D&D challenge ratings don’t make sense in 5e, and this brutal adventure proved it

In a dusk-lit meadow, five figures stand shoulder to shoulder, shooting nervous glances at the darkness beyond the trees. They know that the monster is coming. They can smell the sulphur, hear the ominous wind raised by its bat-like wings. But they are not afraid. The wizard grips his jeweled staff as a hulking construct steps up to protect him. The druid summons the power of lightning, her purple hair standing up. The warlock begins to melt into the shadows, ready to strike. When the towering devil steps into the meadow, fire trailing on its heels, they know this can be their last battle, but they are ready.

A few months ago, while taking a short break from my regular Dungeons & Dragons campaign, I decided to try something different. One of my players had just gotten their hands on Faster, Purple Worm! Everybody Dies Vol. 1, and while I wasn’t familiar with the actual play show it’s based on, the prospect of “letting loose” as a Dungeon Master and not having to worry about wiping out my players for once seemed refreshing. And wickedly fun.

Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill! is a “D&D meets improv comedy” show created by Beadle & Grimm’s Matthew Lillard. In every episode, a party of 1st-level adventurers, played by a rotating cast, is thrown into the fray against some of the deadliest monsters in D&D. They won’t survive, but the unusual setup creates highly entertaining moments and flips some of the core concepts of D&D on their heads. Faster, Purple Worm! Everybody Dies Vol. 1 is a collection of 15 of these one-shot adventures, first published in 2025, that was released on D&D Beyond in February.

These adventures are wickedly fast, making them the perfect break in a long D&D campaign. We all love epic, years-spanning tales of tragedy and glory, but sometimes you just need to chill with your friends, roll some dice, and have a laugh at the barbarian’s expense. As a DM, it’s important to have these little breaks to relieve you from the stress of prepping and running a long campaign, but I decided to put a spin on it to make it feel a little more personal for my players.

The first campaign I ran with my current group was a two-year-long unforgettable trek into the frozen tundra of Icewind Dale, using Rime of the Frostmaiden, one of the best long adventures in 5e. After that wrapped up, we decided to put those now high-level characters to rest and start a new campaign. However, my players got so attached to their first characters that we keep bringing them back for one-shots. It’s a cool and easy way to “stay in touch” with them.

So, the Summer Stars, the saviors of Icewind Dale, were now about to face some big, scary monsters from Faster, Purple Worm! Everybody Dies Vol. 1. I was in a pickle, however, because these weren’t level one newbs, but level 10 veteran adventurers, equipped with experience and magic items. I still wanted to give them the feeling of being in way over their head, but I also didn’t want to kill these beloved characters. So, I picked the adventure “Everybody Dies Eating Mushroom Soufflé” because the dream-like setting gave me an easy way out: If the characters got killed as expected, I could simply write that off as a bad dream they had after eating too many pastries on the night of the annual festival that celebrates their victory over Auril in Icewind Dale.

Instead of the Ancient Red Dragon from the adventure, I opted for a fiend since I had a nice painted minifig that I wanted to use. Looking through all the entries for high-level fiends, both the Balor and the Pit Fiend seemed underwhelming due to their lack of spells (the Balor has no spellcasting, and the Pit Fiend’s Hellfire ability has to recharge after a single use). I eventually settled on Bael, a Duke of Hell from Monsters of the Multiverse. His challenge rating (CR) is 19, and I boosted him further with extra abilities like a fly speed. With his legendary actions and a solid arsenal of spells, this epic devil would make quick work of the Summer Stars, right?

I was very wrong. The party swept the floor with the Duke of Hell. I even had to give Bael a last-minute use of the spell Shield to avoid him being blasted away by a barrage of Magic Missiles, just to make the fight last a bit longer. Despite Bael teleporting around, throwing Fireballs and Dominate Monster at the party, the fight ended with his head rolling on the grass, cursing the Summer Stars with his last infernal breath. In the end, my players had fun, and that’s all that matters (and I didn’t have to pull out a Dallas season 9 twist), however, it made me reflect on the often-discussed issue of balance in D&D 5e.

Bael’s starting CR is 19, which means defeating him rewards the party with 22,000 experience points (XP). Considering the extra abilities I gave him, his CR got boosted to at least 20 or so. D&D 5.5 uses an “xp budget” system to build encounters. According to the Dungeon Master’s Guide, the xp budget to build a high-difficulty encounter (described as potentially lethal for one or more characters) for a party of level 10 characters is 3,100 XP each. This means that, in theory, a party of four (equaling a 12,400 XP budget) should have struggled against Bael even if he were half as strong.

I’ve been a DM long enough to know that these numbers and charts should never be taken at face value. It’s a general rule of 5e that the characters are very powerful, and the monsters struggle to keep up. Still, I did not expect this combat to be so easy for them. Where did I go wrong?

First, I asked each player to pick a single magic item of tier Very Rare or below to help them in the fight. The wizard picked a Shield Guardian Amulet, which granted him a robot bodyguard he could command. It turned out to be a massive boon. That big boy can protect a spellcaster very effectively by absorbing incoming damage, it regenerates, and even packs a punch if it hits. Still, it was thematically very appropriate, as the party had a Shield Guardian accompanying them during Rime of the Frostmaiden, who died heroically fighting Auriel (RIP Bonkers, gone but not forgotten). Bonkers Mark II was instrumental in taking down Bael.

Second, as one of the players couldn’t attend the session, I asked the others to create a level 6 NPC to accompany them. This would be a young apprentice who admired the heroes of Icewind Dale, so it was another cool nod to the original campaign, but obviously they had to go ahead and make a paladin (despite not knowing they would face a devil). Let’s just say that devils and Smite are not a good match.

This episode reinforced some beliefs I already had. Fifth edition and its 5.5 revision are all about grinding. If you want to challenge your players as a DM, you have to exhaust their resources through multiple encounters. This one-shot taught me that, even if you pick a high-level monster, just one combat is not enough to make players sweat once they hit a certain level threshold. In the end, Bael wasn’t the problem — I was. I tried to turn a one-shot into a boss fight, when 5e just isn’t built that way. My players still had a blast, but it was a good reminder that if you want them sweating, you don’t throw something bigger at them. You wear them down first.

I highly recommend Faster, Purple Worm! Everybody Dies Vol. 1 if you’re looking for something different to break the flow of your regular D&D game. In a follow-up session, I ran another of these one-shots by the book. A third-level party ran into a Death Knight in the beautifully titled “Everybody Conveniently Dies in a Cemetery,” and, well, let’s just say everybody did indeed conveniently die in that cemetery.