D&D 5E (2014) Standard CR Assessment: Standard abilities a high level party is always expected to have?

[Zmajdusa]

Samurai can do it with a bow fairly easily, give themselves advantage for a round and wail away. Elven Accuracy for extra insurance that you hit when you use that ability with an action surge.

 

[Hussar]

Well, you're assuming that all his hits hit and and gets a reaction or bonus action and he's got a 20 stat for +5 damage and is using one of the +10 damage feats. How often is that the case?

And if your assuming Guidance or similar, then there are really two characters involved, aren't there?

And he had to tap in 2 more levels on the baseline to do it as well. But, again, I'm just really, really glad as a DM I don't have to deal with players like that. We aren't terribly interested in seeing how min/max we can make our characters and try to play more balanced parties where your laser beam focused damage dealer sits out and rides the pine 2/3rds of the time because there's nothing that character can contribute.

 

[Stalker0]

A martial character can dish out 80+ damage in a round at level 12 or so. Not his whole party - that one character.

That's just four hits at 20 damage a piece. What's so remarkable with that?


Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

If we look at a standard 10th level fighter to give us a baseline.

I think a +1 longsword, 20 strength, and a +2 damage for dueling is a reasonable baseline for the fighter at that point. Lets throw in 1 maneuver for battle master for round as well. No crazy feats or anything, so not min/max but still solid.

That's 4.5 (longsword) + 1 (magic) + 5 (str) + 2 (dueling) = 12.5. Two attacks per round = 25. I'm ignoring misses and crits for the generalization. Then adding in the 5.5 for a maneuver brings us to 30.5.

And this is not the fighter novaing, just using 1 manuever and no action surge.

So with that notion a 5 PC party is going about 152 damage. Based on my experience at 10th, that seems in the ballpark.

 

[CapnZapp]

And if your assuming Guidance or similar, then there are really two characters involved, aren't there?

Yes, I'm talking about one character in a party.

I'm not talking about the whole party, but I'm not talking about an isolated character either.

But please, don't get sidetracked off topic here. If you want to discuss the kinds of DPR that you can reach in 5e, let's not do that here.

In this thread, I just needed to provide a second opinion to the claim a whole party would do as little as 100 DPR even at level ten. Why? Not to brag, not even for a second. Why then?

Because if a reader truly believes 100 DPR is the norm, or worse, the max, then that makes monsters look almost normal, and the whole "easy mode" complaint against 5e becomes incomprehensible.

Let's instead focus on what posters have been saying previously:

Demons are a joke. A dragon can't survive long enough to breathe even twice.

High level monsters generally don't have even the Dragon's flight speed. They couldn't perform the suggested "snatch the caster and murderize him off-screen" even if they wanted to (and even if the DM wanted to).

Again, you really need to look back to see the context here.

Take any big CR "boss monster" (that is, a monster that is supposed to come in just one copy, and sometimes even without any henchmen). Go look this monster up in the d20 SRD.

You will find two things. First, the stat block is hideously complicated, with a lot of niggly little stuff that just won't have any impact but is a batch to build. You should also know that the monster probably has access to spells, or spell-like abilities, or a house caster, so you'll need to recalculate lots of figures on top of the existing mess...

And all that is gone in 5e, which is a HUGE relief.

But notice that the d20 monster also probably had two (or five) special tricks (spells, abilities, items, etc) that allows it to move about the battlefield, escape a player grapple (or paralysed status). It might be able to cast a few area debuffs.

Tools of the trade (when your trade is fighting mid- to high level heroes).

Now look at the sorry excuse for a 5e version. Almost all of it - gone.

This is why I maintain that the designers threw out the baby with the bathwater.

Massively reducing the clutter of 3e - good. Reducing spell buffing - better. Making monsters work on different (simpler) rules than player characters - best.

But treating high level just like low level but with bigger numbers? Forgetting that at high level, a monster needs several tricks you simply don't need at low level?

The fact is that the Monster Manual comes across as written by a naive designer, neither experienced with high level play, nor aware of what the PHB actually hands out to player characters (especially as they reach tier III).


Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[CapnZapp]

If we look at a standard 10th level fighter to give us a baseline.

I think a +1 longsword, 20 strength, and a +2 damage for dueling is a reasonable baseline for the fighter at that point. Lets throw in 1 maneuver for battle master for round as well. No crazy feats or anything, so not min/max but still solid.

That's 4.5 (longsword) + 1 (magic) + 5 (str) + 2 (dueling) = 12.5. Two attacks per round = 25. I'm ignoring misses and crits for the generalization. Then adding in the 5.5 for a maneuver brings us to 30.5.

And this is not the fighter novaing, just using 1 manuever and no action surge.

So with that notion a 5 PC party is going about 152 damage. Based on my experience at 10th, that seems in the ballpark.

No serious DPR fighter would use a longsword.

But if all y'all is interested in discussing is DPR, there are power threads for that.

Heck a whole subforum even.

The point here is: a designer needs to take extremes into account in order to balance his game.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

No serious DPR fighter would use a longsword.

We're not looking at a "serious DPR fighter". We're looking at a more typical fighter, in order to get an idea of the standard capability of a party at that level.

The point here is: a designer needs to take extremes into account in order to balance his game.

Which extreme, and how far?
Min/max munchkin players with a softball DM is one extreme, with killer DM and players building and playing worse than average is at another.
And a whole spectrum in between.

As it is, they aimed for a mid-point at about the level of a typical gaming group and gave guidance as to how to make encounters deadlier for groups that seemed to be defeating them too easily, and less nasty for groups that had difficulties with the standards.

An alternative might be to have three different statblocks for each monster. But most groups that aren't at the typical level aren't at the extreme end either. So maybe 5 statblocks for each monster. Each with an increasing effective CR in order to challenge a group whose playerM effectiveness ratio is greater.

 

[CapnZapp]

As it is, they aimed for a mid-point at about the level of a typical gaming group and gave guidance as to how to make encounters deadlier for groups that seemed to be defeating them too easily, and less nasty for groups that had difficulties with the standards.

No they didn't. You're relativizing to an insane degree. How far are you really prepared to go to defend WotC?!

I bet you never accused the 3e designers of only designing for minmax combat monsters.

Yet you are, trying to paint their incredibly weak attempt as anything other than the big disappointment it is.

Why don't you simply agree that "demons are a joke", that dragons can't fulfil their expected role, and that high-level monsters simply are under-equipped in an edition where PCs come with more goodies ever right out the PHB. This last thing is important.

Yes, I know d20 eventually broke. But 5e comes broken right out the gate. You don't need splatbooks or even magic items (apart from your generic +1 weapon) to roflstomp over most CR 10+ MM critters.

This is a serious defiency with 5th edition.
Note I'm not talking low level now. I am fully aware low complexity helps 5E's success with new gamers. But why throw out the baby with the bathwater = why treat level 15 play as if it were just level 5 play with more hp?!?

No, it doesn't stop me from unhesitatingly lauding 5th edition as the best edition yet. It is.

But why can't you allow yourself to see the obvious warts. I can. I still love 5E. I just chose not to pretend its very real issues don't exist.

 

[Stalker0]

No serious DPR fighter would use a longsword.

As Kobold said, I was specifically not going for any kind of DPR min/maxing. The DPR numbers you quoted I think are too high for a party that is not focusing on min-maxxing. However, the ~100 ish number quoted before I agree was too low. As I showed in my example, there is a number in the middle of the last two quoted where I think most parties would fall.

As stated before, this is meant to be standard assumptions we can assume the vast majority of parties would adhere to...we are specifically and intentionally not talking about the extremes. Just as it is not a good assumption to assume everyone at 10th has fire resistance (as many have rightly called me out on), its not right to assume everyone is a DPR focused character. However....its also not right to assume they are just fluffy RP characters that aren't even decently designed for damage either.


Just to take it 1 step further, if we look at the nova scenario for the fighter I mentioned, who uses all 4 manuevers and action surge...we get.

12.5 * 4 + 5.5 * 4 = 72. That times a party of 5 = 360. Now...assuming all 4 attack hit is likely on the high side, but we will accept that to provide padding.


So a decent wag would say an average party can dish out 150 - 360 damage, depending on the resources they wish to expend.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

No they didn't. You're relativizing to an insane degree. How far are you really prepared to go to defend WotC?!

As far as I believe that the personal attacks, accusations of incompetence, or misrepresentations of their work are unjustified.

I bet you never accused the 3e designers of only designing for minmax combat monsters.

You'd be correct. I never have accused the 3e designers of only designing for minmax combat monsters. Are you making the claim that the 3e designers only designed for minmax combat monsters?
I mean 3e kinda fell down in terms of standardised encounter design as well, but that was due to class and character design imbalances and happened at most levels. They were "good enough" for a standard party in most cases though.

Yet you are, trying to paint their incredibly weak attempt as anything other than the big disappointment it is.

Here I am, pointing out that my personal opinions about some aspects of 5e are different from your personal opinions about some aspects of 5e.
I have never told you that you are not allowed to believe that 5e is "incredibly weak". I'm not saying that you aren't allowed to be disappointed in it for not catering to your rather edge-case situation. I'm just saying that causing issues for Zapp's standardised by-the-book-only DMing style versus heavily optimised and combat-savvy players does not necessarily mean that the game is broken for the more typical group that it was designed for.

But why can't you allow yourself to see the obvious warts. I can. I still love 5E. I just chose not to pretend its very real issues don't exist.

Oh, I can see warts and issues.
However I understand that a lot of its 'issues' in my eyes are a 'feature' in someone else's'.
I'm able to accept that people can hold differing personal opinions without taking that fact as a personal affront.
I don't claim that my personal opinion is universal fact and that anyone who disagrees must be white-knighting, wilfully blind, or disingenuous.

 

[Sacrosanct]

As a game designer, I'm here to tell you that unless I am specifically designing a game for power gamers or system mastery wizards, I do not care about that in my design. Period. End stop. If I'm designing a game, I am designing around two factors:

1. What is my vision of what I'd like to accomplish (really the only factor if it's just a hobby game)
2. What is my target demographic and how can I reach the most people? (which is a factor if my goal is to make money and/or have the most people play it)

In fact, I'll go as far as to say I will avoid trying to factor in system mastery and power gamers intentionally. That is for two reasons. One, because once you start down that path, they game gets a lot more complicated by necessity because your analysis becomes way more complicated. You're devoting a ton of man hours to something that 99% of gamers won't ever encounter. And two, games catered to system mastery or power gaming turns off a lot of other gamers, which happens to run counter to my 2nd priority above.

IMO, the 5e team did it about as perfectly as you can do it. They designed a game that can be played by the majority, and gave guidance in how to beef up things for the more power gamery type of folks. But they did not make the game power gamery right out of the box because that would have turned away a larger group of gamers than what you would have gained. Optimizers are and always have been a minority. Why some people can't get that through their head is beyond me. And since the game tells you how to beef up your games to fit your style, refusal to do so is just pure lazy, and an incredible sense of entitlement to expect them to cater to your exception rather than the majority. I have double contempt if you're (general you) being lazy and also personally attacking the designers for not catering to your personal style (whether that be power gaming or "story mode" without challenge).

So yeah. That's my opinion. As an award winning game designer myself. Take it FWIW, but I'd like to think my experience gives me a little insight that armchair quarterbacks who refuse to do it themselves will have.