Surprisingly Hard Encounters


Advice


Kind of a slow day, a little bored, and was looking for some entertaining anecdotes.

In the homebrew I am currently running, the PC's were off to kill some Trolls. On the way they were attacked by some Goblins (there have been mad rampaging Goblins all over). I figured that the Goblins (they were all Ranger2/Barbarian1 I think and the boss was a lvl4) would do little more than use up some of the parties resources, you know spells, rage, maybe a channel. To make it interesting I mounted them all on dogs, and armed them with horsechoppers and shortbows. Those Goblins were the hardest fight the PC's have had. They were constantly flanking and wailing on them. And peppering them with arrows. It actually caused a bit of a scare, and used up lots of their spells.

Then of course they get to the Trolls and just walk through them. As near as I can figure they saw Gobbos coming and figured it would be a cake walk, and it scared them a little. The planning to separate and slaughter the Trolls was impressive.


Barbarian and ranger both offer NPCs more benefits than they do PCs.

A NPC can waste through all his rage in one fight since you know, he's dead after that usually. This is in addition to the increased save throws they get from raging.

A NPC ranger doesn't have to worry about what he's fighting in 7 levels he can just take favored enemy(most common PC race) which gives him a constant artificial increase to combat effectiveness against the PCs.

You combined both on each of several goblins -- of course they are going to look unreasonably strong in comparison (especially since they now have a move of 40 to go with that).

About the only thing you could do more to favor them is make them invulnerable ragers (for the DR) and superstitious.

You basically gave the each of the goblins a buff for:
+4 to hit and damage
+6 hit points
+2 on will saves

How many goblins were there?


Abraham spalding wrote:

Barbarian and ranger both offer NPCs more benefits than they do PCs.

A NPC can waste through all his rage in one fight since you know, he's dead after that usually. This is in addition to the increased save throws they get from raging.

A NPC ranger doesn't have to worry about what he's fighting in 7 levels he can just take favored enemy(most common PC race) which gives him a constant artificial increase to combat effectiveness against the PCs.

You combined both on each of several goblins -- of course they are going to look unreasonably strong in comparison (especially since they now have a move of 40 to go with that).

About the only thing you could do more to favor them is make them invulnerable ragers (for the DR) and superstitious.

You basically gave the each of the goblins a buff for:
+4 to hit and damage
+6 hit points
+2 on will saves

How many goblins were there?

6 and the boss who was 1 level up. party was 5 lvl 5's


So your party is APL = 5 (APL is level of party for parties of 3~5 people).

PC class levels are worth level -1 each so the goblins increased to CR 3 each. 2 of those are CR 5, 4 are CR 7, you have about a CR8~9 encounter there before looking at the extremely advantageous classes the goblins had.

Now I'm not meaning to criticize -- only show why the goblins seemed so hard -- because they were hard.

Being normal goblins while raging with favored enemy (pc) would be:
+7~9 to hit (depending on power attack and masterwork weapons or not)
Damage: Dice +6~8 (power attacking and what not again)
HP 26
AC: 14 (Assuming studded leather armor)
Fort: +7 Ref: +4 Will: +1

Which is fine if you are prepared to hit will saves... but at level 5 that's not quite as easy as it had been and 'standard tactics' like sleep aren't going to work as well anymore, and all that's predicated on them not having any good gear or shields or whatever.

That's a total of 7 actions a round and 176~180 hp to burn through... a CR 10 creature in contrast has about 125 hp.

Dark Archive

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Here's an entertaining anecdote:

My PCs were chasing down the Big Bad, who was trying to get away so they wouldn't find out his identity. He summons a fiendish roc to deter them.

There are three PCs, all 12th level and at full health, and one CR 9 or 10 roc.

The roc took down the bard (only healer) and monk, and the fighter got some unlucky rolls but finally managed to finish it off.

They were terrified of going near the bad guy for a long time, because they figured his summoned creature was CR 14 or 15--"and just imagine how ridiculously powerful you'd have to be to summon THAT."


Abraham spalding wrote:

So your party is APL = 5 (APL is level of party for parties of 3~5 people).

PC class levels are worth level -1 each so the goblins increased to CR 3 each. 2 of those are CR 5, 4 are CR 7, you have about a CR8~9 encounter there before looking at the extremely advantageous classes the goblins had.

Now I'm not meaning to criticize -- only show why the goblins seemed so hard -- because they were hard.

Being normal goblins while raging with favored enemy (pc) would be:
+7~9 to hit (depending on power attack and masterwork weapons or not)
Damage: Dice +6~8 (power attacking and what not again)
HP 26
AC: 14 (Assuming studded leather armor)
Fort: +7 Ref: +4 Will: +1

Which is fine if you are prepared to hit will saves... but at level 5 that's not quite as easy as it had been and 'standard tactics' like sleep aren't going to work as well anymore, and all that's predicated on them not having any good gear or shields or whatever.

That's a total of 7 actions a round and 176~180 hp to burn through... a CR 10 creature in contrast has about 125 hp.

But Abe you are forgetting they were GOBLINS!!! :) I suppose I fell into the same trap the PC's did :)


malebranche wrote:

Here's an entertaining anecdote:

My PCs were chasing down the Big Bad, who was trying to get away so they wouldn't find out his identity. He summons a fiendish roc to deter them.

There are three PCs, all 12th level and at full health, and one CR 9 or 10 roc.

The roc took down the bard (only healer) and monk, and the fighter got some unlucky rolls but finally managed to finish it off.

They were terrified of going near the bad guy for a long time, because they figured his summoned creature was CR 14 or 15--"and just imagine how ridiculously powerful you'd have to be to summon THAT."

just lucky rolls?


Vuvu wrote:
But Abe you are forgetting they were GOBLINS!!! :) I suppose I fell into the same trap the PC's did :)

Hey all good man I understand -- I'm not allowed to use Kobolds for encounters anymore (by unanimous decision of the players).

Dark Archive

Vuvu wrote:


just lucky rolls?

On the fighter's part. For some reason, rocs are super-effective against monks and bards...


Abraham spalding wrote:
Vuvu wrote:
But Abe you are forgetting they were GOBLINS!!! :) I suppose I fell into the same trap the PC's did :)
Hey all good man I understand -- I'm not allowed to use Kobolds for encounters anymore (by unanimous decision of the players).

Side note I do love the idea of using character classes that can just blow through their resources in a fight. A PC alchemist has to save those bombs, but not a baddy, nope, its just bombs away!! Same thing with monks and their Ki points.

Ah tell us of your Kobold magnificence!!

Edit: Now of course you are set up to have a squadron 30 of lvl 1 kobolds walk over the hill. Nothing special about them. And watch your lvl 10 pcs freak out and blow all their spells to take them out...muahahaha


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Vuvu wrote:
Abraham spalding wrote:

So your party is APL = 5 (APL is level of party for parties of 3~5 people).

PC class levels are worth level -1 each so the goblins increased to CR 3 each. 2 of those are CR 5, 4 are CR 7, you have about a CR8~9 encounter there before looking at the extremely advantageous classes the goblins had.

Now I'm not meaning to criticize -- only show why the goblins seemed so hard -- because they were hard.

Being normal goblins while raging with favored enemy (pc) would be:
+7~9 to hit (depending on power attack and masterwork weapons or not)
Damage: Dice +6~8 (power attacking and what not again)
HP 26
AC: 14 (Assuming studded leather armor)
Fort: +7 Ref: +4 Will: +1

Which is fine if you are prepared to hit will saves... but at level 5 that's not quite as easy as it had been and 'standard tactics' like sleep aren't going to work as well anymore, and all that's predicated on them not having any good gear or shields or whatever.

That's a total of 7 actions a round and 176~180 hp to burn through... a CR 10 creature in contrast has about 125 hp.

But Abe you are forgetting they were GOBLINS!!! :) I suppose I fell into the same trap the PC's did :)

We be Goblins...

You be food.


malebranche wrote:
Vuvu wrote:


just lucky rolls?
On the fighter's part. For some reason, rocs are super-effective against monks and bards...

Flying type attacks are Super Effective vs Fighting Types. (Not sure what happened with the bard, maybe it's a Fighting/Psychic?)


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Kobold fighters with shield wall gang up and outflank combat expertise using Madus for frontline fighters, kobold scouts with dragon wings floating down from half dragon trolls, and battle sorcerer dragon wrought kobolds.

It was a campaign thing -- at one point an NPC asked them to get an artifact from some place that was supposed to have undead in it and they were like, "Alright something easier than kobolds!"

Which got them a funny look from the NPC (who had not seen the invading army).

Typically they won't attack a dragon in its lair either -- to the point of extremely convoluted plans to get it to come out.

They apparently didn't like walking out of the lair after finally killing the dragon to find its clone outside fully healed and ready to go again (with a, "That was cute -- now turn around and put it all back." from the dragon).


Abraham spalding wrote:

Kobold fighters with shield wall gang up and outflank combat expertise using Madus for frontline fighters, kobold scouts with dragon wings floating down from half dragon trolls, and battle sorcerer dragon wrought kobolds.

It was a campaign thing -- at one point an NPC asked them to get an artifact from some place that was supposed to have undead in it and they were like, "Alright something easier than kobolds!"

Which got them a funny look from the NPC (who had not seen the invading army).

Typically they won't attack a dragon in its lair either -- to the point of extremely convoluted plans to get it to come out.

They apparently didn't like walking out of the lair after finally killing the dragon to find its clone outside fully healed and ready to go again (with a, "That was cute -- now turn around and put it all back." from the dragon).

You are an evil man!!

Though I have to say I love the plans to get something out of its lair

My PC's wound up with an amazingly convoluted plan to get the trolls out of their lair and split them up. It involved an invisible Bard, a bunch of prestidigitated camouflage, hiding in bushes, dancing lights, ghost sounds.

Once the fight started the bard tossed some oil on the ground, lit it w spark and blue it up into fireworks


Abraham spalding wrote:

Kobold fighters with shield wall gang up and outflank combat expertise using Madus for frontline fighters, kobold scouts with dragon wings floating down from half dragon trolls, and battle sorcerer dragon wrought kobolds.

It was a campaign thing -- at one point an NPC asked them to get an artifact from some place that was supposed to have undead in it and they were like, "Alright something easier than kobolds!"

Which got them a funny look from the NPC (who had not seen the invading army).

Typically they won't attack a dragon in its lair either -- to the point of extremely convoluted plans to get it to come out.

They apparently didn't like walking out of the lair after finally killing the dragon to find its clone outside fully healed and ready to go again (with a, "That was cute -- now turn around and put it all back." from the dragon).

best clone use ever, where did it have its body hidden? did it just fly back? did the pc's have an idea that might happen cause i can imagine an excellent game with my group and getting them to try to find the resting place of the dragons clone to destroy it before they go after the dragon himself.


Egoish wrote:


best clone use ever, where did it have its body hidden? did it just fly back? did the pc's have an idea that might happen cause i can imagine an excellent game with my group and getting them to try to find the resting place of the dragons clone to destroy it before they go after the dragon himself.

Well I rolled the dragon's treasure and he had a ring of elemental command(earth) and a separate cave that hid the clone, with some greater teleport scrolls plus a few other odds and ends that he didn't keep with the main loot.


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That reminds of a story. Like legends, this story is true, even if it never actually happened. In this case, it actually did happen.

I was DMing the module Dragon Mountain. Well, the party gets all the way to the very end of the module, tough fights throughout the entire thing, and (I can't remember the red dragon's name) they hit the final encounter with the dragon.

Huge, I mean huge fight that sways back and forth, with the party cleric having to cast heal spells left and right just to keep the odds even. I mean this critter almost took down the fighter in one round of full attacks, and she was big, mean, and nasty.

Finally, though, she realizes that she is running low on hit points (I believe she had 37 left), the party is still up and attacking, and all her minions are dead and gone. So, she teleports away.

Now, the entire party is almost at single digits, all of their higher level spells are gone, and the cleric is reduced to patching folks up with a wand of cure moderate wounds.

And one player begins griping and whining and complaining that the dragon had escaped. Well, the wizard had an imp for a familiar, and the imp had a very special magic item that he discovered in the module and hadn't told anyone about. Being an imp, he took a rather perverse delight in making the party's lives miserable.

So, here is this player, a ranger. "Man, you robbed us. YOU ROBBED US. One more round, and we would be having dragon steaks for dinner, we would have dragon-hide plate armor! You stole my kill!"

The imp. "Really? You could have taken her?"

"Damn right. We could have finished her off."

"Are you sure you could have?"

"Yep. Why I would just love one more round with that dragon."

"Okey-dokey," said the imp as pulled out a magic ring and put on his finger (and you don't want to know where he had hidden it). "I wish the dragon were back here, right now."

He had found a ring of three wishes, with one wish left.

The ranger's jaw dropped, the party fell silent, and the dragon looked surprised as well as she reappeared right into the middle of the party, having just drank three potions of cure critical wounds from her second hoard.

I smiled at the party. "Roll initiative."

Good times.

Master Arminas


master arminas wrote:

That reminds of a story. Like legends, this story is true, even if it never actually happened. In this case, it actually did happen.

I was DMing the module Dragon Mountain. Well, the party gets all the way to the very end of the module, tough fights throughout the entire thing, and (I can't remember the red dragon's name) they hit the final encounter with the dragon.

Huge, I mean huge fight that sways back and forth, with the party cleric having to cast heal spells left and right just to keep the odds even. I mean this critter almost took down the fighter in one round of full attacks, and she was big, mean, and nasty.

Finally, though, she realizes that she is running low on hit points (I believe she had 37 left), the party is still up and attacking, and all her minions are dead and gone. So, she teleports away.

Now, the entire party is almost at single digits, all of their higher level spells are gone, and the cleric is reduced to patching folks up with a wand of cure moderate wounds.

And one player begins griping and whining and complaining that the dragon had escaped. Well, the wizard had an imp for a familiar, and the imp had a very special magic item that he discovered in the module and hadn't told anyone about. Being an imp, he took a rather perverse delight in making the party's lives miserable.

So, here is this player, a ranger. "Man, you robbed us. YOU ROBBED US. One more round, and we would be having dragon steaks for dinner, we would have dragon-hide plate armor! You stole my kill!"

The imp. "Really? You could have taken her?"

"Damn right. We could have finished her off."

"Are you sure you could have?"

"Yep. Why I would just love one more round with that dragon."

"Okey-dokey," said the imp as pulled out a magic ring and put on his finger (and you don't want to know where he had hidden it). "I wish the dragon were back here, right now."

He had found a ring of three wishes, with one wish left.

The ranger's...

hahahahaha

And TPK?! Glorious victory?


Oh, the party wound up winning, but the paladin, ranger, fighter, and thief-acrobat, died. Leaving just the cleric and wizard. And the imp. Course, the cleric raised them the next day, and the XP gained from the fight was just enough to put them at the same level they were before the fight (remember, in those days, you lost a level coming back from the dead.

Talk about four very pissed-off players.

Master Arminas


This one maybe falls under bad decisions made by the party, but I think it also qualifies as a standard encounter that became unnecessarily hard. This one's from a 3.5 game.

The PCs had taken to protecting a fairly large village against a recent upsurge of attacks by strangely well-organized orcs and ogres. By the time of the incident, the party had begun to suspect a much smarter BBEG behind it all.

One night a couple of children were kidnapped, and scouts placed them in a cage in a clearing in the woods a league or so north of town. Of course the party suspected it was a trap. (Actually, it was a test by one of the BBEG's lieutenants to see how powerful the party was; the three ogres guarding the clearing were considered expendable.)

So we have five PCs at 6th level and three basic ogres (CR 3 each), which should be a fair fight (CR 6 vs Party Level 6.6), especially considering I have been generous with magic weapons slightly better than their wealth-per-level, and that the party's tank is a half-ogre barbarian and half-ogres were incredibly overpowered at the time (we were using Savage Species).

The elf ranger sneaks up to take a look. He comes back and reports the ogres are standing around the clearing, but there is an open spot on one side.

The half-ogre gets it into his head that he is going to borrow the wizard's hat of disguise and walk right into the camp and pretend to be one of them. The player of the wizard and I look at each other with a total Star Wars look ("I have a bad feeling about this"), but most of the party ends up agreeing it is a plan, so they go with it.

The half-ogre walks in, and of course the ogres surround him. Now, mind you, I am not one of those vicious GMs who likes to kill PCs to "teach someone a lesson," I think that's hogwash. But there really does not seem to be any other realistic way to play this. So the half-ogre tries to bluff them with his abysmal Charisma modifier, and of course they totally don't buy who he says he is or what he says he's doing there.

I go nice on the half-ogre and I let him roll initiative, because I know whatever happens this will not be pretty. I tell him he sees they are not buying it. He should get a chance because he has a much better mod (Improved Initiative). He rolls a 1. The ogres all roll above 15.

Then comes the horror: all three ogres hit, two of them confirm crits and the one who doesn't actually rolls the maximum damage possible for a non-crit. The barbarian is smashed to a pulp. He is dead-dead. The tank is gone.

Well, then two of the rest of the party charge right in. Which two? The rogue/sorcerer and the tiefling psion! I'm totally shocked. Neither is using spells/psionics. They run right in. The wizard and the ranger are using their brains and start peppering the ogres with arrows and spells. Eventually, though, the ranger has to run in because the psion and the rogue are getting the crap kicked out of them. Thankfully, the ranger scored a couple crits with his bow early on, which made it easy for him when he got there to finish them up with a little slice-and-dice. But in the meantime, the psion and rogue have been stretching out the encounter by backing off, then going back in, etc., as they realized they were outmatched.

I think another thing that made it tough to finish the encounter was that because of all the back-and-forth, the ranger had a hard time telling which way the battle was going, and did not rush in sooner.


We were level 13 running a 3.5 converted against the giants, our DM decided to add levels of adept to some of the frost giants. The book indicates they are worth about 1/2 a CR to a monster, but he couldn't possibly see how that would be feasible so he ended up adding 14 levels of adept to these frost giants as it "didn't add that much to them in combat". First round he casts bear's endurance and he starts to do the hd to hp increase and his eyes get really big. We end up Dm-fiat saved halfway through the fight vs a bunch of 600 hp frost giants. Just for laughs we did the calculations and came up with it being a CR 36 fight.


Abraham spalding wrote:
PC class levels are worth level -1 each so the goblins increased to CR 3 each. 2 of those are CR 5, 4 are CR 7, you have about a CR8~9 encounter there before looking at the extremely advantageous classes the goblins had.

Your math is slightly off. A goblin with 3 PC class levels is CR 2; a goblin with 4 PC class levels is CR 3*. 6 CR 2s and a CR 3 = 4,400 XP, which is between CR 7 and CR 8 (closer to 8 than 7). That said, however, your point still stands. That's still APL +2 or +3, which is in the hard-to-very-hard end of the scale.

*--your math would be correct if goblins had racial hit dice, because then you'd use the standard "advancing a monster with class levels" rules and, since Ranger and Barbarian both are reasonably counted as key classes, you would add 1 CR per level in each. However, because goblins do not have racial hit dice, their CR is determined the same way any NPC with only class levels is determined: character level -1 if the NPC has PC class levels, or character level -2 if the NPC only has NPC class levels.

EDIT: Actually, I take that back. I was forgetting about the dogs. 7 riding dogs adds 2800 XP to the total, bringing it to 7,200 XP for the encounter and pushing it into the CR 9-10 range, which is an extremely difficult, bordering on nearly impossible, APL+5 encounter. It's no surprise they had a hard time.


Fozbek wrote:
Abraham spalding wrote:
PC class levels are worth level -1 each so the goblins increased to CR 3 each. 2 of those are CR 5, 4 are CR 7, you have about a CR8~9 encounter there before looking at the extremely advantageous classes the goblins had.

Your math is slightly off. A goblin with 3 PC class levels is CR 2; a goblin with 4 PC class levels is CR 3*. 6 CR 2s and a CR 3 = 4,400 XP, which is between CR 7 and CR 8 (closer to 8 than 7). That said, however, your point still stands. That's still APL +2 or +3, which is in the hard-to-very-hard end of the scale.

*--your math would be correct if goblins had racial hit dice, because then you'd use the standard "advancing a monster with class levels" rules and, since Ranger and Barbarian both are reasonably counted as key classes, you would add 1 CR per level in each. However, because goblins do not have racial hit dice, their CR is determined the same way any NPC with only class levels is determined: character level -1 if the NPC has PC class levels, or character level -2 if the NPC only has NPC class levels.

EDIT: Actually, I take that back. I was forgetting about the dogs. 7 riding dogs adds 2800 XP to the total, bringing it to 7,200 XP for the encounter and pushing it into the CR 9-10 range, which is an extremely difficult, bordering on nearly impossible, APL+5 encounter. It's no surprise they had a hard time.

Agreed -- when I first started I had it in my mind that they had racial hit dice. However point made over all as you said.


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I had a group run up against my kobolds in one of their lairs. It was going to be a crazy encounter for them, lots of pain and fear. There were a dozen 1st level kobolds, 6 sorcerers and 6 rogues, in the final trap room. The room was a cylindrical room 20 ft tall with a 15 ft radius. A reinforced oak door barred the exit and a portcullis dropped on the entrance. The top floor of the room had arrow slits every 10 ft around the interior. The sorcerers cast true strike on the rogues every round and the rogues used sneak attacks from the arrow slits.

The only thing that saved the party was a lucky prepped spell. Fog cloud from the druid gave total concealment to the party and gave the tanks time to bash the door down. They still almost got ousted as 6 4th level characters by "a pack of mangy kobolds" as the fighter called then before they walked into that room. But in the players defense 12 CR 1/2s with a APL +2 for the favorable terrain comes out something like a CR 6-8 depending on 3.5 or PF scalings.

I still love to throw low CRs with a sorcerer level at a group. Put a crossbow in hand with a true strike prepped and you can put the fear of the little guy into a player.


not sure if it was the encounter per se or just bad rolling but one of the hardest encounters my PC have ever had was against 4 gargoyles and a gorgon. Now the gorgon was in a pit and for some reason 1/2 my players ventured near the edge of the pit and simply fell in. Then the all failed their saves versus the gorgon and it went from bad to worse.


Strix rangers with deadly aim and favored enemy against a one race party do +5 attack and d8+4 damage with one level and fly.


I was playing in a Society game that was the first part of a two-parter.

Spoiler:
We were given a key to guard that we would need for the second scenario. At the end we found a spell caster whose familiar attempted to steal the key from our spell caster. The lizard familiar rolled a natural 19 on the Stealth check to climb up the mage's robe to wear the key was hanging (we were in combat). Then it rolled a natural 20 on the Sleight of Hand to bite it off and run. It got the key and dashed into the jungle where we couldn't follow.

The only option was to send our mage's familiar after it. The GM decided since they both had the same base speed, that all the mage had to do was succeed on a combat maneuver check for his familiar to stop the lizard so we could get the key back. With all the bonuses, it came out to a natural roll of 5 or higher. No joke, 6 rolls and he couldn't get higher than a 4. We ended up losing the key and didn't have it for the second scenario.


Legion42 wrote:

I had a group run up against my kobolds in one of their lairs. It was going to be a crazy encounter for them, lots of pain and fear. There were a dozen 1st level kobolds, 6 sorcerers and 6 rogues, in the final trap room. The room was a cylindrical room 20 ft tall with a 15 ft radius. A reinforced oak door barred the exit and a portcullis dropped on the entrance. The top floor of the room had arrow slits every 10 ft around the interior. The sorcerers cast true strike on the rogues every round and the rogues used sneak attacks from the arrow slits.

The only thing that saved the party was a lucky prepped spell. Fog cloud from the druid gave total concealment to the party and gave the tanks time to bash the door down. They still almost got ousted as 6 4th level characters by "a pack of mangy kobolds" as the fighter called then before they walked into that room. But in the players defense 12 CR 1/2s with a APL +2 for the favorable terrain comes out something like a CR 6-8 depending on 3.5 or PF scalings.

I still love to throw low CRs with a sorcerer level at a group. Put a crossbow in hand with a true strike prepped and you can put the fear of the little guy into a player.

Any encounter can be deadly if you break the rules:

Range personal
Target you
Duration see text

Be careful this is a classic oversight with true strike most people seem to gloss over.

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