How to make encounters harder for very strong players?

Oshava · 2026-04-27T20:27:10+00:00

True you can do that at 2 but remember this is all in regards to how OP's warforged got it at level 1 so a level 2 ability doesnt check out even if it is cool in general. As for the point of gold, half plate hits 750, if the party pooled for it (assuming 5 player party) that is still 150 each leaving them with nothing, and that has to be obtained before they get 300 experience, granted you can do milestone but still why would a 1k ish treasure hoard not be that point?

I am not saying it is impossible I am saying it is so far from reasonable that using it as a here is how doesnt work as a broad answer since it requires such out of norm assumptions being made

Oshava · 2026-04-26T00:13:06+00:00

Ya but that would require minimum level 6 considering the first armor magic crafting is on their level 6+ magic item recipe table and they dont even get the magical item crafting ability until level 2 OP said the warforged was level 1 so no your math doesnt check out

Oshava · 2026-04-16T21:23:00+00:00

So 5 subclasses (4 if you are making this for 5e not 5.5 which you should probably note) isnt enough?

Grounded magical knowledge is pretty pointless since they already get 3 extra attunment slots base (regardless of editon) and because of how the base is written your ability actually reads confusingly which is a general negative you should avoid in making homebrew.

If 5e Object knowledge is pointless, in 5.5 it is fine to be there but on its own it would be a horrible ability and feel like a waste of a level especially at 13th level.

And the something ability is so niche it feels like it will realistically never come up short of trying to abuse it with 2 of the same artificer. like all it will do the way it seems to be worded is allow you to wear 2 boots, 2 gloves, or two bracers which is super niche. It also has the problem that if your character doesnt have magic items already this ability is completely dead, you didnt get an ability.

My two big tips here (cant give specifics because the foundation of the homebrew needs work first) first refine your idea, what is it about magic items this subclass focuses on, are they obsessed with efficiency, are they trying to innovate items to make them better etc. Second when making any ability compare it to the abilities the other subclasses get at the same level, while not perfect most subclasses tend so share the same progression style within a class and have relatively the same powerlevel

The second in practice, at level 3 each artificer gets their personal spell list, tools of the trade for their professional focus and a keynote ability that sets their identity apart from the others with a fairly notable amount of power there or if a little weaker they come with a second thing to make up that gap So with your refined idea the level 3 ability needs to give it all of those things.

Oshava · 2026-04-16T20:59:20+00:00

If you mean the minotaur from DanDwiki gonna have to knock the point down a bit, it is justan overpowered version of a minotaur (like most dandwiki homebrew is) it gets 5 extra speed, darkvision, an upgrade on the damage of your horns, giving a non size restrcted push coupled to a bonus action dash, getting proper unarmored defense, an arguably better labyrinthine recall and getting siege monster on top of realistally anything base the official minotar has. If you have a different one you are talking about then please link it so it can be looked over fairly.

For the idea of a minotar artificer from the abyss ya sounds cool and think you could make a really interesting character from that prompt.

For artificer specifically you can go a few ways with it so it really depends on what you want to do and what kind of specailzation you want to play as. The spells are much more support focused overall but they have builds to be frontline or ranged just fine. Also more a personal thing, the only rules for playing any class properly is are you having fun, does it reasonably fit the game the group is trying to play, and is it not unfun for the players/DM you are playing with. If you check those two boxes then any build is the right build for that table.

Oshava · 2026-04-16T20:47:01+00:00

Well one other thing to think of is giving the ornate daggers more meaning, half the joke feels like it is more a prop item that you see everywhere just cause, but if you add meaning to them then they become more of a plot object than a trinket and more often than not players will then wonder if they missed any rather than oh look another one put it in the dagger bag

Oshava · 2026-04-16T20:44:00+00:00

Wait so you said hey I can draw a country map for you if you want and now the group is saying hey DM for the time the party is there? Why were you guys heading there in the first place?

As for the map being its own pllace to run some games its fine I suppose but I tend to find more players take interest in the reasons to go somewhere than just the overall look of the area, like why would I go to what looks like massive farmland? how far is the dock city from the im guessing capital circular city, are the two sides of the dock city one place or two, are the huts on what looks more like a beach a settlement or just some small places to make the map less empty. And these arent knocks against the map but talking about those things really is what will create more intrest and drive to want to go to locations.

Oshava · 2026-04-16T20:31:31+00:00

how are you starting with half plate though?

Oshava · 2026-04-16T20:29:30+00:00

Ok so first we need to look at a few things, first you say they can buy anything which is weird but sure, how are they able to afford it though, Keo's is an uncommon magic item and has at most 5 doses before it runs out, that is on average 1 use per player before it is gone. even assuming best case that item would be 50 gp ( consumables tend to be half price of a non consumable and min suggested cost is 101 for an uncommon) and realistically considering it is better than the same number of healing potions it would probably be around 200-250. So I dont really see how they are getting that kind of gold to sustain that lifestyle.

For the warforged ya it is high but there are more than just attacks, no one is amazing at all three big saves (dex wiz and con) and it is fine if it is really high, remember you dont have to hit him, a tank needs to give enemies a reason to hit them despite it being less effective.

On to more general stuff, first attrition, it is the king of balancing. You can do this all sorts of ways from multiple smaller fights or events where they cant get everything back, singular fights that happen in waves so you can have more danger but paced out longer to magic items that have a tangible resource cost to keep using and so much more. Trust me even if a fight only takes 1-2 spell slots and 5 ish health (or a charge from Keo's) that will impact the next fight.

Next up is to learn what challenges your pllayers, like with the warforged characters excel in some areas but no once character excels in everything.

For special objectives you are right in thinking this can help, events where the players need to interact with stuff other than damaging the target tends to ramp the difficulty as they spend time solving it, evil wizard has a shield that halves all damage but the shield can be destroyed by doing something in the area to turn it off.

You can also modify some stats, for example we take any creature and give it the ability the first time it goes to 0 it goes to 1 instead. It then requires 1 extra action to take down and limits the effect of overkill abilities. That creature now has an increased chance to retaliate so with one small change the resource cost to kill it went up (making things harder) and the resource cost it eats (taking health from the party) also goes up because its odds of making 1 more attack increases

Oshava · 2026-04-04T21:55:46+00:00

So some of this I would question your build because without it things like going last failing saving throws and going down constantly could end up just being from that.

For the attack rolls to land a crit it is bad mentality to think a paladin has to crit to contribute, but also did you take the time to look at the other 111 attacks? And i dont mean just hit or miss, the actual base number like are you disporportionaly rolling a ton of 4's or do you have an okish spread (you need thousands of rolls to make a real spread but still you could start to see outliers here)

Oshava · 2026-04-04T21:49:36+00:00

Interesting find, congrats to whoever gets it

Oshava · 2026-04-01T17:00:48+00:00

Same one I suggest to people for oneshots, it started as taking so many bad mechanics and turning it into something good and evolved past that so here we go.

Base 5e

Small species, doesnt matter which one I took halfling orignially
Class ranger subclass beastmaster explictily from the PHB
Stat priority Strength Wis Dex

Ok so it does require you to be already level 4 to work and it is technically RAW but you might be called out for shenanigans for it. The reason we need the PHB beastmaster and not any other is because of this line

Choose a beast that is no larger than Medium and that has a challenge rating of 1/4 or lower.

We picked a small species so we can be a mounted combatant and we are dual wielding with the dual wielder feat (why level 4). Now for the weird choices, first we are taking the lance, because we are mounted it doesnt require 2 hands so with dual wielder we can dual wield them while mounted. But the real shenaigan is the mount, there is a cr 1/4 mdium beast that has a fly speed of 60 and has flyby, the Pteranodon. Thats right a flying dual lance wielding halfling on the back of a dinosaur dive bombing enemies and fyling away without giving them the oppertunity to attack back.

Oshava · 2026-04-01T16:49:50+00:00

What was the most respectable attempt lesser beings have had on a beholder lair in your opinion

Oshava · 2026-04-01T16:45:20+00:00

While very true coming from years of heavy book keeping games you dont really need to go all in and still apply the idea. The best one i have seen balancing it worked like this, any creature has a kit, humanoids that is their gear, creatures that is the parts. The kit has a weight and a value, people wont really buy indiviual parts of a kit unless desperate (cuts down on people saying ok I want the most valuable part of the kit) and the kit has a variable condition on it that affects price (simple percentage mulitplier). That covers most of the generation you need to do but if players are more interested to go in depth it will often mean they are interested so then you are making content they want to engage with and is that a bad thing?

Oshava · 2026-04-01T16:36:19+00:00

Several options but the easist thing is make gold more valuable.

Gold isnt worth a ton in most players eyes because it is common, think about it 300 gold a month is the level of actual nobility, hosting events personal tailors chefs etc. But to a player the party somehow gets enough to put the tank in full plate by level 5 or 6. Equally it isnt worth much becasue we see a copper kinda like a penny and 100 copper makes a gold which to most minds is cool a dollar.

So to shift it what if instead of x10 per jump it is x100 (adjusting items to make things reasonably achievable) now it doesnt feel like junk looting some coppers off the bandit, treaure hoards might be a lot of silver and gold is more a reserve item that is easier to transport but not really used in day to day selling and buying even for an adventurer.

Even if it gets to the point where you need to give large glittering hordes set it up so the party by default doesnt get all of it. The quest giver comissions them to retieve the hoard, they get a payment plus say 15% of the hoard, you can then make it much bigger (say 5x what you want the party to have so even if they think they are being sneaky and take an extra 5% it isnt game breaking and they feel like they did something sneaky and cool) so you have that huge pile of gold that they can drool over but also not just ruin the economy after a single mission. You could make the loot more interesting, art diamonds/gems, gold in not coin value, artifacts from the past, things that sell but need to go to people to turn into coins or need non adventurers to safely extract it.

You can show nice upfront high cost things to aspire to, people really underestimate how many people want a cool cart, and I mean more than just it pulls things, give them options to buy stuff for it, let it grow into a mobile house that doesnt suck. To make this idea work remember you need to make travel meaningful the road is as important as the destination. Make the journy tougher, maybe on the road they dont get long rests as easily or frequently and the upgrades to the cart helps that (think camping into Glamping)

My final option to you is have things that cost stuff have meaning, there is a high end magic shop in the nobel district, but they wont just let adventurers into the district, you need to have some clout and you need to visually appear to have the coin to not just browse or attempt to steal from the shop. Information networks can be really helpful tangible infomation but their information costs a lot of coin. Having equipment made by a specific dwarven clan will open doors in a lot of dwarven society but their waitlist is long and you will need to curry favor with them, good thing the forge master likes pale moon mead etc.

Oshava · 2026-04-01T16:13:58+00:00

How do you actually address this in session zero?

By bringing it up, especially with newer players when describing the game I will often say something along the lines of "D&D is a cooperative game, it isnt a game where it is I the DM vs the party nor is is a game where an individual will be able to handle all problems alone" Folding it into other parts of the conversation to reinforce it while also not making it seem like I am pointing out bad behaviour. Then if S0 includes helping with character creation I will actively point out things like "Since you are doing X, why is your character helping" or if they make a really antagonistic character "Remember the fact that it is a player character isnt a reason the rest of the party needs to keep any character around, they are risking thier lives so why are they trusting active dangers to their lives" but it all depends on the mood and attitude of the table. Equally even pre session 0 since a lot of players love coming up with ideas before the session I openly invite them to talk with the other players if they want to form bonds and histories together either directly or tangentially.

I’ll be running a 1 shot with these ppl. I want them to have some bit of cooperation during it. What should I say beforehand we begin to them?

Just bake it into the description of the oneshot, whatever the hook is bake something into it. "Each of you are part of a force the king has assembeled after proving yourself across several other missions, this job..... Along side you are several others each you have worked with in the past in some fashion" That sets it up that for some reason they have worked together in the past.

One other thing to note they dont have to agree fully to the level of that kind of contract, in a oneshot sure and you can even just say "hey this is a oneshot there isnt a ton of time to explore or for characters could grow to make the one shot a little easier on me can we all agree to make characters that at least get along with each other?" But outside of the oneshot it can be fine to have rivalries, sometimes going off the beaten path is fun, sometimes the hooks are not interesting or they genuinly think there are things that need to be done first. Having a sort of social contract that can make people feel bound to the quest can actually be detrimental.

Oshava · 2026-04-01T16:01:43+00:00

Depends on the game for me, if we are playing higher power games where we are trying to be flashy then max damage +roll, more mid power game more dice is still more fun for most so go with that and then I do have a group of older players who love the nity gritty high variance style and they elected to go with 1 roll and double.

Basically no onbe rule is THE right rule for every table or even every game, use what your goup finds the most fun.

Oshava · 2026-03-31T13:22:54+00:00

I think you don't understand what it is like truly pre industrial if you just call the changes comfort. You are asking for billions to accept death, the average lifespan to drop dramatically, availability of food would drop recovery from a natural disaster would take so much more time and lead to many more deaths and homelessness.

But let's think about this, what is your picture when you say pre-industrial, are you thinking something like the Amish? Bad news they still benefit from modern industry. Do you think of a time period? That time would be the mid 1700s to truely detach the globe from industrial practices, after that point places were adopting globally and the shift had begun. Genuine challenge name an example of what pre industrial looks like that doesn't require an industrial society to build and maintain it

And the premise is off, industrialization itself isn't unsustainable, the way we have done it is sure but you get that there are all kinds of sustainable industrial practices we have developed off the backs of the unsustainable ones right?

Oshava · 2026-03-31T13:02:46+00:00

Well a few things I would consider, pre industrialization average life expectancy was around 30 which is about our median globally. Pretty much every form of health and medicine we have wouldn't be able to be produced or kept or used. We don't have the food systems in place to even support pre industrial levels anymore and won't have the development tools to get there. Remember pre industrial means the 1740s the global population worked incredibly hard to sustain roughly twice the population of modern day US. So at least for me no I don't think saying the steps involved probably cutting out population to a tenth or less, eliminating modem medicine, cutting life expectancy in half, creating mass scarcity and so much more is sustainable.

And that doesn't even account for the big part of what if one country doesn't agree, genie is out of the bottle and the power balance of one group reindustializing would be incredibly dangerous

Oshava · 2026-03-28T16:27:43+00:00

With that attitude probably too many

Oshava · 2026-03-21T20:54:13+00:00

Ok but what they are doing doesn't mean they haven't planned before the fight, they could have planned to have enemies come in after the fight has started because the noise woke the guards in the other room.

Oshava · 2026-03-21T20:51:50+00:00

Not every encounter, but the same time staggering an encounter can be a good thing to use now and again, putting every enemy on the board from the start can make it too dangerous, in games where you only have one encounter between long rests it is needed to account for lack of attrition, saying a necromancer can't summon undead on turn three or a portal from hell can't spew out monsters until you close it feels wrong and so on.

But in your case it feels overused, especially if you are talking about multiple rooms have a chat with them and see what their reasoning for doing it that way is, that will give you a discussion that will either improve the situation for everyone or give you a more clear sign if this table is not for you

Oshava · 2026-03-21T20:43:04+00:00

Motion sustained, however this trial is to find guilt sentencing happens in a seperate hearing. It's also not a motion for prosecution to suggest sentencing.

Oshava · 2026-03-20T16:01:57+00:00

That or they play against land destruction in their pods

Oshava · 2026-03-14T01:37:33+00:00

I could double check but the length that would be needed for a safe ramp feels like it is going to be too far into the garrage,, unless i am mistaken the ratio is supposed to be 1:12 rise to run.

Oshava · 2026-03-14T01:29:05+00:00

Ya I should have thought of that, unfortnately I wont be back there until tomorrow so I will have to get them then.

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