D&D 5E Differing opinions about 5e

[Xeviat]

I find "medium encounters" to be too easy, and I find it difficult to stretch my player characters out across a full "adventuring day". My chief complaints about 5E is that I find the monsters to be boring; too many of them are simple Attack+Damage brutes.

But I love the player side of it. The classes are evocative and I think of new characters everytime I read a subclass.


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[thethain]

Encounter Designer
What the encounter designer in the book uses is extremely conservative. I would look at it as if an encounter isn't deadly, it has almost no chance of risking death to a party that has full resources. (barring some oddball ability)

DM Leniency:
Honestly, I think a big chunk of "too easy" stems from DM's refusal to go for killing blows. Which makes unconscious just a damage sponge. A melee attack against unconscious target crits, which is 2 failed death saves. Meaning it only takes 2 attacks, or 1 attack and a failed save, to finish off a character for good.

Further, DM's do not run the NPCs to their full potential, an equal number of goblins can easily be deadly for level one adventurers:

If the goblins are hidden in dark, and the players are approaching in the open and one of the players has a torch, the goblins get a surprise attack at about 80 feet away, all with advantage (darkvision only sees to 60 feet away, but the goblins can see the party due to the torch). Now your party has taken 4 attacks with advantage, if they are to attack back they will be at disadvantage (unseen) and likely against 1/2 or 3/4 cover depending on how the goblins are hiding. If the goblins rolled high, they might get 4 more attacks with advantage. The goblins can continue to retreat and strike, hiding with bonus actions to maintain advantage.

Any caster is also subject to how they are controlled. Do they let their henchmen protect them or do they charge into melee?


Official Campaigns:
Official campaigns do NOT use the suggested encounter guidelines. In Curse of Strahd you can easily run into 3 Night Hags that are in a coven (CR 7) at level 3. If you assume a 5 person party, that is an adjusted difficulty level 8.7 times higher than deadly (the highest difficulty level listed of an encounter). If you run this encounter as the hags would actually act, you will kill the players, probably all of them, but maybe one will escape if they flee opposite directions.

Similarly, some encounters in Storm King's Thunder are reliant on artificially restricting the actions of NPCs so they are not a threat.

 

[Blue]

Take this with a grain of salt.

The majority of the "game is too easy" complaints I've heard happen at low-mid to high levels where the DM isn't following the number of encounter per day guidelines.

If you are attempting to run a 1ed, 2ed, 3ed battle of attrition to wear down PCs how those guidelines interact with the class recharge mechanics are a LOT less optional then you think. I love 5e as my favorite D&D edition (and I've been paying since Red Box Basic), but that interaction is my #1 problem with 5e.

"This is a deadly+ fight, why was it easy?", if then followed by "it was the only fight of the day and they knew it" answers the question, no matter how much that's not what the DM wants to hear.

On the other hand, that is just one style of running encounters. Encounters where there are other things at stake, encounters where eventual win of might is not the best route to succeed, these step outside that expectation of attrition as a provider of difficulty.

I would love if 5e supported those all equally.

5e does a decent job at allowing you to play the character you want forcing character build design dictated by system mastery. That said, playing at tables at my FLGS has shown me that you can have a largish power difference in characters aiming for the same niche just witht he core PHB, though it is pretty hard to make a sub-optimal character by accident which is all for the good to me.

 

[Caliban]

So which is it? The game is too easy, too hard or just right?

Yes. It's all of those, depending on the DM, the other players, and the dice rolls.

And if it is too easy, is it a function of optimizing (which would be a voluntary thing...).

It can be if the players are better at optimizing their characters than the DM is at optimizing the monsters and combat situations. (Some DM's just aren't good tacticians, at least when compared to some of the players.)

Not a big deal if everyone is happy with the situation. Can become a big deal if the either DM or some of the players feel outclassed by the optimizers.

 

[BoldItalic]

I have seen complaints about 5e being too easy. I have also seen many threads about the need to optimize and many about the lack of a need to optimize (since the game is forgiving).
...
So which is it? The game is too easy, too hard or just right? And if it is too easy, is it a function of optimizing (which would be a voluntary thing...).

The aim of the game is to have fun. It may be easy or hard to have fun, depending on the people you are playing with, but it's not a function of the game rules unless they are so complex or onerous that merely operating the game becomes a major preoccupation that is too much like hard work to be much fun. 5e was consciously designed to cut out the work and let the fun shine through, so in that sense it is easy to play - it makes it easy to have fun.

 

[Warpiglet]

The aim of the game is to have fun. It may be easy or hard to have fun, depending on the people you are playing with, but it's not a function of the game rules unless they are so complex or onerous that merely operating the game becomes a major preoccupation that is too much like hard work to be much fun. 5e was consciously designed to cut out the work and let the fun shine through, so in that sense it is easy to play - it makes it easy to have fun.

I totally agree. One proof of this fact is that I am actually willing to DM 5e. I liked playing 3e from time to time (its the only version I gave any time to following AD&D 1st edition) but I found it difficult to DM.

I am thinking more about survivability of characters in this particular case. I have fun every time I play! But some forum peeps seem to think this game is always on easy mode and others seem to suggest not gearing up for war in the fullest extent is folly!

Which made me wonder if part of this is predicated on the level of optimization...

Consensus so far is that you can gear it up or gear it down and that is a good thing. i still like the possibility of unwinnable fights. Running for my life has been a big part of my adventuring career!

 

[Warpiglet]

Yes. It's all of those, depending on the DM, the other players, and the dice rolls.



It can be if the players are better at optimizing their characters than the DM is at optimizing the monsters and combat situations. (Some DM's just aren't good tacticians, at least when compared to some of the players.)

Not a big deal if everyone is happy with the situation. Can become a big deal if the either DM or some of the players feel outclassed by the optimizers.

Yes. And I know some DMs are fine tacticians but pull punches too. I am sure that can be a factor for some groups as well.

 

[Illithidbix]

To echo much of what's already been said

Encounter Builder
The guidelines for the encounter builder means that 5E feels forgiving ("easy"), which the Encounter Builder makes it feel wussy for anyone with optamising and tactical players. Esp. their use of the word "Deadly" to mean

A deadly encounter could be lethal for one or more player characters. Survival often requires good tactics and quick thinking, and the party risks defeat.

Rather than "likely TPK", which some seem to assume it should.

To me the encounter builder is mostly there to help ensure that newbie DMs don't accidentally TPK their newbie players.


I've tried it on total newbies and not had problems.

I have also noticed that the games that I've run and played have almost always had far fewer encounters between every rest than the "average adventuring day" that the DMG suggests, and this seems very common.

Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day.
… In general, over the course of a full adventuring day, the party will likely need to take two short rests, about one-third and two-thirds of the way through the day.

I do however wonder if a level 1 party *could* reliably expect to go through six to eight medium/hard encounters with so few resources.

Optimisation

There is very little *need* to optimise in 5E and it tends to be pretty straight forward: Make sure your primary attack stat is your highest ability score. Well done.

There are a handful of powerful multiclass builds; mostly focused on getting 2 levels of Fighter for Action Surge or getting 2 levels of Warlock for Agonising Blast and possibly something, something Assassin Rogue, something something, liberal interpretation of the stealth rules.
Otherwise multiclassing isn't really a path to power.

 

[ad_hoc]

The 'too easy' crowd is a combination of running 1 encounter/day games and the DM ensuring the enemies don't win.

Here is an example: One poster once said the game was too easy because the characters wiped out the entire Drow camp at the beginning of OotA. There are a ton of enemies in the camp and the leader has spells that will wipe out the entire party. The poster was adamant that they played the Drow visciously but it was just that the PCs were too good.

When asked for details it turns out that the Drow leader, instead of using a high level spell to wipe the party out decided to cast levitate instead, not only not actually helping but making her an easy target to be shot down and killed.

This is why there are wildly varying reports. There is a lot of room for difference in play, even in published adventures.

On the flipside people have complained that the game is too hard as there are sometimes high CR creatures in adventures. When asked for examples though, inevitably it turns out that those creatures don't have to be fought it's just that the party decides that they must kill everything they see. So the complaint is that the adventure isn't just a shooting gallery.

 

[akr71]

So which is it? The game is too easy, too hard or just right? And if it is too easy, is it a function of optimizing (which would be a voluntary thing...).

The correct answer is that there is no correct answer. Subjective opinions are just that - subjective.

I like 5e, it works for me and my group. Its a game I play for fun. Often, I find myself thinking, that x should be improved or y needs to be tweaked, but then I also think about how much effort doing x or y would take & preserve game balance. If I still want to proceed I ask myself if x or y being changed will improve the fun for everyone. Often the answer is no and I don't proceed any further.

Sometimes the answer is no, but it sounds like a fun academic exercise and I proceed anyway, though likely I set it aside when I get distracted... Hopefully by my scantily clad wife.