Giant owls are animals and weak compared to a dragon.
Yes. It was the part where you described the GIANT owls as small that made things unclear.
You use the math to defend the ability of a 10,000 orc army to make lvl 20 PCs run, but throw the math out when the same can be said of an ancient dragon? This is the kind of hypocrisy I have trouble debating. You seem to want to use the math to support a point about 5E allowing higher level characters to be challenged by an orc army, but when that same math makes the six player characters the equivalent of a small army against solo creature like a dragon you toss it out?
No, that's not what I did, so do not accuse me of hypocrisy.
I didn't mention the math to support 300 orcs being a viable threat. Instead, I said that the only reason your PCs don't think of 300 orcs as a threat is because they're too aware of the math themselves. Put the math aside for a bit and simply think about the scenario. Yes, level 15 PCs are powerful, we all know what kinds of abilities they have access to. But if there is only 6 of them, why would they feel they can slaughter 300 orcs so easily? The characters I mean. Why would the characters think that? Why would they assume they alone in the world have access to such potent abilities? There can't be orcs who are powerful fighters? Or clerics of Gruumsh? Or any other possible thing that would make an orc more than the 1/8 CR your players know them to be?
That's what I was suggesting you change. The fact that your players know what they face at all times. What you need to do is present them with a horde of orcs that have scoured the countryside razing towns and slaughtering any force who has opposed them, laying waste in the name of their dark one eyed god. Instead, you present them with 300 orcs from page 230 of the Monster Manual.
You have to make the players unsure of what they are facing in order to make the characters behave that way. Your players are so certain of their victory that their characters have no fear....combat is never not an option for them.
That's bad.
That's what we're talking about here. At high level group such as six lvl 15 PCs against a dragon is mathematically advantageous to the PCs in a huge way. That's part of what makes 5E so ludicrously easy is the way a certain CR creature becomes cannon fodder against a group of PCs focus firing. The entire reason a 300 orc army has the ability to challenge a group of PCs is because of Bounded Accuracy and sheer numbers. This same Bounded Accuracy and number advantage makes high CR solo creatures weak against a PC group.
I would disagree that a battle with a dragon is hugely in the PCs favor. A party of 6 is a party at about 150% expected power, so a small adjustment or two might be in order, but for the most part, I think it's a decent challenge. Now, I say that for my players who, despite being perfectly capable of min-maxing to the gills, don't do so because they don't care to. That's not to say they don't make perfectly capable characters, but they're not doing nonsensical things like only picking a race that has dark vision and multi-classing solely for the abilities and so on. If you have a group like that, then a few more adjustments are likely in order.
Nothing too drastic would be required though. Not if the dragon is played intelligently.
You can take care of some of the mechanical inconsistencies with narration. It's not a big deal to describe a fearsome dragon. If you use the MM version against PCs with levels, that dragon is going down fast and is going to be a real disappointment compared to its billing. It's up to the DM to make that creature far, far stronger so it lives up to its billing.
I don't use narration to handle mechanical inconsistencies. I use narration to create the world the PCs interact with. So ultimately, how they interact with the world is the result of how I present it. So, if I want PCs to behave as if they are the absolute best thing on the planet, I narrate things one way, and if I want my PCs to believe that they can be in danger from time to time, then I narrate another.
The math is only supposed to come into things when the outcome is in doubt.
A DM like Flamestrike does that with the six to eight encounter day with terrain and environment manipulation. Good for him. I'm not going to fault his method if it works the majority of the time. I'm not going to use that method myself. I want a creature so fearsome you could fight him in a white room and it would be a ridiculously tough fight. I want balors and dragons to be able to shrug off the PCs attacks and make them feel fear when it plows into the middle of a group and starts thrashing around. And 5E monsters as written do not make PC groups feel this fear meaning they don't live up to the billing, not even against regular PCs.
I'm using a different method to reach a level of creature power that fits what I believe they should be capable of. Whereas you want to narrate the ancient dragon decimating the orc army, I want to narrate this as backstory and have a dragon mechanically capable of wiping out an orc army. I want the mechanics and the narrative to match rather than one being necessary to cover to up the other's shortcomings.
I don't stick anywhere near as closely to the 6-8 encounters a day as [MENTION=6788736]Flamestrike[/MENTION]. I recognize it as a perfectly reasonable way to balancce the game. There are certainly times when I have several encounters in a day. Usually it's more like 2 or 3. Sometimes it's 1. Number of encounters is one way to do it, but there are others.
I think the most important is to not be predictable. Don't always have the same number of encounters, don't always use monsters straight out of the books, don't always make it possible for the PCs to win a given fight. Vary things up and your players will be unsure of what to expect, and then that's half the battle right there.
Now the CR math failing is not just a product of 5E as nearly every previous edition exhibited the same problems including 3E. I am having a harder time finding the sweet spot for the math and narrative to fit. One of the big methods of countering PCs in older editions was spellcasting, in 5E it's very hard to have a solo creature as a powerful spellcaster with the concentration mechanic eliminating buff stacking. A 3E dragon, lich, or demon might be able to stack some buffs to power himself or his minions up, now he can't. It takes a bit more work to come up with a way to create a challenging balor or dragon that the PCs don't find some easy way to counter without giving him a horde of minions he likely would not have. I think it will take some creative monster design rules to get done what I want done. Once I figure them out, I'll start posting them.
Meh the CR system is for beginners. Once you're comfortable, it can and should be abandoned, in my opinion.
As for it taking more work to come up with a way for the big bad to threaten the PCs, I think this edition is easier. You just give it the stars you want. No need to "show your work"....+4 from bull's strength and +2 from divine favor and he's now large because of righteous might, so he gets another +4 and his weapon now does 2d8 instead of blah blah blah.
3E and it's derivatives were so dependent on all the numbers adding up. 5E is not like that.
