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

[CapnZapp]

And I'm telling you, designing an adventure to fit the 6-8 encounters a day paradigm is a genre violation of action-adventure fiction. Not only does it lead to fourth-wall breaking events such as random encounters and Ninjas In The Night, but it's a pacing unnatural to stories. Even games that explicitly seek to challenge you by stretching out limited mundane resources like Torchbearer and Mouseguard don't do that many.

Seriously, when was the last time in a movie or a comic or a cartoon a team of people with diverse abilities fought 7 discrete (let alone challenging) encounters between downtime? Even LotR didn't do more than three combat encounters between climaxes.

Thank you so very much for this post. Yes, yes, and yes again!



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[Eric V]

Is there a poll for how many campaigns deny feats, multiclassing, magic items, etc?

I'm curious. Since MC has been around since 1e, magic items since basic, and feats since 3e, these are all things people who have been playing for a long time are very familiar with, yes?

That said, if you were designing 5e, would you have done so assuming the majority of players were not using them? Or might you have assumed people were, and included notes something along the lines of "If you do not include these options, reduce the CR of monsters by 1," or whatever. My gut tells me most people play with at least two of those 3 classic options, so might not the consumer base have been better served with a design based on that?

Eh, I could be wrong. Maybe people don't use them. I allow them all, and while a few feats have shown up, no ne has multiclassed, and there's only one magic weapon in the party, so maybe it's not a big deal.

 

[Azzy]

And I'm telling you, designing an adventure to fit the 6-8 encounters a day paradigm is a genre violation of action-adventure fiction. Not only does it lead to fourth-wall breaking events such as random encounters and Ninjas In The Night, but it's a pacing unnatural to stories. Even games that explicitly seek to challenge you by stretching out limited mundane resources like Torchbearer and Mouseguard don't do that many.

It bears repeating: The "6-8 encounters per day" paradigm as presented on these boards is a myth. Six to eight is the number of medium to hard encounters that 1) most adventuring parties can typically handle in a day, and 2) that that number will be less or more depending on whether the encounters are more difficult or less difficult that the assumed medium to hard encounters that an average party can typically handle during an adventuring day. The number and difficulty is meant to be adjusted as need be.

 

[CapnZapp]

It bears repeating: The "6-8 encounters per day" paradigm as presented on these boards is a myth. Six to eight is the number of medium to hard encounters that 1) most adventuring parties can typically handle in a day, and 2) that that number will be less or more depending on whether the encounters are more difficult or less difficult that the assumed medium to hard encounters that an average party can typically handle during an adventuring day. The number and difficulty is meant to be adjusted as need be.

But what you can handle is the wrong number to ask.

How many encounters are there in the story, is a better one.

And the most relevant of all:

How many encounters before the party simply takes a long rest (where random encounters can't reach them)?

This latter question is the most important. So much of D&D is based on something a party can easily invalidate...

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[Azzy]

But what you can handle is the wrong number to ask.

How many encounters are there in the story, is a better one.

Which is why the number of encounters given in the DMG is variable.

And the most relevant of all:

How many encounters before the party simply takes a long rest (where random encounters can't reach them)?

That's going to vary between players, PC levels, DM, encounter difficulty, and the adventure in general. There is no hard number or formula there.

This latter question is the most important. So much of D&D is based on something a party can easily invalidate...

Ultimately, that's where the DM comes in, using their own judgement given the variables involved.

 

[Imaro]

And I'm telling you, designing an adventure to fit the 6-8 encounters a day paradigm is a genre violation of action-adventure fiction. Not only does it lead to fourth-wall breaking events such as random encounters and Ninjas In The Night, but it's a pacing unnatural to stories. Even games that explicitly seek to challenge you by stretching out limited mundane resources like Torchbearer and Mouseguard don't do that many.

Seriously, when was the last time in a movie or a comic or a cartoon a team of people with diverse abilities fought 7 discrete (let alone challenging) encounters between downtime? Even LotR didn't do more than three combat encounters between climaxes.

It's a specific invention of 5E D&D. It should be gotten rid of because it's too easy to wreck the difficulty curve and when you do adhere to it you often do violence to the narrative. I support giving noncasters (many) more daily use abilities and cutting down the encounters-per-day to a more reasonable 3-4. You can also give out fewer daily abilities (to include, but not limited to spells) and class abilities, like 4E D&D did.

Emphasis mine...

3-4 can be done in 5e... just make the encounters more challenging (basically double the xp value of each encounter) and give them 2 short rests between them to recharge short rest abilities.

 

[hawkeyefan]

6-8 may not be necessary, but multiple encounter days certainly are. They're also strongly supported by genre fiction. Tons and tons of examples...take out the guards, then sneak into the base in disguise, take out some more guards, try to sneak into the detention block to free the princess, get discovered and into a firefight, escape the fight by jumping into a chute, discover that the chute leads to a pit that contains a monster, then discover that the pit is actually a trap as the walls start closing in, then after disarming the trap encounter some more bad guys, then the party gets split (!), one group has to swing actoss a chasm on a rope before finally making it back to the ship where they then watch a climactic battle between the friendly old mentor and the evil overlord....and then fight some more bad guys before finally escaping.

Is it 6 to 8? I don't know...there's some blending in there probably. But it's a perfect example of a multiple encounter day. And to counter arguments...no, not everyday needs to be like this. And yes, there are plenty of examples of days with fewer encounters in movoes and other fiction. But this multiple encounter day (or at the very least the possibility of it) is assumed by the game design and is just as supported by fiction as anything, especially within the history of this specific medium.

As for the design assumptions, I would agree that perhaps more guidance on how to adjust the CR/XP systems to allow for feats and multiclassing was in order. I think it was actually smart to design based on the assumption those options would not be used because of the way they decided to present the game, abd the fact that they are targeting new players as well as trying to retain or regain old players.

Anyone can play the game with the Basic Rules, which are free. The Basic Rules gives one feat and one subclass for each class, so there is incentive to actually buy the books if a new player decides they like the game. So an approach designed to add these kinds of things on as you go just makes sense to me. Especially compared to an approach that assumes the inclusion of all options, requiring peole to remove the ones they don't like and adjust accordingly.

This puts the modification in the hands of players and DMs who have decided to make their game more complex, rather than requiring modifications by people who want a simpler game.

Sure, some more advice on how to adjust may have been in order...but I also think that there is such a broad spectrum of how the game can go that it's hard to know how to make such adjustments. Maybe it is better to leave that up to the individual groups to decide. I mean, if I allow Feats in my game, and my players take things like Actor and Linguist because they think it will be cool for story purposes...does my game require as much combat adjustment as someone who's got players taking Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter, and also has multiple PCs dipping into Warlock for Devil's Sight so they can cheese Darkness and destroy their foes? Probably not.

So although more advice would help, I think that ultimately they made the right choice. Everyone's game is different and you know it better than anyone. And the best way to learn is through experience; the best advice in a book can only ever hope to match actual experience.

So, to come back to viability...the answer seems obvious to me. I've been given a set of basic tools, and then many examples of how to adjust those tools for a specific purpose. I can indeed achieve a viable high level game using what the books offer. That does not mean I have not had to put some effort in. But when does a DM not have to put in some effort?

So the question seems to me to he about where the designers' responsibility for how the game plays ends and where the DM's begins. It's an interesting question....and with a myriad of answers, I'm sure. But to me, it's about the level of fun I'm having and that my players are having. If the rules are so bad that the game is not enjoyable, then that's the designers' fault. If the game is enjoyable, but there are some areas that can be improved...a bit of a gray area, but hard to say designers of something enjoyable have failed.

But, if the game is mostly enjoyable, and the designers have offered examples of variant rules and options that can help the game be more to your liking, and you choose nit to inprove your game, ,I do think that's a case where it falls to the DM.

 

[Helldritch]

And I'm telling you, designing an adventure to fit the 6-8 encounters a day paradigm is a genre violation of action-adventure fiction. Not only does it lead to fourth-wall breaking events such as random encounters and Ninjas In The Night, but it's a pacing unnatural to stories. Even games that explicitly seek to challenge you by stretching out limited mundane resources like Torchbearer and Mouseguard don't do that many.

Seriously, when was the last time in a movie or a comic or a cartoon a team of people with diverse abilities fought 7 discrete (let alone challenging) encounters between downtime? Even LotR didn't do more than three combat encounters between climaxes.

It's a specific invention of 5E D&D. It should be gotten rid of because it's too easy to wreck the difficulty curve and when you do adhere to it you often do violence to the narrative. I support giving noncasters (many) more daily use abilities and cutting down the encounters-per-day to a more reasonable 3-4. You can also give out fewer daily abilities (to include, but not limited to spells) and class abilities, like 4E D&D did.

No need for that. The 6-8 encounters per day are meant to be used with medium to hard difficulty. I'd say about 1 hard encounter for two medium encounters. If you want to reduce the number of encounters you need to increase the difficulty. 2 hard encounter for one encounter set between hard and deadly. There you would have your only 3 to 4 encounters per day.

It really depends on the play style you want to have. If you want a novel style of game, then you should opt for the optional rule where a short rest is a day and a long rest is a week. There, the number of encounters between long rest will be easy to fix at 6 to 8 without much interuptions. You will have a story like adventure such as the one you seem to prefer. But you will have a shift towards classes with short rest power reset where the classes that are leaning more toward daily powers will have less of an impact.

On the other hand, you might prefer an old style of RPG just like 1e was. Keep the rules as they are.

As for the quote in bold.
More or less, 5e just put that into words for its own convenient way. Some will flame me for saying that but if you look at the structure of the old modules, you'll see that the players were supposed to do a lot between rests. A whole lot more than 5e assumes. Some modules had 40 or so rooms with about 3/4th of them filled with monsters and traps. That makes for about 30 encounters. Some of the adventures expected the players to do all these encounters in one shot. Others could let you rest once or twice (maybe more or less depending on the type of story and the DM). This approach can be seen in 2e and 3e modules/adventures. 4e lessened the amount of expected number of encounters between rests by introducing daylies in every classes. (I know the reverse could be argued. Encounter powers did reset after battle but I'm talking about daily powers here and many groups were ready to rest after their daily powers were used up.)

In a sense, 5e is more narrative than previous editions. It reduced the expected number of encounters by a large margin. This is a RPG, not a novel after all. But all styles can be supported with more or less work from the DM's part.

 

[Imaro]

But what you can handle is the wrong number to ask.

How many encounters are there in the story, is a better one.

No... what you can handle (XP wise in an adventuring day) is the right number to ask... then you spend that xp with the math in the DMG for the number of encounters you want in the story. I think the only numbers it doesn't handle elegantly are 1-2 encounters but at such a low number of encounters... you should probably convert all abilities to dailies.

And the most relevant of all:

How many encounters before the party simply takes a long rest (where random encounters can't reach them)?

This latter question is the most important. So much of D&D is based on something a party can easily invalidate...

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Well the first mitigating factor is that it doesn't matter if the party decides to take a long rest if 24 hrs since their previous one hasn't passed (or 7 days if using the variant). More to the point though, if they aren't spent and encounters are a breeze... why are they taking a long rest? At the extreme, using the variants, I don't think the passage of seven days is something the party can easily invalidate... not without spending and utilizing substantial resources.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I think some are confusing "adventuring day" with "gaming session." I.e., how long combat takes, or how long your gaming session is has no impact on the adventuring day in the game world. You can end your gaming session right in the middle of an adventuring day, and still be in the same adventuring day when you play your next session.

Personally, I find the 6-8 to be pretty accurate. Sometimes it's none, or just one encounter (like during interaction or explorations phases). Other times the PCs may have up to a dozen encounters before they have the opportunity for a long rest, especially in a dungeon. After all, the dungeon doesn't go on time out when the players want to do a long rest. The monsters still move around the place, especially if they are aware of the party and are looking for them.

So in average, 6-8 seems about right.