D&D 5E Test of High Level 5E: Design 4 or 5 lvl 13 PCs for 6 to 8 encounter adventuring day

I'd be more than happy to take over the bard in this test. I've been enjoying it immensely and even if it doesn't prove anything it's been instructive and would hate to see it end here.

Celtavian said:

Flamestrike,

I've tolerated this long enough. This test is off the rails. Azurewraith is fine and I could manage this utilizing the strengths of his character. Bold Italic is not the type of player that players like myself, CapnZapp, and Zard play with. I would like to add the disclaimer that I do not consider his way of playing wrong because I'm assuming he has fun playing the way he does. And fun is of course the goal. It doesn't simulate the type of play I see on a weekly basis or the type of play that makes it harder to run high level games.

For the purposes of this test, it's not going to work. Spending a 4th level slot to cast magic missile to do 30 points against one wolf with 75 hit points with three other wolves present and two giants with twice as many hit points when a single polymorph[/b] spell probably doubles or triples that damage with a huge hit point buffer for Bedrock for the same slot shows such a lack of awareness of the power of spells that I am awed. Even a lvl 4 fireball would at least do 9d6 to all the wolves and possibly one giant doing an average damage of 27 with missed saves (or half as much and likely somewhere in-between) points to four or five targets for a 108 or 135 damage for a 4th level slot. But a 4th level magic missile? Wow. Just wow.

We can't conduct this test with any credibility with that type of resource use. It would be like running a lab test with contaminated samples. I appreciate the time you took to design an adventure. I did enjoy your encounter setup as far as putting the party behind the eight ball. Your descriptions of actions is very good as well. But the disorganization within the group is too much to compensate for.

I have no attachment to the characters I created. If someone else wants to run them if Flamestrike feels like marching on, go for it.

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I'm afraid I have to agree with Celtavian here. My players are by no means power gamers, but casting Magic Missile from a 4th level slot is sub-optimal, even for us.

I'm not so harsh on the paladin's move to draw AoO (although it does seem a bit of a waste of the Portent roll) because in this case it seems like there is a disagreement on what the party should be doing. If the rest of the party were to run after the paladin it would make sense, but the bard had already moved to the back of the cave and started a spell to crowd control the wolves. (And just a note here... Just because the paladin says he is going to do something doesn't mean he has to do it even if the situation changes. It is not a promise, just a heads up of his intentions.)

I would definitely like to see the encounters. Like I mentioned before I am quietly playing along with my own characters to see how optimized, sub-optimal characters do. By that I mean I have the following characters:

Sword and board Champion Fighter (standard human)
Thief Rogue (wood elf)
Light Cleric (standard human)
Abjurer Wizard (standard human)
Beast Master Ranger (wood elf with wolf)

They currently have dropped one wolf and have one giant hypnotized (the other made its save against a DC 18.) and the cleric and ranger haven't gone yet. It's the wolves turn. I wasn't sure if they should use breath weapons or just attack. I'm thinking breath weapons.

Anyway, I would love to run them through the rest of the encounters.

Lord Twig said:

I'm afraid I have to agree with Celtavian here. My players are by no means power gamers, but casting Magic Missile from a 4th level slot is sub-optimal, even for us.

I'm not so harsh on the paladin's move to draw AoO (although it does seem a bit of a waste of the Portent roll) because in this case it seems like there is a disagreement on what the party should be doing. If the rest of the party were to run after the paladin it would make sense, but the bard had already moved to the back of the cave and started a spell to crowd control the wolves. (And just a note here... Just because the paladin says he is going to do something doesn't mean he has to do it even if the situation changes. It is not a promise, just a heads up of his intentions.)

I would definitely like to see the encounters. Like I mentioned before I am quietly playing along with my own characters to see how optimized, sub-optimal characters do. By that I mean I have the following characters:

Sword and board Champion Fighter (standard human)
Thief Rogue (wood elf)
Light Cleric (standard human)
Abjurer Wizard (standard human)
Beast Master Ranger (wood elf with wolf)

They currently have dropped one wolf and have one giant hypnotized (the other made its save against a DC 18.) and the cleric and ranger haven't gone yet. It's the wolves turn. I wasn't sure if they should use breath weapons or just attack. I'm thinking breath weapons.

Anyway, I would love to run them through the rest of the encounters.

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Go for it, Twig. I'd like to see some other semi-optimized groups take their shot.

The new thread that's being built will give everyone the chance to say how they would play through the encounters, with their own characters if they like. That's where the deep analysis is going to happen, and that's where the merits of various optimization schemes can be argued out. It's not quite ready yet, but I'm sure it soon will be.

This thread was started by [MENTION=5834]Celtavian[/MENTION] as, essentially, a contest between him and [MENTION=6788736]Flamestrike[/MENTION] but after Flamestrike and [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] had gone to the trouble of designing an adventure, Celtavian refused point blank to continue with it, apparently because the DM wasn't playing it right.

I'm only here because of that. It was either me or nothing, so I volunteered. [MENTION=6798581]Azurewraith[/MENTION] volunteered as well, and that was great.

But apparently that wasn't acceptable either. I was told I wasn't playing right. Apparently, my characters should be casting spells they don't know because if only they did that, it would prove Celtavian's point somehow. I was told that I should stop role-playing my characters and play the way he wanted them played. And this was the guy who refused to play all of his own characters his way when he had the chance.

I'm not offended, it's water off a duck's back to me. But it makes you wonder, doesn't it? Is there an association between aggressive players and aggressive optimization? Topic for another thread.

As to this thread, I'm happy to play on for a few more rounds of this encounter, but on the strict understanding that disruptive players are as unwelcome here as they would be in a live game, even if they do own the store.

@OBI has volunteered to take the bard character. Anyone up for the cleric?

dave2008 said:

Do you tell other people at the table how to act when you typically play? I think that would get annoying real quick. When I DM I generally don't allow it either. There is not time for that type of behavior.

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This isn't a game.

This is a test to see if an optimized party will have trouble with Medium-Hard encounters as outlined in the core rules. And, it is going very poorly right now. I'm with Celtavian on this one. I want to see a truly tactical party. This test proves absolutely nothing if the party isn't operating like a SWAT team.

I mean, it's obvious that a disorganized party plays in a kick in the door style, with the PCs running every which way, the game will be difficult with even easy encounters. That's not the point, and nobody wants to sit through a 6 month play by post to learn what we already know.

ThirdWizard said:

This isn't a game.

This is a test to see if an optimized party will have trouble with Medium-Hard encounters as outlined in the core rules.

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Why would you test something you know the answer to? The encounter guidelines in the DMG are not intended for optimized PCs/players/groups so of course they will not have trouble (I guess you have to define what trouble is though). If you want to challenge and optimized group you need optimized adversaries!

dave2008 said:

Why would you test something you know the answer to?

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People disagree. This is a test to see why they disagree or see if some consensus can be made between those of differing opinions.

Consensus does not seem probable at this point.

ThirdWizard said:

People disagree. This is a test to see why they disagree or see if some consensus can be made between those of differing opinions.

Consensus does not seem probable at this point.

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So it appears.

ThirdWizard said:

People disagree. This is a test to see why they disagree or see if some consensus can be made between those of differing opinions.

Consensus does not seem probable at this point.

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I agree with all of that

We have a party with some characters optimized mechanically and some optimized non-mechanically, each to their creator's satisfaction. Then we put them together, each played in their own way by their advocates, and see what happens.

What happens is that, not only do the characters not co-operate well when the chips are down, but the players don't either. Without necessarily meaning to, we've tested the meta-game to destruction.

We've demonstrated the importance of choosing players to play with who think on similar lines to you. We knew that anyway, but here we have a case study of things going wrong if you don't.

So we have achieved something.

ThirdWizard said:

This isn't a game.

This is a test to see if an optimized party will have trouble with Medium-Hard encounters as outlined in the core rules. And, it is going very poorly right now. I'm with Celtavian on this one. I want to see a truly tactical party. This test proves absolutely nothing if the party isn't operating like a SWAT team.

I mean, it's obvious that a disorganized party plays in a kick in the door style, with the PCs running every which way, the game will be difficult with even easy encounters. That's not the point, and nobody wants to sit through a 6 month play by post to learn what we already know.

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I thought they tried to prove the opposite, that optimized characters blow through medium-hard encounters without an effort. Does not look like that though and it needs good cooperation and smart use of resources to even live more than a few rounds.