Tips For Running High Level Combat In Dungeons & Dragons 5e

TIME STAMPS
0:00 - Intro
1:44 - Monsters Are Defeated Too Easily
3:37 - Solutions
8:59 - Deadly Monster Abilities
10:00 - Solutions
13:14 - Superheroic Abilities
14:08 - Solutions
20:16 - Character Power Varies
21:43 - Solutions
25:55 - It Takes Forever
28:23 - Solutions
34:26 - Conclusion

____________________________
Watch us play live Tuesdays 6-9 PM EDT on Twitch:

Join our Patreon community:

Get our custom t-shirts:

Pick up your next D&D book on Amazon using our affiliate links below. As an Amazon Affliate, we earn from qualifying purchases:

[bassprorenn]

as a dm of a party of six level 11’s, legendary actions (especially on multiple creatures) have been huge. if a monster isn’t legendary, i’ll usually let it attack and move once or twice per round so that it can kinda keep up with the hundreds of damage points the party does. additionally, giving the monsters a goal outside of killing the party or giving the party an objective outside of killing the monsters really helps makes things quite a bit more tense.

[MetalGlitch]

A DM that I've played with has a really good solution for new players who forget abilities like Action Surge, Rage, etc. He printed out and laminated cards that had the ability's name and a brief description on the front and how they recharged (ie: short rest, long rest, etc.) on the back. The player would keep these cards face up on the table, and when they used the ability they would turn the card face-down. When we did something that let us restore abilities the card would be turned face up again.

[boscobubbles]

Look, as cliche as this sounds, I just wanna say thanks Dungeon Dudes. I have been a 3.5 DM since I was 13, only recently switching to 5ed last year, and between you two and Mark Hulmes, it has made the transition so much easier. I absolutely love these kind of videos, and appreciate them so much. So again, thank you.

[bub]

I have a large party (8 players). To make it faster, I let them pair up and take their initiative and turns in teams. It keeps everyone engaged and speeds up encounters. It's awesome to see how the players come up with combos. I just make them pick a different teammate each time.

[AnObserver]

Thanks. My party has just reached level 10, and it definitely feels like these ideas are going to be progressively more useful.
Right now one of my main tricks is to give them situations where simple combat skills don't help them.
For example, they had to save a village. Turns out the village was mind controlled by a powerful hag. The weak villagers were getting aggressive and paranoid towards the party. Then most the party Drank water from the cursed well, and all of a sudden the villagers seemed reasonable and friendly and the few party members and sane villagers who didn't drink from the well seemed insane and threatening. Also the water was so good that it gave a bunch of bonuses to those who drank it, but also had a withdrawal clock that started causing problems for the players who were trying to let the water wear off.
Both sides saw the other side as cursed and insane.
Almost had a failed mission as both groups (cursed and uncursed) actually got into a struggle. Thankfully there were no fatalities, though there were players grappling and restraining players and a bunch of villagers put to sleep.
When they finally met the big bad, most of the party were overwhelmed by her beauty and had to make wisdom savings throws whenever they tried to harm her or when she gave them commands. It was really challenging for the players, even though the actual fight wasn't.

Afterwards it led to a interesting discussion on how to mediate between different perspectives.

I love dnd 😅

[Calebgoblin]

I've always felt very intimidated about running high level combat, even though I always wanted to, so I didn't do it very often. This very well may be life-changing to my games!!
Keep rolling high, Dudes

[lord]

10:45 Never, ever, run an encounter where there is only a single path for your players to victory, especially if that single path is obscure. We all love the endgame 1 chance to unsnap everyone, but in reality if you as the DM have to tell your players how to win, or the key to their winning dies before they have a chance, you will cheapen or tarnish the challenge.

[sabinrawr]

Somehow, the algorithm knew that my party just entered this phase of play, and I needed to see this, specifically today. Thank you!

[HallenaQuinzel]

Great content as always!

My friend to me when watching this: "Monty looks like the actor who plays Jaskier from the Witcher if he was the DM and not the chaotic bard."

I never noticed it before, but Monty does look like Jaskier a fair bit!

[drdm]

Exactly what I need! Hope this is going to be a series on high level stuff. How about details of any home brew adventures at high level (even third tier)?

[paulcarter]

Hi Dungeon Dudes. I do not normally comment in any way, but I thought I would try it out. I recently DM'd a combat encounter for a group that had a large diversity of character abilities and focuses. I scaled back the combat, and focused on environmental threat. I did A large party had to retrieve some information from an underwater sea cave (in a water sealed weighted chest). There was a limited ability to travel to the environment to get down to the area of interest. They did there prep work and headed off. The balance of the PCs stayed on the surface. But there was an ambush set. A bad guy with a ring of water elemental control, used control water to have a huge wave wave the PCs off the deck and into the water, getting all but 2. 2 spear and shield veterans from the MM, engaged those 2 on land, with the addition of one of them would through a net and retract it on misses. The next round, the trickster cast wall of ice over the surface to create a barrier to get to the air. Half of the in water PCs managed to catch a breath before being dunked under water. One of the guys, a Dwarf wearing Full plate quickly sank to the 30 foot bottom by his full plate while he was knocked silly. Waiting in the water was a swarm of quippers, which harassed the PCs attempting to deal with the puzzle question, without one shotting anybody. It was just enough to distract and frustrate them without derailing them. In the meanwhile, the bad guy veterans with spear shield focused on a couple of attacked, then attempt to push the PCs on the deck off into the water. I used the spellcasting Bad Guy, to use spells to keep the combat and puzzle balanced and the threat relatively balanced. For instance, the PCs fighting got a grease spell on the deck under their feet when they started to dominate the combat. It set them back for about 2 rounds, which let the puzzle group catch up. The bard under the ice sheet, who had not caught his breath before being dunked, used thunderwave to knock out the quippers, and saw the crack form in the ice. He repeated a little for form a crack in the ice that he eventually was able to crawl through. Several others were knocked around, but saw the line on the surface that was the edge of the ice sheet, and feeling the intense cold, swam for it. Difficult, but were able to get to the edge and start to climb up. The bad guy dropped a darkness spell in the center of his ice sheet, which made it a little more difficult to see and assist each other out of water, which they soon did (get out of the water). In the meanwhile, the armored Dwarf on the bottom saw the anchor chain, which he was able to move to on the bottom, and climb up it to the surface. Shield spear guys were dispatched, bad guy spellcaster escaped by running across the water and diving in, to be seen again as a recurrent villain. All of these PCs have different combat and utility capabilities. I also did not have to just stack more meat for them to hack apart, and they wren't limited by what magic they know. Then, we returned to normally scheduled programming with the other team in the sea cave (fought a water elemental in the dark murky underwater cave). It was a good session, but you can imagine the difficulties to overcome, to keep things moving in an exciting way. I think there is a larger impact on the players ability to play creatively, than the capabilities of their PCs. Some want to rely just on their sword swing and spell list, instead of just creative play and solutions. Please give me some suggestions. Thanks.

[Fallin]

At the end of Curse of Strahd my players were incredibly powerful. They were only level 12 but had powerful combos between them and incredible magic items. I chose to make Strahd a multi fased boss fight, culminating with him becoming the essence of vampirism and sucking the life out of Krezk to create a army of shadowy minions. These minions could be medium, large or huge, and two could fuse to make a bigger one. I made their attacks incredibly simple, 1d10+2, 2d10+4 or 3d10+6 respectively, and no HP. Instead 1 hit would kill a medium, 2 hits a large, and so on. This way I could throw huge numbers of these guys at them making them problematic as they would quickly overrun them if ignored.

[Medaumplay]

There was this game where we spent a whole arc of the campaign fighting a gang of mindflayers. My character was a barbarian. You can imagine what was happening in every single combat. I ended up talking to the DM, saying that I knew it was part of the challenge and all, but that spending whole combats not having a turn was getting a bit old.
I'm glad I did, after that we figured some solutions and I was able to do stuff again.

[craftsecond]

One thing I have encountered in the climactic moments of campaigns is that I have a tendency to want a really big set-piece battle. The forces of good v. the forces of evil, defending the hometown/kingdom/whatever. It makes for great stakes...but a really massive bookkeeping headache. So, while I am guilty of having way too many things on the board to keep track of, I have simplified what happens when the various NPCs interact with each other; they just automatically do some kind of average damage. Then I don't have to roll any dice when the horde of orcs battles the horde of zombies; they just wear each other down a set amount, and we all move on.
When the PCs interact, either attacking or getting attacked, they use the actual stat block, though. Real DnD combat, as opposed to simplified because no one wants to just watch the DM fight with themselves.

[martinberntsson]

Really like that you are referring to events that has happened in your livestream campaign when giving some of the advice! Makes it easy to also check out a practical example of how it comes in to play during an actual session. Great content as always! 👍

[Handles]

I think it’s important to remember too that sometimes, particularly with veteran players or especially players who typically DM, they may just be fine playing a character that is weaker than the rest of their party. They may want to be a more background character to support the story or just not powerful in combat. Just because Sam is no match for Aragorn with a sword doesn’t mean he’s any less of a main character. Please don’t take that away from your players without asking/talking with them!

[kallebuchholz]

I cheated myself of what little free time I have as a father and started designing my own RPG. So although I plan to only play D&D when my fellow players won't accept another system, Iwatch your channel a lot, because it is my favorite inspiration for thinking about what options my own system must offer.

[olivverthekid]

it's always a delicate balance! building high level encounters (or any encounter) is a science experiment. a little bit of this, a dash of that, take that out. it's an art form. gotta be challenging and rewarding but not impossible. thanks for the tips guys! love the channel!

[chrism]

For the second problem, I think the best solution is to find a way to telegraph those abilities such as the frightful presence. Have the party see the dragon scouting when they are approaching, and it flies right past them and make them all make a save for the frightful presence.

[holyrod]

I've been DM'ing for a long time and I will say that my design goal is for combat to be three to four rounds, even in 3rd edition in my big level 20 fights. If it's going to be longer I feel it should noticeably shift in some way, such as a gate breaking from damage and sewage water spraying out covering the battlefield. If it goes longer, people start to feel their attention wander or resources start to become hoarded in a way that I don't feel is beneficial to larger enjoyment. Additionally, you're able to have more combats, role-play moments, etc, so the game feels more textured in general.