D&D 5E How viable is 5E to play at high levels?

[happyhermit]

Hey man, not having the monster's abilities all in the textbox and having to look up spells (with the PHB's horrible index issues) certainly does NOT speed up combat!

The spells are in the back of the PHB, alphabetically arranged, what does the index have to do with this?

 

[Oofta]

Not much like 'em at all, really. 4e was unique in that it's advancement scheme didn't result in radical class imbalance by the double-digits, and didn't require radical encounter designs - like the barbarian/ape army, above - to 'chalkenge' high level parties.

And, that's where it broke down. A DM could get into an easy, balanced, formulaic rut and fail to make higher levels different and interesting. The DMG 2 offered advice to avoid that for Paragon, but there was never a DMG 3 to do the same for Epic.

It was my experience that PCs simply had too many control options at their disposal at higher levels. When a 24-ish level party can take out a 30th level solo (Lollth - I think she was 30th) without breaking a sweat, the CR system doesn't work.

Don't get me wrong, I figured out how to challenge people and had some truly memorable encounters. I'm just saying that in my experience the CR system in 4e had the same issues people are complaining about in 5E. The Lollth fight was one of the few straight up by the books encounters I did at that point in the campaign and they just stomped all over it.

Of course we also no longer have monsters listed as "solo" any more. I think solo monsters only work under very specific situations.

 

[Eric V]

Now, I think we could pardon the neophyte DM for not really considering this assemblage when designing challenges for a party of characters based on reading the text he was given from the MM or DMG, or from thinking upon seeing this as a suggestion that this is only a little better than "three adult blue dragons in a room".

And probably not better at all.

5e is great for a bunch of reasons, and I doubt I could play a previous version without importing some 5e "hacks." Having said that, the game officially goes to level 20, and with the wisdom of 40 years and 4 editions preceding it, I wish it worked better out of the box at those levels. Instead, in a lot of ways, it works less well than some previous editions.

If people really do play mostly until around level 10 as their data supposedly says, would it have been a big deal to release the PHB classes only until level 10, then released another (much better playtested) PHB containing levels 11-20? I would have been totally down for that.

 

[Eric V]

No True DM needs to look up spells in combat! ;p

At least there was that member of this community (again, I regret not knowing his/her name) who formatted the 5e monsters so that all the info is there. He or she is a noble indeed. Stops from having to look up anything in the middle of combat at all.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The only option I see is to just have no CR and no guidelines which is a worse alternative.

Is it?

 

[Oofta]

Is it?

In my opinion, which of course is the only one that matters , having no guidelines would be worse. I find them a useful starting point. Don't like them? Ignore them.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It was my experience that PCs simply had too many control options at their disposal at higher levels.

There was a period where broken 'lockdown' combos ruled the OP roost. I didn't see a lot of 'em in actual play, though.

When a 24-ish level party can take out a 30th level solo (Lollth - I think she was 30th) without breaking a sweat, the CR system doesn't work.

It wasn't ever "CR," but level+5 or so (regardless of secondary role) was meant to be on the table, and a single-encounter-day 'alpha-strike' could certainly reduce the difficulty of a solo encounter, as could a larger party, as could pre-(or un-applied) errata lockdowns...

There were a couple of versions of Lolth, including an 'Aspect of' that was a 25th level Elite lurker, not (by itself) a viable encounter for a 24th level party. MM3 lurkers were designed to hit hard once or twice and go down (relatively) fast. They were probably the role most like 3e monster designs in the tendency to rocket tag, or to 5e designs with their steep damage scaling.

I'm just saying that in my experience the CR system in 4e had the same issues people are complaining about in 5E.

It could feel 'too easy' if you stick to dead-on encounters and didn't have enough attrition over day, but not to the same degree, and without The corresponding class imbalances.

Aside from that, not s'much.

Of course we also no longer have monsters listed as "solo" any more. I think solo monsters only work under very specific situations.

We have guidelines that call out a lone monster of equal or higher level as a viable encounter.

 

[hawkeyefan]

In my opinion, which of course is the only one that matters , having no guidelines would be worse. I find them a useful starting point. Don't like them? Ignore them.

That's what I do! Just saying it's not the worst thing. It's actually quite liberating.

But I don't begrudge that there's a system in place. It's fine, and useful as a guideline. I think too many people think of it as an exact science rather than a guideline, but that doesn't mean it's an inherently bad thing.

I think perhaps a slightly different rating system may have been useful...like using letters instead of numbers. Challenge Rating A would be a bit more specific and less likely to be confused with PC level. I would have probably designed things along those lines.

 

[OB1]

We have guidelines that call out a lone monster of equal or higher level as a viable encounter.

The guidelines say that a monster with a CR equal to party level is a medium encounter for a group of 4. So a viable one but not serious threat to the group.

CR is a guide for how dangerous a monster is to any individual member of the party, not the party as a whole. You have to use the encounter and daily XP budget guides to figure out how to challenge the group and those do work reasonably well even at high levels (provided you can keep certain elephants out of the room).




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[Oofta]

There was a period where broken 'lockdown' combos ruled the OP roost. I didn't see a lot of 'em in actual play, though.

It wasn't ever "CR," but level+5 or so was meant to be on the table, and a single-encounter-day 'alpha-strike' could certainly reduce the difficulty of a solo encounter, as could a larger party, as could pre-(or un-applied) errata lockdowns...

There were a couple of versions of Lolth, including an 'Aspect of' that was a 25th level lurker, not a viable encounter for a 24th level party. MM3 lurkers were designed to hit hard once or twice and go down (relatively) fast. They were probably the role most like 3e monster designs in the tendency to rocket tag, or to 5e designs with their steep damage scaling.

It could feel 'too easy' if you stick to dead-on encounters and didn't have enough attrition over day, but not to the same degree, and without The corresponding class imbalances.

Aside from that, not s'much.



We have guidelines that call out a lone monster of equal or higher level as a viable encounter.

It was the level 35 solo version of Lollth, not the 25th level version.

But I agree. A lot of it depends on circumstances, attrition, tactics. Just like 5E.