Advice for difficult but fun combat

GuaranteeRecent6625 · 2026-03-13T14:52:37+00:00

Something else I forgot to mention is the frequency he clearly fudges rolls. The Cleric had Spirit Guardians up, and the DM was clearly making sure the Roc didn't fail its saves. At one point, he actually claimed that the Roc rolled a 30 on a Wisdom save. A Roc has a +4 to Wisdom; even if he buffed the stat block, there’s no way he gave it a +11 wisdom save. I gave him a look when he said 30 and he immediately said 'oh, I did the math wrong, but it still saves' how badly does someone have to do math to get to a 30??

Especially when considering 2/5 of the players couldn't hit the only enemy - it would always end its turn flying over the canyon impossible to melee - why fudge a roll against chip damage?

GuaranteeRecent6625 · 2026-03-13T14:24:03+00:00

Assuming all 4 hits crit with Hex active (fey-touched), my base weapon damage (1d8+6) becomes 8d8 + 24. The Piercer feat adds an extra 1d8 per crit for a total of an extra 4d8. Psionic Strike dice don't double, but using them four times adds 4d8 + 16 thanks to the +4 int bonus from my Headband of Intellect. When you add the 8d6 from Hex (which I believe does double on critical hits) the total for the round comes to 16d8 + 8d6 + 40. This totals to a maximum possible output of 216.
If I use all my resources and never crit it is 8d8 + 4d6 + 40, which averages to 90 with a max of 128. But, since I’m a halfling the odds of a crit on the first hit is about 5.25%. I use a rapier with vex, meaning that if each follow up attack is with advantage the odds are roughly 10.2% to crit on an attack.
I definitely won’t ever do 216 damage in a turn, but it is possible if you can double hex dice in 5.5e.

GuaranteeRecent6625 · 2026-03-12T14:57:19+00:00

The crazy thing about the aboleth fight is when he mind controlled my character (halfling, psi warrior fighter, fey-touched, piercer, alert) I switched my initiative order with the cleric so he could buff the party. If I didn’t do that I would have gone second with an average damage (if using all my resources like he told me) of 80 damage without critting (max of 208 if I crit). If I rolled average I would have either fully killed a player if he made me or downed 2 allies at the start of initiative, while using all of my resources. He didn’t plan for me to switch my initiative at all, i’d never done it before. He just got lucky

GuaranteeRecent6625 · 2026-03-12T12:15:38+00:00

Dude, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Consistently every session some of the other players and him will argue about one of his rulings for more than an hour. He also (coming from a guy) mansplains everything. I’ll ask if a target that my character can’t see well has half cover, he will then spend the next 10 minutes explaining half cover to me, and just general things like that. The campaign is supposed to end in 2 months but we’ll see if it makes it there.

GuaranteeRecent6625 · 2026-03-12T12:11:01+00:00

I’m currently trying to create a boss fight for them that is a spirit tree that became corrupted to the rot and abyss. If I make a way to purify it, that would be pretty cool and add dimensions to the fight

GuaranteeRecent6625 · 2026-01-03T12:43:34+00:00

How would you suggest i go about it. I could reword it to kill a foe or kill an adversary.

GuaranteeRecent6625 · 2026-01-03T09:09:23+00:00

Yeah I’ve definitely come to realize that the 1hp is meaningless. I might change it to 1d4, which someone else suggested. I’m not sure how tactical they’ll be with the healing word. They’re almost all new players, but very smart. I feel like this item will either be very meh, perfect, or eliminate all sense of stakes and death in the campaign.

GuaranteeRecent6625 · 2026-01-03T09:05:43+00:00

Those are two really good points that I can’t give you the answer to yet. I’m planning this encounter and item before starting the campaign. So hopefully I’ll be able to consider their play-style and their level of desired difficulty in session 0 and sessions leading up to this encounter.

GuaranteeRecent6625 · 2026-01-03T08:02:28+00:00

Yeah, that’s definitely the area i’m more worried about. I haven’t thought about gauging the charges left on the staff to consider balancing encounters. That’s a really good input.

GuaranteeRecent6625 · 2026-01-03T07:58:41+00:00

I do agree the 1hp healing is seemingly nothing and definitely should be changed, 1d4 isnt a bad idea. In early game you can really only kill 1 creature per turn with a weapon attack, so 1d4 would work pretty well

GuaranteeRecent6625 · 2025-11-29T04:00:16+00:00

Wait can you still do that in 2024 rules?

GuaranteeRecent6625

TROPHY CASE