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I've been running 5th edition since the Starter Set was released, and run several other campaigns including Hoard of the Dragon Queen (with D&D Encounters), Princes of the Apocalypse, Storm King's Thunder, Out of the Abyss, and (now) Tomb of Annihilation. I've run homebrew campaigns in Ravenloft (before the Curse of Strahd release) and in an original setting.
A few observations I've made (and some that my players have shared with me):
1) 5e doesn't seem to support high level play. Most official products tap out at 11th level. There's little to no help in showing DMs how to craft adventures or encounters for higher level. It's as if there is no intention that characters should play beyond mid level.
2) The encounter creation math just doesn't work. Some monsters (such as hellhounds) can decimate low level parties. Others are not even challenging at all.
3) Most combats are boring. There are few tactical options, and most monsters are just bags of hit points, ever-increasing as characters level up. (This seems to originate from the bounded accuracy design goal.) Most monsters can't reliably hit PC Armor Class.
4) You either have a TPK or no character ever dies. (Not that I like character death, but it should at least feel threatening without being "campaign-ending")
5) Few groups (or official products) actually follow the encounters per day guideline, creating overpowered casters and underpowered martial characters.
I've been watching Matt Colville's YouTube videos, and at his advice, I'm going through my old 4e books for inspiration. I've been redesigning every monster and the encounter math. The game I'm running now is still 5e from the players' perspective, but everything on my side of the DM Screen is homebrewed.
Has anyone else run into similar issues? If so, how did you address them?
A few observations I've made (and some that my players have shared with me):
1) 5e doesn't seem to support high level play. Most official products tap out at 11th level. There's little to no help in showing DMs how to craft adventures or encounters for higher level. It's as if there is no intention that characters should play beyond mid level.
Yes, there are people claiming the rules work fine enough, but they are wrong.
2) The encounter creation math just doesn't work. Some monsters (such as hellhounds) can decimate low level parties. Others are not even challenging at all.
This is actually much less of a problem. Just ignore encounter guidelines and you're safe.
4) You either have a TPK or no character ever dies. (Not that I like character death, but it should at least feel threatening without being "campaign-ending")
5) Few groups (or official products) actually follow the encounters per day guideline, creating overpowered casters and underpowered martial characters.
1) 5e doesn't seem to support high level play. Most official products tap out at 11th level. There's little to no help in showing DMs how to craft adventures or encounters for higher level. It's as if there is no intention that characters should play beyond mid level.
Most editions of D&D have had very little support for high level play. Most campaigns peter out around mid level, high level encounters tend to be really complicated and time consuming to design, and high level PC's can have a widely divergent level of power and durability depending on the campaign.
It's really up to the DM to handle high level play - they need to design the encounters and challenges with their group in mind, generic ones will either be easily bypassed or end up as a TPK.
2) The encounter creation math just doesn't work. Some monsters (such as hellhounds) can decimate low level parties. Others are not even challenging at all.
If you allow feats, multi-classing, and more than a couple of magic items...the baseline CR ratings don't work. As a DM, I just kind of wing it, based on my understanding on the party and their abilities.
3) Most combats are boring. There are few tactical options, and most monsters are just bags of hit points, ever-increasing as characters level up. (This seems to originate from the bounded accuracy design goal.) Most monsters can't reliably hit PC Armor Class.
Don't rely on attacks to challenge the PC's. Use monsters that have a variety of abilities (or add abilities to existing monsters - but don't increase the CR). AoE attacks, Con saves, Dex saves, grapple checks, trip attacks. For monsters that have both powers and melee attacks, allow them to use their powers as a bonus action and still attack.
Use "waves" of monsters - have new enemies show up every round or so. This really lets you scale the challenge up while avoiding a TPK. It also allows you to use lower CR monsters that the PC's can chew through and feel like they are doing something.
4) You either have a TPK or no character ever dies. (Not that I like character death, but it should at least feel threatening without being "campaign-ending")
It's a balancing act. You really have to know your party and their abilities and tailor the challenges to them. Even when using official products.
5) Few groups (or official products) actually follow the encounters per day guideline, creating overpowered casters and underpowered martial characters.
Nothing works out of the box, and you shouldn't expect it too. Every group is different, different people want different things out of the game. As much as possible, adjust the game so that you reach an acceptable compromise between your players expectations and your own goals for the game. Don't be afraid to adjust things on the fly so they better fit the game you want and can enjoy.
I've been watching Matt Colville's YouTube videos, and at his advice, I'm going through my old 4e books for inspiration. I've been redesigning every monster and the encounter math. The game I'm running now is still 5e from the players' perspective, but everything on my side of the DM Screen is homebrewed.
Has anyone else run into similar issues? If so, how did you address them?
I pretty much ignore the encounter math, other than avoiding using creatures with a CR significantly higher than the party (and sometimes I even break that guideline).
I've never really had a problem with the encounter math myself, but then, I also tend to play the way the math was designed: that is, without using the optional feat and multiclasing rules. I think it's disingenuous to use a bunch of optional stuff not accounted in the calculations and then claim the calculations are wrong.
It's your game. You do you, and gripe as you will.
1) 5e doesn't seem to support high level play. Most official products tap out at 11th level. There's little to no help in showing DMs how to craft adventures or encounters for higher level. It's as if there is no intention that characters should play beyond mid level.
The books focus on lower levels of play, because that's what their research shows that most people play. Very few games actually run to level 20, usually ending at about 10th level instead. Thus, the books focus on levels 1-10 because that's the product most people want. The game does work at higher levels, but requires a bit more work and DM experience to pull off well. I believe the assumption by WotC was that DMs would seek out advice from other sources, leaving more space available to focus on lower level play.
2) The encounter creation math just doesn't work. Some monsters (such as hellhounds) can decimate low level parties. Others are not even challenging at all.
These guidelines should not be considered hard and fast rules. They are useful for new DMs, but they can be easily bent/broken, creating super easy/hard encounters, so I ignore them. To be fair to 5E, encounter guidelines didn't work to well in prior editions either.
3) Most combats are boring. There are few tactical options, and most monsters are just bags of hit points, ever-increasing as characters level up. (This seems to originate from the bounded accuracy design goal.) Most monsters can't reliably hit PC Armor Class.
Combats are as exciting or boring as the DM makes them. Don't limit your tactics to just what the monster has on the stat-block, and don't just prohibit innovative ideas players have. Yes, most monsters use HP as their primary defense, because players hate to miss, and players use AC instead of HP, because players hate to be hit. I'd suggest using more monsters of lower CR, because the number of attacks will eventually overcome a high AC. Also, I suggest NEVER giving out a +x shield... ever... because that really busts bounded accuracy to hell.
4) You either have a TPK or no character ever dies. (Not that I like character death, but it should at least feel threatening without being "campaign-ending")
Not in my experience. In my last campaign (levels 3-17, about 50 sessions) I killed about 10 PCs. One was with overwhelming damage, 1 was due to an insta-kill effect (Confusion spell caused a PC to wander off the Demonweb into the infinite Abyss), and the rest were due to failed death saves because the rest of the party was too busy to save them.
In general, low level characters (~1-3) are very fragil, and can die pretty easily. From levels 3-16 or so death is less common, because it requires either an insta-kill effect or the character to roll a 1 on their death save (while the rest of the party is too far out of position to help). If you really feel the need to increase the number of character deaths, I'd lower the death by damage to either 25% or 50% of maximum HP, rather than 100%.
5) Few groups (or official products) actually follow the encounters per day guideline, creating overpowered casters and underpowered martial characters.
Seriously, this I agree with. The big issue (besides people's preferred style of play, which is apparently fewer encounters per day) is that short rests are much less useful at lower levels, since you don't have that many HD. IME, at low levels are 2-3 encounters per day, while mid levels can do about 4-6. It's not really until levels 11+ that the 6-8 encounters per day becomes reasonable.
I've been watching Matt Colville's YouTube videos, and at his advice, I'm going through my old 4e books for inspiration. I've been redesigning every monster and the encounter math. The game I'm running now is still 5e from the players' perspective, but everything on my side of the DM Screen is homebrewed.
Homebrew is good. 5E is meant to be customized in such a way to improve the game for each group. Since I like AD&D, I've drawn most of my inspiration from there, but you've found it in 4E. You'd probably hate my stuff, and I'd probably hate yours, but that's part of the beauty of 5E.
A few observations I've made (and some that my players have shared with me):
1) 5e doesn't seem to support high level play. Most official products tap out at 11th level. There's little to no help in showing DMs how to craft adventures or encounters for higher level. It's as if there is no intention that characters should play beyond mid level.
2) The encounter creation math just doesn't work. Some monsters (such as hellhounds) can decimate low level parties. Others are not even challenging at all.
3) Most combats are boring. There are few tactical options, and most monsters are just bags of hit points, ever-increasing as characters level up. (This seems to originate from the bounded accuracy design goal.) Most monsters can't reliably hit PC Armor Class.
4) You either have a TPK or no character ever dies. (Not that I like character death, but it should at least feel threatening without being "campaign-ending")
5) Few groups (or official products) actually follow the encounters per day guideline, creating overpowered casters and underpowered martial characters.
Has anyone else run into similar issues? If so, how did you address them?
1: Never had any players manage to get a character past level 7 (and one got to 5th/6th, a handful to 4th)...so, never been a problem. Based on how I DM and my experience doing it 'my way', I can't see it being a problem.
2: Nope. It doesn't. It never has. Didn't work in 3.x either. You should just pretend the whole "CR" thing doesn't exist. It will make your DM'ing more fun, more fluid, more exciting, and your campaign setting more believable.
3: Yes...and no. Y'see, if you are using Feats, Multiclassing, Spells from other books, hell, any "OPTIONS" from the books or additional books past PHB/MM/DMG, then you have to make adjustments to everything. The core game assumes these optional things/rules are NOT in play. So, as a DM, it's your job to decide how to account for it in your game/campaign.
As a sub-point to 3, the easiest way to make things more exciting is Terrain/Location stuff, and (one of the easiest) is to sort of 'mix-in-match' one monster with another. Take, say, an Orc and a...hmmm....Hill Giant. Ok, these "orcs" look more ape-like, with overly large upper bodies and huge fists; they can Throw Rocks like a Hill Giant (just use it, but maybe reduce damage...or maybe not). Now, toss these "Hill Orcs" and put them where they ambush the PC's walking through a old dry river bed that winds up between the hills they need to pass through. The Terrain/Location part, you can just make a quick "Terrain Notes" on your scrap paper there and jot down some random possibilities - "Unstable Rocks // Foot Stuck // Small Rock Slide // Snake/Scorpion/Spider Attack // Flash Flood". I usually will use a "tied initiative" method for determining if something 'weird' happens (based on the Dice number...not total). If a tie on the die comes up, one of these 'unusual things' happens; to the lower TOTAL initiative side. Random PC/monster, or I pick the most likely.
Anyway, but adding unusual aspects to Monsters and 'possibilities' for fighting in some terrain/location, it can really make a difference. Hell, just "re-skinning" a monster's looks is all you need sometimes: "You see several humanoids, about 4' tall. It is bright blue in colour with black hair. It has three eyes, in a row, above two slits for nostrils. They jab their crude javelins in your direction and make grunting noises" (then use Kobold stats). Now, mechanically, it may be 'the same', but it will FEEL different to the players. Especially if you have them acting unusual as well (like they always focus-fire, even if it makes one of them vulnerable to 'back' attacks).
4: TPK's are bad. With regards to "no characters ever die"....I do not know these words of which you speak. In my experience, dying is one of the best things that PC's are capable of doing.
All joking(?) aside, change it. Try different things until you find something that works. For example, "If you hit 0hp or lower, make a Death check with a penalty equal to damage taken below 0"...if that's too much, add.... "Add your Con adjustment and Proficiency Bonus"...tweak from there. Or maybe just have an old AD&D/Hackmaster rule of if you are between 0 and -3, you are unconscious; -4 to -10 you are dying; -11 or more and you are dead; if taken from positive HP's to -4 or lower in one-hit, you are instantly killed.
5: I don't think it was meant to be a "guideline". I think it was a "in most game days, there will probably be between X and Y"...not so much a "You should have X to Y encounters per day". And besides that...ignore it. It rarely works out that way imnsho, and it doesn't need to. A normal D&D "game day" is not based on board-game turns or whatever. A "game day" doesn't follow a formula. Life is FAR to random for that to make any sort of sense. The only things you can be relatively assured of is that there is a morning, and afternoon, an evening, and a night. Other than that...anything goes. I guess what I'm trying to say is...shift your DM brain from "game mechanics mode" into "cool narrative/story/description mode". It will serve you SO much better for logical progression of your game.
Final Note: Don't knock the age-old DM skill of "winging it". The more you do it, the better you will get. The only thing I'd suggest you do if you start "winging it" alot is to REALLY REALLY REALLY know your campaign world! You should have notes about "Barkeep's Wife - Edneda, 48, average, grating laugh; secretly was a cortisan of a nearby kingdom's king; has brother who is a well-known assassin; is constantly complaining to the mayor about the towns lack of decent sewage handling). Will the PC's ever interact with Edneda? Maybe. Will they find out about any of her secrets or her causes? Unlikely...but you never know. And its that whole "you never know" part that you will be drawing on. This sort of "background info players will never likely discover" (applies to NPC's as well as cities, terrain locations, gods, the multiverse, oceans, etc), that is the stuff you draw on when "winging it". The more you know about the possible 'behind the scenes' stuff in your campaign, the easier and more logical your "winging" sessions will be.
A few observations I've made (and some that my players have shared with me):
1) 5e doesn't seem to support high level play. Most official products tap out at 11th level. There's little to no help in showing DMs how to craft adventures or encounters for higher level. It's as if there is no intention that characters should play beyond mid level.
No experience, yet, but this seems to be a realm that D&D perpetually finds difficult. My current group is just cresting into 8th. I'm seriously considering converting the game to Fate in a few levels, because D&D play is so weak at higher levels. But we'll see.
2) The encounter creation math just doesn't work. Some monsters (such as hellhounds) can decimate low level parties. Others are not even challenging at all.
This is, IMO, the second-worse design mistake in 5e, but its perhaps the most unforgiveable/least understandable. I just don't see any reason why its so wonky. My advice: ignore the encounter guidelines, and to some extent, ignore the monster creation rules. Look at your PCs and eyeball it. (I know, not great advice, but its what I got.)
3) Most combats are boring. There are few tactical options, and most monsters are just bags of hit points, ever-increasing as characters level up. (This seems to originate from the bounded accuracy design goal.)
That's not bounded accuracy in specific, AFAICT,....ooh, boy, this has potential to be a tremendous rant about mechanics.
IMO, this derives from a fundamental limitation of the D&D combat mechanics.
Namely, its next to impossible to mathematically balance the value of a special ability with doing damage. It's just flat out unpredictable how much impact something is going to have. I've seen too many situations in 5e where the critter goes "poof" before it ever gets to use its special abilities. Same critter, different fight, and its a devastating focal point of the whole fight. (Even a couple of saves breaking one way or another can swing a fight's difficulty tremendously IME.) So, whaddya do? You make bags of HP that are mildly flavored.
Of course, some of that tactical blandness is because 5e isn't doing all the little pushes and pulls and drags and pliés and pirouettes that 4e did. D&D has often existed in this weird sort of tactical limbo. If you think about it, a classic D&D monster basically is just an AC, HP, attack routine, and maybe a kicker gimmick. The basic tactical decisions are somewhat simplistic, because the original system assumed that much of the mini maneuvering was lost in the minute round and HP. How much tactical nit-pickyness a person needs is variable. Personally, I found that 4e tended to drag me out of fantasy space and into technical X-O space.
Now, OTOH, tactical blandness is one of the areas that you can most easily address as a DM. Add maps with all sorts of cover and hiding opportunities. Use teams of enemies with a wide range of abilities. Play rough with visibility, and add water. Seriously, aquatic monsters mess things up. 5e's "easy mode" nature makes it really okay for a DM to lean-in on the party in a big way. (At least, IME.) Although it can be rather swingy, depending on those saves, etc.
As a friend of mine recently noted while looking at the huge pile of dice our paladin had just rolled...:
5e monsters have huge piles of HP because WotC noted that players like rolling lots of dice and dealing big damage. Similarly, monsters can't hit because players don't like taking damage, but when they do its for a lot of damage because the players need to feel tension.
Simple solution: crank up the "to-hit" and crank down the damage. Alternatively, add multiple attacks with lower damage ratings.
4) You either have a TPK or no character ever dies. (Not that I like character death, but it should at least feel threatening without being "campaign-ending")
I haven't seen that personally, but my party is almost all "heavies" (paladin, ranger, fighter, barbarian, and a cleric). I'd imagine, given the way monsters work, that a party with more lower-HP classes would make that more likely. The Cleric character is a replacement for a Wizard who did die (multiple times before it stuck), so I really can't say for sure why you're seeing that.
My suggestion would be to build monsters with lower damage values. ?::shrug::
More complicated, change the way "death" works. In my game, I implemented a 0 HP rule like this:
HP are simply the ability to keep fighting.
If you get dropped to 0 HP, or take a hit while at 0 HP. You are incapacitated.
Roll four dice. Odd results are in your favor. Assign one answer to each of the following questions:
• Who narrates the result? You or the DM?
• Did you lose something substantial? (Your weapon, your backpack, an eye?)
• Are you still conscious?
• Are you Dying?
Amputations count as a Trauma below.
Trauma
If you have been Dying, it has an effect on you: Trauma. Pick one, only one time, each. Also kudos for RPing a trauma, you might get an Inspiration Point.
• Cold: You’re not moved by emotional appeals or social bonds.
• Haunted: You’re often lost in reverie, reliving past horrors, seeing things.
• Obsessed: You’re enthralled by one thing: an activity, a person, an ideology.
• Paranoid: You imagine danger everywhere; you can’t trust others.
• Reckless: You have little regard for your own safety or best interests.
• Soft: You lose your edge; you become sentimental, passive, gentle.
• Unstable: Your emotional state is volatile. You can instantly rage, or fall into despair, act impulsively, or freeze up.
• Vicious: You seek out opportunities to hurt people, even for no good reason.
Your fourth Trauma discharges you from the Hero business.
It has added an interesting element to the game, and the fighter has gotten a lot of mileage out of his "Reckless" trauma.
5) Few groups (or official products) actually follow the encounters per day guideline, creating overpowered casters and underpowered martial characters.
This is related to my #1 beef with 5e. I (as GM) can easily tune my encounters to favor either the fighter or paladin by changing the nature of foes faced. Loads of lower-level foes, particularly in waves, and the fighter shines, a few big foes, and the paladin wallops them with smites. But in either case, I have to make sure that they face multiple encounters (or waves) lest the paladin just nova and make the rest of the party feel useless.
I really don't know what they were thinking with those guidelines. Few groups can meet so regularly and with good enough attendance to rely on the same party being there each session. The most "natural" solution is to rest between sessions, but putting 6 encounters in one session is just unreasonable, IMO.
I've never really had s problem with the encounter math myself, but then, I also tend to play the way the math was designed: that is, without using the optional feat and multiclasing rules. I think it's disingenuous to use a bunch of optional stuff not accounted in the calculations and then claim the calculations are wrong.
I wonder whether we can reach consensus, that groups which eschew the optional feat and multiclass rules tend to have fewer problems with the encounter math. It seems straightforward enough, but I don't know that I've ever seen any attempts to consolidate data around those variables.
I wonder whether we can reach consensus, that groups which eschew the optional feat and multiclass rules tend to have fewer problems with the encounter math. It seems straightforward enough, but I don't know that I've ever seen any attempts to consolidate data around those variables.
I think the biggest difference comes from multiclassing, to be honest. Also nonstandard ability generation methods, come to think of it; in my games we use the standard array, so neither luck nor system mastery come into play.
I would be very interested in a codification of the optional rules vs. balance issues data you suggest, if it were possible to accurately collect.
A few observations I've made (and some that my players have shared with me):
1) 5e doesn't seem to support high level play. Most official products tap out at 11th level. There's little to no help in showing DMs how to craft adventures or encounters for higher level. It's as if there is no intention that characters should play beyond mid level.
This is a classic problem with all editions of D&D; though there is a small amount of high level material available, there never is all that much. (TftYP is 5e's nod, so far, to high level adventures.)
2) The encounter creation math just doesn't work. Some monsters (such as hellhounds) can decimate low level parties. Others are not even challenging at all.
3) Most combats are boring. There are few tactical options, and most monsters are just bags of hit points, ever-increasing as characters level up. (This seems to originate from the bounded accuracy design goal.) Most monsters can't reliably hit PC Armor Class.
Strongly disagree. Combats are fun, fast, and furious, at least in my game. I see tons of use of shoves, grapples, climbing on large creatures, and other creative options. I would say this is table-dependent.
4) You either have a TPK or no character ever dies. (Not that I like character death, but it should at least feel threatening without being "campaign-ending")
5) Few groups (or official products) actually follow the encounters per day guideline, creating overpowered casters and underpowered martial characters.
I don't know where you get the numbers to say this about groups- have you seen some sort of mega-survey I wasn't invited to take? I know there are some groups that do follow the EPD guidelines, though I run a hardcore sandbox that puts a lot of the choice on how many encounters per day the pcs face in the hands of the pcs, since they have a great deal of influence over what adventures they go on and how quickly they move through them.
