Combat went great the first two sessions. The enemies were dangerous and interesting, and the fights went smoothly and well. I felt like I challenged the players, while not overwhelming them. The first fight felt a little bit easy, so the second fight I upped the difficulty. The third fight, my group by-passed with magic and herbalism. This week’s combat, however, didn’t feel as good.
I gave them a choice of three different targets to hunt, and they chose Shadow Mastiffs. I had this option for them to use what they had learned fighting Skulks. These monsters can go invisible when in dim light or darkness, so the group had to work out their light sources and how they would light up the battlefield. With a lot of folks with darkvision, light sources aren’t usually a priority, but would be absolutely necessary in this fight. They did a good job of managing this in the cave where the fight ended up being, eventually getting all the enemies into the light.
I have upped the difficulty on my fights, still trying to balance my large party against the monsters, but in this particular case, I hadn’t looked as much at their damage output as I had at their hit points and invisibility mechanic. So, while the initial parts of the fight were fun and interesting, they weren’t actually a threat to the party, damage-wise. (I also couldn’t roll to hit at all last night, so that wasn’t helpful, either.)
It also was pretty late in the night by the time we got to the fight. So, I also forgot some of the endgame tactics I was going to use. I did try to have the survivors to run away when their alpha died, but too late and only one made it out of the fight, and not with enough hit points remaining to get away.
I’m always hardest on myself, and the group may well have enjoyed the fight. I just found it felt more like a damage slog than the previous fights. Lessons learned, though, I need to go through next week’s options and make sure to apply these thoughts to what comes next.