Balance and difficulty.First of all I should say I think it’s ok to make sapient enemies to be treated the same way as player's character (PC) , giving them classes and gear. Just make sure they have their racial features and actually work the same exact way and we are fine.
1. Combat balance.1.1. Make enemies AC and HP as they are in D&D 5E, excluding those PC-like enemies.
D&D relies on random a lot and even with lower AC for each enemy it's quite possible to have your attacks as "miss, miss, pathetic scratch, miss, finally a hit!.. miss…". It's ok when you need to take off ~50HP and it's really frustrating when there is ~150HP. Plus the problem with such spells as "Sleep".
1.2.
If you wish to reduce the amount of misses without weakening enemies, subtract the amount of disadvantages from the amount of advantages (and vice-versa) instead of complete removal of each other's effects like in actual D&D.
Let's imagine we have high ground with a bow against a cornered enemy, who's slightly obscured. By current rules we'll just roll dice only once as if there are no advantages or disadvantages. But actually we have 2 whole advantages against 1 disadvantage, so I'm suggesting to consider it as 1 whole advantage, roll twice and take the bigger number. It will give a bit more weight to tactical planning, allowing us to increase our chance to hit without making anyone permanently weaker or stronger.
1.3.
If you wish to make some boss-fights more difficult than with AC and HP right by the book, just give them some companions of their own.
It's simple solution, that won't break any spells and may even replace frustration from scratching fat-fat boss with joy from little wins during the fight.
1.4. Align monsters traits and actions with actual D&D 5E. Again excluding PC-like enemies and excluding plot-based changes like intellect devourers (do we really have to fight them after the crash?).
Phase spiders shouldn't spit with poison, only bite. Something with ranged attack that "teleports" around among webs is a problem with only cheese-like solution. I personally stealthed through most of the fight with the Spider Queen and that shouldn't be possible without bending too many D&D rules (
prev.post).
Minotaurs shouldn't have that knock out on jumps. It leads to whole party death in a turn if they notice us right after landing.
The Hag is a special case. Considering how hags are basically witches she could learn a few new tricks and use some artifacts during the fight. But illusions are not supposed to effectively cast spells or fight, they’re just magical play of light. So she could still use them to make us attack the wrong target and she could heal and protect herself a bit, while we are wasting time on illusions. Illusions should mimic her healing and protection spells animations of course.
And so on…
2. Conversation rolls.2.1. Add some difficulty to the tadpole rolls.
It feels like cheating right now. Also it's quite unrealistic that our character, which just got those powers, is so pro in using them.
2.2. Remove chains of persuasion rolls.
Like with Nettie. It's simply annoying and looks like a bad DM attempt to put the party on the rails. It's quite cool that we should give her the whole speech to persuade and I would leave all the phrases there, but let's roll only on the last one. Previously chosen ones can give us advantage/disadvantage or some modifiers on the roll, but no rolling for 3 times phrase after phrase, please.
