D&D 5E Running D&D 5e for Levels 10+

Hussar · Nov 30, 2017

Matrix Sorcica said:
Who has said anything about this premise? Please stop moving the goal posts by adding motives to other people's perceived complaints. Thanks.

Adding motives? Seriously? [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION] has been banging this drum pretty much non stop for three freaking YEARS. I don't think I'm adding any motives here. The motives are pretty bloody clearly marked and sign posted.

EVERY time this gets brought up, all I hear about is how 5e is too easy and the PC's are dealing damage far in excess of what makes for a balanced game.

The thing is, the ONLY way to get 300 points/round consistently out of a 10th level party of 5 PC's, is to laser beam focus on dealing nothing but DPS to the complete exclusion of anything else. You MUST use the -5/+10 feats - and all characters who can use them MUST take them or they aren't even considered as part of the equation. EVERY fighty type character MUST use Xbow expert to get that all important extra attack. EVERY ASI MUST be spent on your primary combat ability. EVERY possible effort must be taken to ensure that every character is absolutely maxed out on damage dealing every single round.

IOW, the only way to achieve this is to completely ignore the other 2/3rds of the game and then the DM has to facilitate this by using shorter adventure days. The problem is 100% of his own making. But, instead of simply making easy changes to the game, [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION] has repeatedly, at length, and ad nauseam called for 5e to be "fixed" and repeatedly claimed that the designers are lazy and incompetent.

Adding motives? Are you kidding me?

Hussar · Nov 30, 2017

Matrix Sorcica said:
Right. I do think that the issue is there, even for non-optimized groups. I think it's very closely connected to the related "monsters are boring bags of hp and lacks interesting abilities" complaint that frequently pops up on this and other forums. The monsters needs tricks and abilities to be able to go toe to toe with high level parties, no matter if the latter are optimized or not.

No single monster has ever been able to go toe to toe with a D&D party. Not unless it massively out leveled the party. It just doesn't work and it never has. This was a problem in every single edition of the game and it's because the PC's simply overwhelm any single monster too easily.

Why anyone would expect 5e to be suddenly different than any other edition is beyond me. If you want to challenge the party, single monsters are NEVER the way to do it.

Matrix Sorcica · Nov 30, 2017

Hussar said:
The thing is, the ONLY way to get 300 points/round consistently out of a 10th level party of 5 PC's, is to laser beam focus on dealing nothing but DPS to the complete exclusion of anything else. You MUST use the -5/+10 feats - and all characters who can use them MUST take them or they aren't even considered as part of the equation. EVERY fighty type character MUST use Xbow expert to get that all important extra attack. EVERY ASI MUST be spent on your primary combat ability. EVERY possible effort must be taken to ensure that every character is absolutely maxed out on damage dealing every single round.

IOW, the only way to achieve this is to completely ignore the other 2/3rds of the game and then the DM has to facilitate this by using shorter adventure days. The problem is 100% of his own making.

Edit: Nevermind.

Matrix Sorcica · Nov 30, 2017

Hussar said:
No single monster has ever been able to go toe to toe with a D&D party. Not unless it massively out leveled the party. It just doesn't work and it never has. This was a problem in every single edition of the game and it's because the PC's simply overwhelm any single monster too easily.

Why anyone would expect 5e to be suddenly different than any other edition is beyond me. If you want to challenge the party, single monsters are NEVER the way to do it.

You obviously never played 4E.

Edit: spelling

CapnZapp · Nov 30, 2017

Hussar said:
You MUST use the -5/+10 feats - and all characters who can use them MUST take them or they aren't even considered as part of the equation. EVERY fighty type character MUST use Xbow expert to get that all important extra attack. EVERY ASI MUST be spent on your primary combat ability.

This.

The GWM/CE feats create two groups of martial characters: the ones dealing damage, and the ones dealing double damage. Why would you ever want to belong to the first group, when your primary job is to kill monsters. (And also, you don't really pay much of a price. It's not like you need to sacrifice anything special to get good at your job)

While I can see that the monsters have a somewhat longer shelf life for the first group, that alone isn't the whole story. PCs get spells, rerolls, maneuvers, movement abilities yada yada - taken together, they can run circles around any poor brute whose only means to make a difference is to run straight at the heroes in the hopes he'll get close enough to deliver his melee attacks.

Your increasingly desperate attempts to shoot down our persuasive arguments by focusing on isolated snippets at a time doesn't impress me. Sure you can argue that X doesn't need to be true, or Y doesn't always happen, or Z only appeals to some players, and so on.

But when you add up X, Y, Z... you get a very clear picture: monsters are decidedly weak-sauce relative to the player characters of the same edition.

"Easy mode" it definitely is, and I'm not saying that as a compliment.

Keeping it simple has its uses, especially at lower tiers. But 5th edition has gone way too far at tiers III and IV.

Why even deny it? The game is still the best D&D there is. We just want community consensus to appear, so the pressure on WotC to fix this can increase.

Raunalyn · Nov 30, 2017

I don't think anyone is denying that PCs and high level are able to dish out some insane damage. I think the problem here is that many people are finding that higher level monsters are not very challenging for higher level parties right out of the box

Just like with anything us DMs do, there needs to be prep. In some cases, more prep than usual. Keep in mind that most high level BBEGs are intelligent enough to do their research. Very rarely is a party going to catch them unaware.

In my game, the group is going after Lolth. She knows who they are, she's observed their strengths and weaknesses and she is targeting those weaknesses.

She was able to determine that the party's ranger/rogue (who can deal out ridiculous amounts of damage) has a weak Wisdom save. So what does she do? Her and her Yochlol handmaidens target him with Dominations and have him attack his party members.

Point is, it's not terribly difficult to justify a high level BBEG knowing what the party's weaknesses are and finding ways to target them.

Sacrosanct · Nov 30, 2017

Raunalyn said:
I don't think anyone is denying that PCs and high level are able to dish out some insane damage. I think the problem here is that many people are finding that higher level monsters are not very challenging for higher level parties right out of the box

Just like with anything us DMs do, there needs to be prep. In some cases, more prep than usual. Keep in mind that most high level BBEGs are intelligent enough to do their research. Very rarely is a party going to catch them unaware.

In my game, the group is going after Lolth. She knows who they are, she's observed their strengths and weaknesses and she is targeting those weaknesses.

She was able to determine that the party's ranger/rogue (who can deal out ridiculous amounts of damage) has a weak Wisdom save. So what does she do? Her and her Yochlol handmaidens target him with Dominations and have him attack his party members.

Point is, it's not terribly difficult to justify a high level BBEG knowing what the party's weaknesses are and finding ways to target them.

Now you've done it. You've said that a DM...gasp...needs to do prep work. The very thought!

Imagine that...

Also, I can't help but notice the same people arguing why combat is easy mode because PCs are hyperspecialized for DPR are the same ones in the fighter threads saying that fighters can't do anything out of combat.

No, they can if you choose, but you choose to be hyperspecialized into DPR. That's a "you" issue, not a game design issue. Oh wait, but if you use one of those extra feats to get a very impactful out of combat ability, suddenly that makes your fighter incompetent...

I also can't help but notice that people arguing about how the hyperspecialized DPR builds break the game seem to only play combat. The other pillars almost never show up. Well, if you're ignoring those other pillars, no wonder why it's easier for a certain build to seem to break the game because they become disproportionately involved. A GW/SS DPR build is probably going to actually be worse at interaction and exploration than other classes because they didn't devote skills/powers/abilities towards those pillars. Which then again causes said person to come on this forum and say how the class design is broken because they can't contribute out of combat. :/

5ekyu · Nov 30, 2017

Matrix Sorcica said:
Right. I do think that the issue is there, even for non-optimized groups. I think it's very closely connected to the related "monsters are boring bags of hp and lacks interesting abilities" complaint that frequently pops up on this and other forums. The monsters needs tricks and abilities to be able to go toe to toe with high level parties, no matter if the latter are optimized or not.

If only they had it so that a gm could add inyrresting or unique stuff to his adversaries or encounters to help that encounter contain things that are of interest or fun to his group.

Heck, the even give the gm options to add quirks and minor gimmicks to magic items... Why not give the gm the ability to do so to monsters too?

Clearly, a major oversight!!!

Goid call.

Sent from my VS995 using EN World mobile app

Oofta · Nov 30, 2017

CapnZapp said:
This.

The GWM/CE feats create two groups of martial characters: the ones dealing damage, and the ones dealing double damage. Why would you ever want to belong to the first group, when your primary job is to kill monsters. (And also, you don't really pay much of a price. It's not like you need to sacrifice anything special to get good at your job)

While I can see that the monsters have a somewhat longer shelf life for the first group, that alone isn't the whole story. PCs get spells, rerolls, maneuvers, movement abilities yada yada - taken together, they can run circles around any poor brute whose only means to make a difference is to run straight at the heroes in the hopes he'll get close enough to deliver his melee attacks.

Your increasingly desperate attempts to shoot down our persuasive arguments by focusing on isolated snippets at a time doesn't impress me. Sure you can argue that X doesn't need to be true, or Y doesn't always happen, or Z only appeals to some players, and so on.

But when you add up X, Y, Z... you get a very clear picture: monsters are decidedly weak-sauce relative to the player characters of the same edition.

"Easy mode" it definitely is, and I'm not saying that as a compliment.

Keeping it simple has its uses, especially at lower tiers. But 5th edition has gone way too far at tiers III and IV.

Why even deny it? The game is still the best D&D there is. We just want community consensus to appear, so the pressure on WotC to fix this can increase.

I can count the number of people who think this is a major issue on one hand and still have fingers left over. There's never going to be a "consensus" and something this fundamental is never going to be changed.

We get it. I don't necessarily disagree, but it's as easy to fix as saying that they're not allowed in your campaign since all feats are optional.

The horse died a long time ago.

Oofta · Nov 30, 2017

Matrix Sorcica said:
You obviously never played 4E.

Edit: spelling

You obviously never played with my group where the PCs stomped on Lollth (CR 34?) at level 22 because I had set up a fight I thought they couldn't win.

It took them a round and a half. Yeah, 4E was so much better.

Don't get me wrong. I managed to challenge my players in most fights, but just like every edition you have to use tactics and adjust encounters to your group.

D&D 5E Running D&D 5e for Levels 10+

Hussar

Legend

Hussar

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Matrix Sorcica

Hero

Matrix Sorcica

Hero

CapnZapp

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Raunalyn

Hero

Sacrosanct

Legend

5ekyu

Hero

Oofta

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Oofta

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