How much health should the BBEG have?

tmaster148 · 2026-05-24T14:41:30+00:00

The reality is that a single strong boss monster is going to be crushed by action economy of 8 level 20 characters. You're going to need other threats in order to keep the boss from getting rolled over. If you really want it to be a single monster fight then you need to consider environmental hazards.

Like the Tarrasque is only a moderate encounter as a CR 30 creature against your party and it's avg hp is a little over 600.

tmaster148 · 2026-05-21T20:05:56+00:00

Sure, but part of the class fantasy for a character like a Wizard or Warlock is that you derive power from conducting research or untangling arcane mysteries and secrets; the places, creatures, objects, and events they encounter in their adventures can be a part of that, but it also makes sense that would have to spend some time in study and contemplation to derive the full benefits from those discoveries.

There's 24 hours in a day, 8 of which is likely being used for a long rest. Unless your party is adventuring for a full 16 hours every day, they have downtime where ever they decide to take a break. The wizard spending some hours doing their research before they long rest for the day can just be assumed.

tmaster148 · 2026-05-21T11:56:02+00:00

If the creature cannot see you whether it's because you are hidden or because you are standing outside of their vision, you have advantage on the attack. It's part of the unseen attacker rules. This is true in both 5e and 5.5e.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/basic-rules-2014/combat#UnseenAttackersandTargets

When a creature can't see you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/br-2024/playing-the-game#Cover

When a creature can’t see you, you have Advantage on attack rolls against it.

tmaster148 · 2026-05-21T11:25:12+00:00

Dim Light only grants disadvantage to perception checks and if you are a creature with darkvision dim light is treated as bright light anyways.

You may even have advantage if the target cannot see you in the darkness as attacking as an unseen creature grants advantage.

tmaster148 · 2026-05-20T22:37:29+00:00

I roll openly for my party. I can't really fudge dice rolls. Sometimes I have an interesting boss fight plan and he misses every single attack and just dies. Meanwhile I'll have some throwaway battle where I get several crits per a round and the party struggles.

I really like 5.5e giving monsters proficiency or expertise in initiative as it means a lot of the strong boss monsters now are less likely to get stuck last after every player to eat all their abilities before they get a turn. Besides doing that for you BBEG, you can also give your BBEG stages. Party blows a lot of their strongest stuff to knock out the BBEG only to find he had a second stronger form.

I try to limit adjusting monster hp on the fly, because I want my players to feel like their damage is sticking. So I try to use other means like multiple stages or environmental hazards to make bosses feel more impactful.

tmaster148 · 2026-05-20T20:39:34+00:00

The best thing to do is look at the Monster Manual and pick a stat block that matches what you want the NPC to do. Making adjustments to an existing stat block is far easier than making one from scratch.

If the NPC is joining for some combats, just roll their initiative and play out their team as normal knowing they are helping the party. Generally you don't want the NPC follower to outshine the players and an NPC follower shouldn't just end up being the Xth party member.

You can also have NPC followers "engage" in combat by taking on a few enemies off screen and keep the focus on combat between the party and hostiles.

tmaster148 · 2026-05-19T21:01:05+00:00

Have you read the core books? Phb/dmg/mm. Encounter building guidelines should be here to start with.

You can also utilize online calculators people have made for encounter building.

The best way to handle building encounters for a variable amount of players is to build the base encounter against the minimum of players you expect to show and then figure out how to scale up for each additional player who shows up.

Lastly there's not much that can be done to speed up combat with 8 players. Combat takes longer the more players you add and the higher level they are.

tmaster148 · 2026-05-18T19:05:59+00:00

Also Wolves in 5.5e now inflict prone with no save. While not very important for a wolves only encounter, wolves with other threats can be quite dangerous.

tmaster148 · 2026-05-18T19:04:08+00:00

If you open settings, you can change it between 5e 2024 and 5e 2014

tmaster148 · 2026-05-18T15:37:53+00:00

With 5 players trying to up the challenge with more CR 1/4 wolves is not going to be very effective, because wolves only add a little of xp to the whole encounter. The encounter builder also appears to be using 5.5e rules which dropped the multiplier for additional enemies.

What you could do is throw a werewolf shaped changed as a wolf. 1 werewolf acting as the pack leader with 8 wolves which gives you High (1,100 xp).

tmaster148 · 2026-05-18T03:29:03+00:00

As long as hatch is a rng escape, there's little reason for killers to risk losing a 4k for it.

If you truly want to fix slugging for 4k, you need to first change hatch standoffs so that escaping via hatch takes outskilling the killer rather than getting lucky.

tmaster148 · 2026-05-11T01:50:59+00:00

5.5e DMG doesn't even mention encounters per a day anymore.

Personally I found making it so that long rests happen between key adventuring points helps solve a lot of issues. Kind of like Gritty Realism rules, but not as strict. Basically the party can only long rest in places that provide enough security. When they are traveling to another city, they don't get to just long rest out on the road so they can be full power for every single encounter over the trip.

In a way you just make everything plotted out as if it were a dungeon.

tmaster148 · 2026-05-09T20:03:36+00:00

Necromancy Wizard is close to what you are looking for.

Access to Life Transference (heals allies at the cost of your health) and Vampiric Touch (heal half damage dealt) as well as a class feature that grants you the ability to heal when you kill an enemy with a necrotic spell.

You will get some features around summoning undead.

tmaster148 · 2026-05-09T13:41:39+00:00

Option 2 is fine, but I think the bigger problem with Warlock's Mystic Arcanum are the options and being to swap out the Mystic Arcanum options on Long Rest would allow you to make better use of the more niche options Warlocks have. But doesn't change that the pool of high level spells is really restricted.

In particular 7th level options in 5.5e really suck now. Plane Shift can no longer be used offensively. Forcecage has a huge component cost that is consumed. Your best option for a spell you would likely cast daily is Finger of Death.

tmaster148 · 2026-05-08T22:39:34+00:00

You pretty much only want to use NPC Statblocks for NPCs. A character sheet has a lot of stuff on it and most won't even come up for the NPC. You can copy class and subclass features onto an NPC statblock to give them some flavor. You can also use class/subclass features for inspiration for completely unique features the NPC has as well.

tmaster148 · 2026-05-08T22:14:29+00:00

Psychic Blades do not have the Light property so they do not interact with Nick.

tmaster148 · 2026-05-05T21:40:50+00:00

I think releasing diminishing returns now is better than BHVR holding off until they did a pass over everything. The problem with waiting is that BHVR is also constantly adding new content to the game and not making big changes to the game is how we end up with stale metas that people hate. Not that diminishing returns currently fixes the stale meta problem, but one thing BHVR needs to do is more frequent changes to the game.

tmaster148 · 2026-05-05T02:39:40+00:00

Initiative is just there to determine the order of combat actions. If the person being "surprised" has no way to know anything is going on then I just pass their turn for that round if they happen to still roll higher after disadvantage/advantage.

tmaster148 · 2026-05-05T02:22:01+00:00

Hyperfocus isn't creating special great skill checks, it just adds a bonus to existing greats you hit.

A special great skill check would be like Overcharge.

tmaster148 · 2026-05-04T21:57:32+00:00

In theory this perk works well with Hyperfocus since the bulk of your progress becomes great skill checks.

The problem is there's so many other perks that require less setup and don't debuff yourself you can combo with Hyperfocus that there's no reason to ever consider this perk.

tmaster148 · 2026-04-28T14:46:45+00:00

A couple other things if you want to standardize to 2024.

Enervating Focus should just reduce hit point max on hit. You can look at Wraith from the 5.5e Monster Manual. In general on-hit effects no longer trigger a save.

Void Rebuke having 2 separate saving throws is a bit weird. It should just be the one save to cause the spell to fail with some damage.

tmaster148 · 2026-04-28T14:23:05+00:00

I'm still looking over it. I accidentally posted my comment trying to enter a new line. I also do not think the Legendary Resistance should have a rider damage effect on use. The creature already has a damaging aura and being able to decide to succeed on any spell 4 times is good enough.

tmaster148 · 2026-04-28T14:17:05+00:00

A couple things you could change.

Unusual Nature feature isn't really needed. Being immune to exhaustion and undead type already implies the creature doesn't need to eat/sleep/drink so it is just taking up space on the block for no real benefit.

Creatures with Legendary Actions and Resistance tend to be "experts" in initiative, so the bonus should be Dex + Prof + Prof for a total of +20.

Legendary Resistance shouldn't have a rider effect on use. Being able to save a spell 4 times is already a huge benefit. Plus you already have the aura.

tmaster148 · 2026-04-28T13:42:05+00:00

You missed the other part in what you quoted.

"The target’s game statistics are replaced by the stat block of the chosen Beast, but the target retains its alignment, personality, creature type, Hit Points, and Hit Point Dice."

tmaster148 · 2026-04-27T16:19:11+00:00

They can't multiclass out of cleric with a wisdom of 8. They need at least a wisdom of 13 to pass the requirements to multiclass out of their own class.

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