D&D 5E My (Personal) Early Evaluation of the D&D 5thEd System – Wall of Text

[jasper]

AlterEgo....Not just one store. I've been to AL in 4 different stores in 3 different states. All charged $5 and said they were 'supposed' to because of AL rules. None of them charge for a PFS or SW game at the same store. The only place that didn't charge was AL at a bar. But even they said they were told they were supposed to charge but didn't because we all came in and bought plenty of drinks and food. .......
Ok I have review all the AL docs I have on hand and I don't find this rule. Are they "WPN" ( I think those are the initials ) stores? If you have facebook join the Adventure League Facebook book page, and ask if this an official. Never mind. I just ask there if a $5 cover was required. Will update if the post gets approved and answered.
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[MENTION=6775477]Shiroiken[/MENTION]
13. I can't comment on AL, because I don't participate in any organized play anymore. When they started charging the DM to run events, I quit and never looked back.
When did this happen? I started AL back in July 2016 and never been charged. Ok I do generally buy my own modules.
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elterEgo I own Seasons 1-8 AL adventures. Some con create and Adept modules. How about you list the adventures you have game with and some the problems in the modules. That way we can see if was bad editing on the module or bad dming.

 

[TwoSix]

Yeah I'm currently loving my Divine Soul sorcerer. Twinned concentration spells are a gas. Twinned Suggestion: "Your friend here has been plotting against you and is going to kill you unless you kill him first." /popcorn

I usually went with the power plays with my sorcerer (twin haste, twin polymorph, twin banishment), but damn, that's brilliant.

 

[Stalker0]

This is poor DMing, not a flaw with the game. A good DM knows you don't force checks when they're not needed. 3rd Edition (and especially 4th) relied WAY too heavily on skill checks and gawd-awful "skill challenges," making the game more like video games.

I think this is less poor Dming than old school dming. I have fallen into this trap a few times myself. In 3e I found overall the skill checks were more frequent and harder. I've had to get used to 5e where many things "just work". And there is nothing wrong with that.


One thing I am very curious about is the notion that 5e is "deadly". I've played and Dmed 3e, 4e, and 5e....and so far I've found 5e the most marshmellow of them all once the group gets to 5-6th level. Like I am routinely throwing way over the top CR monsters at my parties and not only are they not dying....they aren't even going unconscious.

One recent example. I had 5 6th level characters in a dungeon room go against 20 wights and a wraith. The wights have bows. Letting the paladin tank while the rest of the party used the doorway (ducking back behind the wall as needed)...the party mopped the whole room, with only the paladin needing some light healing. 5e characters are very very durable.

 

[ad_hoc]

I think this is less poor Dming than old school dming. I have fallen into this trap a few times myself. In 3e I found overall the skill checks were more frequent and harder. I've had to get used to 5e where many things "just work". And there is nothing wrong with that.

With such a long history we need to define 'oldschool'. I think it is a return to form with 3e being the outlier.

One thing I am very curious about is the notion that 5e is "deadly". I've played and Dmed 3e, 4e, and 5e....and so far I've found 5e the most marshmellow of them all once the group gets to 5-6th level. Like I am routinely throwing way over the top CR monsters at my parties and not only are they not dying....they aren't even going unconscious.

One recent example. I had 5 6th level characters in a dungeon room go against 20 wights and a wraith. The wights have bows. Letting the paladin tank while the rest of the party used the doorway (ducking back behind the wall as needed)...the party mopped the whole room, with only the paladin needing some light healing. 5e characters are very very durable.

How many encounters did they face before that? And how many after?

And of course if the characters have complete control they're going to have an easy time. Wights aren't zombies, why play them like zombies?

 

[Stalker0]

How many encounters did they face before that? And how many after?

And of course if the characters have complete control they're going to have an easy time. Wights aren't zombies, why play them like zombies?

Overall it was 6 encounters:

1) A stone golem
2) A room filled with Glyph of Warding Traps (6th level version)
3) A room with unhallow (darkness) containing a Vampire and 5 mirrors of opposition. The mirrors were set in places that the darkness part didn't get to. Only 1 of them actually triggered in the fight (on the rogue).
4) A treasure room containing 2 cursed sets of armor, an intelligent evil sword that dominated 2 party members for a short period of time before it was thrown in a bag of holding, and a mimic. Both sets of armor were worn so their cursed kicked off.
5) 12 Magma Mephits and a Spirit Naga.
6) 20 wights and a wraith.

The wights were all located in a 60 foot wide hexagon room. They spread out to avoid fireballs and focused fire with their bows. The wraith went through the ceiling to avoid attacks and AOOs when possible.

That is of course just one dungeon. There was also a time they encountered a Green Slaad, 2 Hezrou, 2 Vrocks, and 30 dretches....and wiped the floor with them.

This is not me saying that 5e cannot be challenging, but I find you really have to go above and beyond to make something deadly....like really above and beyond.

 

[ad_hoc]

This is not me saying that 5e cannot be challenging, but I find you really have to go above and beyond to make something deadly....like really above and beyond.

Fair enough. You're not alone in this mindset.

I have a completely different experience. I run the WotC adventures and often find the party struggling to survive. We do have a party of 4. Every additional party member does add a lot of power. I personally don't think the game really works at 6+ PCs. 5 should still be okay though.

The #1 thing I've heard people doing is have monsters just attack the nearest PC which I agree does make encounters trivial. At our table any time the party was able to constrain the enemy like that they have had an easy time. Other times though monsters just walk around the heavily armoured PCs and attack the spellcasters and ranged characters. It makes a huge difference.

It's hard though without being at other tables. There are a ton of factors involved. For example, we use the treasure hoard random magic item tables which provide fewer items than are in most adventures. As PCs progress they gather more items too and items aren't taken into consideration with monster difficulty.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

And of course if the characters have complete control they're going to have an easy time. Wights aren't zombies, why play them like zombies?

This is not me saying that 5e cannot be challenging, but I find you really have to go above and beyond to make something deadly....like really above and beyond.

I'm wondering how you did not at least drop the paladin? Eight of the wights could have swarmed = 16 attacks with longswords (1d10+2) or longsword/life drain in a single round (all with advantage if using flanking). Then the wraith drops down from above, if necessary. Meanwhile the other 12 wights (or however many are left at that point assuming some PCs went first and were able to take some out) charge in at the other 4 PCs peeking around the corner to keep them busy. Rinse/repeat. Especially after the party had just run through the other 5 encounters and found themselves with reduced resources in this combat.

Not hard to drop a PC, IME, with a reasonably hard or deadly encounter - if that's one of your goals in the story you are trying to tell at the table.

TL/DR = focus fire

 

[Stalker0]

I'm wondering how you did not at least drop the paladin? Eight of the wights could have swarmed = 16 attacks with longswords (1d10+2) or longsword/life drain in a single round (all with advantage if using flanking). Then the wraith drops down from above, if necessary. Meanwhile the other 12 wights (or however many are left at that point assuming some PCs went first and were able to take some out) charge in at the other 4 PCs peeking around the corner to keep them busy. Rinse/repeat. Especially after the party had just run through the other 5 encounters and found themselves with reduced resources in this combat.

Not hard to drop a PC, IME, with a reasonably hard or deadly encounter - if that's one of your goals in the story you are trying to tell at the table.

TL/DR = focus fire

Paladin had a 22 AC, protection from evil (giving disadvantage to all undead attacks), and heavy armor mastery (-3 damage per attack). He was standing in the doorway, so could not get surrounded on all sides (and we don't use alternate flanking rules). And of course can heal himself. Note that with a wight's +4 to attack, that is only a ~2% chance to hit with each attack, and on average it does 3 points of damage.

As the paladin was blocking the doorway the other wights could not charge in as you say. So they chose to focus fire, as you noted it felt the best way to try and drop a key player quickly. But the paladin was too tough.

Now could I have played it more intelligently of course, the DM can always "win" if he wants. I'm just going back to my original premise, 5e can be deadly, but you have to work at it. I think most DMs would say "hmm....20 wights, and a wraith? Damn, that sounds pretty darn deadly". But it wasn't even a challenge in this example.

 

[André Soares]

One recent example. I had 5 6th level characters in a dungeon room go against 20 wights and a wraith. The wights have bows. Letting the paladin tank while the rest of the party used the doorway (ducking back behind the wall as needed)...the party mopped the whole room, with only the paladin needing some light healing. 5e characters are very very durable.

Couldn't the wights have held their actions to shoot the other party members when they used the doorway? Sure the attacks would be at disavantage, but 20 of them should drop a squishy caster.

 

[Mistwell]

c.  I dislike the $5 fee to play the game. Not only do I have to by a $60+ book, I have to pay $5 at every game session. PFS has no charge to play. Most of us buy snacks/drinks at the game shop. Sometimes we buy some figurines, maps, dice, etc… With AL’s fee, I find myself less likely to buy anything else. On average, they are getting less money from me. But maybe they are getting more on average from others. I can understand this is setup to help make the game shops more supportive of AL, but I find it annoying.

This isn't a thing. Or I should say, this isn't a thing about AL. There is no charge for AL from WOTC. There is no requirement in any way that AL games charge to play, any more than there ever was a charge to play in Pathfider Society. If you are encountering a fee, it's purely that game store doing it, or some DM doing it. It has literally nothing to do with AL. There is no "AL Fee". And I suspect if WOTC found out that some game store was saying or implying a fee they were charging was from AL or from WOTC, they'd be unhappy about that.