Frush posted:

Ah, this explains so much. I've been so busy with life and prepping stuff as DM that I haven't taken a good look into how all (any, really) the character classes work, and I've told the players to know their own rules since I don't have the ability to babysit six of them.

Neither of them (there are actually two rangers in the group, one hunter and one beastmaster. I know, right?) are doing any of these things. Both are literally just auto attacking. Heck, the beast master took the dual wielding stuff, but is so concerned about keeping her beast alive she just started using a bow and plinking away with no bonuses.

No wonder the party is getting rolled by stuff. No healers, wizard and sorcerer only use firebolt ever (because the sorcerer's wild magic kills them more often than enemies, and the wizard is a necromancer who doesn't really have any necromancy spells yet, I'm probably going to reskin some old ones for him), rangers are doing literally a third of the damage they should be by not paying attention, the monk has been rolling so badly the party just forced him to go buy new dice, etc. The fighter is on his game, but there's only so much he can do with how nerfed they got since 4th edition, and with the slow killing rate from the others he spends a little more time at single digit health than he should be through no fault of his own.

I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and go through every character class they're playing, and start giving advice on how to upgrade the damage. I guess 5e wouldn't be quite as lethal if they were tripling their damage output.