D&D 5E Grindy D&D Next Combat

[MerricB]

At present, my playtesting of D&D Next is mainly confined to running the current season of D&D Encounters with Next. The last season of Encounters was the best I've run, but this one is feeling like the worst. Of course, the reason the last one was the best had much to do with how good the structure of the adventure was: a lot of investigation and players' choices mattering. Combat was the least of it, and just as well, because player damage was so high that monsters died quickly.

With this adventure - and the latest iteration of Next - I'm running into trouble with the players' damage being quite low and the hit points of the monsters in the adventure are quite high... and, by the XP budgets we've got, there have to be a lot of them. Way, way too many.

Take the fourth encounter (last week's) of this season. In the 4E version, the group would have faced 7 opponents. By my calculations, for the recommended "tough" encounter, the Next group should have needed to face about 15 opponents. (I toned it down in the session, as it was ridiculous). And, despite the level gap and XP gap between the monsters, the actual HP of the monsters was fairly similar.

I'm almost certainly feeling this more because I'm running Encounters instead of creating my own adventures, but I am wondering if I'm alone in feeling like the current version of Next feels a lot like the bad old days of 4E Grind?

Cheers!

 

[Li Shenron]

I haven't playtested since the Xmas packet, so my experience tells me that 5e encounters were too quick, and when I say quick I mean most encounters ended at the first or second round! And I had 3 PCs only, smart people for players but two of them had never actually even played D&D before...

IMO that needed to be fixed somehow... maybe now they overcompensated, and the game tends to suffer from the opposite problem. Maybe it's just the XP budget numbers that have become wrong.

I still think that the surprise rules make the surprise round too valuable. In our case, it made a huge difference, because one full extra round when combat lasts 1-2 rounds is indeed HUGE. I preferred the first rules where being surprised made you lose "half" a round i.e. you went last because of -20 on Init. It's slightly more complex than just losing a round but the effect was more balanced (but I'm coming from running 3e for years with the rule that surprise round only granted a partial action).

15 monsters clearly is going to be too much with the current rules however I remember they announced rules for handling large groups of creatures differently, presumably running them in subgroups of 3-5 treating each as a single creature.

I definitely don't want combats to regularly be less than 3 rounds, but neither I want them to be always more than 6. I think 3-6 rounds is a good length for 90% of encounters.

Make sure you write your findings in your playtest feedback!

 

[GX.Sigma]

With this adventure - and the latest iteration of Next - I'm running into trouble with the players' damage being quite low and the hit points of the monsters in the adventure are quite high... and, by the XP budgets we've got, there have to be a lot of them. Way, way too many.

Are most of your players fighters/rogues?

 

[MortalPlague]

I've been running Blingdenstone again with a 6-man group, and they've been blitzing through encounters with record speed (except when their dice suck). It's not as bad as the earlier packs, where monsters went down in two rounds flat, but there have only been three or four battles that have gone on past round four, and that's over a span of about four sessions.

 

[jadrax]

There is/was something in encounter building that said if you end up outnumbering the PCs, then the encounter automatically shifts one category up.

 

[Klaus]

There is/was something in encounter building that said if you end up outnumbering the PCs, then the encounter automatically shifts one category up.

Outnumbered 2:1 bumps the encounter one category (easy -> average or average -> tough). Outnumbered 3:1 bumps up two categories (easy -> tough or average to -> TPK-in-the-making). I tested it in my first DDN combat, when I pitted 3 PCs against 9 kobolds.

 

[Dausuul]

I still think that the surprise rules make the surprise round too valuable. In our case, it made a huge difference, because one full extra round when combat lasts 1-2 rounds is indeed HUGE. I preferred the first rules where being surprised made you lose "half" a round i.e. you went last because of -20 on Init. It's slightly more complex than just losing a round but the effect was more balanced (but I'm coming from running 3e for years with the rule that surprise round only granted a partial action).

I'm a big fan of surprise being a powerful factor in combat. One of the things that's bugged me about recent editions of D&D, especially 4E, is that ambushes aren't effective enough. So often I've seen the PCs carefully plan out an ambush, coming up with lots of clever ideas to ensure that they get the drop on their foes, and the end result is... you get one free attack in a 10-round combat. Woo.

I'd like for surprise to be the sort of thing that can swing a "probable TPK" fight to the "likely win" category. It rewards player creativity, and gives the rogue more of a chance to shine by doing sneaky rogue stuff (as opposed to just being a flankbot). And on the flip side, it encourages player paranoia. A dungeon feels a lot more dangerous when you know that letting your guard down could be deadly.

Now, admittedly, if most fights average 1.5 rounds, a full surprise round might be a little much. But then again, a major fight (as opposed to a skirmish) should take more than 1.5 rounds to begin with.

 

[Klaus]

There's also the fact that most monsters will lose initiative to the PCs, so PCs who surprise their opponents will likely get two full rounds of stuff to do before the monsters do anything.

I wonder if surprise could mean "you go first", or maybe "you get two actions in the first round".

 

[Dausuul]

There's also the fact that most monsters will lose initiative to the PCs, so PCs who surprise their opponents will likely get two full rounds of stuff to do before the monsters do anything.

I wonder if surprise could mean "you go first", or maybe "you get two actions in the first round".

I'd rather just improve monster initiative.

 

[Li Shenron]

Now, admittedly, if most fights average 1.5 rounds, a full surprise round might be a little much. But then again, a major fight (as opposed to a skirmish) should take more than 1.5 rounds to begin with.

Yeah, that's the problem... of course in 4e, if it's true that combats are so long, 1 extra round is minimal.