D&D 5E Encounter Balance holds back 5E

In a game where exploration is a central pillar of play, encounter balance serves as an unnecessary gatekeeper to immersion, storytelling, and creativity. This thesis relies on the idea that encounter balance, defined as having a rigid system that can output the potential difficulty of a fight depending on their level, not only fails to function in the environment 5E creates, but also hinders 5E's promise of uniting mechanics with the fictional world.

For the first point, while classes are roughly balanced between one another, avenues of subclass, spell access and selection, feat choice, magic item availability, and player taste and competency all impact how classes actually perform. When viewed through this lens, the only true balance you can hope for is a soft balance wherein no one feels particularly outshined by another player at the table. Whether 5E has achieved this soft balance is debatable; many argue that this isn't true from 9th level on, 11th or 13th level on, and some more extreme opinions even posit after 5th level (or 1st). Likewise, just as many haven't had any issue with inter-party balance. The fact that both opinions can be encountered in large numbers indicates how much the aforementioned avenues impact class balance in the game. How one person plays a battlemaster is not how another person does, and that's before factoring in the GM, the type of game it is, how much loot is given, what kinds of enemies are faced, what optional rules are used, and so on. A Rakshasa will be a very different combat if the party is composed of a Warlock, Wizard, Cleric, and Druid as opposed to a Fighter, Ranger, Barbarian, and Monk.

The second, greater point is that a focus on encounter balance hinders 5E's promise of uniting mechanics with the fictional world. What I mean by this is, encounter balance says that at X level, Y number of Z creatures will be of a certain tier of difficulty. As 5E is a game, such a system is partially required; its better to know the general "power level" of your individual monsters as a DM. But this does not mean that 5E's methods and culture around doing so are necessarily precise or good.

By arranging the world in a way that adheres to strict power level, you bring to the forefront the combat simulation of the games more so then it already it. You say that while this is a game about exploration and social interaction, its really just about combat, because the pacing of the game is based specifically on the tier-difficulties of the encounters you'll be experiencing. Since the DM is encouraged in a way of thinking that models the game as a combat simulator, parties of enemies are then built strictly to match certain metrics with narrative justification given afterwards. While this in and of itself is not a problem, the deconstruction of this is that certain parties of enemies are therefore excluded from the game not because of narrative justification, but because of their mismatch with the necessitated numbers. The level 5 party will not encounter an Adult Red Dragon and have to creatively navigate around it; they'll encounter, at best, a Young Red Dragon, if that, maybe even just a Wyrmling. The scope of what I can create is hemmed in, which is fine in certain ways, but the stories that I want to tell are partially rendered incompatible with the game itself.

More ripple effects come from this. Play culture begins to turn away from creatively using what's at hand to find ways around or over massive challenges to instead using raw mechanics in optimal ways to win against enemies that were designed to be won against. Having encounters where your party is meant to feel powerful is not a bad thing; however, when every encounter is balanced along these lines, it means that players are rarely forced to think outside the box for overcoming challenges.

Playing the game purely in this way leads to a more rote experience, reducing the scope of the game in effect. This reduced scope of play is what I mean when I say that encounter balance holds back 5E. Instead of creating new tools for helping DMs come up with creative ways that a level 5 party could beat an Ancient Red Dragon (such as with a Bard-esque arrow to a weak spot over its heart, or by finding a special gem that steals the dragon's vitality, or by giving ways a legion led by the PCs could potentially trap, restrain, and butcher the dragon), we instead get a bunch of stat blocks that show the dragon in various power stages, limiting the stories that are being told to "Can you kill this thing in a straight up fight now or later?" And while this type of story is fine, and I enjoy it, it would have been interesting if 5E embraced a variety of fantastical stories instead of just that one. The Wild Beyond the Witchlight was a great attempt at doing so. More like that, with less of a kid focus and more of an Odyssey focus, would have led to a more open and varied D&D ecosystem IMO.

Just to be clear, I am not saying that playing 5E as a combat-first game is badwrongfun. I play 5E like that often and enjoy it. What I'm saying is that 5E's focus on encounter balance gets in the way of creating more vivid and varied games because of the lack of tools and the created play culture which generally colors within the lines as opposed to outside. YMMV.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

dave2008

Legend
In a game where exploration is a central pillar of play, encounter balance serves as an unnecessary gatekeeper to immersion, storytelling, and creativity. This thesis relies on the idea that encounter balance, defined as having a rigid system that can output the potential difficulty of a fight depending on their level, not only fails to function in the environment 5E creates, but also hinders 5E's promise of uniting mechanics with the fictional world.
First, I apologize but I did not have time to read past this first paragraph (meeting starting in 5 minutes).

Your thesis may or may not be accurate; however, one great thing I found in 5e early on (like about 8-9 years ago) was that you don't need to worry about encounter balance in 5e. Just populate your world with people and monsters that make sense for the story of your world and it pretty much works. The idea that you need to fine tune encounters with an XP budget and such is hogwash IME.

So, while you may be correct - is also something (the encounter balance) that can be complete ignored with ease in 5e (IME)
 
Last edited:

First, I apologize but I did not have time to read post this first paragraph (meeting starting in 5 minutes).

Your thesis may or may not be accurate; however, one great thing I found in 5e early on (like about 8-9 years ago) was that you don't need to worry about encounter balance in 5e. Just populate your world with people and monsters that make sense for the story of your world and it pretty much works. The idea that you need to fine tune encounters with an XP budget and such is hogwash IME.

So, while you may be correct - is also something (the encounter balance) that can be complete ignored with ease in 5e (IME)
It 100% can be, and I do so very often hahaha. However, I think in the wider play culture and in WotC's design culture is where we see the consequences of encounter balance being assumed as a default.
 

Stormonu

NeoGrognard
1714396969671.jpeg


Honestly, CR is just there to give the DM a starting point to say "the group ought to be able to handle X, and if you do Y, you're likely to get them killed." It was not meant to be the straight jacket some claim, and one need look no further than the first 5E adventure Hoard of the Dragon Queen to see this with the presence of the blue dragon and overwhelming forces in Greenest. Head-on brashness will get the party killed, and not just in the starting area.

The problem is getting some DMs to look beyond CR as a jail cell when running their game. There are things in the world you can't beat by hacking your way through it. There are things that weren't meant to faced only in combat or only as a level Z experience. D&D isn't just a tabletop skirmish game, it's certainly an RPG with tabletop roots, but it is a role-playing game, and there is so much more that can be done with if that part is embraced over hack'n'slash.
 

View attachment 360466

Honestly, CR is just there to give the DM a starting point to say "the group ought to be able to handle X, and if you do Y, you're likely to get them killed." It was not meant to be the straight jacket some claim, and one need look no further than the first 5E adventure Hoard of the Dragon Queen to see this with the presence of the blue dragon and overwhelming forces in Greenest. Head-on brashness will get the party killed, and not just in the starting area.

The problem is getting some DMs to look beyond CR as a jail cell when running their game. There are things in the world you can't beat by hacking your way through it. There are things that weren't meant to faced only in combat or only as a level Z experience. D&D isn't just a tabletop skirmish game, it's certainly an RPG with tabletop roots, but it is a role-playing game, and there is so much more that can be done with if that part is embraced over hack'n'slash.
I agree 100%; however, unless WotC creates direct guidance OR tools for handling mismatched power levels in terms of party vs monster, many DMs (especially newer ones) will be hemmed in by the CR system as written.
 

Stormonu

NeoGrognard
I agree 100%; however, unless WotC creates direct guidance OR tools for handling mismatched power levels in terms of party vs monster, many DMs (especially newer ones) will be hemmed in by the CR system as written.
I don't agree. From the start, WotC has tried to show that you can and should have times of mismatched power in encounters and events. And in those cases you don't want tools because it flies in the very face of developing something creative instead of rote and "by the book".

It is the community that has pushed for balanced, beatable encounters time and time against the examples and advice WotC has tried to put out to say "you don't have to do that".
 

mamba

Legend
Playing the game purely in this way leads to a more rote experience, reducing the scope of the game in effect. This reduced scope of play is what I mean when I say that encounter balance holds back 5E. Instead of creating new tools for helping DMs come up with creative ways that a level 5 party could beat an Ancient Red Dragon (such as with a Bard-esque arrow to a weak spot over its heart, or by finding a special gem that steals the dragon's vitality, or by giving ways a legion led by the PCs could potentially trap, restrain, and butcher the dragon), we instead get a bunch of stat blocks that show the dragon in various power stages, limiting the stories that are being told to "Can you kill this thing in a straight up fight now or later?"
no one is forcing you to stick to hard encounters according to the encounter rules. I’d rather have them than not have them (not that you argue for their removal)

Your example seems to teach players, no matter what it looks like, your DM built in a ‘trap’ to allow you to win against overwhelming odds, go and find it. I’d much rather teach them that some fights are too tough and they need a way to avoid getting dragged into them

As to balanced encounters limiting the kinds of stories you can tell, yes they do, not overly as far as I am concerned, but to a degree
 

Micah Sweet

Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
One of the ways a TTRPG teaches you how it intends to be played is by what appears in it's published adventures. Focusing on WotC 5e, are there examples in its adventures of unbalanced encounters, in the sense that not every encounter is meant to be a combat victory for the PCs?
 

no one is forcing you to stick to hard encounters according to the encounter rules. I’d rather have them than not have them (not that you argue for their removal)

Your example seems to teach players, no matter what it looks like, your DM built in a ‘trap’ to allow you to win against overwhelming odds, go and find it. I’d much rather teach them that some fights are too tough and they need a way to avoid getting dragged into them

As to balanced encounters limiting the kinds of stories you can tell, yes they do, not overly as far as I am concerned, but to a degree
It's not about being forced to, it's that many people default to what the book lays out when building the game. This is the inherent function of rulebooks and guidelines of any kind. Therefore, guidelines that push the players towards new things are necessary.

I want to clarify to everyone reading I stated in my post that none of what I said is WotC literally binding how people play. I'm talking about the implicit effects their guidelines and the structure of their text creates. Responding to me "You have the freedom to do whatever" is very pointedly missing the forest for the trees.
 

I don't agree. From the start, WotC has tried to show that you can and should have times of mismatched power in encounters and events. And in those cases you don't want tools because it flies in the very face of developing something creative instead of rote and "by the book".

It is the community that has pushed for balanced, beatable encounters time and time against the examples and advice WotC has tried to put out to say "you don't have to do that".
I don't think WotC has done a very good job of showing what you claim they do, and I think they could do a better job at empowering their player base along these lines by creating better, more interesting tools to achieve such aims, like the ones I mentioned briefly in my post.
 

Remove ads

Top