D&D 5E last encounter was totally one-sided

[Celtavian]

Have you considered that 5E isnt the game for you, and you should possibly be trying different systems like GURPS, or Savage Worlds, or Rolemaster etc?

It just seems like you're set on intentionally playing 5E against several of the conventions that underpin the system, and its not working out for you as a consequence.

If you're unwilling to play 'with the grain' as it were, perhaps changing systems would be be better?

That way instead of trying to force a round peg into a square hole, you could be using a 'round hole' ruleset and be having a much better time of it.

There's a few reasons for this. We may eventually go back to Pathfinder. It's been discussed. Right now, no one wants to return to the complexity and problems of Pathfinder/3E. 3E has its own headaches. I had to heavily modify that game as well, just not quite as much out of the box monster modification as I've had to do in 5E. The monsters, specifically dragons and outsiders, had varied abilities that allowed for better tactics than close and melee or blast with breath weapon. Not sure why they went that direction with dragons and demons, but it is what it is.

The reasons people in my group are unhappy right now:

1. Myself. Weak monsters, badly designed modules with weak challenges. Too much work on my part to modify monsters to challenge my min/max players. But especially, the weak module design. I can't believe how badly designed these modules are. I used to love WotC modules. City of the Spider Queen. Temple of Elemental Evil. Against the Giants. Nearly every edition had good modules with some seriously dangerous challenges. These new modules seem so weak compared to past produced WotC material. Not sure what's going on with their challenge design, but it needs to be stepped up.

2. Player 1. Not enough options and splatbooks. He misses having new options for classes. We level and play through campaigns fairly fast. He likes to try new options. He feels like he's reached a point in 5E where there is nothing new. Every power seems the same to him with the advantage mechanic. Every strategy seems to be get advantage and attack.

I think the other two players are indifferent. They'll play whatever is played.

 

[Flamestrike]

1. Myself. Weak monsters, badly designed modules with weak challenges. Too much work on my part to modify monsters to challenge my min/max players. But especially, the weak module design. I can't believe how badly designed these modules are. I used to love WotC modules. City of the Spider Queen. Temple of Elemental Evil. Against the Giants. Nearly every edition had good modules with some seriously dangerous challenges. These new modules seem so weak compared to past produced WotC material. Not sure what's going on with their challenge design, but it needs to be stepped up.

Instead of ramping up the monsters, just push more encounters on the party via time limits imposed via the narrative (or environment).

Its the same result for a lot less work.

That said, itll be hard to do with the campaign you have where every PC has access to magic items that function as intangible 13th+ level spell casters, with their own pools of actions, with concentration stackable, and everyone has +3 items/ artifacts.

That party has effectively twice as many members (actions economy) and twice as many long rest resources than they would otherwise (those items spells), and PCs are layered with buffs twice (or more) over what the game maths anticipates, and they rock items that push them a further 50 percent or more over what their proficiency bonuses should be.

Just accounting for the items (extra actions and extra long rest resources) would mean at a minimum you would need to push 15 or so encounters on them between long rests (and thats an absurd amount to maintain). Even then, those encounters would need to be around the [hard-deadly] level to account for the +3 items and stacking of concentration.

 

[Tony Vargas]

And yet the game designers don't design adventures with this in mind. So are your base assumptions true and the adventure designers wrong or vice versa?

Two of his assumptions have been stated, outright, by Mr. Mearls in the past 1) magic items are not assumed and 2) 6-8 encounter days. The other two ('lowest common denominator' & 'inexperienced players') I've not heard articulated by anyone from WotC. I can see negatively-spinning 5e's goal of inclusiveness towards fans of all past editions being 'catering to the lowest common denominator,' but well, it's just being negative. The closest I recall Mike wandering to considering 'inexperienced' players was thinking about what made the game appealing when 'we' (he & his playtesters, I assume) were new players (which simply dovetails with the whole 'classic feel' goal).

You know none of the modules I've played written by WotC follow your baseline. You know that, right?

Sure. Why does it matter? We're not forced to use the modules.
(BTW, thanks for saying 'module,' instead of 'AP,' I feel less alone somehow...
...do me a favor and say 'variant' instead of 'house rule' sometime.)

How many times does this have to be repeated before you admit that the game designers themselves are not following the baseline expectations you claim the game assumes?

The designers claim two of 'em, and as to why they don't follow their own guidelines? Well, they don't need to. Neither do you. Maybe the writer of the given module felt that the 'story' was better-served by deviating?

(Maybe the guidelines are just there for the minority of DMs who want to aim for a balanced/playable game, while the main thrust of the game is intentionally weighted towards the 5MWD & caster supremacy?) (Ah, it feels good to sound cynical again, I was get'n too kumbaya there...)

A party of adventures designed using the baseline you claim the game follows have far more options to crush creatures than the creatures have to crush them.

Not too surprising, each set of monsters had only one party to crush on-screen, while the party is going to take on many challenges...

I am a returning player. My entire group is comprised of returning players.

Well, "transitioning" from 3.5/PF.

So 5E not exactly doing the job for some of us returning players. Does that mean it's not working as intended?

Not if you're able to adapt it to your needs. Turn on feats & MCing, use the stuff from UA, etc...
...but, no, it's not a great sign.

As soon as the group found out Smiting and Ranged attacks were number one for offense, every single party they make now is comprised of those types of characters with a bard and some kind of healer support. 5E monsters can't handle optimized parties any better than 3E.

But, you were playing 3e (or at least PF?) up until you tried 5e, right? So what made it tolerable for 14 years then, but not for couple, now?

So may be relying on six to eight encounters a day doesn't a very smart design decision to begin with.

Depends on the purpose. If it was to be a practical default way for everyone to run the game, maybe not such a great decision. If it was just to throw a bone to fans who obsess about theoretical balance, while providing a game that'd be wildly imbalanced for most everyone who actually played it...

The reasons people in my group are unhappy right now:

1. Myself. Weak monsters, badly designed modules with weak challenges. Too much work on my part to modify monsters to challenge my min/max players. But especially, the weak module design.
2. Player 1. Not enough options and splatbooks.

I think the other two players are indifferent. They'll play whatever is played.

So, 50% approval rate.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't own all the adventures....but I do own a few. I'm away from my books right now but off the top of my head, I can think of many sections that adhere to several encounters clumped together. Is it always 6-8? No, but it certainly happens quite a bit.

I feel like saying that the designers don't adhere to that guideline is misleading. They don't always follow the guideline, but they certainly do some of the time.

 

[Helldritch]

I own all of them. And where the 6-8 is not explicitly stated, random encounters (or other the DM prepared) are supposed to be used to fill in the missing amount of encounters.

Even the LMoP is built like that.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I own all of them. And where the 6-8 is not explicitly stated, random encounters (or other the DM prepared) are supposed to be used to fill in the missing amount of encounters.

Even the LMoP is built like that.

Yeah....the more I think about it, the more it seems like the modules have that in mind. Curse of Strahd is the one I'm currently running, so it's the freshest in my mind...but most of the areas have multiple encounters. Castle Ravenloft, the Amber Temple, Arghynvostholt, the Wizard of Wines and Yester Hill...they all have several encounters.

Old Bonegrinder and the Ruins of Berez are the only ones I can think of that primarily consist of one encounter...but they also are out in the wilderness and perfect for random encounters.

For Hoard of the Dragon Queen, I'd have to refresh my mind about a good chunk of it...but the opening at Greenest certainly allows for and expects multiple encounters. Later parts of the module I'd have to double check, but I recall many of them consisting of multiple encounters.

For Princes of the Apocalypse, all of the Haunted Keeps have multiple encounters, with the exception of Scarlet Moon Hall. Then each of the Temples for each of the elemental cults require multiple encounters.

Yeah....I don't think that the multiple encounter day is an element of play that the adventure designers have ignored. Not by any means.

 

[Celtavian]

I don't own all the adventures....but I do own a few. I'm away from my books right now but off the top of my head, I can think of many sections that adhere to several encounters clumped together. Is it always 6-8? No, but it certainly happens quite a bit.

I feel like saying that the designers don't adhere to that guideline is misleading. They don't always follow the guideline, but they certainly do some of the time.

Yes. It has been ignored. Not a single module made it so you had to do 6-8 encounters a day. Not one. The only module that came close up to Out of the Abyss was the Princes of the Apocalypse module. Those encounters were built weak and did not require 6 to 8 encounters a day at all. You could do a couple at a time or more than six to eight. The encounters were so weak that my group ripped entire complexes apart doing far more than 6 to 8 a day. This was using the base rules without any additional magic beyond what was in the module for character building.

So no, the requirement as so many of you are pushing of six to eight encounters a day is not in any of the modules, not one. One of the few people I've seen design a 6-8 encounter scenario worth a damn was Flamestrike.

 

[Celtavian]

I own all of them. And where the 6-8 is not explicitly stated, random encounters (or other the DM prepared) are supposed to be used to fill in the missing amount of encounters.

Even the LMoP is built like that.

I own up to Out of the Abyss. You are flat out wrong and need to look again. The closest to 6 to 8 a day is the Temple module. All the others use a lot more one or two day encounters or a variety of very weak encounters far below what would constitute challenging for 6-8 encounters a day for a proper level. And even the Temple module was weak and we were clearing it with standard characters with only the magic from the module past lvl 7 or so.

Out of the Abyss was really, really bad about encounters per day. The majority of the xp was generated by random travel encounters that were rolled twice a day. The majority of the encounters were small set-piece encounters that were not very challenging at all. Hoard of the Dragon Queen was very similar. The Temple module at least had dungeon and temple complexes, but the enemies within were incredibly weak and lacked variety. The end prophets were a joke to defeat. Very poorly designed. The fact that you don't remember them very well doesn't surprise me. They aren't very memorable like many of the best older edition modules. One thing that has been lacking this edition has been well-designed, memorable modules.

 

[Helldritch]

I own up to Out of the Abyss. You are flat out wrong and need to look again. The closest to 6 to 8 a day is the Temple module. All the others use a lot more one or two day encounters or a variety of very weak encounters far below what would constitute challenging for 6-8 encounters a day for a proper level. And even the Temple module was weak and we were clearing it with standard characters with only the magic from the module past lvl 7 or so.

Out of the Abyss was really, really bad about encounters per day. The majority of the xp was generated by random travel encounters that were rolled twice a day. The majority of the encounters were small set-piece encounters that were not very challenging at all. Hoard of the Dragon Queen was very similar. The Temple module at least had dungeon and temple complexes, but the enemies within were incredibly weak and lacked variety. The end prophets were a joke to defeat. Very poorly designed. The fact that you don't remember them very well doesn't surprise me. They aren't very memorable like many of the best older edition modules. One thing that has been lacking this edition has been well-designed, memorable modules.

I encourage you to reread them. The detailed encounters are as you suggest. But you have to fill in the rest. That is why they usualy say that at this point (insert end of a phase, plot point, chapter) PC should be "X" level. You can either do that by using the mile stone or as old bones like me did and that is fill the requirement with encounters of your own. In HoDQ you travel quite a lot. Random encounter is explicitly stated. Same in RoT, RoEE, OoA, CoS and now the SKT.

The new way to make adventures by WoTC is to simply give the back bones you need to flesh out memorable adventures that will be as diversified as there are DM out in the world. I have been aware of three OoA campaigns in my area, none of them looked like mine and one even made me envious as the DM, though young, did a wonderful job with that/his adventure.

The new adventure do not cater the DM by the hand with every single room detailed like old modules. They can't or the adventures in themselve would be 700 pages long. The old Temple of Elemental Evil (T1-4) was bringing players up to level 8 with about 130 or a 140 pages with small, very condensed prints (at least they look small print to me now. An old bone like me has a declining eyesight.) whereas the new adventures have a neater and much clearer print that what we used to have. I guess that they could be condensed to 2/3rd of their page count if they had been made in the '80s. The style of writing changed, DM are no longuer looking for fixed adventure that they will adapt anyway to their group. Over the years, professionals understood that all they needed was to make adventure as guidelines to what the campaign should look like and not an absolute write up that is the only thing you can do in it.

The adventures are now simply describing key event/places and the DM has to fill up the rest. If you play all of them as is, you will fall short in both levels and time played. I guess that there are many ways to read a book.

 

[CapnZapp]

Just to chime in to state why I'm no longer active in this thread: y'all have merely restarted an argument I thought was over and done with a long time ago - I mean I didn't think people still believed the myth that the game actively supports its own expected 6-8 encounter days?

As has been stated repeatedly: there is almost not a single example of an official module that clearly follows what you claim is a fundamental expectation of the game, so perhaps there is another explanation.

And of course, that other explanation is that WotC completely dropped the ball when it comes to making the game challenging for veteran D&Ders.

It is obviously a newbie-friendly game. More worryingly, many monsters come across as having been designed by those same newbies.

To me, it's just a matter of time before people start playing the game at higher levels and realize what some of us have already realized: the need for an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons supplement