Plaguescarred
D&D Playtester for WoTC since 2012
What? No i didn't. You did and you're strawmaning me. Where do you see the word SIMILAR in what i said?Yes, you did say that, and it's still not true. I don't think I can make it any clearer, though!
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D&D 5E L&L for 7/7
- Thread starter Rydac
- Start date
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Only you can answer that, because you're being very vague, and may be skipping steps or forgetting them.
[MENTION=6777182]stinkomandx[/MENTION]
I agree that it's not dissimilar to 4E - it's essentially pared-down 4E.
However, "effortlessly" "2.5 hours" "As much time in Adventure Builder as 3E", wow, that is some truly amazing hyberbole! I'd have burned my 4E books if the third one was even slightly true.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
You're misunderstanding my wording. I'm not referring to the "similar". I am not arguing this further.
Yup, that was my experience too. An even-level encounter (even using MM3 and later) was absurdly easy and boring, no tension at all. Level+1 was the minimum to make my players feel engaged. Level+2 was a decent fight. To really challenge them, I had to go to level+3 or even level+4.
And while my group built decently effective characters, they were far from hardcore optimizers.
stinkomandx
First Post
Maybe you/your DM had the wisdom of not allowing a Artificer/Warlord hybrid that flooded the game with interrupts and basic attacks. Trust me when I tell you it was not hyperbole (and that it's awfully rude to accuse a stranger of). Going into monsters to drop HPs, increase damage outputs, and ensure that I was using monsters from Monster Manual 3 or higher (where the math was more in line with the actual game) was time consuming--especially considering the lag on every button click in the Silverlight program.
I appreciate that you have strong opinions about 4e--I do too, I liked it enough to play it for its entire lifespan. But my experiences at my table were my own, and yours were yours.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
I get that. It still sounds like wild hyperbole, but obviously your experiences are your own, as you say!
I seriously would have burned my 4E books if that'd happened to me, though. 4E's biggest selling point to me as a DM was that encounter design took 1/5th or less the time than mid-high level 3.XE design.
Well, here's Houserule [deletion] #1 for me. Pullin' this CR/encounter building business right out.
Encounters are...well, encountered because they have a place (however periphery) in the adventure/story. There is a reason a creature/group of creatures are in a particular place when the party finds them at a particular time.
That may be something that can be talked out of, snuck around, [most often] fought through, or possibly intimidated, lied to, overpowered/over run, wheel n' deal, bribe outright, or possibly (if the dice gods are good to you) eeked out by the edge of your blade. They can be easy, simple, difficult, surprising, challenging, and, yeah, deadly. Depends on the nature of the encounter...its reason for being [why the encounter is there at all] not some cooked up "CR". Its reason for being is not because the pc level is X, so the encounters "should be, to be 'balanced'" no more than Z monsters.
Nuh no.
It's a preference thing, I know. It's a playstyle thing. I know. It's not a "right/wrong" thing [unless some rules lawyers wanna get into a RAW brawl...which they are welcome to do amongst themselves. I won't be responding to any such.]. The "guidelines/rules/rulings/whatever" are good for the folks that want/use that sorta thing. I know.
I simply won't be having it. If your 1st level party makes a wrong turn and runs into a beholder...figure it out. If you're a party of 10th level characters and the only way to get the information you need is to find and deal with a cowardly goblin merchant that any one of you could step on and kill...then that's what needs doin'...figure it out [and try not to kill your source of information]. 5th level PCs vs. a family of red dragons? 5th level party vs. 5 kobolds setting a trap for the adventurers their scouts told them were coming? 20th level PCs against an entire army of demonically infused hobgoblins or a 3rd level party against a water elemental hydra? Figure it out. It's all fair game. It's D&D. Open season on fun. Fight 'em. Talk to' em. Try to sneak by 'em...Meet an encounter, figure it out...that's the ADVENTURE!
Where's the adventure in:
DM: "You see a group of 5 goblins and an ogre."
PL1: "Cool! That's exactly appropriate for what we need to be 'challenged.'"
DM: "A moment later, second ogre is comes around the corner, having heard the jeering and warning cries of the goblins when you knocked the door in. He won't be in melee range until next round, though. Roll initiative."
PL2: "Wait, there's TWO ogres? And goblins! Are you MAD?!?!"
PL3: "That's not the rules!"
PL1: "But we're only 1st level. You're a 'killer DM'!"
PL3: "Big jerkface."
PL2: "The CR should only be X. Yur not doin' it right!"
DM: *facepalm*
Encounters are...well, encountered because they have a place (however periphery) in the adventure/story. There is a reason a creature/group of creatures are in a particular place when the party finds them at a particular time.
That may be something that can be talked out of, snuck around, [most often] fought through, or possibly intimidated, lied to, overpowered/over run, wheel n' deal, bribe outright, or possibly (if the dice gods are good to you) eeked out by the edge of your blade. They can be easy, simple, difficult, surprising, challenging, and, yeah, deadly. Depends on the nature of the encounter...its reason for being [why the encounter is there at all] not some cooked up "CR". Its reason for being is not because the pc level is X, so the encounters "should be, to be 'balanced'" no more than Z monsters.
Nuh no.
It's a preference thing, I know. It's a playstyle thing. I know. It's not a "right/wrong" thing [unless some rules lawyers wanna get into a RAW brawl...which they are welcome to do amongst themselves. I won't be responding to any such.]. The "guidelines/rules/rulings/whatever" are good for the folks that want/use that sorta thing. I know.
I simply won't be having it. If your 1st level party makes a wrong turn and runs into a beholder...figure it out. If you're a party of 10th level characters and the only way to get the information you need is to find and deal with a cowardly goblin merchant that any one of you could step on and kill...then that's what needs doin'...figure it out [and try not to kill your source of information]. 5th level PCs vs. a family of red dragons? 5th level party vs. 5 kobolds setting a trap for the adventurers their scouts told them were coming? 20th level PCs against an entire army of demonically infused hobgoblins or a 3rd level party against a water elemental hydra? Figure it out. It's all fair game. It's D&D. Open season on fun. Fight 'em. Talk to' em. Try to sneak by 'em...Meet an encounter, figure it out...that's the ADVENTURE!
Where's the adventure in:
DM: "You see a group of 5 goblins and an ogre."
PL1: "Cool! That's exactly appropriate for what we need to be 'challenged.'"
DM: "A moment later, second ogre is comes around the corner, having heard the jeering and warning cries of the goblins when you knocked the door in. He won't be in melee range until next round, though. Roll initiative."
PL2: "Wait, there's TWO ogres? And goblins! Are you MAD?!?!"
PL3: "That's not the rules!"
PL1: "But we're only 1st level. You're a 'killer DM'!"
PL3: "Big jerkface."
PL2: "The CR should only be X. Yur not doin' it right!"
DM: *facepalm*
stinkomandx
First Post
In fairness, it didn't seem as long as 3e planning (and when I recently picked up a Pathfinder monster book and saw the list of feats for the monster, I laaaaaughed and laughed remembering picking feats for 30 HD of some big dumb giant). A huge part of the time sink was the lag on the eTools, and that contributed more to the total-minutes-per-planning-session more than the actual feel of creating.
Click "reduce HP by 15%"
::wait::
Click "damage output - limited use"
::wait::
I listened to a lot of podcasts.
...Hey, just noticed something about this table: The power curve isn't a curve any more. It's a straight line.
In the last two editions, PC power scaled on an exponential curve. In 3E, the very rough guideline was that PC power was proportional to 1.4^level (doubling every two levels). In 4E, it was 1.2^level (doubling every four levels).
But in 5E, PC power is proportional to level. It's not exact, but it's close. To a first approximation, a "challenging" opponent is one worth 100 XP per level.
This is really interesting. For one thing, it means power scales rapidly at the low levels and semi-plateaus at the high levels, rather like E6. A 4th-level character is twice as powerful as a 2nd-level character, but a 14th-level character and a 12th-level character are almost evenly matched. For another thing, it means you can very easily eyeball NPC encounters simply by adding up the levels of the NPCs.
It also means we're going to have to collectively revisit a lot of assumptions about high-level PCs and the campaign world.
In the last two editions, PC power scaled on an exponential curve. In 3E, the very rough guideline was that PC power was proportional to 1.4^level (doubling every two levels). In 4E, it was 1.2^level (doubling every four levels).
But in 5E, PC power is proportional to level. It's not exact, but it's close. To a first approximation, a "challenging" opponent is one worth 100 XP per level.
This is really interesting. For one thing, it means power scales rapidly at the low levels and semi-plateaus at the high levels, rather like E6. A 4th-level character is twice as powerful as a 2nd-level character, but a 14th-level character and a 12th-level character are almost evenly matched. For another thing, it means you can very easily eyeball NPC encounters simply by adding up the levels of the NPCs.
It also means we're going to have to collectively revisit a lot of assumptions about high-level PCs and the campaign world.
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Ruin Explorer
Legend
I dunno man. I guess my Silverlight doesn't lag because "reduce HP by 15%" is my friend too, but I created six encounters in under two hours a couple of weeks ago, for level 13/14 PCs. One encounter for level 13/14 PCs could easily take that long for me in 3E.
But I admit I cannot overwrite your experience and apologize if I did so!
