D&D 5E Does anyone else find Nova-ing is not a problem in 5e?

[cmad1977]

Got some more details on how you do a kick-ass fight that's not trivial when the PCs have all their daily resources, but still level appropriate?

Waves help. Intelligent enemies help. Bad guys don't just stand around waiting for the heroes to bust through the door.

OR
Given that a fully loaded and prepped crew of heroes is so badass why bother making it level appropriate?


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[Caliban]

I haven't had a problem with it in my home campaign. I let the players rest whenever they want - barring nearby enemies and environmental factors. But I also ignore the "level appropriate" encounter guidelines and just make encounters appropriate for the party and situation.

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[cmad1977]

I haven't had a problem with it in my home campaign. I let the players rest whenever they want - barring nearby enemies and environmental factors. But I also ignore the "level appropriate" encounter guidelines and just make encounters appropriate for the party and situation.

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Yeah, much the same.
If the heroes are going to be facing a series of encounters I go with the guidelines(they work well for me). If they're facing one or two encounters I don't.


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[Jester David]

How do you tell a story about a long but peaceful investigation followed by a life-and-death fight, when attrition is required for a life-and-death fight to happen?

That's always been an issue with mid-to-high level D&D. Because survival and powers increase so much.

Traps and other hazards can work. A high damage opponent also works. Minions immediately prior to the boss works as well, with no time to recover.
And interesting terrain can help. As can separating the party.

But, generally, the point of those kinds of stories is the adventure and investigation. So even if the combat isn't life-or-death and an edge of your seat challenge, the session can be fun.

 

[S'mon]

Got some more details on how you do a kick-ass fight that's not trivial when the PCs have all their daily resources, but still level appropriate?

By making it level appropriate for a fully resourced party? Something like 5 CR 9 foes for a 5 PC level 12 group seems about right.

 

[Caliban]

Got some more details on how you do a kick-ass fight that's not trivial when the PCs have all their daily resources, but still level appropriate?

Oh, that's easy. Once initiative is rolled just keep adding bad guys until the players look worried.

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[UngeheuerLich]

Oh, that's easy. Once initiative is rolled just keep adding bad guys until the players look worried.

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That is actually a lot better than adding more and more hp. The novaing characters will at least feel that the nova did something. Dropping the first big bad guy.
If maybe the wizard regrets not having a fireball left to clear the next wave is a nice byproduct. And if in the next fight the wizard saves his highest spell slot for a while to see if he can't hit more enemies, you habe won.
The paladin fighter who burnt his highest slots and action surge may also regret not being able to use his 4 attack nova with spells and superiority dice on the big brute which only appears in the 3rd round of battle.

And after the group learnt that there is no cookie cutter method of solving encounters all nova problems fade away.

 

[Tony Vargas]

In 3e/PF, IME Nova tactics for casters can be so overwhelming as to trivialise any conceivable encounter and efectively 'break' the game.

Sure.

But I've not seen any problem with nova tactics in my 5e games.

It wasn't necessarily a /problem/ in 3e/PF (some folks quite liked it), it's just how the game could end up playing.

5e combats are tuned to be fast/trivial, anyway, unless you dial them up pretty aggressively, so it shouldn't make a big difference if you did nova (so why bother?). Plus, almost any class can 'nova' at least a little - the fighter with Action Surge, even the Rogue, in spite of having no rest-recharge powers, can open strong in a surprise round. So if the wizard doesn't pwn an encounter with a big AE, the melee types with scythe through it pretty quickly, anyway.

Does anyone else have this experience, or am I alone? Because it seems like a lot of the angst about the "5 minute adventuring day", "Policing the adventuring day" to force multiple encounters, et al

Oh, the 5MWD issue (and the even more problematic issue of 'balancing' short vs long rests vs encounter & other challenges) still applies, it's just not necessarily all about trivializing combat encounters.

A caster can Nova with a high-damage/big-area/hard-control/whatever spell, a melee type can combo with some peak DPR, they can even synergize and rollover a speedbump encounter that much more easily.

But, because casters are all spontaneous, now, any slot you nova with is a slot you can't solve some other problem with, so the issue with too-short/easy a day is not just that you can blow up every encounter - out of low levels, you can, even on a 6-8 encounter day - it's that you reduce your flexibility to deal with all other challenges if you do so every time. In a shorter day, you not only nova the few encounters as a matter of course, your casters have plenty of mojo left over to trivialize every other challenge you come across.

 

[Gadget]

I guess obviously if the encounters are all 5e DMG "medium" or "hard" or
low-end "deadly" and the PCs get to go all out on each one, the game will be easy.

I think this may be the main complaint I have seen people level at 5e. Unlike 4e, the game is not designed around the 'Encounter' but the 'adventuring day'. Thus the 6-8 encounters baseline for attrition based adventuring day.

In 3e/PF, IME Nova tactics for casters can be so overwhelming as to trivialise any conceivable encounter and efectively 'break' the game. But I've not seen any problem with nova tactics in my 5e games. They play a lot like 0e-2e, or even 4e. Spellcasters can use their highest level powers (eg my Sunday group has a Wiz-12/Rog-1 and a Druid-14) without trivialising battles or in any way breaking the game. Sometimes they even lose & have to retreat, with Dimension Door, Wall of Stone etc to help them get away.

The issue was different in 3e, the vast difference in capabilities between a magically buffed up party and one not so enhanced made it so. The whole 'scry and fry' tactics and all that. 5e has severely curtailed the magic stacking with the concentration mechanic, along with toning down some of the more abusive

Does anyone else have this experience, or am I alone? Because it seems like a lot of the angst about the "5 minute adventuring day", "Policing the adventuring day" to force multiple encounters, et al
seems a bit misplaced. I've just not been seeing issues with the nova-capable classes.

In 5e, the "5 minute adventuring day" has more to do with the baseline design being attrition over the adventuring day based (the aforementioned 6-8 encounters), with there being fewer ways to force that on the players other than the tired "the world will end/princess be sacrificed/Mcguffin found if you don't hurry up (along with the tried and true random monster encounter).

The only possible issue is that short-rest, non-nova-capable classes may look weak by comparison. And shifting them to more of a long rest dependent, nova-capable design fixes that.

This is indeed close to the crux of the issue, and you say this as if it it a trivial thing to do or an afterthought. Or even desirable.

Or do GMs just love forcing resource management on the PCs? I think there's a place for that, but 5e has tons of spells like Leomund's Tiny Hut that make this hard to accomplish. Whereas balancing around "every fight is potentially risky, even at full power" doesn't really seem to be hard at all.

As mentioned above, the game has gone back to a more attrition based, resource management model. Some tables prefer this method more than others, but there is the dichotomy of the game being designed around this baseline and the availability of ways like Leomund's Tiny Hut.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think this may be the main complaint I have seen people level at 5e. Unlike 4e, the game is not designed around the 'Encounter' but the 'adventuring day'. Thus the 6-8 encounters baseline for attrition based adventuring day.

Interestingly, 5e is also like 4e, in that it's designed around attrition between both short rests (an encounter in 4e) and long rests ('an adventuring day' in both). It's unlike 4e, as you note, in that a 5e hour-long short rest doesn't correspond as tightly to an encounter as the 4e 5-min short rest tended to, and in that there's a resource, HD, that's both short-rest-associated in that it recharges hps on a short rest, and uniquely /two/ long rests to recharge, itself. So the baseline of not on /just/ 6-8 Encounters per day, but 2-3 short rests per day, and, presumably, about 2 encounters per short rest. That's get'n pretty specific. That resource balancing/management/attrition of a 5e 'day' is more complex than that of a 4e day, let alone a classic-D&D adventuring day that just had spell slots & magic items to deal with (recharging hps being primarily a matter of healing spells & items) - and it's not surprising there are some concerns out there.

Ultimately, though, I don't think it's a big problem, in a sense. I see it more as guidelines for anyone who may want to balance 5e classes/encounters mechanically. That is, it's not a set of assumptions you deviate from at your peril, it's just available guidance in case you want to deviate from the usual D&D practice of managing intra-party and encounter balance, dynamically yourself, and run in a more regimented style in which such things might theoretically take care of themselves.