Rift raft encounter 5e
So I’ve been dming for some years now, but DND is still kinda new to me.
My players are level 3 now, 6 of em and I want to make a special encounter. They are going to take a keelboat down a river soon. The Mooren river run, I think it's called. (We play in Tal’dorei)
I had the idea to make an encounter for the ship ride. A “water elemental” is messing with the river in that region.
I wanted to take this opportunity and let the players get a feel for what legendary actions and lair actions can be like.
I was thinking to make this encounter about getting down the river, before the waterelemental sinks them.
I took a waterelemental and dialed it's damage down a lot, to make it closer to cr3, but kept the Hitpoints to make it difficult to just kill instead.
The plan is that I will put down a boat as a battlemap and instead of moving the boat, I would move the riverbank. The river runs at 25 feet per round, so the boat goes 25 feet per round, so everything instead moves towards and away from them at 25 feet per round.
I imagining playing rocks in the beginning of the map, as they progress, so they have to get around those, while dealing with the elemental.
They can slow down 10feet or speed up 10 feet, by rowing the boat one way or the other.
As lair actions I will use control water as a random table. The flood will speed them up, a whirlpool as and obstacle and the wave as a hazard.
I also want to spawn some minions, like awakened shrubs or something. It fits well with the theme of things awakening because of some magic residuum in the lake and river.
As legendary actions, I give the Waterelemental movement and displacement abilities, to build up stress without damage. Also the “whelm” attack is now an less damaging legendary action
I think it could be a fun encounter.
But I worry it's gonna be “to easy”.
They encounter table gives me up to 2400 XP to build a difficult encounter.
I feel like they might just focus down the Waterelemental and be done with it.
I was thinking about making the elemental strong enough to be “unbeatable” so they can only survive and might want to come back to take it down.
What do you guys think? Any ideas and tips for my encounter balancing?