u/RisingDusk

tl;dr: I grossly underestimated the 5.5e Dracolich stat block's impact on its lair and it is a menace!

My players are a group of level 17 characters and are very powerful, coordinated, and optimized, and are usually able to crush CR20+ threats without much issue as a result.

The context is that I run a tier 4 campaign for one of my groups and planned a tier 4 dungeon for them off the beaten path with a Dracolich as the core boss therein. As part of this I have 4 encounters following a harrowing trek through a desert that required resources to avoid Exhaustion, but crucially I designed the entire dungeon to fit within the 60-foot radius of the Dracolich's Life Suppression feature:

> Life Suppression. Creatures within 60 feet of the dracolich can't regain Hit Points.

On the 2nd encounter they finally took some real damage, bloodying the Wizard and damaging a few others quite dearly. When the party discovered that their usual plan (including some heavy hitter heals like Conjure Celestial and Aura of Vitality, plus Potions of Healing) of healing up between encounters wasn't going to work here, they locked in and got really worried! They've been planning back-and-forth all week ways to avoid having to retreat, which is really exciting to see from such optimizers!

Nota Bene: The dungeon is situated in such a way that to escape the Life Suppression feature, the party would have to brave mounting Exhaustion saves in the desert that they already nearly failed on the way here. They could always Teleport out or something if it gets too dire, but they know that this advances their enemies' plans and is a loss in the narrative sense, so they will try to avoid it.

Originally I was planning to use the Sammaster (Dracolich) stat block as the boss Dracolich of this dungeon to make it meaningfully threatening to them, but in their current state with a complete additional encounter to get through before fighting it I think it might just be a complete TPK to do so! Given the minions planned for the Dracolich encounter, I think I might just run the basic CR17 version and not push it too hard. The average damage on the CR17's Necrotic Breath would outright kill the Wizard right now on a failed save since he wouldn't be able to be healed once downed.

Anyway, I was just really impressed by how a simple effect like the Life Suppression trait with a tailored dungeon designed to abuse it could be more threatening than many other high-tier bosses I've run in recent history. Highly recommend!

In one of my weekly games, I play an extremely-deadly level 11 Dexadin. I hit like a truck, Radiant Strike on all my attacks, Nick Mastery with a Scimitar, Advantage from Vex on my Shortsword, etc. The build is extremely powerful, but one thing I've realized as I've played it for many levels now is that all the heroic stuff I want to do requires Athletics and huge Strength-based rolls I just can't succeed at.

Just recently, last session, one of my party members, a Wizard, was getting pulled into a void by shadowy hands, their magic was disabled by these hands so he was doomed, and they couldn't make the saving throw to save their life. This would've killed them for sure and the whole table knew it (gasps around, etc). My Paladin, of course, charged in to help. But even after casting Bless and with my aura, they kept failing the save, and my Athletics rolls were too low to save them! Basically, i was failing at a core tenet of the class fantasy, the heroism, because I had chosen to be a Dexadin!

Narratively it was made to ultimately make sense (I started being pulled in too, after all, and now my magic wasn't working! Oh no!), and the Barbarian had to charge in and save both of us, but it really impacted my character and got me thinking as the character's player. The Barbarian was the real hero of the session in the end, saving two lives, and it was a big campaign moment for them.

Moments like these I think really tell the story about how important Strength is to certain class fantasies, including the Paladin, and I think white-room build discussions undervalue Strength and its narrative impact on more traditional martial classes. Thinking back to character creation, if I knew then what I knew now, I'd have at least invested in 12 Strength and Athletics proficiency rather than going all-in on the Dexterity proficiencies and boosting things like Wisdom or Constitution so high.

I don't really have any questions or anything here, I just think Strength gets a bit of a bad rap and is worth taking even on DEX-focused builds depending on what you imagine your character wanting to do in-narrative. A good DM will present opportunities where things like Athletics and Strength dominate, even and especially at higher levels of play where I think Athletics and Strength get dunked on the most by the community.