I don't now how much 5e you have played, but that hasn't been my experience and based on most comments on these forums, others as well. Most people claim 5e monsters a too easy, the fall to quickly, and they are not a slug fest. Obviously you experience could be different, but that is not the consensus.
A little over two years now. One campaign went from 1-20 levels.
I don't disagree but the in 3e the same dragon has 527 HP (and of course they go up to 660 HP because there are more age categories) and in 4e it has 1,390 HP! So you can see why people who came from 4e find the idea the 5e has HP bloat a little odd.
Almost 1400 HP??? That is f'ing stupid crazy. What they hell were they thinking??? Yeah, I could see coming from 3E and 4E the concept of bloat isn't as "in your face" compared to my experiences with 1E and 2E...
I agree the hit roll comes up good bit more often. If that is not what you want, RAW 5e is not tuned to your preferences and that is OK. WotC believes most people prefer to hit more and find missing frustrating. The sales of this edition seem to agree. My own experience at least partially agrees.
My old group (we've played together since HS) didn't seem to notice a difference, or a least didn't complain or praise the more frequent hitting.
However, my new group (my sons and their friends that I taught 4e too) definitely noticed the change and much preferred the more frequent hitting in 5e vs 4e. They hated missing 4e and I guess the basically still do in 5e, but it happens less often now.
In prior editions, hitting was about 35-50% typically. In 5E it is about 65-70%, which I find boring. It is like watching a baseball game game and players hit most of the time--it removes some of the excitement of hitting IMO. I have found either imposing disadvantage or boosting AC, both work well.
I am not certain their sales are related to this aspect of the game. Personally I think there are a lot of other factors that contribute to it more than just hitting more.
We don't have any issue with monsters dropping quickly, but I agree the excite meet has shifted a bit from just hitting so seeing how much damage you do and whether or not you take the beast down with said damage.
Valid point. I was almost to the point where I would just have players roll damage since they were hitting
SO often. If you build a PC to hit, you can increase your chance to 80% most of the time. Personally, just rolling damage would be less exciting for me.
How quickly monsters "drop" seems to vary IME from others. Much of it depends on the numbers encountered. IME when PCs outnumber the foes, the foes drop quickly. If foes are equal (or greater) then it takes much longer.
Since your old school, why not cap bonuses a bit. In 1e attribute bonuses capped at +3. why don't you make a 16 the max stat? Also, what I find in 5e is that since magic items are not required, you can remove the attack bonus from magic items if you want. That can be as much as a +5 difference in your attack bonus.
I've considered capping at 16 and 18. I don't hand out magic items much anymore to help make the game harder. 5E is "easy" IMO compared to AD&D, but the changes I make with house-rules are designed for maximum impact with fewest rules.
I have also found adding +1 AC per tier for monsters works for some and still allows PCs to have all of their RAW bonuses.
We did this for our long campaign to make higher tiered monsters more powerful.
I personally hear more about monsters having to few hit points (some use max HP since 5e monsters fall so quickly) so I don't normally recommend reducing monster HP, but you could do that if your experience is different.
I only do max HP with solo encounters. Otherwise the damage potential of the PCs vastly outstrips a single monster's HP.
I prefer to leave the monster HP the same but increase monster damage. Either use max damage or flat increase per tier or CR. I has the bonus of effectively reducing character HP, without having to actually reduce character HP
Sure, that would work as well, it has the same net effect. My preference is to reduce HP instead, making the math easier for some of the our players (even simple subtraction is
not their strong point LOL).
Sounds like your trying to make 5e look more like 1e, which is completely fine. I think 5e is extremely malleable. We have several house rules to HP, HD, and rest and recovery that make the game more like we want to play.
We've thought about removing HD and CON bonus after 10th level, but with our other house rules it would probably make PCs to squishy for high level monsters.
Precisely. 5E (as designed, mind you) is easy-mode by comparison to AD&D. I have found that with the four house-rules the game dynamic changes greatly--which I am happier about. A while ago I posted a thread on the very topic of making 5E a game I
want to play.
It's getting there...