I am running 2 5E campaigns at this time. One is set in my homebrew world and is using the Against the Slave Lords campaign, the other is Rise of Tiamat. The Slave Lords campaign is at 4th level now and the group (currently) consist of 2 Paladins, a Wizard, a Rogue (Arcane Trickster) and a Cleric (War). The Tiamat group is 9th level and has a Paladin, a Fighter (Maneuvers), a Rogue (Arcane Trickster) and a Cleric (Storm), each character also has 2 magic items. The lower level party matches my experience with running games during playtest and the Hoard of the Dragon Queen and other Adventurer’s League content; encounters are challenging and this creates interest. At low levels a lucky shot from a goblin might have your character making death saves or even be dead, that adds tension to the game. Around level 4 this starts to change, the characters can take 2, maybe 3 good hits before going down, they have the resources to handle 2 or 3 encounters of their level before things begin to become questionable about pushing on. By level 9 the game has begun to change.
A New Tier of Problems
I first ran into the problems I’m seeing at level 9 in Tiamat at the end of the playtest cycle when my group finished Dragonspear Castle. At the time I wrote much of it off as caused by changes in rules iterations from what was in the book to what we were using at the time, but my experiences with Tiamat have caused me to rethink this early evaluation. By level 9 some of the most powerful spells in the game can be accessed, and even cast at higher levels for more effect and in general ability to access powers and the options they represent are starting to increase such that “I attack” isn’t going to be the only thing most characters are doing most of the time.
My Tiamat party consists of 3 characters that are strong melee combatants and an average melee combatant with strong spells. The AC in the party is high teens or low twenties and the lowest hit points is in the 50s. The highest charisma character has the feat that allows him to add temp HP every long or short rest, essentially adding 10 to the hit point totals of the party. The rogue of course has the ability to hide reliably (+13 stealth modifier) every round and the cleric has a Robe of Displacement. In short these guys are tough, hard to hit, and can dish out the damage, they are a well optimised party.
In contrast to the party, where more options is the norm, the monsters the party faces typically have the same sorts of options and damage capacity that they had back down at level 1 for the PCs. Hit 1x or hit 2x. The only thing higher level monsters have going for them is they hit slightly harder, slightly more often and have more hit points. This creates a problem when contrasted with the PC’s increasing capacity; its like every monster is a Fighter (Champion) without the benefits of even that limited path.
3 Encounters
So over the last few weeks I have ran 3 encounters that stuck with me. Each was run with the party having used no resources and having access to a long or short rest immediately after the encounter.
Firstly the party battled 6 trolls (Deadly Encounter). This fight happened when the fighter was on watch and the paladin was asleep (and deemed to be in chainmail instead of his usual plate). This fight worried them, it was only when the rogue realised that she could create a campfire on the downed trolls with prestidigitation that the party became confident of their ability to win readily.
2 Frost Giants (Hard Encounter) which the party handily defeated in 2 rounds taking minimal damage and using minimal resources. I modified the giants so that their boulder attack was an AoE with a reflex save for half damage, and this made them worry more than straight high damage attacks.
1 Remorhaz (Hard Encounter) again handily defeated in 2 rounds, however this time the fighter was reduced to 0 hit points mostly by virtue of him attacking the Remorhaz in melee and me rolling moderately well on the fire damage that causes then managing to bite him and get a good strong hit (again rolling damage), as it was well below half hit points the creature then fled with its dwarf flavoured can of food and was killed by the paladin thanks to his Vengeance features.
The Brute Squad
From my perspective as the DM these encounters were lacking, they lacked things to do and the monsters were flat and largely featureless. For those of us that DMed a lot of 4E these encounters are reminiscent of 4E Brutes, moderate to low AC, moderate to low accuracy with high damage capacity and lots of hit points. In 4E we quickly realised these encounters were boring, the tension is entirely dependant on the monsters hitting often enough, if that doesn’t happen then the whole thing degenerates into a grind through the hit points of the monster with the party not experiencing a threat. In 4E this meant taking the time to organise encounters so that monsters had a range of options and presented different styles of danger to the party. Done well that mix created exciting and engaging combats. (Note there are separate issues around 4E combat with regards to HP and stagnation of combats, which the 5E changes largely address.)
More Diversity
In 4E a good combat mixed “strikers” with “brutes” and other “roles” to create diversity. The key is that there were fundamental differences in these enemies. Strikers could do a lot of damage but had (comparatively) few hit points, while controllers had (comparatively) lower damage but interfered with the PCs ability to do what they wanted and so on. These concepts can be applied to 5E battles as well. Something like a Frost Giant supported by a number of smaller monsters that can distract party members or get behind them increasing the danger of the frost giant and so on.
In addition to these sorts of raw tactical decisions adjusting the monsters so they have more variety in their attacks will help as well. Things other than “just hit for damage” turn up in 5E already, and Legendary actions give inspiration for how to increase the complexity of a monster as well. Firstly using actions like shove and help defined in the combat section can be done without messing with the complexity of a specific monster. These are good uses for weaker monsters in an encounter (or stronger ones depending on the goal) as they support a more powerful ally (say wolves with Frost Giants or goblins with an Ogre). You can also add Legendary actions to large single monsters, like the Remorhaz above, to make the fight more dynamic. A good use to boost the complexity is to add Legendary actions that use the shove or other non-damaging options to affect the combat without directly boosting the monster’s damage output. After these you can start changing the way that powers on monsters work, giving giants the ability to “sweep” their weapon doing low damage and knocking enemies away and prone based on a Dex or Str save (model off Thunderwave), changing their boulder to a small (10’x10′) AoE with a Ref save to avoid damage and similar.
The key here is that the standard content starts flattening out in terms of challenge for players and interest for DMs around level 5, so its worthwhile to consider that as you are planning encounters. A lot of the ideas (rather than execution) of 4E are worth considering in this regard to spice things up more.
