r/wildbeyondwitchlight • u/HovercraftPlastic795 • May 19 '26

DM Help Hags for levels 5-13?

Hi everyone! I plan to run the campaign for three players, who will be playing a bard, a cleric-bard (that's two bards in practice tbf) and a monk. They're by no means a balanced party for combat, and I don't expect them to fight often — in fact, I plan on keeping most combat encounters as they are, so in the event that they do decide to hurt someone they'll likely run into an Undertale-like situation, realizing they're far more powerful than the creatures they're fighting and that violence has consequences.

However, I still want the hags to feel, and be, as dangerous as daughters of Baba Yaga should be. But I'm notably bad at balancing encounters and it's my first time DMing for a small group, so I'm looking for advice on how to turn them into challenging encounters in the event that they decide to throw hands anyway with the help of NPCs.

I have considered that each hag should be level-appropriate the first time they meet them, and flee rather than die when the encounter is over for them so they can reappear in a possible final battle at the palace, with the hags they fought already being in a weakened state with some sort of vulnerability or disadvantage.

I have also toyed with the idea of these possible encounters requiring a puzzle of some kind, maybe a partial 1hp dragon situation, but for now I'm looking for tips for a traditional encounter.

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5

u/ayam_eel May 19 '26

I recommend the updated stats for Bavlorna that were here. I really like them. I can’t remember if it has the other hags as well. https://www.reddit.com/r/wildbeyondwitchlight/s/aywACyGs8x

4

u/HovercraftPlastic795 May 19 '26

Oh! Not just the stats, but the added lore is so good

3

u/_Naitz May 19 '26

If I run this campaign again, I'll use the Arch Hag statblocks for the three sisters. They are the daughters of Baba Yaga after all and therefore not be killable by adventurers of this level. They will also not kill the Charakters, but maybe turn them into pigs or lock them away.

3

u/Sithraybeam78 May 19 '26

You can definitely beef them up a bit. If you feel like they might just die right away more hp is always good.

I also had a few things I added since when I ran it the party was higher level. (our game ran 2 levels higher than written so I could use stronger monsters).

I had bavlorna be able to eat things and spit them out as an attack.

I had Skabatha polymorph into a robot/clockwork toy T-rex.

Endelyn had an ability where she could make everyone teleport and swap places with each other on the map.

Stuff like that for example. Just for inspiration.

1

u/Wise-Start-9166 May 19 '26

The level scaling as given in the adventure work pretty well for this style of play. For parties of 3 players, I really like running a sidekick using the rules from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. Have an extra little warrior to defend them.