D&D 5E Why Good Players Do Not 14.25.

[Zardnaar]

Ah, I see. I'm sorry to hear that your DM experimented with a cure that was worse than the disease. I have certainly had similar missteps as a DM, and it took a lot of practice, but as with everything in life moderation is the key. Like I said in my previous post, that kind of an adjustment should be used some of the time, not the majority of the time. I have found that it is very important for the choices players make when building their characters to feel powerful and useful. If those choices aren't effective or don't have a meaningful impact on the story, then that undermines the entire point of building a character. However, it is incumbent upon the DM to provide a wide variety of challenges that make a character's default strategies sub-optimal, and require players to adapt to circumstances. If the DM does not do that, it undermines the entire point of choices in customizing a character, and ultimately results in the illusion of choices surrounding a single optimal/effective character design.

Your comment about Sorcerers continues to reflect your presumption that the amount of damage a character does is somehow the defining metric of the game. I am trying to help you realize that damage output is not analogous to character efficacy.

I know but if you do want to deal a lot of damage those feats enable it.


Right now we don;t have the most ideal damage dealing party.

Light Cleric
Shadowdancer Monk
Dex Based Sword and Board battlemaster fighter
Mastermind Rogue

And then a 5th turned up.

Hunter Ranger/sharpshooter. Even without the Ranger they were dealing enough damage to get by and having fun with it. Battlemaster fighter+ ranger and rogue helps a lot though.

Not many people take wizards for whatever reason in this group, Sorcerers, Bards and Warlocks see more play in previous games.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Did you just accuse a *DM* of metagaming??! Truly, we are living in a post-sanity multiverse.

The DM's job is to build the world, play the NPCs, and adjudicate uncertainty. There actually is a sidebar in this edition, specifically calling out metagaming as inappropriate and to be avoided.

 

[TwoSix]

Ok, I'm sorry that I misunderstood what you were trying to say. Thanks for helping me to understand your thought process more clearly.

Not a problem. I literally had to read my three posts before I saw how you were interpreting it. I can see now how it could be read that way, especially considering how relatively contentious this thread is. So we're all good.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I know but if you do want to deal a lot of damage those feats enable it.

Yes, we have established that these feats do in fact allow one to increase one's damage output. There's debate over how much (just saying +10 earlier was a poor choice since it doesn't factor in hit change, but I understand where you were going). There's not much debate that allowing those feats allows one to be better--from a CharOp perspective--at single target damage dealing. I think the only thing left to cover is whether that's a problem. Do other people not have fun because the archery machine-gun or meat cleaver of doom GWM character are now in the party?

 

[kbrakke]

There seems to be a huge mismatch in desires and expectations.

For me, when I play an adventure path style (Homebrew or pre-written) I expect and plan to make most of the encounters and adventuring days an appropriate challenge for the players. In the fiction of these worlds once they get to tier two or higher they are expected to be fighting against organizations of intelligent creatures who will respond to new abilities or tactics that the party has. In this style of adventure I am never worried about the players being too good at hurting enemies. I would be fine with auto hit auto kill attacks from the players as long as their ACs stay at 21 or lower and their saves are not unusually high. I am comfortable in my ability to challenge players in an engaging way provided their defenses are not too high. (If their defenses are too high it is possible but much more work and I personally dislike it because it just means more prep time to develop specific monsters. The fights tend to drag on longer because the monster need significantly more defenses and attacks, but to avoid rocket tag style play they can't be that much better at damaging. Post level 20 I don't mind but it's nice being able to use the monster manual as is for most gaming).
In the style of game where the players are heroes for whom the world changes to accommodate these feats represent increases in power and allow the players to face new and powerful foes but does not throw encounter balance out the window. The players will still be challenged because they are expect to as they are the heroes of this story.

However in a different style of game, a more naturalistic game if you will, the expectation is that the world is as it is and the players do what they will. The world will respond but there is no expectation of consistently meeting a challenge. In this world the feats represent a jump in power that the world is not feasibly able to deal with. In this world things like adding more enemies or getting better gear simply doesn't make sense. However, I maintain that it is not game breaking, or to be more accurate no more game breaking than anything else you can do by the rules as is. Even without feats a dedicated fighter can reach 21 AC and do reasonable damage every round. 21 AC is frankly absurd for most monsters of CR 1-10 to hit. Additionally simply using certain spells can make many encounters trivial. I think if you are playing in a naturalistic game and want to extend your sweet spot forbid feats and multiclassing. But even with that some % of encounters are simply going to be easy for your party, that's the price of making a more expansive world. On the flip side the party can use planning and forethought to tackle greater encounters which has a certain appeal. If you want the highs then you should allow for the lows, lest you devalue the players triumphs.

If you are trying to do an adventure path style, but not modifying the monster or encounters then I would strongly suggest against allowing feats and multiclassing if your goal is to consistently provide a challenge. Another option is to mess around with resting or frame the more epic encounter days in terms of the full adventuring day. However wanting specifically pre-written adventures to be balanced for your specific adventuring party that does include feats and multiclassing is a hard sell.

Also, honestly, the players just doing more damage is such an easy problem to balance for. If they're doing 120 more HP on average than you expect add 120 HP of enemies. I'll give an easy out in the fiction, the cultist hideout actually had 8 cultists instead of 4. Monsters in this edition get hit all the time past level 5, if the players have difficulty hitting a monster I am astonished. To make a challenging encounter (Hereby defined as an encounter where the players bitch and moan about how hard it is despite not being as deadly as it seems) I would rather face a high damage team than a high defense team.

Or to sum it all up:
If you are playing a heroic adventure change the encounters to challenge the party, that is how the story should go. If it's a natural world they will find somethings easier than average and be able to tackle bigger challenges, that is the way of the world. If you want to run a prewritten AP without any changes you're out of luck for basically any specific party but more so with feats and multiclassing.

 

[TwoSix]

Yes, we have established that these feats do in fact allow one to increase one's damage output. There's debate over how much (just saying +10 earlier was a poor choice since it doesn't factor in hit change, but I understand where you were going). There's not much debate that allowing those feats allows one to be better--from a CharOp perspective--at single target damage dealing. I think the only thing left to cover is whether that's a problem. Do other people not have fun because the archery machine-gun or meat cleaver of doom GWM character are now in the party?

At least to my mind, that isn't the issue with any unbalanced option. (Although it can be for certain play styles.) The issue, to me, isn't balance between player A and player B. It's whether or not the potential option leads to distorted choices between character concept A and character concept B for any one player. Is Sharpshooter so strong that it's going to drive me to play an archer ranger, even though my initial concept leaned towards dual-wielding? Is Great Weapon Master so strong that my barbarian will use a greataxe instead of a battleaxe and shield?

That's obviously a decision every player will make for themselves, based on how they weight things like fidelity to concept, mechanical effectiveness, play style, party synergies, etc. I don't think there's a real right answer.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

In this world the feats represent a jump in power that the world is not feasibly able to deal with. In this world things like adding more enemies or getting better gear simply doesn't make sense.

These two statements need not be necessarily true. A naturalistic game, to borrow your phrase, can be set in a world wherein it actually makes perfect sense for there to be larger groupings of enemies and/or enemies that are better equipped than the stat-blocks in the Monster Manual.

At no point does a "this is the world, do what you want in it" approach necessitate the DM ceding their monster-establishing duties to some other authority such as the books.

I think if you are playing in a naturalistic game and want to extend your sweet spot forbid feats and multiclassing.

More advice that isn't actually necessary to follow. One can include feats and multi-classing and still get the "sweet spot" experience at, according to my table's experiences, any level up to at least 15th - and there are no indications that something will cause the remaining portion of the game that we've yet to reach to inherently prevent the "sweet spot" experience lasting all the way through.

But I will agree that a good place to start if you are having problems finding that "sweet spot" experience at your own table, taking things down to the basics and carefully evaluating each added element you were previously using, like how stomach discomfort can be solved by switching to entirely bland foods and then analytically reintroducing previously eaten foods to find the cause so it can be avoided in the future.

 

[kbrakke]

These two statements need not be necessarily true. A naturalistic game, to borrow your phrase, can be set in a world wherein it actually makes perfect sense for there to be larger groupings of enemies and/or enemies that are better equipped than the stat-blocks in the Monster Manual.

At no point does a "this is the world, do what you want in it" approach necessitate the DM ceding their monster-establishing duties to some other authority such as the books.

More advice that isn't actually necessary to follow. One can include feats and multi-classing and still get the "sweet spot" experience at, according to my table's experiences, any level up to at least 15th - and there are no indications that something will cause the remaining portion of the game that we've yet to reach to inherently prevent the "sweet spot" experience lasting all the way through.

But I will agree that a good place to start if you are having problems finding that "sweet spot" experience at your own table, taking things down to the basics and carefully evaluating each added element you were previously using, like how stomach discomfort can be solved by switching to entirely bland foods and then analytically reintroducing previously eaten foods to find the cause so it can be avoided in the future.

I agree whole heartedly in my games. However if someone came to a game where they had very rigid expectations about the game world (Goblin groups come in a set range of sizes, Orcs and Gnolls will never get armor better than their listed MM armor) then the notion that the party could come across a group out of line with these expectations is silly. People that also ascribe to a more strict definition of metagaming than I might also find it out of line with their fantasy of the world. As a person who believes that you can establish a world and react reasonably to player actions and abilities to create a more consistent sense of challenge I'm am allowing both feats and multiclassing in my hexcrawl style game (And all the players independently chose to roll for stats, every single one beating my point buy system). But I have low worries about establishing things to threaten them because I both accept that some random encounters won't be threatening at all, and that the players have the ability to seek greater challenges if they feel the area or threads they are following are beneath their ability. The villains of the world are well informed, equipped and intelligent.

So your description of tearing things down to the basics then building up is precisely my intention. If you find these things to be out of line with your expectations of the game, start by removing all of them, then add back in things as you think are reasonable. Perhaps along the way you find a new way of handling it in game, or determine you're perfectly happy without it.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

However if someone came to a game where they had very rigid expectations about the game world (Goblin groups come in a set range of sizes, Orcs and Gnolls will never get armor better than their listed MM armor) then the notion that the party could come across a group out of line with these expectations is silly.

No, what is "silly" in that scenario is having expectations that do not match to what the game books clearly try to convey - because the 5th edition Monster Manual says pretty much the exact opposite of those expectations when it says things like:

Page 4, "The best thing about being a DM is that you get to invent your own fantasy world..."

Page 6, sidebar, "Feel free to tweak an existing creature to make it into something more useful for you..."

Also page 6, "Regardless of which environment a monster traditionally calls home, you can place it anywhere you want."

and Page 11, "You can equip monsters with additional gear and trinkets however you like..."

And also likely in other places throughout the other rule books as well (but I'll leave it as "likely" rather than "confirmed, and evidence provided" at this point because I've got an appointment with a warm, blanket-covered couch in front of a very large TV that I'm already running a bit late for).

 

[WarpedAcorn]

Question I hope someone can help me with. One thing I've noticed (correct me if I'm wrong) is that optimizers like to play with other optimizers, for the most part. Which makes sense, because there's a synergy of playstyle there. So I assume the DMs for optimized groups are also favorable to the optimizer playstyle.

However...

I get the impression that DMs aren't allowed to follow the same rules that the players do. The DM is supposed to be limited to RAW only, and that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why can't humanoids wear better armor and weapons? Why can't a war like race such as orcs have solid tactics in battle, with a phalanx front line and back row with ranged weapons and pots of flaming oil? Why can't the ogre use its brute strength to grapple and restrain a PC while its goblin allies riddle it with attacks made at advantage?

If players like to look for the most mechanically optimized builds (which is fine), why can't the DM do the same? It seems to me that that would be the most ideal situation because it lets everyone who likes to play like that play like that (not just the players). It would also seem to eliminate a lot of these types of threads, where people seem to complain about how the game is broken based on the players optimizing and/or using loopholes while the DM is handcuffed.

I agree. I've always used NPC's that are built under the same conditions of the players. Sometimes that guy is literally just a Monster Manual Bandit, but sometimes he is a Fighter-Champion 6 with Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert. Sometimes that Orc is just an Orc...but sometimes he's actually a 5th Level Cleric. For people who are intimately familiar with the Monster Manual enemies, having re-skinned monsters or changing stats, adding class abilities, etc...really changes the mood of the players. And ultimately, I think it makes things more interesting and more fun.

One of my friends who runs a separate campaign has been pretty much homebrewing monsters for the last few sessions, which keeps me on my toes and incredibly curious as to what in the world we are fighting. We had some Gnomes that had mechanized equipment as well as Hydraduck, and most recently a Nano-Machine Ghost-Like thing. Changing things up like that is, I think, an awesome thing to do and totally something that should be in the DM's toolbox if he feels he needs to keep things interesting at the table.