D&D 4E 4E vs 5E: Monsters and bounded accuracy

[CapnZapp]

Although, really, how often would a DM *really* put a CR 3 ogre against a level 8 party in 3rd Edition? With a +8 to hit, it'd need a 16 or 17 to deal any damage to said fighter.

I honestly think the designers intend the answer to be "everytime".

As in, even at very high levels, you can still throw in a dozen Ogres.

One Ogre on the other hand...

 

[CapnZapp]

I honestly think the designers intend the answer to be "everytime".

As in, even at very high levels, you can still throw in a dozen Ogres.

Myself though, I draw the practical limit at whatever Spirit Guardians can kill off.

If the monster needs to run up to you in order to claw your face off, it better have more hit points than twice the average Spirit Guardian damage, or you can throw an almost endless stream of foes at the party without anyone ever scoring a hit.

I know this because I pitched five squads of a dozen Gnolls each at my level 9ish party. They did need to lay down a Wall of Fire, in addition to the Cleric's Spirit Guardians, but that was it really. Sure the cleric took a couple of hits, but only because the Gnolls are equipped with a ranged (thrown) weapon.

So once the party reaches level five, 30 hp or so becomes the "minion threshold". Then this slowly rises, of course. The problem is; this spell alone utterly invalidates all those CR 1/2 statblocks of the MM. (I too note how 4E minions could squirm their way past area spells like this!)

We desperately need "elite" versions of many many more humanoids, with CRs reaching (and sometimes surpassing) CR 5. Gnolls, Dwarves, Grimlocks or what have you. The Orc War Chiefs and Drow Elite Warriors are just a start. We need more. Many more.

 

[Jester David]

I honestly think the designers intend the answer to be "everytime".

As in, even at very high levels, you can still throw in a dozen Ogres.

One Ogre on the other hand...

I was referring to 3e. In 5e that might work well. But when I tried it in Pathfinder (the last half of Hook Mountain Massacre, part 3 of Rise of the Runelords) the players weren't even slowed down because the ogres couldn't land a hit. Monsters with a CR more than 4 below the party ceases to be a threat...

 

[Tony Vargas]

I looked it up, because there are limits to my disbelief on how bad 1E could have possibly been.

LOL. 1e was, as 5e has tried to become, only as bad as the DM running it.

It took a bit more work than I was expecting. First of all, the chance to hit isn't anywhere in the PHB; the "attack matrices" were in the DMG. Second of all, it was "attack matrices" rather than attack bonus or THAC0 or anything.

Yep. The attack matrices in the DMG became very familiar to the 1e DM, as did the saving throw matrix - they were all also conveniently on the DM screen back then.

There's even a kind of neat thing where the 20 result repeats six times, so if you needed a 20 to hit (for example) AC -4, then you could still hit anything as high as -9 before you would need a 21 to hit.

And 21 in that context didn't mean a total of 21 but a natural 20 with at least a +1 bonus. Both more and less 'bounded' in a sense. The string of 'mere' 20s rather than a simple 1:1 increasing DC did reign in things a bit, but the requirement that every 20 after the first be natural...

Honestly, that's way better than our current "anyone can hit on a 20" rules.

I'm amused that you find it so. It does have it's merits, but it could seem a needless complication, compared to which the oft-maligned THAC0 was arguably a simplification.

That's probably where you got the idea that AC can only go from -10 to +10, because that's as far as the chart shows.

That's as far as the chart goes, yes. And it's as far as it went in practice, to, for the most part. In the MM, for instance, the lowest AC you'll find is a -8, and you won't find an AC 11 anywhere.

Fortunately for my faith in the designers, there's a note on using the table, which mentions you can get ACs that aren't on the chart by shifting 1 for each additional point of AC (accounting for the six repeating 20s, as above). It does mention that AC rarely gets worse than 10 unless you've been cursed, which is odd.

No odder than everything else in 1e. The whole philosophy of the hadn't crept that far from wargaming, in which any given scenario might have its own variant rules. Of course the DM could extend a matrix if he wished - he could do whatever he wanted. Just like a 5e DM can change proficiency or introduce +4 weapons, or make expertise more broadly available or otherwise 'break' bounded accuracy. The bounds are still there - as a starting point - just as the many tables of AD&D were.

As if oneshotting was ever a thing in D&D? Everybody has already moved on to accept that with high level comes so many hit points you become functionally immune to being oneshotted.

Of course it was. You had lots of save or die effects, dragons' breath weapons did their hp totals in damage (save:1/2). So if you 72 hp PC failed his save vs that huge ancient red dragon's breath weapon, boom, you were 'oneshotted' - possibly with half the rest of the party. ('Evasion,' what's that?)

Being susceptible to being oneshotted is a bad thing. Its the reason why everybody wants to escape tier I asap. The game at low levels is too unstable to be sustainable.

Then it's a pervasively bad thing. AD&D was full of it, 3e was outright rocket tag. That you can probably, mostly craw free of it out of Apprentice Tier in 5e must be reckoned a good thing, I take it?

The 4e minion idea was an interesting and sometimes very useful approach to try to keep low level creatures useful against super-hero level characters. I think the 5e approach is better.

It has the advantage of not requiring a separate write-up, however simple & easy that write-up may be. Aside from that, though, I'm not seeing how it's better for the goal of keeping lesser foes relevant to have them automatically wiped out by anything that inflicts half damage.

And the opportunity to use fireball against a group of goblins, for example, it rarely happens in my campaigns. They are cowards and don't run around in a bunch like that unless there is no choice. Just last session there was a large group of goblins ready behind a door that the PCs kicked in. They were spread across the room, and while the fireball took out a chunk of them, it certainly wasn't half. And the rest scattered, looking for cover. The fact that a single spell, combined with the bear (the druid had shape-changed), and the ranger crippling one of theirs by shooting it in the leg so they could take it prisoner was enough for the rest of that group of goblins to decide that they were too dangerous to take on.

Instantly defeated by one fireball (or perhaps even the threat of one) is instantly defeated, whether they satisfyingly burn up or just scatter like cockroaches, they've been rendered irrelevant.

If I've been one-shotting ogres for the past two editions, then it feels kind of lame if I can't do that anymore.

Of course the reverse could also be said of 4E, where you couldn't one-shot an orc unless it was a specially-prepared orc that was designed to die in one hit.

Sure, the DM in 4e could use a minion or standard version of either an orc or an ogre, so when the PCs were supposed to be one-shotting or struggling they would be. Part of having functional encounter building guidelines, really.

so you'd feel awesome, and orcs had been common fodder ever since the original game. That doesn't feel so great either, when you know they're set up for you to knock down so easily.

An orc that'll die whether it saves vs your spell or not has been set up for you to knock down easily - not just easily, automatically.

The ones within the area of effect are dead, but that's only a twenty-foot radius. If you throw a ten-by-ten block of orcs at the party, a Fireball will only stop like a third of them. And who decided that a bunch of orcs should be a challenge to a party of demi-gods, anyway?

A 5th level character - or even a 12th level one, is hardly a demi-god - nor is the guy with the helm of brilliance (well, might seem that way) or necklace/wand of fireballs.

4E minions may have had only one HP but they also had good defences and immunity to damage on a miss so you could expect to have a decent number left after the horde is hit by a Fireball.

Not that fireball was the bread & butter it was in the olden days or could be in 5e if that's your predilection. You got one fireball a day. You might have a few other dailies with comparable AEs. Compare that to pumping all your 3rd-5th level slots into fireballs in 5e - or a classic Wand of Fireballs!

In 5E you would need to use ridiculous numbers of orcs to have an interesting figth at high Levels.

Rediculous numbers prettymuch stop being interesting, anyway. Too much rolling - or they just degenerate into accounting exercises.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Sorry but that will have to be a different discussion. Especially since nothing prevents you from having Ogres with 29 hp...

An ogre has 7d10+21 hit points in 5E. I guess you might have one with only 29hp, if it was young and had a blood-deficiency, but that's hardly a typical ogre for the purposes of this discussion. If you can one-shot a baby ogre, then that's nothing to brag about.

Are you still comparing the PCs to Ogres?

The inherent meaning of a hit point or a point of damage is not consistent across all editions of all games, so you have to pick things that are consistent to use as reference points. Goblins and ogres are consistent in their representations across large varieties of media.

Most PCs can one-shot a goblin in most editions of most games. Goblins are chumps.

A high-end character can one-shot an ogre in some games, but not other games. The PCs in 5E are weaker than the PCs in 3E or 4E, because they can't do the same sorts of things that those characters in those other games can do.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

An orc that'll die whether it saves vs your spell or not has been set up for you to knock down easily - not just easily, automatically.

If the enemies are set up especially for you to fight them, then the DM is not doing a good job of remaining impartial. A bad DM can ruin any game.

Now I'm remembering why I had you on ignore.

 

[Tony Vargas]

If the enemies are set up especially for you to fight them, then the DM is not doing a good job of remaining impartial. A bad DM can ruin any game.

Don't mistake 'different style' for 'bad.' Status quo and tailored are both legitimate ways to approach running the game, in any edition.

A high-end character can one-shot an ogre in some games, but not other games. The PCs in 5E are weaker than the PCs in 3E or 4E, because they can't do the same sorts of things that those characters in those other games can do.

A 5e wizard can throw a half dozen fireballs in a row, a 4e wizard couldn't have. A 5e wizard can throw firebolts all day, a 3e wizard can't.

They're not absolutely weaker across the board. The real question is just how they stack up to 'appropriate' threats.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

They're not absolutely weaker across the board. The real question is just how they stack up to 'appropriate' threats.

The real question is how they stack up to objective threats, because 'appropriate' threats are contrived and irrelevant. Nobody cares about some ridiculously-unlikely scenario where you only encounter things that are 'appropriate' for you.

Objective metrics are the only objective metrics.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The real question is how they stack up to objective threats, because 'appropriate' threats are contrived and irrelevant.

Hey, the game provides guidelines. If the guidelines consistently deliver challenges the PCs can't handle, you can say they're arguable 'too weak.' Considering that 5e guidelines tend towards the opposite issue by all accounts - when they're not just varying wildly, anyway - it's hard to paint 5e PCs as 'too weak.'

Nobody cares about some ridiculously-unlikely scenario where you only encounter things that are 'appropriate' for you.

So you want nothing but TPKs and rollovers? Design your scenarios that way and enjoy. But accept that others might want something else from a game.

 

[Satyrn]

An ogre has 7d10+21 hit points in 5E. I guess you might have one with only 29hp, if it was young and had a blood-deficiency, but that's hardly a typical ogre for the purposes of this discussion.

There's no reason that 29 hp ogre has to described as young or sickly. I might attribute the low hit points to poor defensive skills, his inability to turn a solidhit into a glancing blow, a lack of endurance from poor practice. Whatever.

This ogre is just the cannon fodder of ogres, and iput in there by the DM to be mown down like a 4e minion. I'd probably give him slightly worse looking weapons and armour, too, to indicate he was the cannon fodder.