AbdulAlhazred
Legend
To me these just read like any game rules. If you expect people to 'just know' exactly how the mechanics of the game they're playing work without actually making even a rudimentary effort to know the most basic terminology, then of course they won't figure anything out! How does 5e 'fix' this? It doesn't!It's very much about memorizing rules.
Looking at Pathfinder 2 here, rather than keeping this about 4e (because discussing that in terms even remotely non-positive will automatically induce an edition war)
CLOAK OF ELVENKIND ITEM 10+
Illusion, Invested, Magical
Method of Use worn, cloak; Bulk L
Activation [[A]] Focus Activation, [[A]] Operate Activation
This cloak is deep green with a voluminous hood, and is embroidered with gold trim and symbols of significance to the elves. The cloak allows you to cast the ghost sound cantrip as an innate arcane spell. When you draw the hood up over your head (an Interact action), the cloak transforms to match the environment around you and muffles your sounds, giving you an item bonus to Stealth checks. If you activate the cloak, you pull the hood up and are affected by invisibility for 1 minute or until you pull the hood back down, whichever comes first.
Type standard; Level 10; Price 1,000 gp
The cloak grants a +3 bonus.
Type greater; Level 18; Price 24,000 gp
The cloak grants a +5 bonus, and invisibility is 4th level. If you're also wearing greater boots of elvenkind, the greater cloak of elvenkind allows you to Sneak in forest environments even when creatures are currently observing you.
Looking at it, the activation uses two keywords and a couple symbol, plus Bulk and the various tags (illusion, invested, magical). There's references to the "Interact" action in the text as well. There's a lot of stuff that is just gobbledygook to new players.
But my favourite bit is at the end where the cloak says it allows you to "Sneak in forest environments". It reads like a plain sentence but the capitalization denotes it's actually some special term. What does it mean? I'm uncertain. It's basically hidden rules.
Or another example, 13th Age.
I was working on making a 5e warlord type class for a while. And looked at the Commande for inspiration. And found its powers awkward to parse.
Buck Up!
Quick action Recharge 16+ after battle
Targets: You and 1d4 nearby allies
Effect: Each target gains temporary hit points equal to the average number of hit points it gains when it heals using a recovery.
Champion Feat Add twice your Charisma modifier to the temporary hit points each target gains.
Epic Feat One of the targets can also heal using a recovery.
I can guess at some of the purposes but so much of how the power works or what it does is hidden in other rules.
That's a barrier to entry and requires system mastery to know what powers do, let alone if they're good or bad.
OK, so this is a simple poison description from 5e, just a random thing I picked from the DMG. Lets skip over the obvious question of how you would get 'subjected' to a poison, that clearly ties back to who knows which rules about using them in combat, or out of combat, etc. It just as well might be a defined game term, even if it technically isn't. Then we get the reference to a save vs poison, so you need to know how that works, and any rules tied to that, like how dwarves get a bonus, etc. and then finally it references something, a condition I guess, called 'poisoned'.Assassin's Blood (Ingested). A creature subjected
to this poison must make a DC 10 Constitution saving
throw. On a failed save, it takes 6 (1d12) poison damage
and is poisoned for 24 hours. On a successful save, the
creature takes half damage and isn't poisoned.
I'm not saying its complex, its not even a 'power' or 'spell' or a complicated item or something, but it still ties into several different rules systems. This is fine, its how it should be. I don't even have a beef with this particular example, the 4e equivalent is pretty similar.
I think this is unfair. I did outline the math in my post. It isn't even so much 'math' as just if you sample the monsters from an AD&D product you'll see what everyone knows, that higher level monsters have progressively lower ACs! How is this controversial? Do you dispute the accuracy of my claims or not? I'm pretty sure there's about 500 guys reading this thread who know AD&D like the back of their hands, I'm happy to hear from them if they think I misstated in the least!You SAY you've done the math and then don't provide it… Proof doesn't work like that.
But that is enough! A change of 17 in AC over the course of 20 levels, and of course these are only 'typical' examples. In any case your level something fighter, lets call him level 15 since things basically top out past that point, is going to have SOMETHING like a 25 better chance to hit than at level 1 (say 7 from STR 15 from level and 3 from a weapon). As I said, it usually gets a bit easier. Even so, my recollection is that hitting the really 'name' creatures, even when you're 20th level, is not that easy! Demon Lords and such tend to have ACs south of -8.Do higher level monsters have a lower AC. Okay. Probably. That's going to happen. But the key phrase of my claim was that "the AC of enemies goes up at a matching rate".
Let's actually go to a book. I have the 2e Monstrous Manual handy on my PC so I'll use that.
(Man, I had forgotten how low monster hit points were in 2e. There's some high level critters here that might only have 40hp...)
For low level monsters Goblin is AC 6; kobold is AC 7; orc is AC 6; ogre is AC 5
The hill giant is AC 3. Stone is AC 0. Storm is AC -6. A pit fiend is -5 while the balor is -8. Will o'wisps are -8 for some reason. And the tarrasque is only -3.
But dragon is the big one, with it's AC having a base number that varies by it's age, from -6 for a hatchling to +8 for a great old wyrm. 11
So the difference between a kobold you fight at level 1 and the great wyrm red dragon you fight at level 20 is…. 17.
And that's the most extreme example I can find, with most high level dangerous foes typically only having an AC in the -5 range. If even that.
Yes, by a fairly modest amount. You are still going to think you're in good shape if you hit on an 8 at those levels. I stated you're chances might improve by 30%.The fighter's bonus to attack rolls from just THAC0 exceeds the increases to AC. Their accuracy increases.
The point is, the world doesn't change. YOU change and you engage in different activities, which engage different mechanics (slightly). What seems WEIRD to me is how nothing seems to get harder in 5e! Its bizarre, and sometimes problematical. Most of all it doesn't fit with the paradigm of play that 4e uses, which is tuned to its rules structure, so the two work in concert. That's the best test of things, does it work in the way intended? It does!Emphasis added. "It's not against the rules to…."
Yeah… no. That's a theoretical argument. We're not discussing hypotheticals or corner case situations where you throw a great wyrm blue dragon against a level 5 party.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, groups are going to regularly and continually encounter threats and challenges at their level. That's the assumption, and in that case the increased bonuses you have match the increasing DC.
That's how it works in 3e, 4e, Pathfinder, and very likely Pathfinder 2. Where you go from a +5 on a check and a DC 15 to a +25 on a check and a DC 35.
Yes and no. Orcus is a decent challenge, yes, when thematically treated LIKE ORCUS. If you put the Orcus stat block in sphere world and play a theorycrafted combat then nope, it won't work. If you even follow the advice in the DMG on building encounters, and logically extrapolate it to epic encounters, which aren't really the focus of DMG1's advice, then it does work.So do the encounter building rules in the DMG work?
Are five level 25 monsters an moderate challenge for five level 25 PCs?
Is Orcus in the Monster Manual a decent challenge?
In the case of Orcus, that means you are NASTY! Go take a look at the descriptions of 4e battles @pemerton has posted, nothing sounds like it was problematic there! So, can I make a nasty Orcus encounter that follows the 'rules' of DMG1? Yup! It will be a level 35 encounter, with level 35 terrain of the nastiest sort.
I have 235,000 XP for my encounter budget, and Orcus (level 33 Solo Brute) takes 155,000. So I have 80,000 XP left in my budget. Lets suppose I choose to utilize 3 level 30 standard monsters, that's 57,000, so I have 23,000 left, which will get me 5 level 30 minions give or take 1000 XP.
Now, I can have WHATEVER terrain and terrain powers and etc. I wish, there's no XP budget for those (yeah, you can maybe overdo it, but this is a CAPSTONE encounter of a whole campaign, so not really). I can fill the place with necrotic energy. Lets be nice and use an inverted Pillar of Life, at epic tier this will suck 15 hit points out of any character within say 3 squares (and we can put a bunch of them around). Then we can position the main combat area such that there are places where PCs can easily be forced out of the fight for a while, like slopes and drops. We're nasty so these lead to areas which trap and inhibit PCs (grasping slime and such). Note that all this stuff is actually FRIENDLY to our nice Demon Prince, and his boys.
We can add some more nastiness, like some terrain powers which Orcus can use from locations which are difficult to access so he can make attacks with relative impunity, allowing him to soften up and debuff his opponents before choosing to appear at close range.
I would also add some sort of gimmick to the encounter. A static situation is silly for this sort of a crazy ultimate fight. The PCs have to defeat Orcus in short order, or they must abide by some sort of specific conditions, perform some kind of ritual, etc. all while ALSO taking on the rest of the encounter. Don't like it? Hey, its a CAPSTONE, that's how it is! Old Stinky don't fight fair, and the rules don't say nuttin' about it.
So, now, lets put our nice monsters in place, they'll heavily favor a lurking tactic, with some sort of nice way to hide (IE there's bones everywhere, some of them are less dead than others).
EDIT: Lest we forget, forget HS at this point, you just walked through something worse than HELL. Maybe some PCs still have an action point. We'll be nice and assume they all have a daily left. Getting here is NOT a calk walk.
Well, that answers my above questions, and you admit I was right. That the rules broke down. You could no longer uses the assumed challenges in the book or the rules for encounter building that came with the game.
I don't agree that the rules 'broke down'. I think that people failed to be reasonable about what the rules are intending this sort of epic battle to be like. They simply extrapolated a level 1 orc fight and thought that using the exact same techniques for a level 35 capstone encounter would produce perfect results, and it probably won't. But if you read the encounter design rules carefully, and build these encounters in the light of the experience of a couple years worth of running your campaign up to that level, then yeah, most DMs were able to take the elements given and make fun stuff from it.
I think a lot of them went on to do more various stuff, partly because it gives you even more flexibility, and partly because players figured out how to beat the 'stock' baddies. Frankly they are SUPPOSED to be beatable, just not easily. It wasn't the intention that Orcus would be likely to TPK worthy opponents. He's just supposed to push them to the limit. It is possible to do, even with the designs provided in the MM. Honestly Orcus is not even the best example really. Demogorgon from MM2 is more fun!
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