D&D 5E How to Break 5E

[Celtavian]

I'm confused. What does being an optional rule have to do with anything? Are we saying that rules are allowed to be broken as long as they're labelled "optional"? Rules are only broken if they affect every table? I mean, how is that different than the Oberoni fallacy? And if breaking 5e is as simple as "use MC rules" or "use feats," then those rules aren't exactly optional, are they?

Does that also mean we can't complain about the quality of material in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide because, as splat, it's optional by definition?

I'm just trying to understand why a rule explicitly being optional is relevant.

A rule being optional is relevant because it assumes that game is built without the advantages of the rule being taken into account when creating monsters or encounter challenges. Thus a DM must take into account the advantages provided by the rule when designing encounters to challenge players using the optional rule.

 

[Celtavian]

I keep wondering what exactly constitutes an encounter. I might create six to eight encounters of varying difficulty, then run them consecutively. If a party invades a dungeon area that is interconnected such as an orc lair, does that count as one encounter? Or does each room count as an encounter? What if the orc lair operates in a coordinated manner descending on the party as the alarm goes up? Do you count that as one encounter? Or a group of encounters? My point is you can't fit square pegs into round holes by forcing a specific amount of encounters into each encounter area or day. It's more important to make the encounters seem organic and appropriate, so the players feel immersed in the world and journey.

 

[Psikerlord#]

After getting back into DMing in the last couple of years (and wow had I missed it!), and comparing it to my ongoing experience playing in other games, I've come to a realization.

At least with the people I play with, DMs seem to believe that players want/need high threat encounters to feel satisfied with their gaming experience--but players are much less interested in everyone being down to their last spell slots and hps as they are about doing something cool.

As a player, it kind of bugged me how the DM would err on the side of only a few fights, but they were likely to kill one or two of our characters, when I really just wanted to show off my wilder's new power by kicking monster butt. That generally ended up meaning that I didn't get to kick butt at all, because the encounter was so difficult that my new power was underwhelming.

I found myself doing the same thing before I realized it. In both situations, it has nothing to do with being a jerk as a DM. We were both attempting to give our players the most satisfying experience. The issue is just that DM assumptions about what players wanted was wrong.

Now, maybe my experience is non-typical, and perhaps a lot more players really do want every battle to be a serious death match.

I think you're onto something here. I've found as a player - and DM - I ultimately want to narrate something cool each encounter. Those close to the death scenes are great and exciting, but little trifling combats can also be great if you throw a memorable narration here or there, esp if you use a new or cool ability, etc. I certainly don't think you need the big showdown deadly fight every adventure (in fact, that probably makes things too predictable).

We had a fantastic session the other day, variant princess rescue, and completely avoided the BBEG end fight by stealth. And it was a totally awesome, fun & exciting adventure.

 

[Wik]

After getting back into DMing in the last couple of years (and wow had I missed it!), and comparing it to my ongoing experience playing in other games, I've come to a realization.

At least with the people I play with, DMs seem to believe that players want/need high threat encounters to feel satisfied with their gaming experience--but players are much less interested in everyone being down to their last spell slots and hps as they are about doing something cool.

As a player, it kind of bugged me how the DM would err on the side of only a few fights, but they were likely to kill one or two of our characters, when I really just wanted to show off my wilder's new power by kicking monster butt. That generally ended up meaning that I didn't get to kick butt at all, because the encounter was so difficult that my new power was underwhelming.

I found myself doing the same thing before I realized it. In both situations, it has nothing to do with being a jerk as a DM. We were both attempting to give our players the most satisfying experience. The issue is just that DM assumptions about what players wanted was wrong.

Now, maybe my experience is non-typical, and perhaps a lot more players really do want every battle to be a serious death match.

Absolutely. I've come to the same conclusion. The game, for my players at least, is more fun when they get to be awesome. Sometimes they love surviving tough combats - and I definitely provide. I even act like I'm disappointed if I don't get a kill, and they feel as if they've thwarted me. But ultimately, I want to provide a framework for them to pursue (and achieve!) their own stories.

Right now, I've got the PCs working on fixing up their keep. One PC is looking for an elven dog companion, as well as a way to turn a petrified pseudodragon he found back to flesh. Another PC wants to free the ghost of a bard and move the soul into her mechanical ferret companion. Yet another is wondering why she was selected by druids as an awakened animal, and what her purpose in life is... as well as coming to terms with the fact that the local constabulary wants to use her as some sort of intelligent bloodhound.

I never have any ideas what stories are going to happen in my game. I can be rough on my PCs sometimes, but as a general rule, I want them to succeed. And that means occasionally throwing them some easier challenges.

 

[KarinsDad]

I'm the DM and it's very rare my group have had more than 1-3 encounters per day. They almost never take short rests.

This is because we like our fights exciting. To be any challenge, a fight must be difficult. After one or three such fights, a PC is depleted, more or less.

If they have 2 or 3 difficult encounters in a day, how do they use their Hit Dice to heal without taking a short rest?

 

[pming]

Hiya!

If their aim is to be disruptive maybe. If they just thought they had come up with a cool combo - or simply a feat they liked the look of not so much.
Otherwise where does it stop? Spells you don't like (conjuring is stupid) Races you don't think should be in the Realms? The metagame rules that cover the AL are not & should not be subject to DM interpretation

If a player is using conjuring spells in a disruptive manner that is detracting from others (including the DM's) fun in a way that becomes "not worth it"? Then, wholeheartedly, yes. My conjecture is that when something... anything, Optional or not... is taken to an extreme by some player who shows up at the table, then is is the duty of the DM to kick that player out. Period. To do otherwise makes the entire point of having a "Code of Conduct", well, pointless.

I see that you disagree with me on that. That's cool. I don't play AL anyway, but if I did I'd say there would be a 95% or better chance that I'd be DM'ing.

Feats are always an option even when they are allowed in the sense that you can choose to take one instead of an ASI or at level 1 if you are a variant human.

That wording just means the AL DMs cannot arbitrarily ban feats because eg "they did not have them back in my day when DMs really were gods" any more than they can ban monks or tieflings or (sadly) gnomes.

It was smart in that it pleases both sides like the feeble Level 1 characters that were demanded. Which is what you said

My point is that the game was designed to include them (IMO) & you would struggle to prove otherwise (though equally I would struggle to prove it we are just reinforcing our prejudices).

To quote someone above ... I believe your "O" is wrong. The game was not, by definition of them being labled as "Optional", designed around them. I'm sure they kept them in mind, but I'd bet dimes to dollars that when they were thinking about some spell, monster, skill, or rule for how to handle something in the game, how some Feat or MC combo came into play was pretty far down the list. If for nothing else than the sheer number of combinations of just those two Options alone.

I think this is just another aspect we are just in disagreement on, and unless we hear from the actual designers on the matter, we'll just have to leave it at "Well, I *think* this is the way it was designed, YMMV" and leave it at that.

Just a few hours ago, I had a player 'argue' with me over a Feat. Sharpshooter. Mostly about the -5/+10 bullet point. She (the character) is a 4th level drow ranger focusing on archery. After about 15 to 20 minutes of back and forth, the conclusion from him was: "Yeah. Wow. That is kinda unbalanced. I see your point on the other feats...especially ones like this, like Great Weapon Master. How about we nix that -5/+10 and just make it +2 on attack rolls?" I thought about it a bit, then decided modify it a bit. The third bullet point is now "+2 to hit and damage with one group of missile weapons (Bows, Crossbows, Thrown Weapons, Slings, Pistols, Rifles, etc)". (Yes, my game has the optional 'gunpoweder' stuff from the DMG...even though it's never been encountered in any of our 5e games; and yes, the "Weapon Group" thing was his idea, he said it didn't make any sense to be a "Sharpshooter" with every missile weapon). The -5/+10 was just faaar too "win"; at level 4 she has +9 to hit and +9 damage; the Feat as is would mean "only" +4 to hit (with pretty much never rolling to hit at Disadvantage or with any penalty due to cover or concealment), and her damage would jump to +19! For one fricken arrow!?! Meanwhile, the "powerhouse" dwarf is limited to 1d12+4 I think. Same level. She did NOT take Great Weapon Fighter.

So... because she didn't take GWF, she is now waaaaay out classed by the archer. How is it that "the designers were taking Feats into account in designing the game" again? Or by "design" you mean "yeah, if someone takes something like GWF, everyone MUST take something equivalent​, or suck". If that's the case, then failure to do so would result in an unbalanced game. Which would prove that Feats are unbalancing by default.

IMHO, of course.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Evenglare]

Didn't read the whole thread because, let's be honest, aint nobody got time for that.

Anyway, to subject of the thread... breaking 5e. It's always funny to me how players tend to think they have broken the system. There are a few real points worth mentioning. First, players (especially min maxers) seem to triumphantly boast about how good their character is. How it can kill X in a few hits or whatever. I find this funny because it's like they are applying computer rpg logic with tabletop intent. Let me spell this out clearly. You can not win. I don't care how powerful your character is I assure you I can kill him at any given time since I am the DM. Your character can be snuffed from existence with out a moment of thought. I'm not saying I would do that as a DM, but it needs to be made clear that the DM is in control....

Which leads me into my next point. Since your character is vastly meaningless compared to the DM the next step down is comparison to your fellow party members. So I can only assume you want to completely outshine those characters with your mary sue character. If this is the case what's the point of playing the game? It's clearly collaborative story telling if you want to outshine everyone then why should the other players stick around if they are useless? I wuoldn't blame them either, there's only so much marginalization someone can take until they just don't give a **** about the game. I don't understand why a min - maxer would choose to go down this route if it's inevitably going to lead into party decay.

I guess I just don't get the appeal.

 

[CapnZapp]

It varies the other day we had 2 encounters some adventuring days we have made it to 14. The 6-8 encounters is what the designers expect.

Yes I know. I'm saying I have a hard time seeing how a fight can become exciting if it's easy enough that the PCs are up for seven more without a long rest.

In my mind, this must mean the party spellcasters feel confident the combat will be won without having to spend much spell slots. Already from the start.

In my experience, a fight that already from the start (not three or even one round in: in those fights the spellcasters will obviously cast a spell in round one) will looks as if cantrips and weapons will be enough ("let the fighters handle this one") is a fight that isn't worth our time to actually play out. Sure, those seven fights would chip away at hit points and resources. But it isn't worth taking the time to find out how much IMHO. There would be little or no risk of any character falling - my preference would be to simply say "you kill seven groups of three goblins each; deduct 10 hp each; now what?"

If D&D always was like at level 1, then things would be different. Other rpgs, where any combat can turn deadly with sufficiently bad dice luck, doesn't suffer from this issue.

But this "meta game" of resource preservation, where the worst outcome of a fight is "shucks, we spent two more slots and three hit dice than our budget!". I'm just not seeing it. Or rather, the appeal of it.

I would be very interested in hearing more about your string of 14(!) encounters. (Assuming you brought up this as an example of a good fun play session, of course! ) I don't need exhaustive details, only enough to gauge a representative difficulty grade. Would it be convenient for you to pick one of those fourteen encounters that you feel would be a good example, and tell us a little about the foes featured, and also state how many adventurers are there and what their party level is?

 

[CapnZapp]

Another case of "different groups", I guess? Because my group does this all the time, and my players love it. We have 7 characters in the group, though (6 players, 1 NPC), so maybe that's a contributing factor.

Around half the encounters I throw at PCs are "under budget", often consisting of one monster of a CR around the party's average character level. However, not always. When the PCs were 1st or 2nd level, one of the toughest fights they had was a simple "snake in a sack" that hilariously nearly did in the gnomish thief.

The party's a bit higher level now (~5th), and these small fights can still be problematic. After all, crits happen. And just because it's a few small monsters, the whole "bounded accuracy" thing means low-level monsters can still hurt you... and contribute to an expenditure of resources. I mean, at 10th level, a few hobgoblins that get the drop on you can still cause a world of pain.

My group is four heavy min-maxers. They live in a completely separate world from one where "a few hobgoblins that get the drop on you can still cause a world of pain" to a group of 10th level PCs.

(Not that this makes your game any less fun or valuable. Saying this merely to explain why *I* am not seeing it. You're definitely right it depends a lot on the players and their skill in playing the game and specifically its combats)

Running one or two such encounters would not be an issue. After all, weak encounters can still fulfil story purposes.

What we're discussing here is essentially running seven of them for the purposes of a resource depletion meta game, and whether any of you can see any fun in that.

As a comparison: I would consider pairing up those encounters to combine into perhaps three "double encounters" - and I would definitely expect this to result in a much more fun and exciting play session, even if the time spent and XP acquired to be the same.

 

[CapnZapp]

I think there's a bit of Older-Edition-Itis going on with some of the encounter pacing at certain tables. In 3e, at a lot of tables, you pretty much had to max out your party's output in each encounter (attrition wasn't so much a thing after your first wand of cure light wounds), encouraging a "One Deadly Encounter Then Rest Then Again" kind of pacing. 4e embraced the encounter-based design almost explicitly and there wasn't much attrition that happened between encounters, so again, one big encounter would be enough.

5e harkens back to earlier editions in this regard: you don't need to fight an enemy at the top of your danger curve to have an adequate threat. Resting should be a hard decision the party makes, and the 6-8 encounter model allows that to happen. It's much more possible to have a slow burn, a building threat, an adventuring day where you build up to a climax, and you feel it in your dwindling resources.

5e doesn't stop you from doing the one-big-boom-and-done thing (which I think is a testament to its flexibility!), and as long as you're using up your daily XP budget, you should be fine, challenge-wise (and even if you're not, that doesn't mean it wasn't challenging!). However, it encourages the game to be about more than a string of very difficult encounters, allowing for a diversity and pacing and dynamic flow that I really appreciate as a DM and a player.

This is all fine and dandy, but how do you actually do it in practice?

I mean, this isn't the first time I've read stuff like "Resting should be a hard decision the party makes"...

...but there's absolutely no game mechanic to make it so.

It's all dumped in the lap of the adventure designer or DM. Sure, I can come up with a trite variation of the "the princess will be sacrificed in X hours or days" to use story to limit rests, but
a) this feels so very arbitrary: some stories don't have a ticking clock built-in. In fact, if the clock sets a hard uncircumventable limit, I've found this will reek of being there only for rest-denying purposes more often than not.
b) this still does not change the fact that 7 easy fights are boring while 3 challenging ones are exciting

What, exactly, in 5E's design makes it "encourage[] the game to be about more than a string of very difficult encounters"...? (I honestly don't see it!)

If you're talking about pressing on despite being low on spells and hit points, I don't see how this edition differs from any other in that there really isn't any mechanical support that actually encourages you to actually do that.

Adding in a ticking clock that forces you to extend the adventurig day is fine once in a while, but it does nothing to solve the issue more generally.

Contrast this to something like: "the party can't gain the benefits of a short rest until after completing at least two encounters, and the party can't gain the benefits of a long rest until after completing at least two short rests."

NOW YOURE TALKING.

Now suddenly D&D would be transformed into a game where resource depletion would be a real thing, regardless of story. Now the adventure would be freed from the yoke of having to provide rest constraints, and all this talk about how the game "should" do this and "should" do that would suddenly make sense!

But I fear such an edition of the game will never come to pass.

Sigh...