D&D 5E 5e on Hard difficulty

[clearstream]

That is my thought exactly.

Now the question is if 45,000 XP / PC is a deadly/extremely challenging encounter? That is a roughly a pit fiend and two ice devils for each lvl 20 PC. I would think that is fairly lethal if it was a straight up melee fight, but against ranged PCs, maybe not. Would be great to get some play testers to evaluate this.

If can find something that looks reasonable I will be using it straight away in my weekly campaign. So it will get testing. One thought I had is rather than alter the XP value directly, it could be better to alter the CR value so that the treasure tables work without modification. (If we change the XP value so that we are using a higher CR creature against our PCs, then rolls for that creature won't generate appropriate treasure for their level. Whereas, if we change CR the creature will have less treasure. Sucky for the creature, but probably more balanced in game.)

Up to and including CR 5, drop the CR by 1 and use the resultant XP value in encounters.
From CR 6 to CR 11, drop it by 2
From CR 12 on, drop it by 3

That generally cuts their XP value by about half, but awkwardly lands creatures at the top of a band in the same CR as those in the bottom of the next. Perhaps it's better to drop by 1 up to CR 5, and then 2 from CR 6 on?

 

[clearstream]

How are worlds not teaming with level 20 characters, especially long lived races like elves?

The mathematical reason is the very low survival rates over encounters. In order to level from 1-20 you must live through over one hundred attritional and a score of lethal encounters. With my initial targets of 1/24 chance of dying per attritional and 1/4 per lethal, and with revival magic used on average half the time, only 1 in a 1000 characters who started at tier 1 would live to see level 20. What I will do is reduce the targeted death rates and the revival assumption, because it seems like for most DMs both those numbers are much lower than what I'm using!

1/100 for attritional and 1/10 for lethal (chances of death) are possibly about right. That means a party of 4 PCs has a better than 90% chance of seeing a death per 60 attritional or 6 lethal encounters: a death per 8 or 9 adventuring "days" roughly.

TIER4 ADVENTURING

"I joined TIER4 AVENTURING and in 12 days everyone else in my party was dead. I demanded a refund!" Rosencrantz the Dish Master, level 17 Cook

"A little over a month ago, I was called the Runt of the North-12 strength, 10 constitution, now thanks to TIER4 ADVENTURING, I'm one of only two guys in my year to reach tier 2." Bullwinkle the Barbarian (retired)

"Because I was a single mom raising 8 kids, I joined TIER4's once a week program. It took me a little longer... after 33-39 weeks of training I died, leaving my children motherless" Sarah, via Speak with Dead from a High Priestess of Light

 

[dave2008]

If can find something that looks reasonable I will be using it straight away in my weekly campaign. So it will get testing. One thought I had is rather than alter the XP value directly, it could be better to alter the CR value so that the treasure tables work without modification. (If we change the XP value so that we are using a higher CR creature against our PCs, then rolls for that creature won't generate appropriate treasure for their level. Whereas, if we change CR the creature will have less treasure. Sucky for the creature, but probably more balanced in game.)

Up to and including CR 5, drop the CR by 1 and use the resultant XP value in encounters.
From CR 6 to CR 11, drop it by 2
From CR 12 on, drop it by 3

That generally cuts their XP value by about half, but awkwardly lands creatures at the top of a band in the same CR as those in the bottom of the next. Perhaps it's better to drop by 1 up to CR 5, and then 2 from CR 6 on?

I never use the treasure tables so I didn't even think about them! I don't like changing the CR of the monsters, but it is more a personal hang-up than anything else. It doesn't solve the problem for me, but if it works for you - go for it and let us know how it goes.

 

[clearstream]

I never use the treasure tables so I didn't even think about them! I don't like changing the CR of the monsters, but it is more a personal hang-up than anything else. It doesn't solve the problem for me, but if it works for you - go for it and let us know how it goes.

Modifying CR feels like a good solution from various angles. I like that it's experienced by players only by the results (no mechanics visible to them change) and I hold out hope that it makes better use of the MM than if I have to buff every creature individually.

The level of lethality I'm aiming for is to see PC death at about 1/100 in easy-hard encounters, and 1/10 in deadly encounters. Without revivals fewer than 1 in 20 characters make level 20. With revivals (1/5 for tier 1 scaling to 4/5 in tier 4) about 1 in 5 characters could make level 20. About 1 in 2 tier 1 PCs should see tier 2, and about 1 in 2 of those PCs should see tier 3. That works for my world, where I assume 1/100 NPCs are tier 1 equivalent, and 1/10 fewer per tier upward. My narrative is that about 6/10 retire and 3/10 die: leaving PCs over-represented in the remainder which is fine by me. (PCs obviously not retiring, but doing better at surviving than the 1 in 4 background rate.) That all tallies pretty well with a principle that NPCs use MM-like stat-blocks with part but not all of the power that PCs have.

In my thread asking about revival rates, I see that for most DMs very few to no characters die, and very few are revived. Obviously people should run their campaigns as they wish, but I believe the game mechanics - Spare the Dying, Gentle Repose, Raise Dead, Reincarnation, Resurrection and True Resurrection - are very suggestive of a world in which revival is more frequent. Certainly it seems to be a theme of the coming adventure that quite a few high-tier NPCs have experienced revival. Note also that I'm using a Gritty Realism because (among other benefits) I believe that sustains about the right amount of casts of such spells.

 

[CapnZapp]

If you don't have anything to actually add to the discussion but edition warring at shots and 5th Edition, you really don't need to post. Attacking the game just makes people defensive.

Do you have any actual suggestions to offer on making 5e harder? Things we as the community can add and make? Would you like to contribute anything?

I have contributed plenty. Reining in feats, discussing how to combat archery supremacy, you name it.

As for the purposes of this thread, however, I just wanted to agree with you. Reissuing the Monster Manual (in an "advanced" version, rather than actually replacing the one we've got) would go a long way.

Terrain could also work, but only with better support. A DM needs to be able to get everything about an encounter with a monster from its MM page. Lair actions and descriptions is a good step in this direction, but of course they're almost always just ribbon features that really doesn't increase the heroes' challenge.

If you're* talking about "a monster can always be made challenging, given terrain exotic enough" that might be true, but it's an argument along the "this critter has an Int 20, it must play smart". If it isn't in the stat block, it isn't there for the challenge rating.

*) you in general, not speaking directly or solely to you Jester.

That is, I don't care if the dragon or lich is an idiot or a mastermind. It has six ability scores. None of them matter outside of what's in the stat block. If its CR of 20 really is more of a 12, then there's something seriously wrong. That the monster COULD bring in traps and schemes and adds is completely beside the issue. If the monster is meant to be encountered with all that, add it to the stat block.

Other than that, if the OP wants to talk about XP budgets and encounter frequencies, I will leave you to it. I don't see any future in having that as a solution, since there's no real science or accuracy to it anyway. I'd much rather have monsters that can challenge a fresh party right off the bat, and ideally on their own if that's their legendary role. And then just vary their power to adjust for worn-down heroes.

So yes, I agree with you. The monsters are key. It's vital to the game you don't have to use monsters 10-15 CR steps higher than the APL, because that doesn't really work too well - they generally can one-shot a hero. It does mean the fight becomes tense and exciting, because the party will per definition not be able to down the monster before it can seriously threaten them in return, but it sells hero resilience and stamina short.

I'd much rather have support for Solo creatures, where a CR 10 Solo generally simply can't be brought down in less than, say, three rounds no matter what*. On the other hand, its many and varied attacks are geared to not easily be focusable, and so it can in return not easily kill off a level 10 character in a single round.
*) by a level 8-10 party of five, that is

The end result: a mechanic that assumes that this combat - all on its own - is supposed to be exciting enough. No further adventuring that day assumed.

THEN, if you want to turn this encounter from "hard" to "double deadly" (or whatever), you can either add in warm-up fights (where the party is wise to conserve resources) or even adds to the main event itself (though it's okay if the book cautions you against doing so - even with the current rules, a walk-over fight against, say a Balor, becomes significantly more dangerous if you add a couple of much-lower-CRs adds, like half a dozen Barlgura guards or a pair of Marilith wives)

Hope you find this reply sufficiently expanded.

 

[clearstream]

Other than that, if the OP wants to talk about XP budgets and encounter frequencies, I will leave you to it. I don't see any future in having that as a solution, since there's no real science or accuracy to it anyway. I'd much rather have monsters that can challenge a fresh party right off the bat, and ideally on their own if that's their legendary role. And then just vary their power to adjust for worn-down heroes.

Possibly it could help to hear what the figuring out is about. Through having targets we can tune toward our intent. So a statement such as "I want to see no more than one death per 10 character-engagements in deadly encounters is useful because when we're running such encounters we know what we're looking out for. In the same vein, considering the cumulative probabilities lets us understand what the long-term consequences are of such targets. For me, they suggest that revivification magic is potentially underutilised - in part because deaths are very infrequent. If we're increasing the game difficulty that's going to make deaths more frequent and the cumulative probabilities suggest we may want to allow such spells to be used more. How much more? Again, we can set goals for that and know that - relative to our framing statement - they are likely to turn out to make sense.

Essentially, the maths is done to make the empirical testing more efficient, by homing in on targets that are more likely about right. In estimation "accuracy" is always relative to your goals and contrasted with "precision". The calculating is accurate enough provided we remember that the apparently precise values are approximations or suggested centering values.

So yes, I agree with you. The monsters are key. It's vital to the game you don't have to use monsters 10-15 CR steps higher than the APL, because that doesn't really work too well - they generally can one-shot a hero. It does mean the fight becomes tense and exciting, because the party will per definition not be able to down the monster before it can seriously threaten them in return, but it sells hero resilience and stamina short.

Agreed, my sense is that it is efficient to modify monster CRs downward, but that cannot go very far due to the propensity to one-shot, which is warned about in the DMG of course. I'd suggest a range of -1 to -3 CR steps.

The end result: a mechanic that assumes that this combat - all on its own - is supposed to be exciting enough. No further adventuring that day assumed.

Unless we are after all deadly, all alpha combats. And narrative purposes only easy and medium encounters i.e. not mechanically meaningful. The adventuring day matters.

THEN, if you want to turn this encounter from "hard" to "double deadly" (or whatever), you can either add in warm-up fights (where the party is wise to conserve resources) or even adds to the main event itself (though it's okay if the book cautions you against doing so - even with the current rules, a walk-over fight against, say a Balor, becomes significantly more dangerous if you add a couple of much-lower-CRs adds, like half a dozen Barlgura guards or a pair of Marilith wives)

Hope you find this reply sufficiently expanded.

We need to respect a difference in the cumulative lethality of one deadly versus N warm-up fights. The lethality of the latter needs to be very far below the lethality of the former, because they exponentiate. X^1 vs Y^N.

 

[dave2008]

Modifying CR feels like a good solution from various angles. I like that it's experienced by players only by the results (no mechanics visible to them change) and I hold out hope that it makes better use of the MM than if I have to buff every creature individually.

The level of lethality I'm aiming for is to see PC death at about 1/100 in easy-hard encounters, and 1/10 in deadly encounters. Without revivals fewer than 1 in 20 characters make level 20. With revivals (1/5 for tier 1 scaling to 4/5 in tier 4) about 1 in 5 characters could make level 20. About 1 in 2 tier 1 PCs should see tier 2, and about 1 in 2 of those PCs should see tier 3. That works for my world, where I assume 1/100 NPCs are tier 1 equivalent, and 1/10 fewer per tier upward. My narrative is that about 6/10 retire and 3/10 die: leaving PCs over-represented in the remainder which is fine by me. (PCs obviously not retiring, but doing better at surviving than the 1 in 4 background rate.) That all tallies pretty well with a principle that NPCs use MM-like stat-blocks with part but not all of the power that PCs have.

In my thread asking about revival rates, I see that for most DMs very few to no characters die, and very few are revived. Obviously people should run their campaigns as they wish, but I believe the game mechanics - Spare the Dying, Gentle Repose, Raise Dead, Reincarnation, Resurrection and True Resurrection - are very suggestive of a world in which revival is more frequent. Certainly it seems to be a theme of the coming adventure that quite a few high-tier NPCs have experienced revival. Note also that I'm using a Gritty Realism because (among other benefits) I believe that sustains about the right amount of casts of such spells.

I totally get why revising CR down makes sense for you and anyone who wants to do it themselves. But I am making a series of "hardcore" monsters, you can see them here: 5e Hardcore Monsters

So, what I, selfishly, am looking for is way to revise the encounter / daily / progression XP tables to still use the existing monsters and my hardcore versions. Thanks to your work I think I have all of the pieces I need, I just need to put them together.

 

[Jester David]

Reissuing the Monster Manual (in an "advanced" version, rather than actually replacing the one we've got) would go a long way.

Never going to happen. Too much like 3.5e, and the vast majority of people - including posters here - would just shout that it's a cheap cash grab.
And would cause confusion for new players uncertain of which monster book they buy. And it would potentially split future sales of the MM.
And it would be a lot of work (redesigning all the statblocks & layout) but never sell as many copies. And most of the MM pages are pretty tight for space. You can't add the text needed to make monsters "advanced" without going over the page limit. Or cutting monsters...

Plus, it'd have to replace another book on the schedule. I think most people would rather have a new book than a reprint, even one with major revisions.

We can't look to WotC to help with this issue. The tables full of minmaxers who need optional rules for a challenge are the minority - let alone ones that get to high level - and WotC is focused on the much larger majority who is reasonably challenged and only plays low level.

Terrain could also work, but only with better support. A DM needs to be able to get everything about an encounter with a monster from its MM page. Lair actions and descriptions is a good step in this direction, but of course they're almost always just ribbon features that really doesn't increase the heroes' challenge.

Regional effects are ribbons. Lair actions... not so much.
I mean, the lich regains a d8 spell slot every other round, splits damage between a character for one round (ouch), or causes 15d6 damage (save for half) to one creature within 60 feet.

Templates with generic Legendary and Lair Actions would be nice. At least on paper. I'm not sure how that would work. I did a few Legendary monsters myself, and the increase even a single attack does is pretty variable. And lair actions really require some flavour and unique design that's hard to make generic.

But good advice on building and using terrain would be useful. There's a few examples in the 4e DM books (unfortunately rare) that would still probably work, using the DCs and average damage in the 5e DMG. It was the 4e DMG2 IIRC.
But examples of terrain and encounter areas are something the community or DMsGuild could handle fairly easily.

I'd much rather have support for Solo creatures, where a CR 10 Solo generally simply can't be brought down in less than, say, three rounds no matter what*. On the other hand, its many and varied attacks are geared to not easily be focusable, and so it can in return not easily kill off a level 10 character in a single round.
*) by a level 8-10 party of five, that is

Looking at Warcraft boss fights is probably the way. Multi-round bosses that "die" and "reform" with some sort of middle phase that needs to be done before they can be defeated. Like smashing crystals or shutting off devices or breaking ritual circles.
But that's all unique stuff designed for an encounter. They're not very generic and won't work for every fight...

 

[dave2008]

Looking at Warcraft boss fights is probably the way. Multi-round bosses that "die" and "reform" with some sort of middle phase that needs to be done before they can be defeated. Like smashing crystals or shutting off devices or breaking ritual circles.
But that's all unique stuff designed for an encounter. They're not very generic and won't work for every fight...

That is one way. But I think you can expand on the legendary monster concept to achieve the same effect.

 

[clearstream]

I totally get why revising CR down makes sense for you and anyone who wants to do it themselves. But I am making a series of "hardcore" monsters, you can see them here: 5e Hardcore Monsters

So, what I, selfishly, am looking for is way to revise the encounter / daily / progression XP tables to still use the existing monsters and my hardcore versions. Thanks to your work I think I have all of the pieces I need, I just need to put them together.

Nice work on the AD&D monsters. I can put together some tables. Is it right to say that the goal is to be able to afford these hardcore beasties in deadly encounters?