D&D 5E: Badguys just don't survive to do very much?

Between the golden grain inn and recently the temple of the lawbringer, really the badguys seem to drop so quickly they don't do anything much?

Perhaps monsters could regularly have a power like the possessed Sir Moonbrook did earlier in the module and on a natural 5+ or 10+ they do 1 or 2 damage even on a miss? Or even they can only do this once each - once they have applied this damage, they can't do so again that fight?

I don't really enjoy running absolute cake walks for the PC's. Why set up a combat roll when you have little to no chance of having any effect? Could just as much narrate that they won splendidly, over and over.

I originally posted this over at the D&D playtest forum.

3, 2, 1, Death Contact!

I'm at that stage in game development where I just haven't put in damage to the player.

It just gets in the way of play testing. It's fairly rudimentry to add.

But - it's like your just imagining how it'd be like if you could actually take damage/die/lose in game. It's this hazy notion of what'd be like to play the game - which will indeed have nothing to really do with the game. It's kind of like drawing a big wafty cloud, but in the end play with be a hard square somewhere inside of it.

Actually, 'Death Contact' would be a good name for a game.