D&D 5E Monster Manual and Players Hand Book Power Levels

[CapnZapp]

I can make that Nalfeshnee threatening just by giving it some low-CR minions. They don't even add much to the XP award.

The thing is, this completely changes the encounter.

You are completely right. Even if you add, say, four regular Minotaurs only (and I say only because they're only CR 3), this will completely change, perhaps not the outcome, but the perception of challenge in the eyes of the players.

Yes, 5th edition really is that sensitive to numbers.

But all of this obscures the point. It is still not right that an official module presents an encounter in one way, when it is going to play out a completely different way.

Even if, as you say, it is somewhat easily fixed, it still says two things, neither very flattering:
a) the writers have no clue
b) the system can't handle solo encounters for sh*t

 

[Dualazi]

That's selling the idea far too short.

a) The spells should still feel worth the investment, since even if a single Banishment or Dominate Monster doesn't equate to pressing the insta-win button, they should still inconvenience the monster.

Put more succtinctly: If the players feel spells aren't worth the investment that means the implementation was done poorly. It doesn't mean the idea was bad to begin with.

b) you say 1) that like it was bad or something? and 2) you very strangely say "then go back to their old playstyle" as if the wizards could suddenly transform back to kick-in-the-door fighters?

If the group concludes they need three spellcasters (so that they can get in three Banishment or whatever in quick succession) what's wrong with that? I would have thought, however, a more balanced approach would be to shield the wizard for three rounds. Which would accomplish everything we want out of a Solo fight.

It’s bad for groups to favor damage over other options because damage is already heavily weighted favorably since ‘dead’ is the best status effect and more often the desired result of the fight. If CC is so weak that people see it as not being worth the time, then they’ll focus all their effort on ending the fight by the ultimate means: killing everything. This is bad if for no other reason than it reduces game diversity, but also it becomes an arms race of sorts, which only exacerbates your need for increased HP pools. Basically, if your complaint is that solos don’t have enough HP, prodding the players into favoring DPR isn’t going to help that.

As for b), I can’t speak for every table (or even most tables) but no, the players are not going to nicely let a dynamic tug-of-war between the wizard’s CC and the big bad ensue. They’re either going to bring three wizards and lock him down in one turn (this is what I referenced by “go back to the old playstyle”, that they just CC the boss and kill him while he’s crippled.) or they’re going to go to the damage option above.

The reason for these two results are the same; players, in my experience, massively favor method that produce efficient, reliable results. The three save idea introduces a huge degree of unreliability and decreased efficiency, and so it’s no surprise to me that they will either opt to restore it to prior levels or bail on the strategy altogether.

For instance, I am well aware a single spellcaster might not be capable of pushing out so many Imprisonments or Dominate Monsters that the math tells us are needed if you need three to "lock down" the monster.

So it's eminently possible the framework should encourage DMs to interpret many spells as stacking together.

For instance, my Fear example earlier, with Shaken --> Frightened --> Panicked.

This isn't going to be a very high-level example, but still: Let's say you successfully cast one Fear, one Phantasmal Killer and one Nightmare spell. They could all contribute to locking down the monster, with the final third spell determining the exact results.

The idea is that all of these spells are in roughly the same neighborhood, both thematically and power-wise.

The idea isn't to require you to memorize three (or six, assuming a 50% save rate) identical spells just to defeat the big bad.

This could be accomplished maybe with a return to 4e style keywords, but it doesn’t address much. Either you add other stuff like damage to the spells to make them still useful in the interim, or you end up with a bunch of spells that have different names but the same effects. How is your fear/nightmare/PK combo different from fear/fear/fear?

Maybe a different line of thought would be something like a spell-focused escalation die from 13^th age, where being subjected to spells (save or no) increases the effectiveness of subsequent spells. So the first time you’re hit with fear, at most it can make you shaken on the first casting. On the 3^rd casting, you’re shaken regardless, with frightened being the fail state. Monsters would need a thorough redesign though to give them increased potency, since as I have harped about before the action economy is not in their favor.

As a player you should feel casting save or suck spells is worthwhile. There must be some middle-ground here, and not "unless my spell insta-wins the combat I'm going to resort to damage only".

What we all want out of a Solo fight is a monster that might be killed off by hit points damage, but where spells are needed to make the monster suck just enough to not kill off the fighters.

If I were a dev for a day, I would have added more wind-up to certain monster attacks. If you can see the flame building in a red dragon and smoke and cinders start to leak from its jaws, you know you need to drop some CC on him now to avoid the incoming blast. It’s hard for wizards to ‘time’ their CC right since there’s no real predictive measures for enemy behavior, and it simply becomes a good idea to drop it ASAP.

Or, conversely, the fighters managing to keep the monster from killing off the spellcasters (or themselves) long enough for the spells to grind the monster down. Which should not be about a single roll of the die, but something that generally takes a while.

This is one of the reasons for my initial analysis about going to damage or super cc. Attrition favors team monster in 9/10 situations, players actively try and avoid it. In my experience, they will do everything in their power to avoid the situation you just described.

What we all want is the math of the game to usually lead to a nice satifying climactic fight.

Nothing wrong with the odd one spell and you're out fight, or the we-all-critted-so-the-monster-didn't-even-act-once.

But the game's math currently only achieve an average fight of more than a single round by heavy handwavium, and that's not a satisfying design.

I would sort of agree, but my point continues to be that it’s incredibly hard to make cc relevant to bosses without being overpowering, or a useless spell you might pack for trash mobs. This is because D&D is so binary in its pass/fail, hit/miss design. I’m not sure that it can ever really be done without the addition of handwavium, to be honest.

 

[CapnZapp]

a CR 14 Nalfeshnee looks reasonable for most level 11 groups

The thing is, on paper you're right.

But.

For one thing, the Nalfeshnee stat block is certainly not deserving of CR 14. Its melee packs a fair punch, but everything else about this demon is weaksauce.

For another thing, we're not talking about a regular speed-bump encounter here. The text places Slaughtertusk as the guardian of the Maze Engine. The rules for dramatic encounters says this encounter should not be a two-round stomp (like a regular speed-bump encounter could be). The actual text of the module strongly suggest the writers had intended to follow these rules, only they failed miserably.

And again, had this been an isolated encounter, I wouldn't have been here. The point is that OotA consistently plays a level 6-8ish game with level 12-16 characters to the point where you need to completely switch out its encounters if you want to even remotely challenge your PCs.

You can't have three goblins or a troll as resource-depleting encounters at this level. You need something completely different; like from a different tier of play.

 

[CapnZapp]

It’s bad for groups to favor damage over other options because damage is already heavily weighted favorably since ‘dead’ is the best status effect and more often the desired result of the fight. If CC is so weak that people see it as not being worth the time, then they’ll focus all their effort on ending the fight by the ultimate means: killing everything. This is bad if for no other reason than it reduces game diversity, but also it becomes an arms race of sorts, which only exacerbates your need for increased HP pools. Basically, if your complaint is that solos don’t have enough HP, prodding the players into favoring DPR isn’t going to help that.

As for b), I can’t speak for every table (or even most tables) but no, the players are not going to nicely let a dynamic tug-of-war between the wizard’s CC and the big bad ensue. They’re either going to bring three wizards and lock him down in one turn (this is what I referenced by “go back to the old playstyle”, that they just CC the boss and kill him while he’s crippled.) or they’re going to go to the damage option above.

The reason for these two results are the same; players, in my experience, massively favor method that produce efficient, reliable results. The three save idea introduces a huge degree of unreliability and decreased efficiency, and so it’s no surprise to me that they will either opt to restore it to prior levels or bail on the strategy altogether.

Hmm.

You keep returning to the default rules as the baseline, and only judge my proposed change in terms of how this changes the status quo.

But at no time do you show any signs of actually agreeing the status quo is bad, or worth changing.

So before we continue this discussion: could it be that behind all your words, you're actually content with the rules as they are?

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Sure the players will want to be as effective as possible. But the basic assumption I am laboring under, and what I am basing our conversation on, is this:

The current rules for solos aren't enough. First, spells are completely negated, which is bad and boring. Then, spells have their full effect, which is bad and boring. What is needed is a more gradual way, so that even the first spell can have SOME effect without actually ending the encounter.

I'm getting the impression you expect players to change their play style only under protest. You seem to envision reactionary players - all they want is to get back to the "good old days" where solo BBEGs can be insta-shut down. But why make that highly negative conclusion?

Why not instead assume players are well on board the change, since they too want exciting solo fights?!?

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I still don't know how you conclude "they're going to bring three wizards". How? What wizards? Where did they come from?

If you're suggesting the players will build their group of four to five heroes with three arcane spellcasters, that's one thing. That is also ridiculous, since why would a group tailor-make their composition for perhaps 1% of the combats they will have??

Having three wizards might be nice for the two BBEG Solo fights they will be having from level 1-10, but it sure won't be as convenient when they face the regular hordes of orcs and mooks and guards...

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In short, I'm not truly getting you or your arguments, Dualazi. Could it be that you are instinctively opposed to the idea and so you bring emotional arguments to the table?

 

[Dualazi]

Hmm.

You keep returning to the default rules as the baseline, and only judge my proposed change in terms of how this changes the status quo.

But at no time do you show any signs of actually agreeing the status quo is bad, or worth changing.

So before we continue this discussion: could it be that behind all your words, you're actually content with the rules as they are?

No. I would like to see more done to make solos solo, and more on general monster diversity and options in general. So if there truly is a ‘status quo’ then yes, I’m against it. Most of my arguments are centered around the belief that while I support your intentions on the conceptual level, D&D as a system makes it nigh impossible to bring about as a reality in a lot of ways. That’s all.

I also return to the baseline because that’s the only real metric we have for analysis, the baseline experience and the inference of what changing that baseline does to player and game behavior. This has been the source of my counter-arguments; you say we will change X, and I say that will lead to players doing Y or Z, which are just as bad as X was.

---

Sure the players will want to be as effective as possible. But the basic assumption I am laboring under, and what I am basing our conversation on, is this:

The current rules for solos aren't enough. First, spells are completely negated, which is bad and boring. Then, spells have their full effect, which is bad and boring. What is needed is a more gradual way, so that even the first spell can have SOME effect without actually ending the encounter.

I'm getting the impression you expect players to change their play style only under protest. You seem to envision reactionary players - all they want is to get back to the "good old days" where solo BBEGs can be insta-shut down. But why make that highly negative conclusion?

Why not instead assume players are well on board the change, since they too want exciting solo fights?!?

Well, while I agree it’s ham-fisted and of questionable use in practice, shutting down those early spells is designed to make the fight last long enough to be exciting. Not saying it does this well, but that’s the intent.

Frankly, my reactionary assumptions are built from two things; the simple number and agency disparity between DM and Player assets, and the simple and understandable desire to win and progress.

For the first, fighting is dangerous, and over time (assuming the encounters are semi-challenging) the possibility of player death or loss should hypothetically guarantee it happens sometimes. However, it should be obvious that players and DMs deal with their respective losses in markedly different ways. A lost player character is a huge deal, whereas an unexpectedly bypassed dungeon or boss isn’t, simply by virtue of there being only 1 of that character but an infinite number of bosses and foes. As a result of this, players will take the options and opportunities to reduce this chance of failure, which leads to my assumed strategies. In summary, players want cool fights, but not as badly as they want to fight another day, and those two concepts are fundamentally at odds with each other.

Second is just the drive to succeed, which really spreads across everything. If you can checkmate your opponent in 4 turns, why would you not do so in the hope of an exciting game that you might then lose? There’s a not insubstantial portion of the fanbase I think that would rather be a bored winner than an excited loser, especially in the context of the DM/player arrangement, where player loss not only results in a lost character, but also potential negative ramifications for the world at large. Knowing you had a fun fight against the lich is dampened by the knowledge that he’s now going to usher in an age of darkness.

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I still don't know how you conclude "they're going to bring three wizards". How? What wizards? Where did they come from?

If you're suggesting the players will build their group of four to five heroes with three arcane spellcasters, that's one thing. That is also ridiculous, since why would a group tailor-make their composition for perhaps 1% of the combats they will have??

I am suggesting just that, yes, because the distinction of mooks and bosses innately signifies that bosses are the greatest threat the players can face, and players (and groups) will routinely plan around the worst case. You see this a lot in videogames, as players rarely waste significant resources on trash mobs, opting instead to save it for the big bad at the end of the dungeon. Like it or not, the same mentality is often applied in tabletop, moreso when rules explicitly aid in the creation of potent bosses.

Having three wizards might be nice for the two BBEG Solo fights they will be having from level 1-10, but it sure won't be as convenient when they face the regular hordes of orcs and mooks and guards...

I am skeptical of this. The group does have more weaknesses, but especially since the wizard is such a flexible class I could see them managing just fine. Hell, with a necromancer and enchanter they could have plenty of mook meatshields themselves, and that still leaves a 3^rd mage to do whatever else. I’m not looking to pick a fight based on this specific example, but I will say that I don’t believe there are enough barriers to lopsided groups to provide significant discouragement.

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In short, I'm not truly getting you or your arguments, Dualazi. Could it be that you are instinctively opposed to the idea and so you bring emotional arguments to the table?

Not going to lie, this bit aggravates me. I feel I’ve done a reasonable job describing what I think the results of your changes will be and why, ideally to help you and maybe the community at large have a better method of making solo encounters meaningful. My opposition to some of your ideas has simply been to caution you that the changes you propose might not produce the desired effect.

 

[S'mon]

Sure. It's possible.

Still utterly unacceptable, though.

Right?

It's not great - if you want a Nalfeshnee to challenge level 12 PCs solo it needs Legendary resistance & actions at the very least, and really I'd want to give it some spells too. I agree with you it's obviously not a serious BBEG challenge for a group within a few levels of its CR.

I do think this is solvable by eg having lower level PCs encounter it - at around 8th level 4 PCs should find it appropriately scary - or by having it summon a pack of lower CR demon allies, allies being by far the best way to create a challenge in 5e.

My overall feeling is that WoTC published adventures tend to be really bad, though more due to presentation than stat block issues, so I prefer buying Paizo or OSR stuff and converting. Converted Paizo material tends to work much better in 5e than in Pathfinder IME.

 

[CapnZapp]

Converted Paizo material tends to work much better in 5e than in Pathfinder IME.

Oh the burn

 

[CapnZapp]

snip

Sorry Dualazi, I didn't mean to offend.

I just can't understand why you wouldn't bring four wizards to the regular rules party, and have the first three rip out the legendary resistance, and the fourth still making sure its a one-round game ender?

With that logic, I mean...

 

[Dualazi]

Sorry Dualazi, I didn't mean to offend.

I just can't understand why you wouldn't bring four wizards to the regular rules party, and have the first three rip out the legendary resistance, and the fourth still making sure its a one-round game ender?

With that logic, I mean...

s'alright, none taken.

In the base game I think you wouldn't bring a ton of wizards because it's so easy to burn through the HP of enemies it's not always necessary, which your HP fix would address, but that leads us right around back to the start again, so I'll need some time to think and come up with some possible solutions.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Converted Paizo material tends to work much better in 5e than in Pathfinder IME.

Mine too, though I only have a few parts of one path and a few test encounters experience with such so far.

One of the biggest things, to me, seems to be that the APs include too many examples of monster building gone wrong (by which I refer to things like an NPC being a multi-class barbarian/ranger with a magic scimitar and favored enemy human that is just kind of there to be stumbled upon in a rage by low-level characters, or an awakened golem given a crit-fishing build of feats and a scythe - both of which when ran in PF rules crit on and killed instantly fighter PCs at full hit points) and 5th edition doesn't shackle the DM to a specific number of feats for a monster or the full allotment of a class' features and traits for an NPC, so there is less for the DM to accidentally compound into unintended results when whipping up the 5th edition equivalent.