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So I am LM of a 5e campaign. Brand new to D&D and this game and so is my entire group. We just did session 1 and trying to get a handle on everything. I feel like I'm miss understanding stuff cos it appears the heroes and the encounters are badly balanced. Almost like all cultures are proficient in most weapons. Resulted in nearly total 1 hit kills on all combatants.
(Encounter was 3 npcs vs 5 player-heroes)
Does a proficiency in simple weapons include simple ranged too?

Also it is just me but I really struggle to understand how to play the 'Journey phase' can anyone give me an idiots guide to it?

Yes, simple weapon proficiency includes ranged simple weapons. The three NPCs were what CR?, For a party of 5 1st levels, typically CR 1/4 or Cr 1/2 would be a decent encounter. Be sure you use maximum HP at first level for the heroes.

Journey Phase
1) determine who fills which role
2) the guide does a Travel check to see how far they go before the event
3) determine the target of the event
4) the target makes a check depending on their role (Hunter, Scout or Look-out), be sure to figure in the proper DC and Advantage/Disadvantage
5) compare the result to the chart to determine the result
6) repeat 2 through 5 until the party arrives

To confirm, you're asking about LotRR 5e? Not TOR 2e?

So Yes I am definately asking about LOTR Roleplaying 5e.

This was an unplanned encounter, so it was 3 footpads against 5 PCs, I just used their base stats from the book so it was 11AC and 11HP for them. I just felt that most of the PCs have a attack bonus of 5 nearly every attack roll as they have proficieny in basically all weapons.
For reference the Callings of my PCs:
Captain: Simple & Martial Weapons
Messenger: Simple, Short sword & Sword
Scholar: Simple Weapon
Warden: Simple & Martial.
Because SIMPLE includes ranged, i.e. Bow they just are able to componsate for semi-bad rolls with a near +5 attack bonus making engagements super easy. I guess as they almost all have proficiency it would be up to me to try and balance this by increasing NPC AC or HP to manage 5 PCs or increase the amount of NPCs they face in an encounter?
Like I said this was my first every session and the PCs too so it is a learning experience.

Thank you also for the guide, the journey log is that purely for a Loremaster reference or is it given to the players? I am not massively sure why I made it as I am good at tracking the journey in my mind and creating the land on the fly? As long as I had a way to manage the roles and events would the log be essential?

Edit: I think the balance issue might just be more my inexperience as DM and not using the CR properly in encounters

Footpads are Challenge Rating 1/8, so in simple math terms, it would take 8 of them to challenge a group of four Level 1 Player-heroes. So, having 3 of them against 5 heroes being an easy win for the heroes is not super unexpected. There are tools out there to calculate a good matchup for encounters, and an explanation of how to do it by hand in the Dungeon Master's Guide (unfortunately it is not in the OGL System Reference Document and thus you have to use a core rules guide).

Footpads are Challenge Rating 1/8, so in simple math terms, it would take 8 of them to challenge a group of four Level 1 Player-heroes. So, having 3 of them against 5 heroes being an easy win for the heroes is not super unexpected. There are tools out there to calculate a good matchup for encounters, and an explanation of how to do it by hand in the Dungeon Master's Guide (unfortunately it is not in the OGL System Reference Document and thus you have to use a core rules guide).

Yeah I get that now, I didn't realise understand the CR feature and its importance encounters. so very much so the balancing is my mistake there.

Assuming it's the same maths for D&D5e, I use this site:
https://kastark.co.uk/rpgs/encounter-calculator-5th/
You literally just plug in the levels and numbers of players, the CRs or XP values of enemies (there's a toggle button) and their numbers, hit calculate and voilà. It gives how difficult the encounter is and what the thresholds are (so you get an idea of how far along the scale it is).

Of course, it has the problem that it's based on the idea of a 5-8 encounter adventuring day...so you have to mentally downgrade the assessments (a deadly encounter isn't really all that deadly, assuming it's close to the threshold, unless you have several such encounters). However, that's an issue with 5e more than anything.

Remember that you can only take long rests in safe places, so it may be several days before you get a long rest. So an 'adventuring day' might be a week (or more) of game time.

There are tools out there to calculate a good matchup for encounters, and an explanation of how to do it by hand in the Dungeon Master's Guide (unfortunately it is not in the OGL System Reference Document and thus you have to use a core rules guide).

You can actually find all the official tools to balance encounters in 5e for free in the Dungeon Master's Basic Rules, available for download from the Wizards of the Coast website.

Here's the link:

https://media.wizards.com/2014/download ... s_v0.1.pdf

(see page 56 onwards for the rules on building combat encounters)

In addition to that, as already mentioned there are tons of extremely useful fan-made tools out there to ease the calculations even further, such as the one provided from Linklite above.

Also remember that sometimes it is better to let a party of new players to have an easy combat, to make them feel like heroes. Just not too often because your players want to be challenged.

Also, do not be afraid to ask your players how it is going. You are all new and this is a learning experience for everyone. Just showing you have this concern makes you a great Lore Master. Wishing you good luck with your campaign! Cheers

Even with an "Easy" combat scenario, if you don't fudge the dice (I don't), even a fairly weak enemy can take a level 1 player-hero from FULL HP to ZERO with a single hit. It happened to a 5 player company I was taking through their initial trial of LOTR 5e recently. We were about 5 hours in and everyone was about ready to end the session anyway, but it kind of put a downer on what had been a great session. It was the player's first time with any RPG game and she had actually done very well with her decision making. The worst part is with the 5e edition's almost total lack of any way to raise hit points by a meaningful amount at level 1 after a journey to a wilderness location, the risk of continuing to explore the ruins would be pretty high after that happened (even though the CORE book says the site is suitable for a Level 1 company). I think I would start the next session (if there is one) by promoting them all to Level 2 right off the bat.