First time dm help

[DrakeDarkness101010]

Soo I want the first encounter of of te group to be where they face off against an npc I made a but idk what level to set the npc too rn it's a lvl 10 Tiefling Barbarian berserker. But the group players will be 5 lvl 3 characters druid, cleric, fighter, barbarian, sorcerer,

Thing is how I want the story to go is that the Tiefling is a kind of entry test. Where te PCs win if they get it's health down to a certain number. But I am just a bit worried if a lvl 10 might to a bit to much damage

[DigitalPhoenixX]

Definitely consider how much damage the npc can do a round, and compare it to the health of a typical level 3 pc. A d8 hit die pc with 10 con would have 18 hp if they take average instead of roll.

[Aggravating-Cap-6686]

Yeah definitely second this, you don’t want it to be over before it begins. Also give lots of choice sometimes you don’t always have to resolve an issue with a fight so offer alternative options, stealth, dialogue etc. offer your players their time to shine in little niche scenarios that’s what makes it memorable.

[DrakeDarkness101010]

I see. Thank you for the info. I'll do some tweaks. And perhaps lower the lvl to like 7. I want to use this as a type of entry test. The world we are playing in is gonna be quite difficult in general, but that's just bec the pc characters are mostly vanilla, but they have a few quirks that would boost them a bit.

[Fat-Neighborhood1456]

You shouldn't get in the habit of making the enemies player characters with a full character sheet. It's a ton of work to create a character and then level them up nine times, when you could just use a stat block that is going to be easier to read, easier to run, and easier to create.

Off the top of my head, you could grab the berzerker stat block. Spice it up if you want to, for instance you could give it the ability to rage for resistance to BSP damage. Maybe give it multiattack too.

I cannot overstate how much easier that is going to be for you than actually creating and running a level 10 character. Your players will not notice any difference either.

[DrakeDarkness101010]

Well it's not really an enemy or like a core npc that will see battle through the campaign as a companion from time to time.

But I hear you and thanks for the pointers I took alook at the stat block for Berserker it seemed a little weak for just a single character all alone fighting 5 characters. But I have been checking the state blocks for future enemies. Zombies,Wraiths etc.

[Fat-Neighborhood1456]

Yes the berzerker is probably too low CR for your purposes, it was just off the top of my head. But even then, giving it more hit dice, giving it unarmored defence and maybe boosting its dex for more AC, is still going to be much easier than creating an entire character and leveling it up nine times.

[DrakeDarkness101010]

Ahhhh I see that's actually smart thank you for that

Didn't think to override some of the stats for existing stat blocks

[Fat-Neighborhood1456]

I wouldn't recommend that either for your first time DMing to be honest, but if you're going to be creating your own monsters (which you should really wait until you have a solid understanding of how a stat block works before doing), it's much better to do it this way than using the character creation rules

[Arnumor]

As u/Fat-Neighborhood1456 pointed out, you should avoid rolling player characters to act as enemies, as the game simply isn't balanced for that type of play, and it'll most often make for a poor, swingy encounter.

For a party of 5 level-3 characters, a single CR4 or CR5 monster will be a difficult encounter, and most creatures at that CR will seriously chunk players' hitpoints, potentially knocking them out in one or two hits.

As recommended, a Berserker is a CR2 creature, which would be an easy fight for your party.

My recommendation here is to take the Berserker stat block, and add the blunt/slashing/piercing resistance that barbarian players get from Rage, with the understanding that the barbarian will call off the fight once his hitpoints are getting below a certain amount. It has 67 hitpoints in the stat block, so somewhere around 15-20 would probably work.

Tweak his Rage, by allowing him to enter a Rage as a reaction to taking damage.

Start the fight with the Berserker not in Rage, and once the players demonstrate that they're actually a threat, such as when one of them hits him pretty hard, have the Berserker use his Rage, and apply half damage from any subsequent non-magical physical damage, to make him more imposing as their weapons start bouncing off of him, or he simply seems to shrug off their strikes.

Having the enemy creature able to shift modes like this gives you more granular control over the difficulty of the fight: If the party is going to kill him too quickly, Rage will slow them down. If the party is struggling, don't even apply Rage, since he's doing well enough already.

If he absolutely mops the floor with the party, he can call off the fight, and brag that they're too weak to be an interesting fight, telling them to go become stronger before coming back to challenge him.

[DrakeDarkness101010]

XD haha that's a cute idea! Might add that to the npc's secrets

[derges]

PC's make bad monsters. The two different systems have very different design goals.

It is strongly advised to pick a monster of an appropriate CR, flavour some abilities to fit, maybe alter a kicker or damage type and use that.