D&D 5E last encounter was totally one-sided

[Hussar]

Thing is, turning [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION]'s pushover encounter into a more dangerous one isn't all that difficult. All you really have to do is add a second encounter before the big guys show up. As I understand it, the PC's are in a building and the bad guys are approaching and are seen 100 feet away.

Why don't the bad guys have mooks? The bad guys send a force down first to gauge the party and then, ten minutes later, they show up. Now, the party is down a fair number of resources and the bad guys have a very good idea of what the party is capable of. And it's not like it's unrealistic. "Hey, underling, take twenty guys out and check that out" is a pretty reasonable thing for our baddies to order.

Now, my question is, is that first encounter a "trash" encounter? To me, it's not. It moves the game along, makes the game more interesting and provides an added level of challenge. Sure, the party mops the floor with the first bunch, but, so what? Better that than a rather lackluster encounter with much more dangerous foes.

 

[Ancalagon]

Thank the heavens NPCs are not done like PCs. I ran several multi-year D&D 3.0 & 3.5 campaigns where monsters and NPCs were built exactly like PCs. As we got to higher levels, I wasted SO MANY HOURS doing math to build foes in my adventures that I would much rather have spent improving the adventures and the campaign.

]

I completely agree. It's why I ran warhammer FRPG (2nd ed) for almost 10 years.

When 4e came I disliked it a "D&D system" a lot (though grew to like it some over time), but I loved the exception based monster design. Taking that forward in 5e (and the 13th Age campaign I run) has been a blessing. Do what you need, here's some guidelines for around where the numbers should be. Spend your effort making interesting foes and adventures instead of mathematically equal to PCs, when it's really easy to min-max PCs so that's no guarantee of balance. Heck, PC creation is made richer so that each player, focusing on one character, has a enough to do. A DM running dozens of different foes during a night doesn't need that range for each of them.

Having NPCs built like PCs would be a dealbreaker for 5e - with the exception of the encounters-per-long/short-rest it's my favorite D&D mechanics by far. But I would toss the whole thing aside rather then DM that again.

Nowadays I would just design them "roughly". Does this NPC fighter have too many feats? Not enough? Don't care. He has this much HP, does this much damage, this is his AC, this are his "moves", saves etc done. The "exact math" doesn't matter, not at all.

To get back to the OP though... Isn't this ultimately about "how smart should the bad guys be run"?

 

[delericho]

Neither. Which is why I posted several examples that supported my position that aren't anecdotes.

The problem with your position is that you talk about a paradigm shift among DMs when nothing has changed.

Back in the day there were certainly DMs who played as you described. Nobody is questioning that. But there were also plenty of DMs who didn't. Likewise, right now there are DMs who play as you described. And there are plenty who don't.

But, sure, kids today suck. Sorry about your lawn.

So no, you are objectively wrong when you say that was an era that never happened.

Those years happened. Doesn't mean it was a golden age.

You also realize that by 1985, there were over 107,000 subscribers to Dragon Magazine? Hardly a small minority of players at the time.

Compared with a player base numbered in the millions, 100k is a small minority.

 

[Psikerlord#]

For this one I had brought out rather big guns. To lead the bad guys I chose a Death Knight, supplemented by an Arch-Druid, a Blackguard, a Diviner and a Warlock of the Fiend.

That's a 19th level spellcaster leading an 18th level spellcaster, a 10th level spellcaster, a 15th level spellcaster, and a 17th level spellcaster. The Death Knight and Blackguard are of course fearsome martial fighters and the druid could wild shape into both Wyvern and Mammoth.

The party (14th level) still curbstomped them all... Let me tell you how things went down

The player characters:

• A "ranger" (actually multiclassed fighter 8/ranger 6 i think) fighting with a hand crossbow with poisoned bolts, crossbow expert and sharpshooter. Assuming advantage, he'll use -5/+10 on every shot (since his +13 is turned into +8 he wouldn't use it without advantage)
• A tempest cleric (singleclassed) that didn't get much use out of Spirit Guardians this time
• A shadow monk: combining his ability to stunlock with his supreme battlefield maneuvrability (~110 ft move is flabbergastingly good)
• A warlock (I think fiend/chain)
• A dual-wielding fighter (with no need for armor due to one Barbarian level and an item to gain awesome Unarmored AC)

This fight definitely belonged to the darkness (monk and warlock)

IMO:

(1) the-5/+10 mechanic is broken, there's been lots of threads on this issue
(2) multiclassing is also broken if you allow 1 level dips

Not sure about the rest, but just these two aspects, if you eliminate them, may well fix your issues.

 

[CapnZapp]

text

I guess it's admirable the way you avoid making multiple replies, and not without spending some effort either; but really, your posts are becoming walls of text, Mr Vargas.

I can only throw out there that to encourage further discussion, you would probably stand to benefit from making several smaller posts, where you discuss one (sub)topic at a time, and/or where you adress one forumist at a time.

There are things in your recent communication (and not only in this particular thread) I certainly would have responded to, if I wouldn't have gotten such a huge chunk of text to edit first when I click reply with quote.

Sincerely,
Zapp

 

[CapnZapp]

This is the feel that 5e is looking for.

And I'm not contesting that.

What I am curious about is: how come you and others are so accepting of this fact?

What you're saying is that 5E really only works well in the classic dungeon environment: places where you can easily explain how you encounter a new group of foes every ten minutes or every other hour.

What I want to know is why not more people realize and see this as something that has a considerable downside.

Not supporting few encounter per day adventures (which certainly include many many types of stories and adventures, including but not being limited to overland adventures and traveling) is too me a large step backwards in the evolution of D&D.

I've been playing D&D for decades, but seldom in actual honest-to-god dungeons. That playstyle and its baggage simply isn't as attractive to me.

I'm much more an Red Hand of Doom kind of DM than, say, I don't know, is Princes of the Apocalypse the most dungeoney of 5E modules? The freedom to do what you want and go where you want is considerably attractive to me. The outright abusive ease with which you can rest, coupled with the considerable balancing dependency on not resting, is not.

I would have thought the backlash be considerable.

Instead here at ENWorld I encounter vocal opposition, sometimes by outright WotC apologists, ready to defend their every decision in absurdum, or at the very least hugely accepting and supporting of the edition's shortcomings and deficiencies.

Why do you think that is?

 

[CapnZapp]

Thank the heavens NPCs are not done like PCs. I ran several multi-year D&D 3.0 & 3.5 campaigns where monsters and NPCs were built exactly like PCs. As we got to higher levels, I wasted SO MANY HOURS doing math to build foes in my adventures that I would much rather have spent improving the adventures and the campaign.

When 4e came I disliked it a "D&D system" a lot (though grew to like it some over time), but I loved the exception based monster design. Taking that forward in 5e (and the 13th Age campaign I run) has been a blessing. Do what you need, here's some guidelines for around where the numbers should be. Spend your effort making interesting foes and adventures instead of mathematically equal to PCs, when it's really easy to min-max PCs so that's no guarantee of balance. Heck, PC creation is made richer so that each player, focusing on one character, has a enough to do. A DM running dozens of different foes during a night doesn't need that range for each of them.

Having NPCs built like PCs would be a dealbreaker for 5e - with the exception of the encounters-per-long/short-rest it's my favorite D&D mechanics by far. But I would toss the whole thing aside rather then DM that again.

To be fair nobody has suggested that

I am pointing out what I percieve to be a huge opportunity to improve NPC statblocks. Spellcasters having concentration spells clearly marked as such, and being supplied with three likely Cast actions. It would go a long way of making these stat blocks as easy to use as monsters with abilities that aren't spells - they're already listed in the stat blocks, so why not spells?

For some reason, a few posters are vocal opponents to this suggestion. I can't see why, unless they're reflexive opponents to everything I suggest, perhaps because I don't uncritically buy every single thing about this edition...?

That puts a downer to what I would have wanted to happen - a general consensus this would be a great thing, that eventually spreads to the design team, and the edition is improved for everyone's benefit!

 

[CapnZapp]

AFB, but 100 percent certain the DMG (in the chapter on building encounters) expressly says just this. It also says something like the action economy of 4-5 PCs makes solo fights one sided.

You'd know this if you read that chapter and applied those guidelines instead of ignoring them and then complaining the system (that you dont use) sucks when it doesnt work out for you.

Even putting aside the express words of the DMG telling you this fact, does it really need pointing out?

I mean; 4-5 PCs, each dealing around 50 damage each per turn (probably around par for around 11th level PCs) dish out 200-250 damage per round. Thats just raw damage, and not other 'one-two' punches that they can dish out via owning the action economy, lobbing a single save or suck spell (or a barrage of them) and so forth.

This is the exact reason for the existence of legendary creatures. If you want to use a solo creature it generally needs to have a very high CR (the encounter building XP charts recommend about 4-5 CRs higher than the party). Better yet, use a legendary creature (the creatures legendary actions even up the action economy imbalance, and its legendary saves protect it from getting shut down on round 1 via a barrage of save or suck effects).

Higher CR solo creatures run the risk of devolving your encounters into rocket tag. They can generally deal enough damage in a single hit to cream a PC in a single round. Combats become much more swingy.

I had a similar houserule for SWSE (which like all iterations of d20 and many other games also features this problem). I simply added 2 'legendary actions' to solo encounters (they get an extra turn at initiative -10 and then again at initiative -20) giving them 3 turns per round, and tripled their HP. I also let them ignore getting moved down the CT [or remove a debilitating effect like getting Force Gripped] 3/ encounter. The EL for such an encounter is = to the critters CR (instead of CR/3).

'Legendary' Darth Vader in this system has 450 odd HP, and gets three turns per round. He can choose to ignore getting knocked down the CT (or choose to automatically resist a talent or force power used on him) 3 times per encounter.

He's an approriate solo encounter for 4 x 19th level SWSE PCs.

But why oh why don't you criticize Wotc for not putting something akin to your fixes into the edition??

I mean, you "explain" to me how the DMG is saying solo fights get one sided as if that's all there is to it.

Why stop there? Why not fix it instead?

Your post would have made sense if the problem was unfixable. But it isn't.

 

[Eric V]

I'm much more an Red Hand of Doom kind of DM than, say, I don't know, is Princes of the Apocalypse the most dungeoney of 5E modules? The freedom to do what you want and go where you want is considerably attractive to me. The outright abusive ease with which you can rest, coupled with the considerable balancing dependency on not resting, is not.

I'm more along that kind of DM as well. It starts to become a bit tiring and feel forced to make sure enough encounters get thrown in before the BBEG fight for required drama. One "solution" is to have the BBEG be much higher in CR than the rules suggest, but...there's plenty of opportunity for an accidental TPK there.

The only other thing I can think of is the alternate rest rules in the DMG. Not sure how those work out in play, though. I think the bolded part is the crux of the issue, along with the fact that not every adventure can be a race against the clock kind of thing.

This has been an interesting thread, btw. Thanks.

 

[CapnZapp]

Thing is, turning [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION]'s pushover encounter into a more dangerous one isn't all that difficult.

Whoa there Hussar

Who said it was a pushover encounter that needed to be more dangerous?

Not I, that's for sure.

This thread is about me setting up an absurdly dangerous encounter, and then seeing the party absolutely crush it.

I'm certain that if ANY ONE of these things had went down differently, it could have been a huge slaughterhouse...

• the Warlock's familiar being discovered (they did discuss having it break into the cultists room at the inn)
• the monk not deciding to relocate to within striking distance of the inn entrance
• the monk having a bit of bad luck with his initative (so Keeper Alandra and Master Thalder could act first)
• the battlefield not being this large open town plaza, where 30 ft and 60 ft spells could not reach more than a single opponent at a time
• the party warlock being caught in the open instead of being able to take cover inside the town hall between her turns
• the party postponing their "raid" just a little bit, letting word that the fighter and cleric absolutely dominated the bar fight that took place immediately prior reach Lord Gonfrey (and this his allies).

For instance, they talked about seeking an audience with the Lord to perhaps buy their friend out of prison (the reason they entered the village in the first place).

Mostly pure chance meant they spent their morning looking for (unrelated) clues in Rundreth Manor a fair distance away. It felt reasonable they would reach the village just after sundown. Had they arrived during the day, things would have been different since the Lord and his Warlock would have been present in the village. Not to mention the lack of shadows on an open town square during day time!

Also notable is the fact I did not know the Warlock had taken Forcecage. Well played by that player, surprising not only Lord Gongrey but me as well (my warlock player is probably the player most skilled at playing the DM, which as we all know is the highest form of optimization )

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On the other hand, also chance meant they did not take out the Blackguard (with three militia boys) first (it was very very close that they had decided to rush him before springing their prisoner free). Or, if they hadn't listened to the town scribe's story, it would not have been an unlikely development they had fought the dragon cultists separately. The cultists actually did a sending to alert Lord Gonfrey, and I made the judgement he would have time to reach the village from the keep (since it was after sundown) because of the scribe's storytelling.

So in the end, having to fight all five "named" NPCs at the same time (which this came very close to) was definitely a worst case scenario. A best case scenario would have meant taking the bad guys out piecemeal, and possibly using the potential NPC gladiator ally and Mystra girl to do it for them...



TL;DR: This encounter definitely did not need to be made more dangerous...

(Didn't somebody calculate the absolutely huge XP loadout, even for a level 14 party?)