D&D 5E Game Theory. CR and 5E Encounter System.

Zardnaar · May 21, 2018

Psikerlord# said:
Fair call 5e is faster than 4e and probably 3e (it's been so long, I cant rem now how long 3e combat took)

3E combat was generally similar to 5E except when to many bufs entered the equation or maybe Druids. We played it at a decent clip as we would have all the relevant info (+ to hit before and after buffs) laid out. We generally did not go to far down the powergaming role in 3E though- lots of fighters used, bards, skill monkey. The worst builds I saw IRL were a Shadow Adept, Incantrix and a persistent spell cleric build.

Worst example I could think of was a Druid player who wanted to read the stats of every monster he could summon each round to get the ideal one. I resolved the issue by telling him to get his own MM which effectively nerfed wildshape or give each PC 1 minute of real time to decide their actions.

Paul Farquhar · May 21, 2018

Psikerlord# said:
100% agree with Zardnaar. 5e is far too easy and survivable. Partly because of the broken feats nominated, but also because of the 3 death saves regime.

I generally consider this as "plot armour", and shows the action movie influence on 5e. Again, from a story telling perspective, it's better if key characters can't die from an unlucky spin of the dice.

Zardnaar · May 21, 2018

Paul Farquhar said:
I generally consider this as "plot armour", and shows the action movie influence on 5e. Again, from a story telling perspective, it's better if key characters can't die from an unlucky spin of the dice.

Downside is it can be to boring. I don't play video games on easy for example, the old god mode on Doom was boring. They kind of compensated with 5E monsters dealing lots of damage.

Paul Farquhar · May 21, 2018

Zardnaar said:
Downside is it can be to boring. I don't play video games on easy for example, the old god mode on Doom was boring. They kind of compensated with 5E monsters dealing lots of damage.

That depends on why you are playing. I think my players are interested in what plot twist I am going to throw at them next, not if they are going to have to create a new character.

UngeheuerLich · May 21, 2018

Use a different healing mechanism that is suted for your group.
That fixed 5e easily for us.
And in the playtest they noticed that it is kmpossible to suit everybody with healong rules so they defaulted to a very generous one.
Change long rest to a complete day of rest insteqd of a night and it helps a lot.

Sacrosanct · May 21, 2018

5e is not designed for power gamers because the overwhelming majority of players aren't powergamers and never have issues with any of the oft-mentioned feats. What 5e does do, is make it super easy for powergamers to tweak their games to fit that style.* Unfortunately, it seems certain power gamers don't want to or are unwilling to do that, and demand that the 5e designers cater to them, often resorting to personal insults on said designers.

*for example, I prefer a deadlier edition. So tweaks I have made include but are not limited to not giving full HP regen on a long rest. That one tweak makes a huge difference. There are other smaller tweaks as well, like varying monster HP

DEFCON 1 · May 21, 2018

If your games are not deadly enough, especially if the games have allowed for all the extra bells and whistles available to PCs... it's because the DM hasn't learned how to adapt encounters to their players yet. That's not a fault of the game... that's a fault of the DM.

There is not single CR system that can accommodate for such a wide swing in PC power and ability. So DMs need to learn how to build their games away from the CR system if the system isn't working for them. Is it more work for the DM? Yep. But that's part of their job. If they don't want that part of the job, then all they have to do is cut down the breadth of options they allow PCs to use and the CR system will come more into focus.

Try playing a Basic Rules game as-is with just 4 PCs and see if the CR system works out for you. My guess is that it'll be a much deadlier game than you've probably been experiencing up to this point.

Oofta · May 21, 2018

DEFCON 1 said:
If your games are not deadly enough, especially if the games have allowed for all the extra bells and whistles available to PCs... it's because the DM hasn't learned how to adapt encounters to their players yet. That's not a fault of the game... that's a fault of the DM.

I was going to say basically the same thing. I've DMed different groups now and even though I use the same (minor) house rules and rulings, the difficulty level I needed to challenge the players was pretty dramatic. Builds, experience, party makeup, number of players all make a huge difference.

In other words, the CR guidelines are just that. Guidelines. In addition, the bar is set low because people who are new to the game will not understand that they need to be adjusted. Meanwhile if you are DMing for a bunch of power gamers you're going to have to adjust things anyway unless you want the base assumption to kill off the vast majority of groups.

There have been several threads on how to increase difficulty, but that's not what this thread is about. It's just Z's whine of the week thread. :yawn:

cmad1977 · May 21, 2018

Feature.

Zardnaar · May 22, 2018

Oofta said:
I was going to say basically the same thing. I've DMed different groups now and even though I use the same (minor) house rules and rulings, the difficulty level I needed to challenge the players was pretty dramatic. Builds, experience, party makeup, number of players all make a huge difference.

In other words, the CR guidelines are just that. Guidelines. In addition, the bar is set low because people who are new to the game will not understand that they need to be adjusted. Meanwhile if you are DMing for a bunch of power gamers you're going to have to adjust things anyway unless you want the base assumption to kill off the vast majority of groups.

There have been several threads on how to increase difficulty, but that's not what this thread is about. It's just Z's whine of the week thread.

Its not really a whine its just a thing. I want to play a featless game but players seem to have different expectations. And its easy enough to ignore the CR system.

I also don.t care because it kinfd of plays like AD&D in that regard where level 8 PCs can kill level 18 liches and Balors/Pitfiends so I do not have the expectation of +/- 4 CR others have from previous editions.

I dumped the 5E CR guidelines fairly early on once level 5 or so has been reached.

D&D 5E Game Theory. CR and 5E Encounter System.

Zardnaar

Legend

Paul Farquhar

Legend

Zardnaar

Legend

Paul Farquhar

Legend

UngeheuerLich

Legend

Sacrosanct

Legend

DEFCON 1

Legend

Oofta

Legend

cmad1977

Hero

Zardnaar

Legend

Similar Threads