The Two-Word Cure to Overpowered Characters
by Mike on 12 May 2025
Since the earliest days of D&D, we've seen RPG character builds that operate beyond of their expected effectiveness. Whether they inflict twice the damage of the next highest character build or have incredible ways to pin down and incapacitate enemies big and small – some characters are just plain overpowered.
There's a simple cure to overpowered characters. A two-word cure that ensures encounters remain appropriately challenging even when the characters coming to the table operate well outside of their normal power.
More monsters.
Add more monsters to your encounters and the threat goes up. There are more targets to focus on. It's harder to control them all. Each additional monster increases their side of the action economy. You also care less about these additional monsters so it's not a bummer when they fall early. In fact, sometimes you want them to fall early. This leads into the concept of "lightning rods" – monsters specifically designed to eat particularly powerful abilities of your characters.
If this advice sounds familiar, "more monsters" is one of the four dials described in Dials of Monster Difficulty.
One might be tempted to use more powerful monsters to face overpowered characters but this change often doesn't help. Sure, bigger monsters have more hit points and hit harder, but they're often as easy to control as smaller ones unless you add in things like 5e's legendary resistance. Bigger monsters don't prevent your characters from focusing their fire. More monsters split their attention.
The true enemy in combat in most tactically-crunchy RPGs like D&D or Pathfinder is time. We don't want our battles to drag on beyond the enjoyment they bring. Timing is an important consideration as you throw more monsters into encounters to challenge powerful characters. An easy way to manage the length of battles is to have your hand on the hit point dial. After the battle has gone on beyond the joy it brings, start lowering those hit points or let the next attack against a monster take it out completely.
Bosses are the true victims in most tactical RPGs. A big boss typically lasts seconds in a battle before it's pinned down, knocked prone, force caged, mazed, banished, polymorphed, counterspelled, or otherwise completely debilitated. So what's a lazy solution to help bosses stay relevant in an encounter?
More bosses!
That's right. Include more than one boss. Have a few antagonists – fancy named NPCs who all likewise throw shade in their introductory monologues. The characters may still focus on one villain but you might have one or two more bosses they can't focus on.
Adding monsters is my new go-to technique for a lot of high-level boss battles. Throw out waves of combatants including lots of small blast-worthy minions, a handful of normal monsters, some big brutes to control, and multiple bosses to spread the wrath of the characters around.
So there you have it.
Want to keep up the threat?
Add more monsters.