D&D 5E Is 5e "Easy Mode?"

[Garthanos]

Just another way later editions made the game easier (by design) was to make bonuses more akin to B/X where a 13 or so would get you a +1 bonus.

Didn't know about that (I have only skimmed those)

 

[DND_Reborn]

roll 4 take the highest 3 is not averaging 15 and 16? and yes my mage thought he was doing good with a 14.

True. But because HP was so much harder to get a bonus, many PCs had their second best roll in CON (or DEX), so IME most PCs would have a 15 or better if at all possible, fighters shot for 16 or better if they rolled it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

As you say, in 5E you can heal up much faster and more easily than in other editions. Making survivability more likely.

If the DM lets you rest safely, and only gives you moderate challenge fights, etc.

Literally just treating the PCs as not exceptional in power, and thus making more single combatants have a higher CR than is the case in the APs, dials up the difficulty of 5e dramatically. Why ever use guards? They're captains and veterans and the like. One can kill a PC at lower levels, and they come in groups. Even the green recruit should be at least CR 1/2 in such a game. You can't gain HP if you're dead.

And the slower healing rules in the DMG are official part of the game, just like multi-classing and feats.

Now, making specific creatures and encounters difficult in the same way as a previous edition is going to require rebuilding those encounters and creatures to account for the differing math of the new edition, but that doesn't make one game harder than another. These aren't video games. This is like saying that NES games are harder than Sega Genysis games. It depends on the particulars of a specific game (campaign).

 

[Oofta]

We played AD&D without clerics before, just FYI.

So, let's dig into the old books, shall we? Let's a party of 4 PCs (simple Cleric, Fighter, Thief, and Magic-User) at 5th level. Average HP (with reasonable CONs of 15, 16, 15, and 15 respectively) would be:

Cleric: 27.5
Fighter: 37.5
Thief: 22.5
Magic-User: 17.5
TOTAL: 105 hp

The cleric will have 5, 5, 2 spells per day. If he used them all for healing, that is 12 cure light wounds for a total of 54 hp on average, barely HALF the total HP of the party.

In 5E, just sleep for 6 hours and a couple hours light activity and poof full HP without any spells. Easy-peasy.

Yeah if only there were options in, say the DMG that spelled out options to adjust the game to suit your style. If only.

 

[DND_Reborn]

In #2 I'm saying that by the book MM goblins haven't been scary since before 2e. But in 5e they're a real threat, because they don't need a crit to hit, they have advantage in groups, and they hit for reasonable per-hit damage each, meaning that they deal damage similar to a higher CR monster that takes several attacks, but they do so better in some ways because a given single target effect only ever reduces 1 attack of threat from the fight, and they're harder to lock down than any non-legendary single creature.

I'm saying that goblins are a bigger threat in 5e than they have been since before 2e.

Gotcha. Sure, goblins are more of a threat in 5E, but that level is still pretty low unless you use the "horde-o'-goblins".

If the DM lets you rest safely, and only gives you moderate challenge fights, etc.

Literally just treating the PCs as not exceptional in power, and thus making more single combatants have a higher CR than is the case in the APs, dials up the difficulty of 5e dramatically. Why ever use guards? They're captains and veterans and the like. One can kill a PC at lower levels, and they come in groups. Even the green recruit should be at least CR 1/2 in such a game. You can't gain HP if you're dead.

And the slower healing rules in the DMG are official part of the game, just like multi-classing and feats.

Now, making specific creatures and encounters difficult in the same way as a previous edition is going to require rebuilding those encounters and creatures to account for the differing math of the new edition, but that doesn't make one game harder than another. These aren't video games. This is like saying that NES games are harder than Sega Genysis games. It depends on the particulars of a specific game (campaign).

But the design of 5E is to allow rests, etc. and you aren't going to face difficult or deadly encounters all day long. Also the slow healing is not the default, which is all the base design of the game is about when making such comparisons.

 

[Umbran]

The attention span you reference...

Mod Note:
Someone got banned in the other "5e is easy" thread for being rude.

So, you might want to take this kind of tone, and put it away in a box where you can't reach it while posting in this thread, as its use may be... rather self-limiting at this point.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Yeah if only there were options in, say the DMG that spelled out options to adjust the game to suit your style. If only.

LOL, but still the "grittiest" option makes full HP after 7 days.

In AD&D you get 7+Con bonus hp in the same 7 days. That means a 1st-level d8-HD class or better can't fully heal in 7 days.

 

[Garthanos]

Thing is to me its trivial to just up "deadliness" ... but making more interesting tactical choices is another kettle of fish and does not seem nearly as straightforward as rule patches in the dmg.

 

[Minigiant]

Wait?

Y'all getting long rests without going back to the city or setting up a camp after clearing out a whole forest first?

When was this? Did I miss a union meeting?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Gotcha. Sure, goblins are more of a threat in 5E, but that level is still pretty low unless you use the "horde-o'-goblins".

Well, no, that's just one way to make goblins deadly.

But the design of 5E is to allow rests, etc. and you aren't going to face difficult or deadly encounters all day long. Also the slow healing is not the default, which is all the base design of the game is about when making such comparisons.

The advice of 5e is to allow rests, etc. Whether you face deadly encounters frequently is decided by how the DM builds NPCs, and how the players interact with the world. There are guidelines for making deadly encounters for a reason. If you want a deadly game, you just...use them.

The design of 5e is to put things like this in the hands of the DM, and to present a fun game that can be played casually to new potential players.

Again, dnd isn't a video game. You decide the difficulty. 5e is the second best edition of dnd at making it easy for the DM to accurately set the difficulty.