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

[knasser]

Maybe a step back is in order. Most of the objections seem to revolve around the idea that the five encounter, four-person party is baked in you either should live with it and find ways to bend your story to fit, or find a different game. But Capn's earlier arguments were about ways to "fix" the game that didn't (presumably) prevent a four-person party having five encounters per day.

What this thread is devolving into (I fear) is a lot of people arguing abstract principles at each other. Which is an argument that can never be won. Only factual arguments can be won. I would suggest if Capn wants to refute the people who claim his objections are not design flaws but core assumptions of the game, he provide some examples of how the game or its content (I separate out the two) could be changed such that it solves a problem but doesn't interfere with what others say are design goals. If he can give examples of changes that remove constraints but don't add new ones, then he proves his point. If others can show that the proposals do in fact interfere with what they say are actually design goals, then they prove theirs.

For example, the Jubilex monster change where the spawning feature prevented a PC party insta-winning but without ramping up its ability to do damage per se. I.e. it reduced swinginess but didn't make the monster tougher as such.

Maybe Capn or another could give specific examples (let's number them so they're easy to discuss) if they're willing and discussion could become more concrete, and thus more likely to produce actual conclusions as to whether the game can be improved without diminishing the fun of people who are already happy. It would certainly be more useful to people like myself who could decide whether a suggestion would be good to add to their own game.

Just a thought.

 

[OB1]

When did having all the info needed to run a monster in one place become a bad thing? When did having suggested encounter groups for said monster included in its write-up become a bad thing? When did giving it a role, for suggested combat purposes, become a bad thing? These aforementioned things only made the game easier (and therefore more fun) to run...why were they jettisoned?

IMO, it became a bad thing when such information restricted the creativity of the DM instead of inspiring the DM. When the info listed in the stat block is assumed to be the only things the monster can do. When the role can't change depending on if you are fighting it at level 2 or level 12. When the rules make the game easier to run, but less fun to actually play, that's when it's a bad thing.

No monster manual can ever hope to provide all of the info needed for every possible party to encounter it. 5e doesn't try to provide all those answers for you, it tries to inspire the DM to provide their own answers in the way that is most fun for their group. It may be more work, but it is also more fun.

 

[Sacrosanct]

IMO, it became a bad thing when such information restricted the creativity of the DM instead of inspiring the DM. When the info listed in the stat block is assumed to be the only things the monster can do. When the role can't change depending on if you are fighting it at level 2 or level 12. When the rules make the game easier to run, but less fun to actually play, that's when it's a bad thing.

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That's part of it, I suppose. And I know it's definitely a thing that exists (that I saw really become a problem in 3e). But for me, there's another more pressing reason. When I DM, the real estate of my table and my books is critical. I need to be as efficient as possible. Therefore, I don't like to turn any more pages than I have to. If I have to flip pages for every encounter, that's too much, and is a hassle. Especially if the information is redundant (like the aforementioned spell list also detailing what those spells do further down).

Here is a page from one of my adventures (this is from an early playtest version). Critical stats only, fit as much info as you can, so I don't have to flip pages after every encounter. For me, this is the perfect middle ground. I know opinions vary, but to answer the question, this is where too much info becomes more of a problem than a good thing in my opinion.

 

[mpwylie]

That's what's frustrating about the 'apologists': People critique the game because they want a better game, and they feel 5e might be able to deliver. Otherwise, we're left with "5e delivers as long as you have 6-8 encounters per day, otherwise, all bets are off." I can't believe that's true. "5e breaks down after level 15." Why?! With decades of experience, no one can make those levels work? Really? It's impossible? I can't believe that either. And if it ends up being true (note, I don't think it needs be true), then it's not right that the designers present the game pretending that it works fine. :/

"Apologists" Assumes that something is broken that people are apologizing for, that just not the case.
I appreciate people critiquing the game but there is a vast difference between “I think X would work better with this tweak” and saying “I am not playing it right and it’s not working so it’s broken and it’s all the designer’s fault.”

"5e delivers as long as you have 6-8 encounters per day, otherwise, all bets are off." I can't believe that's true. Why can’t you believe this to be true? Monopoly is built on the assumption that you roll dice to determine random distances you move, but if you throw away the dice and say everyone just moves 1 space at a time the game will break. 5e is no different. It is built on 6-8 encounter adventuring day and if you deviate from that, it doesn’t work the same! But the beauty of 5e is, they left the rules and game open enough, and provided tools to tweak it to meet various styles. The great thing is that everything is easily adjustable which is by design. It is really just as simple as, play it like it was built and it works without alteration, don’t play it like it was built, use these tools to account for it. I see no reason to apologize for this, I think it was brilliant!

"5e breaks down after level 15." I think the system works reasonably well if you play it correctly and/or adjust things, but the inherent issue is, in a game where people can wish things, simulacrum, Polymorph, Teleport, and many many other things beyond 15^th level, no system can be perfect. The gameplay is just too open ended and unpredictable to create a 1 size fits all solution. That is why the game has a DM, that is why they gave us tools and optional rules. The best way to make a 1 size fits all solution is to do exactly what they did, put it in the hands of the DM.
If folks want to talk about things they would prefer, things they would like to see, things they may want tweaked, Awesome! That’s a great conversation to have. This issue is when folks start whining how it’s broken and ranting about how WOTC needs to own up to all these mistakes when all their issues are because they aren’t playing it correctly and don’t want to use what they were given to fix what they themselves have broken.

One of my groups is very savy and currently playing at 19^th level. I don’t use the guidelines for encounters a day for that group and yet my table works just fine. The difference is, I know I am not playing it correctly so I don’t expect it to work out of the box without using the tools they gave me to make it work. At the same time my other group doesn’t play optimally and I build the game with 6-8 encounters between rests and I do almost no tweaking to make it work. I do however take the time to prepare for the game and make sure I know what abilities the monsters have and use them correctly. Both groups get challenged, both groups have fun. I see nothing broken. There are things I would have done different, there are things I would like to see added at some point, but it’s not broken.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I do wish, if the design team was aware of this, that they had made mention of it in the sections for those optional rules. :/

They seem to have assumed, for good or for ill, that segregating a rule by labeling it "Optional" would be enough for the people playing the game to realize that using that option would change the way the game plays (meaning an obvious need to want the game to play differently, or to do something to prevent the game from feeling different despite the change, assuming you wish to engage that optional rule).

Much like how a video game might let you select the number of lives you get, and doesn't feel the need to specifically call out that setting that number higher than the default reduces the overall difficulty of the game because that should be obvious.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Can you be specific about what you mean by the bolded? What are you referring to?

I've done all I can to make that clear prior to this point in the thread, so more words spent on it are not likely to change whatever misunderstanding you are having.

 

[knasser]

"5e delivers as long as you have 6-8 encounters per day, otherwise, all bets are off." I can't believe that's true. Why can’t you believe this to be true? Monopoly is built on the assumption that you roll dice to determine random distances you move, but if you throw away the dice and say everyone just moves 1 space at a time the game will break. 5e is no different.

I'm not the person you quoted, but the reason I would find that hard to believe is true is because it is staggeringly restrictive and any design that depends on that to more than a very casual degree is flawed. Why flawed? Because it should be possible to design a game that functions just as well for a much wider range. No other role-playing game I have ever played is as restrictive as that and to my mind the purpose of a role-playing game is to tell stories. Monopoly - a game of chance and arbitrariness - is about the last thing that should be a point of comparison for a role-playing game. For a role-playing game to be so focused on progressing through a set amount of encounters per day rules out any sort of story where encounters follow naturally from events and decisions rather than from metagame reasons. That logic is almost by definition. I'll repeat it because it is a critical flaw in a role-playing game. If the game system pushes you towards a set number of encounters to work well, then encounters are not following from player decisions, from the flow of the plot or the story or drama. They're being set by meta reasons and the story, drama, player decisions are all being driven by rules reasons rather than in-game events. That is a flaw because it reduces versimilitude and constrains many types of stories and player decisions. Constraint without advantage is an objectively bad thing because some lose for the sake of nobody gaining. If making a game work for six encounters by necessity made it work poorly for any other number of encounters, that would be one thing. But it doesn't. No other role-playing game I have played is so limited.

 

[Tony Vargas]

IMO, it became a bad thing when such information restricted the creativity of the DM instead of inspiring the DM. When the info listed in the stat block is assumed to be the only things the monster can do. When the role can't change depending on if you are fighting it at level 2 or level 12. When the rules make the game easier to run, but less fun to actually play, that's when it's a bad thing.

So, never. ;P Cool.

No monster manual can ever hope to provide all of the info needed for every possible party to encounter it.

In theory, that depends on how robustly-balanced PC options are. In practice, though...

5e doesn't try to provide all those answers for you, it tries to inspire the DM to provide their own answers in the way that is most fun for their group. It may be more work, but it is also more fun.

As long as you enjoy that kind of 'work,' sure.

"Apologists" Assumes that something is broken that people are apologizing for,

Nah, "apologists" can be (coincidentally) in the right, and still be apologists, it's just the lack of critical thinking before leaping to the defense that marks them as such.

"5e breaks down after level 15." I think the system works reasonably well if you play it correctly....
....The gameplay is just too open ended and unpredictable to create a 1 size fits all solution.

So there really is no 'correctly.'

but the inherent issue is, in a game where people can wish things, simulacrum, Polymorph, Teleport, and many many other things beyond 15^th level, no system can be perfect.

A system doesn't need to be perfect to avoid falling apart. And, you can have things like Polymorph or Teleport without having problematic 3.0 Polymorph or scry/buff/teleport. Besides, still holding together up to 15th is arguably better than 3e or the classic game did.

 

[knasser]

They seem to have assumed, for good or for ill, that segregating a rule by labeling it "Optional" would be enough for the people playing the game to realize that using that option would change the way the game plays (meaning an obvious need to want the game to play differently, or to do something to prevent the game from feeling different despite the change, assuming you wish to engage that optional rule).

Much like how a video game might let you select the number of lives you get, and doesn't feel the need to specifically call out that setting that number higher than the default reduces the overall difficulty of the game because that should be obvious.

The consequence of changing the number of lives given in a video game is intuitive and easy to grasp however. I have feats in my game because at character creation a player made their PC that way and I was a new GM. I don't know that six or seven levels from now their character is going to be overpowered when I start playing. I was adding up their stats, found it didn't make sense and they said "I thought we were using Variant Humans. Everybody normally uses Feats". I looked in the book, it had an exchange rate where a player would give up six attribute points for a feat and figured the game designers knew what they were doing and that was a fair exchange. Tagging it as "Optional" conveyed very little to me. Maybe it was optional because it added more complexity, maybe it was optional because people liked playing different ways or more depth to their characters. Who knows? All said, one can't condemn someone for using optional rules and liken it to changing the number of lives in a video game, when the consequences of the option is so very much more complex and hard to fathom. It's not as if the book says "this is optional because it makes PCs a lot more powerful". If it did that might be something. But a DM without tonnes of experience is going to assume that if something is in the core rule book it works. Reasonably so, imo.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

...figured the game designers knew what they were doing...

They did know what they were doing. They were making a base set of rules that works when played under their provided assumptions, and providing options for use by people wanting to use a different set of assumptions or to have the game work differently.

The problem you describe is one of you not knowing what the designers were doing, and I will grant that their assumption of DMs realizing that when they say "...your Dungeon Master might allow..." they meant exactly that, and no more, and certainly not that any/all optional/variant rules could be engaged without further thought on the matter.

Tagging it as "Optional" conveyed very little to me.

And it conveyed very much to me. But that is a natural problem of language; there are too many possible meanings of each word, so any given string of them can be interpreted in multiple linguistically-correct ways.

All said, one can't condemn someone for using optional rules

I've not condemned anyone for using optional rules. I have condemned the idea that when using optional rules, it's not your own responsibility to make whatever other adjustments are necessary for you to enjoy the result of using those rules, whether it is accepting the altered state of the game (adjusting your expectations) or altering other aspects of the game to mitigate undesired effects (adjusting the way you play).

...and liken it to changing the number of lives in a video game, when the consequences of the option is so very much more complex and hard to fathom.

If the consequences of these optional rules were "complex and hard to fathom", I doubt there would have been as many threads as there have been in which people stated with absolute confidence what those consequences are. We'd have people posting about how their game play broke down and they have no idea why, rather than people pointing a finger directly at specific feats and calling them "broken."

At the very least, I don't find the consequences of optional D&D rules to be all that complex in this edition thanks to the overall simplicity of the game rules, nor do I find it to be hard to fathom that "give the character a thing they otherwise wouldn't have" means characters having things not actually expected for them to have by the base game rules.

But a DM without tonnes of experience is going to assume that if something is in the core rule book it works. Reasonably so, imo.

I don't think that is the case. In my experience, inexperienced DMs have typically approached the game with caution because they are aware of their own inexperience - so they take anything listed as optional and say "I'll save that for later, when I've got a handle on the non-optional stuff." Some even look for ways to trim-back even more of the rules so that they don't, in their inexperienced state, have so much to keep track of.

Yes, I have seen a few inexperienced DMs that were brimming with confidence and were planning on using all kinds of optional rules, variants, and even their own home-brewed-without-ever-playing-a-single-session-before materials... but those have, in my experience, been the sort of people that are dead-set on doing that no matter who tells them it's not a great plan or what reasons are given why they should reconsider. And then their first campaign goes up in flames, if it ever gets started in the first place, and they abandon the entire idea of DMing or come back for campaign #2 with a base-rules-only approach because they realized their error of asking too much of their as of then un-developed skill set.

And really, what I think this kind of comes down to is that WotC wrote the game rules assuming their reader to be possessed of a particular degree of intelligence and self-awareness, and some people are expressing that they think that was asking/expecting too much of the reader.