D&D 5E Fifth Edition.....Why?

[Ilbranteloth]

I played AD&D as my preferred edition for 30 years (skipped 3e and 4e). And in my gut feeling (and experience)? There were two type of uses for the XP tables:

- standard play, from level 1 to low teens
- Monty haul. you either got to the high teens super fast, or you just said screw it and started at level 20 and ended up at level 36 after a couple weeks

So from a designer standpoint, if I see the above is true, it's entirely reasonable for me to say "We're just gonna ignore Monty Haul and focus our design on a standard level of play in this new edition, so level 20 is more than enough of a level cap."

We had a different approach.

Up through the teens (although it's pretty rare for any characters to even reach 10th level in my campaigns) - PCs.

Anything above that? NPCs.

I believe it was Ed Greenwood who mentioned that the high level of the NPCs in the Gray Box were (paraphrasing), "specifically so they were higher than any PC and would always be a challenge."

I seem to recall that in Gygax's original design concept, that any spells over 6th level were also for NPCs so there were magical effects beyond the capability of the PCs.

In 5e I think the level 20 cap is essential for their concept of bounded accuracy. Not because of hit points, attack modifiers, etc., but because of special abilities and the "capstone" design approach. An approach that, not surprisingly, I'm not fond of. You have characters (apparently every one of a given class again) sprouting wings and such. Continuing that upward trend would become absurd (if it isn't already). Having said that, the boon approach works well for designing those extra-powerful NPCs.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

... However, as a DM and player, I do like having mechanics that help back up the concept. ...

I do too. However, I'm not a fan of a new mechanic for every class/ability. Again, I understand that for a large group of players, that's a big part of what makes playing a different class, etc. is about. The different mechanics.

I much prefer leveraging and expanding on existing mechanics:

Mimic: You can use your Performance or Deception skill to mimic the voice or sounds of another creature.
Appraise: You can use your Insight skill to appraise the relative value of gems, jewelry, and other valuables.
Acrobat: You can use your Acrobatics skill to walk a tightrope or pole vault.

Or the the Mastermind's "Insightful Manipulator," or the Fighter's "Know Your Enemy" ability. Instead of the "study for a minute and you automatically succeed" approach (a new mechanic), how about simply allowing them to use double their proficiency bonus to make an Insight check to gain that information. Failure indicates the target might know what you're up to, and might become hostile.

No new mechanic is needed, the abilities could just be feats or class abilities, and you have the same abilities. The fact that there's a chance of failure makes it interesting as well.

The bigger risk to always designing new abilities, of course, is power and complexity creep.

 

[Mistwell]

Potatoe

[video=youtube;qrQVFZx7XX4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrQVFZx7XX4[/video]

 

[Azzy]

Well then, it had a hard cap of 20 until that came out.

In regards to 2e, while Forgotten Realms Adventures put no hard cap on PC levels, the spell advancement tables did stop at 30th level. Also, the DM's Option: High-Level Campaigns did put a hard cap at 30th level

Similarly, 3.0 had a hard cap of 20, as did 3.5, until the Epic Level Handbook.

As a nitpick, the Epic Level Handbook came out during 3.0's run, not during 3.5. Not that it matters much.

Can't say for sure until the ed wraps, there could always be a supplement for higher level play, but it would be the second such after 3.0, FWIW. Existential, I know.

True.

Personally, I wish that 5e had hard-capped at 30th level like late 2e, and 4e. But, y'know...

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Well then, it had a hard cap of 20 until that came out. Similarly, 3.0 had a hard cap of 20, as did 3.5, until the Epic Level Handbook.
Hard cap at 30.
Can't say for sure until the ed wraps, there could always be a supplement for higher level play, but it would be the second such after 3.0, FWIW. Existential, I know.

2e originally said that it wasn't recommended, and FR Adventures came out less than a year later, so I'd consider it more of a soft cap myself.

The 3.5e DMG has 21st level+ noted as Epic levels. Although this is undoubtedly due to the Epic Level Handbook, but that had also been published a year (less than?) after the original 3e PHB/DMG. I don't have an actual 3e PHB handy right now to see what sort of wording they used, but I suspect it left the door open to a future high-level handbook. It looks like 4e was much closer to a hard cap.

Where 5e explicitly says 20th level is the top, and has a mechanic (epic boons), to finalize the point. Since both 4e and 5e are designed to provide something "new" at every level, it makes sense that they both have a limit.

But what's more important how they handle character level. Through 3.5e, it was class level that might be maxed out. For example [MENTION=6683613]TheCosmicKid[/MENTION] says that making Elminster a 20th level wizard//10th level fighter/3rd-level cleric is legal in 5e. But it's not. Character level is independent of classes now, so the maximum total level a character can be is 20th, not 33rd as in his example. However, in earlier editions it would be legal, even if there was a cap at 20th level for a given class, because class level was independent of character level.

Elminster would have to be something like a 15th level wizard\4th level fighter\1st level cleric in 5e. Not only considerably less powerful, but because of the capstone design approach, he wouldn't be among the top wizards in the Realms at all. This is a pretty big change, particularly when both Ed Greenwood and Gary Gygax have made comments in the past that indicated that part of the inclusion of high-level rules was initially intended to always be able to have NPCs/challenges of significantly higher level than the PCs. While you can accomplish that to some degree with epic boons, it would require quite a few to counter a 4 person party of 20th level characters.

Is that bad? Well, it's different. It certainly limits what you can throw at 20th level characters, but it also seems to be intentional. The idea that the PCs can become the most powerful beings in the land seems to be part of the driving force of this edition, but through the use of limitations rather than the BECMI approach of progressing into godhood.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

I must admit that the idea of statting up NPCs as monsters is annoying.

Why is that annoying? I consider it an option when appropriate. I find it a bit annoying that in 5e they have NPC "archetypes" and yet they don't have the same abilities as the same PC archetype of that level. I also find it annoying that they've opted out of the template approach in most cases, even when it makes much more sense (skeleton, zombie, etc), and yet they have templates for other creatures.

While it's not impossible, I'd agree to some degree with [MENTION=6918252]Aspects07[/MENTION] that it's difficult to stat out famous NPCs the same way, although that has been an issue with each change in edition as well. Where it fails, though, is the hard cap at 20th level for a character, not for a specific class. A hard cap for a class has an impact too.

When you get right down to it, RAW stats for the most famous NPCs have usually been less than optimal even in the edition that was current when the NPC was first published. Different authors had differing understandings of the rules themselves when developing their characters, but the FR was far more liberal in their character descriptions than say, Dragonlance, which followed the AD&D ruleset pretty closely if I recall.

Regardless, I don't think statting out famous NPCs was in any way a priority for the design team. More importantly, I find that one of the most frequent complaints about the FR is the large number of famous NPCs, particularly powerful ones, and that might have had a part in the design not catering to them either. Since I've very, very, very rarely had any of those characters be anything more than a comment in a campaign, I don't really care anyway.

In my case, PCs rarely get about 10th level (that's been the case for decades), so I still have a buffer for high level NPCs to be perpetual challenges.

 

[5ekyu]

Why is that annoying? I consider it an option when appropriate. I find it a bit annoying that in 5e they have NPC "archetypes" and yet they don't have the same abilities as the same PC archetype of that level. I also find it annoying that they've opted out of the template approach in most cases, even when it makes much more sense (skeleton, zombie, etc), and yet they have templates for other creatures.

While it's not impossible, I'd agree to some degree with [MENTION=6918252]Aspects07[/MENTION] that it's difficult to stat out famous NPCs the same way, although that has been an issue with each change in edition as well. Where it fails, though, is the hard cap at 20th level for a character, not for a specific class. A hard cap for a class has an impact too.

When you get right down to it, RAW stats for the most famous NPCs have usually been less than optimal even in the edition that was current when the NPC was first published. Different authors had differing understandings of the rules themselves when developing their characters, but the FR was far more liberal in their character descriptions than say, Dragonlance, which followed the AD&D ruleset pretty closely if I recall.

Regardless, I don't think statting out famous NPCs was in any way a priority for the design team. More importantly, I find that one of the most frequent complaints about the FR is the large number of famous NPCs, particularly powerful ones, and that might have had a part in the design not catering to them either. Since I've very, very, very rarely had any of those characters be anything more than a comment in a campaign, I don't really care anyway.

In my case, PCs rarely get about 10th level (that's been the case for decades), so I still have a buffer for high level NPCs to be perpetual challenges.

Actually in almost any game with build your own... Player built items tend to be more optimal potentially than the setting provided examples are. Mechs in battle tech, ships in teaveller, PCs vs NPCs etc...the key is those setting pieces are built for setting purpose and example not to optimize every ounce of output... Generally.

Sent from my VS995 using EN World mobile app

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Actually in almost any game with build your own... Player built items tend to be more optimal potentially than the setting provided examples are. Mechs in battle tech, ships in teaveller, PCs vs NPCs etc...the key is those setting pieces are built for setting purpose and example not to optimize every ounce of output... Generally.

Sent from my VS995 using EN World mobile app

I don't mind the players being more optimal, and I'd expect that actually, since the players will spend much more time working on their PCs. The archetype is most likely to be an average person of that type, perhaps with important NPCs more optimized.

But they could have taken the recommended path, with an NPC standard array, and then just include whatever class features they would gain at that given level. It's easy enough to pull out the PHB and figure out those abilities, but it just seems like you shouldn't have to do that.

 

[ad_hoc]

I don't consider requiring to take a 5 feat chain and be 10th level so my character can attack, move, and then attack to be customization.

Also, the idea that NPCs should be written up like PCs has always been strange to me. I don't get it. It's a lot of extra work and results in an NPC who is constrained and has mundane abilities.

 

[Shasarak]

Why is that annoying? I consider it an option when appropriate. I find it a bit annoying that in 5e they have NPC "archetypes" and yet they don't have the same abilities as the same PC archetype of that level. I also find it annoying that they've opted out of the template approach in most cases, even when it makes much more sense (skeleton, zombie, etc), and yet they have templates for other creatures.

Its just a bit too Gamist for me really and I feel that it does not fit the narrative of DnD.