggle and had an easy time, etc.) even if it implies breaking some rules ? They generally have a way to estimate an encounter's relative difficulty beforehand, in a way I could argue that not delivering said difficulty, in one way or the other, is lying to them. (I'm playing with words there but I think you get my point. Lying isn't the important part. Fun is. And for me, it's also way more important than keeping to the rules)

Yeah same, if it has less HP than half the total HP of the party, It should either be able to down a player in max 2 turns, Or it should have more HP.

The most effective patch I've found is to use the encounter building system as is, but then boost monster HP for the important monsters (and maybe the minion-y ones if they only have like 6 hp each or something). This mostly grew out of doing exactly what you just said repeatedly. This especially works for my games because I don't tend to run lots of combat encounters in one day -- my games have more intrigue, RP, exploration, etc.

Lol yeah. I am a goblinoid main.

how?

Fuck maybe I should reconsider sending 4 scarecrows against my level 3s then.

Same thing happened to me, but it was only two scarecrow and a lvl 3 party (for reference, it was a party of 4 and I had just solo'd two CR 1 creatures one Kong rest ago). We got TPK'd, one guy got stun locked, we used 16 potions, and we hit a total of 5 attacks over a 45 minute battle.

@@jacksonschumacher175 Paralysis. If they are set right, they can potentially even stun lock several party members at once. I once had a 12 turn game where a player only got 2 turns because he was stuck in stun.

There's your first problem. Larger groups always hit above their weight, unless the power levels are massively out of balance

Gas Spore

@@ohexenwahno5652 Yeah, One moment you're fighting a mute beholder, The next you're fighting a lethal poison.

@@BramLastname I almost tpk'd my party with Skulks, yet they destroyed a hydra with no spells left...

@@ohexenwahno5652 Well Skulks are similar to Shadows in that, while they aren't very strong Their utility makes it so that they're a more immediate threat than most things you put next to them.

@@BramLastname oh, but it was only skulks, cr 1/2 vs level 6 characters

Shadows are really weak on their own tho, Their support capabilities is what makes them so scary. Adding a shadow to any encounter makes it significantly more difficult, Just because you can't risk keeping it alive.

@@BramLastname That and all it takes is one hit and it will completely alter an encounter. The barbarian goes from 18 STR to 14 STR and boom, your frontline is really hurt. I agree through, by themselves they arent that much of a threat but to be fair, rot grubs arent much of a threat by themselves but if you get hit and dont know what to do, you are fuuuuucked, especially if the party is at an earlier level

@@Espionia well Rot Grubs aren't difficult they're unfair, That's why I'm never gonna use them.

@@BramLastname Lmao very well said. If I ever throw rot grubs at my party, its probably because I want to kill them... that or Trents

@@Espionia if I ever use them they had it coming and they'd better be friends with the locals.

I played a game to 20 last year, and it was way more manageable than I expected. I fumble over my level 12 Pathfinder character just trying to roll a craft (alchemy) check

playing in a game currently at level 16. we annihilated a dragon turtle, but were almost tpk to 15 specters until our cleric remembered turn undead and decimated them

Jokes on you, tarrasque

@@moofy69 Multiple monsters can multiply the challenge rating. For example, 4 CR2 monsters is not CR8 monster. They're dealing significantly more damage per round and can quickly wipe a party caught unaware. I don't remember off the top of my head, but I think it's something like "multiply the CR by 1.5 for every additional monster", so 2 CR2s is a CR5 encounter. 3 CR2s is 2 + 3 + 4, a CR9 encounter. By the time you get to 4 monsters it goes from 8 to 14. That's A HUGE difference. 15 of anything is CRAZY.

@@chrismanuel9768 yep, action economy is king, but effective aoe is king-er. We had a battle map with exactly 100 enemy kobolds at one point. But 3 well placed fireballs from our wizard trivialized it

it was young, maybe it meant to use it's other breath weapon but got mixed up, maybe it'll feel bad & rush to an adult gold dragon to get help healing them , maybe the brass dragon was a friend it asked to look after them while it got help but GOD revived them and then they killed it, & now the adult gold dragon on it's way to help them will not be pleased

@@Marcusjnmc I am stealing this for a lowlevel party :) The dragon cocks its head and looks at the surviving members of the party, roll insight [17] It seems confused. The dragon flies hurriedly into the air. It seems like its has somewhere to be. Let the party deal with the aftermath continue like normal. Suddenly they hear and earth-shattering roar, the trees bend and shake. Roll perception [7] okay you chalk it up to seismic activity. Or maybe something is hunting further away. A little later: Roll perception [18] you spot the glimmer of scales as they briefly reflect in the rays of the sun. Your dragon friend is back for round two, you can't quite hit it yet it's out of view. What do you do? [ready our weapons, hold attack]. As you ready your weapons the same gold dragon swoops out of the treeline. 1-2 rounds of noncombat from dragons side. You hear the roar again. This time you are sure it's a roar. Almost lazily yet still as gracefully as any bird you spot it as it descends upon your group. Another dragon it's scales much thicker and resembling gold. Its tail alone about the size of the other dragon. The massive creature lands in front of you. Intelligence in its eyes it seems to be contemplating what to do.

@@SpectralKnight ^.^ have fun

Could easily be an evil party

Personally, I don’t like the alignment system, so I don’t use it. So a gold dragon could be more aggressive. Not necessarily what’s going on here, but it’s worth thinking about.

Lol, imagine fighting 6 vampire spawns as 3 lvl 3 characters in Volachia(we ran away)

@@tastycastle1976 I mean, yeah, the DM should make it clear in CoS that the players can run into monsters that are beyond their abilities and should constantly be thinking about escape plans. It's impossible to have an effective horror module if your players know they can effortlessly slice up any monsters that cross their path.

@@nerdboy02 I'm not complaining tho. Last two games were pretty intense, and now we're level 5 (because enemies were cr4-5), so that should make it a l LOT easier. ( It's still a bull that we faced an enemy that can instakill without death saving throws)

@@nerdboy02 The worst fight I saw in CoS actually closes off the escape routes. There is an encounter in Castle with TWO Iron Golems (CR 16 monsters), doors slam shut preventing escape, and the encounter flavor text says that the Iron Golem Poison Breath automatically fills up the entire area due to it being enclosed. It's almost a guaranteed TPK if a fight breaks out.

We found it during the day and called the city guards to help, which made it much easier. We also killed the hags at level 3 because we just blew up the windmill. Had no idea there were survivors inside.

Do you like garlic bread? No I hate it. *garlic bread hater ceases to exist*

Yeah, but that requires understanding that CR is worthless. The DM Guide is giving you a weighted Life Preserver. :D

I like that game

I mean, for one, the challenge rating in DH 2e actually works. ...mainly because it rates things as “lethal”, “lethal and hard to kill” and “guaranteed lethal, which is why we have special, equally lethal characters just for this encounter for you here”

Yeah! You could do one on paladin for sure!