D&D 5E Observations and opinions after 8 levels and a dragon fight

Sacrosanct said:

Only insofar as the heroic imagery and exotic game worlds go. If you know the main good guy is always going to win (because good always ends up winning in the end), why have a random element in your game at all?

In books and movies, heroes are written and outcomes predetermined. In rpgs, heroes are made by player actions, often only after the first couple of heroes didn't make it.

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Sometimes it's the journey, not the end. That's what I tell my wife, anyway....

BTW, I didn't mean to imply that D&D should work out like movies or books. I was just making a bad joke.

Celtavian said:

They did. But they're not geared for using them. The fighter has a dex of 14. He fired one arrow and hit with a 20 for 12 points. The paladin has an 8 dex. He's not good with a bow. ACs are relatively low, but you still need to be geared for using a bow to do good damage.

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Bad Dex means thrown weapons... The dragon should be gaggin' from a javelin from the paladin.

I mean, a paladin without a quiver of javelins is like a plumber without a snake. (hmm... that turned racier than I intended). I assume the fighter was not an Eldritch knight; but if he was, he could be throwing one of his bonded weapons every rnd. That's Str Mods as well. he may not hit often, but it's better than nothing.

Sacrosanct said:

Only insofar as the heroic imagery and exotic game worlds go. If you know the main good guy is always going to win (because good always ends up winning in the end), why have a random element in your game at all?

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*sigh*. Must it always be, "If you don't agree with me, it means you want the main good guy to always win"? 'Cause that's not what I'm saying. Saying "the game is designed to that fights look like stuff from fiction" and "the game is designed for the good guys to always win" are *NOT EQUIVALENT!* Big letters, so we all see them.

Combat in fiction isn't just about who wins, you know. The fight scene takes several minutes of screen time, or pages of words - and only the last bit is who wins. You're skipping over all the rest of the imagery and events.

And remember... Sturm Brighblade faced off against the dragon, and died. Only Ripley and the cat survive - everyone else dies. Survival is not guaranteed for everyone in the books or movies.

Umbran said:

And remember... Sturm Brighblade faced off against the dragon, and died. Only Ripley and the cat survive - everyone else dies. Survival is not guaranteed for everyone in the books or movies.

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This actually just reinforces my point. Do we tell the players, "Hey, this game is meant to emulate fiction, so all of you but one will die."

Unless your goal is to have a scripted storyline when you play, then I stand by my assertion that comparing a D&D session to a movie or book is fundamentally flawed. Because D&D has a random element to it, you can't really say that monster X would be defeated, or hero Y would live because that's what happened in a scripted and predetermined movie or book.

Umbran said:

They may not be pre-determined, but don't you figure that the game is likely built to model what one sees in movies or books? Do you think the designers somehow figure players aren't kind of expecting to have their games turn out sort of like movies and books?

This is not to say that all games will turn out with all PCs alive, and everyone happy - that's only one class of book/movie. But let us not kid ourselves that the mental image the play should generate isn't intended to be like other fantasy fiction.

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Having experiences like those described in fantasy books and novels is exactly the reason I play RPGs. Having such experiences does not require scripted outcomes.

Umbran said:

*sigh*. Must it always be, "If you don't agree with me, it means you want the main good guy to always win"? 'Cause that's not what I'm saying. Saying "the game is designed to that fights look like stuff from fiction" and "the game is designed for the good guys to always win" are *NOT EQUIVALENT!* Big letters, so we all see them.

Combat in fiction isn't just about who wins, you know. The fight scene takes several minutes of screen time, or pages of words - and only the last bit is who wins. You're skipping over all the rest of the imagery and events.

And remember... Sturm Brighblade faced off against the dragon, and died. Only Ripley and the cat survive - everyone else dies. Survival is not guaranteed for everyone in the books or movies.

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And then there is Game of Thrones and Malazan: Book of the Fallen. There's never any guarantees. Maybe some run Lord of the Rings or Conan, but random elements means your story can go either way.

In the recent combat, one of the players wrote out what his character was thinking right before he fell. He role-played it to the bitter end.

Sacrosanct said:

This actually just reinforces my point. Do we tell the players, "Hey, this game is meant to emulate fiction, so all of you but one will die."

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Except, of course, how I gave a couple of examples... and only one of them fits that description. Most of the Heroes of the Lance make it out alive.

I think you are over-simplifying what happens in books and movies.

Unless your goal is to have a scripted storyline when you play, then I stand by my assertion that comparing a D&D session to a movie or book is fundamentally flawed.

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And I say that, by focusing on only one aspect of books and movies (who lives), your prohibition is fundamentally flawed. One must be careful with *any* comparison or analogy. But the need to be careful doesn't mean one shouldn't do it at all.

And in a different thread people are complaining that legendary creatures, dragons used as example, are a complete joke.

With the short combats in 5E every turn counts. That makes surprise such a big deal (25%-33% more combat actions? Yes please!) and a ranged fighter is also much better than a melee one as he often can spend one or even more turns attacking while melee characters are still closing in or, thanks to the lack of flight spells, are completely neutralized.

txshusker said:

Another post, though, that continues my discomfort with the concentration RAW. I don't understand the problem with more than one buff working at a time.

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It's a reaction to previous editions, especially 3E. Stacking buffs in that edition was very powerful, to the point where it was always better to cast buffs rather than iconic damage spells like Fireball. Many casters complained that they were being turned into "buff-bots" and pre-combat was always several rounds of buffing up.

Concentration is just a mechanism to prevent that style of play from becoming optimal.

If you want to try something different, it is easy to change. You could ignore concentration entirely, and a spell lasts a full duration once cast. Or maybe you could do something like increase the number of spells a caster can concentrate on as her level increases. I.e. A level 1-5 wizard can concentrate on 1 spell, a 6-10 wizard on 2 spells, etc.

Sacrosanct said:

This actually just reinforces my point. Do we tell the players, "Hey, this game is meant to emulate fiction, so all of you but one will die."

Unless your goal is to have a scripted storyline when you play, then I stand by my assertion that comparing a D&D session to a movie or book is fundamentally flawed. Because D&D has a random element to it, you can't really say that monster X would be defeated, or hero Y would live because that's what happened in a scripted and predetermined movie or book.

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The game is not scripted...that's the point. Everyone *could* die. Many people play the game because of that element of heroism, understanding that the random element is there and that their player *could* die. However, if they live? That's where the glory comes in.

EroGaki said:

Has anyone thought up effective methods for negating lair actions? Especially against dragons, why would some willingly engage against such a creature when it has those abilities? Better to wait for them to leave their little hidey holes, or draw them out than actually fight them. Especially when they have a bunch of cheesy legendary actions.

And I am forced to ask, do dragons ever actually leave their caves? It seems a big chunk of their deadliness is their home-field advantage.

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Smaug did, to demolish those pesky barrel people down by the lake. I don't think anyone would have stood a chance in his lair.

One thing my party has started doing in 5e is actually waiting. After they found the goblin cave, they don't enter it and try to strong arm their way in, they put it under surveillance and attacked when there was a guard change from the ambush spot. Since surprise is so valuable in 5e, it was much better fighting 4-5 goblins instead of the 2-3 guards.

The biggest change I have seen regarding combat in 5e is that planning before the battle is really important. Which I really like, because it's mostly done in character via role playing.

I also like the way they have shaped ranged/melee combat. Since you don't have a 5' step/shift, most weapon based characters switch weapons a lot more. They use their ranged alternatives in the first round, and then depending on the situation switch to melee weapons. A character without thrown/missile weapons is really just asking to just stand there.

Btw, I think that Dragons have plenty of reasons to not just kite the party to death, for instance a personality that makes them inclined to think that everyone else are ants. Ants! I also like when the PC's to "stupid" things because it's in character, instead of just min-maxing. It makes it feel more like a role playing game, instead of a board game.

One last thing: I think that the game looks like it can feel completely different depending on the party composition and strategies involved. Little or no ranged attacks? Fighting a flying dragon gets hard. A really versatile party tending to ranged optimization? Fighting a dragon gets easy with some luck. I think this is a strength of the system, not a flaw. It creates a really large dynamic range of encounters, so playing the same module with three different parties can feel totally different.