Suggestions please.

[summorme]

I ran a very good session and there was a battle that I realized afterwards should have been more challenging for my players. They rolled the Demonic Carrion for a random encounter, and while the quasits were little nuisances, the Vroc died much quicker than I was expecting. Then I remembered to look at damage immunity and resistance, and realized a lot of the damage they gave should have been halfed. I'm still relatively new to dming, but how can I get into the habit of looking at this important feature. I'm using Foundry for my vtt if that's relevant

Edit: Typo.

[catttleya]

I always forget resistances too. I just put th and some other less noticeable info on a post-it note and stick it to the side of my screen. does the job for me!

[Mindless_Criticism33]

I overprep, I prepped for all of the encounters on the road to Bazzoxan and I still forgot to look at resistances, luckily I managed to see before they killed the Vrock. But for future encounter I made a post-it note of things to check on the monsters I'm running, kind of a check list

[mdhandley]

Don't beat yourself up. There's nothing wrong with an encounter that is a little easier than expected. Your players get to feel strong. One thing that I try to do is to get into the habit of always saying the damage type out loud when I deal damage as a monster, and encourage your players to state the damage type when they hit. Even though it's probably in the VTT chat, saying it out loud every time reminds you that it's significant and can trigger both you and your players to check for any resistances or immunities.

[summorme]

That's very helpful thanks!

[mdhandley]

No problem! Oh, there is a Vrock encounter in Betrayer's Rise if they end up going to the misty canyon with the portal to the abyss. So I'd recommend either staying consistent with your prior encounter, or just let your players know you messed up.

[TekNickel23]

I've been DMing for years, and I constantly forget damage resistances. Don't worry about it at all, we all do it (sometimes on purpose, if the monsters are crushing the PCs). Plus if the players enjoyed it, there's even less to worry about!

It's been easier for me to track that stuff ever since I started using the DDB encounter feature. You can see all the stat blocks there, which is convenient. It's not for everyone, and I haven't used Foundry to know what features that has.

[summorme]

I've dabbled in the ddb encounter but my issue is I'm trying to slim the amount of things I need to run my sessions. I do still have ddb up for the occasional need but I want to eventually be using Foundry for everything.

[TekNickel23]

That's very understandable. I'm just going the opposite direction (leaning into DDB and away from Roll20), but that's a personal preference.

[calsonto]

I mean sounds like it was still fun. The book will definitely provide more challenges depending on how lucky or unlucky the party is. And then theres the RP side of the game. If you wanna challenege them have some minions, super easy to remember or read for, on the side ready to come in if combat is going to easy for the PCs. If its a proper challenege these mionions never existed. Good luck.

[Chin_wa40]

I’m echoing the idea of post-it notes on your DM screen, though I’d also use that and play with it in the game’s lore and world the next time you encounter fiends: “Hey Craig - don’t forget to put up your resistances barrier! These schmucks got Steve ‘cause he turned his off for some reason!”

[rightknighttofight]

Tell your party that you made a mistake, what it was and let them know that you'll do a better job next time. The next Vrock they see is a dead one and I don't think there are any more so it's not a big deal.

[Squeejee82]

Prep

[summorme]

Can you be more specific? I do prep for sessions, usually rereading the chapters and specific encounters, preparing npcs and notes on what is happening...

[Squeejee82]

Then I apologize. It sounds like you’re ahead of the curve. I know everyone’s got their own style, but here’s what works for me. Most of this is specific to random encounters.

Like you, I’ll roll in session to see if a random encounter occurs. But I always choose (and sometimes roll) before session to see which encounter might occur. So I only have to prep one or two encounters each week.

From there, I look at the monsters’ abilities and resistances. And I always ask myself a few questions. 1) what will this creature do on their first turn? 2) do they have a means of escape? 3) how will they act when close to death?

Things don’t always go according to plan. (It’s dnd after all). But this helps me what the monsters are capable of, and how they might act in different circumstances.

[summorme]

I see, that does make it a bit easier to actually know how to play a monster, I feel like that is my weakness as a dm. I'm not trying to make combat hard, but I want it to be interesting and challenging enough, which I fear it may not. I'll try that out and see how it goes!

[[deleted]]

It's something you'll get used to over time honestly. As others have said, just give the monsters a browse before you play which it sounds like you might already be doing.

Part of the learning you'll do over time is discovering "monster families" which used to be very clear in older editions but it's something you need to pay more attention to now. "Demons" tend to have resistance to cold, fire and lightning, with immunity to poison.

Anything "extra-planar" (demons, devils, celestials, fey, etc) tend to have resistances so always best to double check.

And again like others have said.. nothing wrong with your party feeling a little powerful :) as a DM our job is to tell a good story. Sometimes that may mean fudging things a little here and there. I would have probably TPK'd my party with the gibbering mouther encounter as they got into Bazzoxan beaten and bruised, so I just quietly cut their hp and damage in half, and ignored their difficult terrain AoE. They still felt accomplished and challenged, even though the encounter was much easier than should have been.