call that Diss Spell Magic
Wait. You do sub-20 dmg at Tier III? Your DM is letting you bowl with bumpers on.
I ran a 1-17 game and typically as a DM I wasn’t consistently dealing over 20 damage per attack until I was using CR 13 or greater monsters or higher, and I’d typically prefer several monsters per encounter to one, so that probably happened consistently around the time the party were level 12 ish, and even beyond that, I would say I generally didn’t focus on massive damage output because knocking PCs out the fight in 1-2 rounds doesn’t give them enough time to assess the battle and then deprives them of agency through a particularly slow segment of the game.
I’m currently a player, playing a trickery cleric 9 rogue 2 and loving it, but I think I use my 4th or 5th level spell slots for a damaging spell about once every 5 encounters, because those spell slots are better for exciting spells like polymorph, scrying or modify memory, or at least I find those more exciting than making my number go high. In that game, the paladin 6 bard 5 may on occasion do a spike of damage via a smite but his spellcasting is also primarily utility too, and our only massive damage dealer is our draconic sorcerer. A lot of our consistent damage comes from our barbarian who is probably putting out 40 damage per round but rarely over 20 in a hit when not critting.
As players, if we want to knock an enemy out of concentration, we’re more likely to pepper them with small secondary attacks, forcing them to make 3+ DC 10 saving throws per round, which has generally been more successful than one 30 damage attack and a one DC 15 save, just because of how the odds fall.
According to Matt Colville, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Your monsters should be doing average damage equal to 6, + 3 times their CR”. Therefore, your < CR 13 monsters were so nerfed that their actual CR was less than half (+/-) the printed number. All due respect, but if you’re training your players to interact with the game system in this manner, you’re not only making more work for yourself, but you’re setting them up for a rude fucking awakening at nearly any other table than yours. 🤷🏼♂️
Looking back at some of the monsters I used, which were generally official monsters or from tome of beasts 1 or 2, they traditionally were dealing about 84 damage per round if it hit all attacks but only 21 per attack. I remember using an adult white dragon (CR 13) while the players were about level 10. That’s going to either use it’s breath (54 but 22 on a save), or any other combo of attacks that wouldn’t deal over 20 withousome lucky dice rolls, averaging 13-17 damage per attack, and 58 damage if it uses its legendary action to use it’s tail once and hits every attack.
Also my table sounds like a different experience to yours. All the players are people I’m friends with in person and as we’ve become more experienced with RPGs, were played different games rather than optimising 5e, and we tend towards storytelling focused RPGs like Fate or collaborative storytelling games like For The Queen. If we are looking for difficulty, we’re likely to seek a full horror experience over 5e. I enjoy the content Matt Colville but I know his style isn’t for me, it’s very tactical and all about combat, while when I play 5e, I find combat often becomes a necessary chore that the system is built around that only engaged each player half the time and takes far too long to warrant the storytelling it provides.
