D&D General DM Says No Powergaming?

[Blue]

So the DM's feelings about how powerful the party is are irrelevant and shouldn't be considered. I saw that you focused on player power and require the DM to adjust to them or risk being labeled as "bad". Is that fair?

Yes, that's fair. The one thing under the player control is that character. That's it. I'm fine with the DM going "thematically these are the options available in the world" and restricting there, but going "I want you to purposefully all detune from where you want to play for something that is relatively easy for me to adjust to" is the DM stepping out of bounds. It's saying that they don't want to do their job (balancing the adventures to the party), and asking the entire party to give up making character they want for however long the campaign will run in order to allow the DM to slack there.

Again, this is predicated on the whole group wanting to play at the same level. If the whole group was casual and the adventures were too hard, that's just as equally the DM falling down on their job.

 

[Blue]

While we are staking out the no true scottsman shaped boundaries of what of a real GM does can you list off the tools that 5e includes for the gm to use with that? Past editions had tools that allowed the GM to finesse monsters encounters & even individual PC strengths to the needs of their group like DR SR Magic item churn bonus type/slot conflicts plausible odds of lethality & even the extra wiggle room provided by iterative/multi attack penalties.. 5e seems rather lacking

5e gives the same sort of tools every other edition has - a flawed, starting point of an encounter calculator. Listing specific survivability tools that change from edition to edition isn't all that useful. It's always possible to add more or less, or the big tweak in 5e monsters is HPs. The challange calulator never perfectly fits any party in any edition. For the entire lifespan of D&D, with 5e no different, the DM has had to estimate and be familiar with their group in order to well fit encounters to it.

If you look at discussions about the big hardcover adventures, you will see people arguing away flaws because the DM is supposed to adjust these to their parties. Default is just that - a baseline to adjust from.

Tailoring adventures has always been part of the DM's job, no "no true scotsman" about it, though I appreciate the attempt at rhetoric.

 

[jgsugden]

If we were to assume that "5e has plenty of tools for a DM" it's hard not to notice that you didn't actually name any of them. Are you praising the bounty of tools 5e provides GMs while in the group "unlikely to know about many of them" or was it just a case of hitting post too quick?

I can't speak for Mort, but I can say that there are plenty of tools out there in the books, and on Youtube, and on Reddit, and on these forums, etc... Let me give you a suggestion for how to discover them yourself.

I suggest planning a one shot for your players. Tell them to build 5th level PCs using point buy, and that each one gets one rare item, two uncommon items and unlimited mundane (nonmagical) items. They also get three uncommon spell scrolls / potions of their choice. They can use any WotC class/race options.

Then, you get to build a one shot dungeon to challenge them for a five hour session. You get to use a small cavern and a road for your battlemaps, and the monsters you get to use in your build are:

19 goblins
4 wolves
1 bugbear
4 traps that have DCs no higher than 13 and deal no more than 2d8 damage each (but can hamper PCs, such as a snare or a pit)

If that sounds familiar, you may have played an intro adventure for 5E. These are appropriate challenges for a 1st level party with starting gear, and you're going to challenge heavily armed 5th level PCs.

Think about how you'd use your resources to make an interesing challenge for the PCs. Think about how (and why) the monsters might be prepared for the PCs and use their capabilities to provide challenges for the PCs. Figure out things the monsters might be doing that the PCs might have to disrupt. Experiment. Think outside the box - but make sure the story makes sense. If you try this a few times, and succeed in building fun one shots this way, it may influence how you approach the rest of your adventure building in a positive way.

 

[Blue]

If an extreme powergamer walks into my group I know that they aren't there for the enjoyment of the group. They are there for themselves and their power.

Oh gees, this again? The long disproven gatekeeping that powergamers can't be roleplayers, that if you enjoy system mastery that you can't be part of a team?

Yes, you can get people who aren't team players. Regardless if they are powergamers. And you can have powergamers. Regardless if they are team players or not. Don't let that there is some overlap in any circles of Venn diagrams to the fact that there's also plenty of non-overlap. No matter what the circles are.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes, that's fair. The one thing under the player control is that character. That's it. I'm fine with the DM going "thematically these are the options available in the world" and restricting there, but going "I want you to purposefully all detune from where you want to play for something that is relatively easy for me to adjust to" is the DM stepping out of bounds. It's saying that they don't want to do their job (balancing the adventures to the party), and asking the entire party to give up making character they want for however long the campaign will run in order to allow the DM to slack there.

Again, this is predicated on the whole group wanting to play at the same level. If the whole group was casual and the adventures were too hard, that's just as equally the DM falling down on their job.

Balancing the adventure to the PCs is decidedly  not the DM's job, IMO. Far from it. To me, the DMs job is to present the setting and give the PCs reasons to engage with it. How they engage and what happens is a combination of player choices and emergent events. Balance in the adventure has nothing to do with it.

I honestly don't know why anyone would DM at all if some of you folks are right and problems at the table are always the fault of inflexible, capricious, tyrannical, or downright nasty DMs. Hopefully one day their poor players will rise up and cast them off, I guess.

 

[Vaalingrade]

5e gives the same sort of tools every other edition has - a flawed, starting point of an encounter calculator.

4e had a functional encounter calculator that was revisited and refined throughout its lifetime.

Before we went back to the DM trial by fire we call CR.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

So...why not have an adult conversation?

And if you can't have an adult conversation, why are you choosing to play with this person? In anything, not just D&D?

I like how you imply I don't have an adult conversation about those rules with the players.

Seriously, why do people always default to the DM being the bad guy in these types of situations?

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

Oh gees, this again? The long disproven gatekeeping that powergamers can't be roleplayers, that if you enjoy system mastery that you can't be part of a team?

Yes, you can get people who aren't team players. Regardless if they are powergamers. And you can have powergamers. Regardless if they are team players or not. Don't let that there is some overlap in any circles of Venn diagrams to the fact that there's also plenty of non-overlap. No matter what the circles are.

Roleplay out how you feel about how your Warlock Patron is commanding you to do something against your oath as a Paladin then.

 

[Greg Benage]

Optimizing creates the build meta, and I don't like the meta on a couple scores:
1. I really don't need to see another paladin with a hexblade dip, or wizard with a cleric dip.
2. The meta is often goofy, such as the preeminence of the hand crossbow as a weapon of war in 5e.

#2 is a fault in the game design. #1 is only a problem when I play AL events at cons -- the meta isn't a problem at all in my (virtual) home game. Both are just subjective peeves and not a problem with a certain category of player preferences. We've generally solved the con event problem by not playing AL events above Tier 1 if we can help it.

I do like it when the meta, powergamey options are group-focused, rather than individual-focused. I have a twilight cleric in my spelljammer game and it's fine: It mostly makes the other characters feel more badass. If I designed balanced encounters for the party, I probably wouldn't think it's fine because hoo boy it makes a difference whether that aura is up or not. But I don't design balanced encounters so I don't care.

 

[iserith]

Having had a campaign go to 17th level and experiencing the same, that's why I've banned it. It's a cheaper, penalty free resurrection magic that is always the best choice. The limitation of 1 minute came up twice during the game, but all it did was require the caster to spend an action in combat. Death is uncommon enough in 5E, so I don't feel like cheapening it further.

Across all my campaigns where death is on the table, I see about a 10% permanent death rate. So you could say I'm decimating them, and that's good enough for me. Revivify, raise dead, and resurrection are in my view tools to resolve iteration time (that is, the time it takes a player with a dead PC to get back into the primary mode of playing since character creation takes a while) and model the death/rebirth aspect of the hero's journey. For these reasons, I leave them in.