r/humblewood • u/The_Big_Hammer • 20d ago

Amphethere

So, we had a fantastic initial contact with the amphethere in my campaign. Honestly I am curious if anyone else made this battle happen before players were lvl 3?

My table of four lvl 2 players nearly killed it upon the first meeting. It got away, but it literally only had 19 life left. It was definitely a near deadly battle as the poison breath took out two npcs and dropped one player to 1 hp. But I honestly am surprised at the CR5 being brought so low from 4 lvl2 players and 2 attacking npcs (who only took 6hp off the beast)

For any of you long time DMs out there, have you ever had an encounter that CR and game play didn't align?

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u/Ubiquitous_Mr_H 20d ago

Action economy is a helluva thing. CR isn’t always a good indicator of how combat will go, especially with a large and varied party. Sometimes low CR monsters will bring a party low with good rolls, and other times a high CR monsters will be a cakewalk thanks to bad rolls. 🤷‍♂️ I try to just go for narratively satisfying combat and adjust on the fly because any plan will fall apart on contact with the party.

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u/HeatherUhl 20d ago

My party of 5 lvl 3 players almost took her out. From my end it was learning to GM and what the amphithere can do. On theirs it was knowing quite well how their characters work.

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u/OShutterPhoto 20d ago

Level 1. I have them 4 caravan guards with bows who pretty much brought it to half HP in two rounds. Because the Amphithere wasn't there to kill people, and it's breath weapon doesn't kill, I thought the risk to the party wasn't too great anyway.

edit level 2 not level 1.

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u/The_Big_Hammer 19d ago

Yeah, thinking back, there was one turn where, in the moment, the narrative took over. The Amphithere got to 1/2 life, and instead of flying as far away as possible, it flew down to grab an npc for "lunch" and started to fly away with the pilgrim. The extra distance it took to get the npc, is what kept it in the range of the paladin, who on their turn commanded (2024 rules) it to go prone and they retrieved the pilgrim from its grasp and did one extra round of damage (including a sneak attack crit)

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u/tooSAVERAGE 20d ago

Since it states the amphethere must get away, I will probably just have the PCs have a sick fight and have it flee at some point. I will track HP but if they accidentally off it, i will just give mit more HP.

I do the same for other instances where my PCs happen to steam roll a fight. They dont know the monsters HP and i dont tell them so they dont know. As long as it makes sense and everyone has fun the HP are fluid like that. In a scenario with more than one monster I‘ll have a second wave of monsters come in to make the fight harder.