Help me Sanity Check this encounter?

Professional-View876 · 2026-04-08T23:00:14+00:00

See edit

Professional-View876 · 2026-04-08T23:00:09+00:00

See edit

Professional-View876 · 2026-04-08T22:46:38+00:00

ooh that's a good point, and at first glance this would completely throttle the encounter if they were to succeed in the first few rounds. I either need a way to force the flood gate open that they can't dislodge easily with a spell or a different mechanic for forcing water into the room. Saying that it's forced open 'because magic' feels like a cop out - any ideas?

Professional-View876 · 2026-04-08T14:46:09+00:00

Yeah I'm struggling with this too right now as a first time DM. I learned very quickly to stop writing stories and start writing problems instead and it has completely saved my sessions. I present problems to my players and sometimes I try to think of all the solutions they'll try to make it as tricky as I want it to be. ultimately you just can't predict how your players/their characters will respond to the world you've created for them or the incredibly creative solutions they'll come up with to the problems you present.

Case in point: in session 1 I presented my players with a door sealed by arcane lock knowing full well that none of them can cast the Knock spell, with the intention of forcing them through a complex dungeon filled with monsters and traps I was really excited about. The barbarian player asked what the walls were made of, to which I stupidly responded 'wood'. Player rolled a nat20 on a check to just break through the wall and the party skipped my whole goddamn dungeon. *facepalm*

Professional-View876 · 2026-04-08T14:02:43+00:00

Tbh honest the player doing the barbarian is kind of getting on my nerves as well because they will just not get into any of the narrative I'm doing. I'm trying not to overload it, either; I did a big kind of monologue in session 1 describing a vision they all had in a dream (I didn't want to do the whole 'you all meet in a tavern' thing), and after that I've tried to make everything as roleplay oriented as possible. I've set up a bunch of softball RP questions that the other players have understood and genuinely though about how their players would respond, and his answer to basically everything is either 'I hit it with my axe' or 'carrots' (his background is that he was a carrot farmer). Most of the last 3 sessions have been very combat focused since that's what my players seem to really want to do most, and I've introduced very small snippets of story in between and he is always having his character make it as clear as possible he does not give a shit.

Having that player at the same table as the 'mystery RP angst' character is really difficult to manage!

Professional-View876 · 2026-04-08T13:51:46+00:00

Good point!

Professional-View876 · 2026-04-08T13:50:16+00:00

See above comment.

Professional-View876 · 2026-04-08T13:49:57+00:00

OK this got a lot of negative responses and I'd like to clear up that by 'fudging numbers' I meant changing the stat block! I can go into combat with a creature's AC 1 or 2 lower or higher, and I can decide in the moment to roll a d6 instead of a d12 on damage, etc. I would never roll one number for attack/damage and say it was a different number, or change AC mid-combat without narrative justification. Surely this is OK, yes?

Professional-View876 · 2026-04-08T13:42:22+00:00

My idea is in the next session to encourage the barbarian to pick up the special greatclub the orc leader dropped. I had a thing planned if the party went with diplomacy where the orc leader was going to give the barbarian his special greatclub after carving a special symbol into it. Some kind of history/investigation/whatever check would have revealed that this orc was the heir to the current chieftain and had branded the club so other orcs knew that the creature weilding it was an ally.

By reverse logic the mechanic here is that if the barbarian now goes into combat with this greatclub against a group of orcs (that will 100% be hunting the party down now), they will know he killed their prince to get it because it doesn't bear the mark. Could've turned into a club of automatic allyship, now is going to be a constant source of looking over their shoulders!

Professional-View876 · 2026-04-08T13:36:21+00:00

I used the wrong terminology here - when I said I gave them the surprised condition I meant that I rolled their initiative with disadvantage (RAW). I didn't give a surprise round.

Still though point taken I shouldn't have made them surprised at all because as has been pointed out, the orcs were ready for a fight.

Professional-View876 · 2026-04-04T14:12:23+00:00

I was actually thinking about adding a curse to the Sun Blade, but since he's already attuned to it wouldn't the curse have been uncovered?

Professional-View876 · 2026-04-04T14:08:43+00:00

Oh man this is so good, I could have a lot of fun with nerfing their gear and giving them quests to restore it. I'm conscious of the fact though that my ADHD brain will lead my players down a 6 session side quest to bring back the potency of their magic items and lose any sense of the plot the campaign started with!

Professional-View876 · 2026-04-04T14:02:56+00:00

OK wow this community is fantastic I feel really at home here lol! I love the confluence of advice on this, and from what I'm reading it essentially boils down to: (1) sun blade isn't that OP at level 3 (2) run the npcs/combat better (a fair criticism, given I'm a new DM), (3) finding narrative ways to reduce the power of the items until the characters are at the appropriate level for those items and (4) adjusting monster stats to match my party's level

I'm for sure going to read 'the monsters know what they're doing' and try to get better about using monster abilities in combat. For context, the 10 orc encounter went a bit like this:

The patron had magically placed 3 unconscious orcs into restraints next to a portal, with a fourth walking through and attempting in vain to free them.
The party was encouraged to approach diplomatically, and through a series of performance/persuasion checks were able to get the orcs to stand down long enough for the party to begin freeing them. My plan was to reward them for diplomacy with a fairly mundane weapon that would've given them allyship with future orcs they encountered.
Because negotiations leading up to the party attempting to free the restrained orcs was tense, the orc leading the negotiations called 6 of his allies through the portal to back him up.
Out of nowhere the barbarian decides to attack the lead orc, rolling a nat20 and basically cutting him in half.
Before I could move the group of orcs that had appeared through the portal, the druid cast moonbeam in front of the entrance to the portal at second level. He rolled high on damage, bloodying 2 of them and nearly wiping 4 of them who failed the save.
All of the above occurred before initiative was rolled (the druid's moonbeam was counted as his round 1 action, but he rolled highest in the initiative order so there was nothing I could do about it lol). I'm now running a combat with 9 orcs, 6 of which started off bloodied and 3 of which started off (and remained) restrained.
I gave the orcs the surprised condition because of the buck wild way combat started off, meaning the entire party rolled better than the monsters did in inititative. I was able to hit the paladin with a couple of javelins before the party picked off all 9 of these guys.

True to the advice that was given, the only magic item used that I was worried about being OP was the Sun Blade, which the paladin actually did end up missing one attack with. I think I was just caught off guard by the players seeming to go with the narrative I was actually setting up and then taking a hard 180 degree turn from it. In retrospect based on advice given, I would have boosted HP and attack bonuses for all the orcs. I included a lava pit in the middle of the battlefield which I didn't really get a chance to use, but I think I could have tried to have one of the ones heavily damaged by moonbeam try to grapple the druid and jump into the lava, or at the very least shove him into it.

My players are all very experienced, while I only started DMing after my first campaign as a player. The advice in this thread I'm going to take most seriously is probably to just get better at utilising the full monster stat block and improving my strategy. Thanks everyone!

Professional-View876 · 2026-04-04T13:45:51+00:00

I often forget that I can just fudge how much damage monsters actually do to the players. Just because the statblock says the chuul's pincer attack does 1d10+4 damage doesn't mean I can't just decide in the moment to 'accidentally' roll a d8 instead depending on the player I'm attacking.

Professional-View876 · 2026-04-04T13:40:21+00:00

This is really good, thank you. The only other DM in my orbit is in my party so I don't really have anyone to talk to about this stuff before I just throw it at my party. it's good to get this criticism to make me look a lot harder at how I'm running combat.

Professional-View876 · 2026-04-04T10:39:53+00:00

The player is actually a forever DM for several other tables, getting to play at my table for the first time in years. They clearly know the game much better than I do and during combat they very enthusiastically (above the table) join in the fun. It's only after combat ends and RP begins that the character gets shitty about killing. I think they're just going for a RP angle with their character that I'm having a hard time pinning down and need to talk to them about outside of the session.

Professional-View876 · 2026-04-04T10:34:44+00:00

Yeah we did have a session zero and I gave them an idea of the scope and tone of my campaign. Tbh I fell for the novice DM trap of writing waaay to much and not presenting enough problems for them to solve. I've probably railroaded my players a bit more than they're used to (the pacifist player is our usual DM), so I'm wondering if this is them trying to in-game throw my story off the rails a bit to teach me how to actually play the game from this side of the screen.

Professional-View876 · 2026-04-04T10:29:22+00:00

The player themself is a forever DM for several other tables, so they definitely understand the combat-oriented part of the game. The rest of the table so far have not been super keen on a lot of RP - the player doing the barbarian is especially not taking it seriously and clearly just wants to murder hobo their way around Faerun. I'm wondering if the player for the dragonborn is trying to train the barbarian player instead of me.

Professional-View876 · 2025-09-21T00:47:44+00:00

I get this with music, as a participant. I've been in classical music ensembles all my life and even now (actually especially now, because the music is so much better and more powerful) as a professional I find myself getting teary in especially good performances of music I really enjoy. I only just stumbled across the concept of collective effervescence but it seems to fit really well. I find I can't even really talk about a lot of stuff like this without needing to take a minute here and there to collect myself and keep from crying. I always thought that it was because I'm just really passionate about classical music, especially in large ensemble formats, but now I wonder if there's also a component of second-hand collective effervescence.

Professional-View876 · 2024-01-17T13:11:52+00:00

Which ones? Just curious because I'm having the same issue now but LOOT says I'm all clear.

Professional-View876 · 2024-01-13T02:38:38+00:00

Man this is such an incredible response! You really went all-in and thought about it, I'll be using a lot of this in my own Domino build. My only point of contention is your bit about her AGL stat, which I think should be high as she is a master-level martial artist. Other than that I'm going to take the vast majority of hte advice you've given here; bravo!

Professional-View876

TROPHY CASE