D&D 5E D&D compared to Bespoke Genre TTRPGs

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think you missed what I meant by monsters "shrinking", so even if I get some terms wrong I'll try to explain.

As the PCs levelled up, a particular monster - say, an ogre - would correspondingly "shrink" from being a solo to an elite to a (ordinary?) to a minion.

And sure, there's some top-end stufflike the deity-level creatures you mention where the PCs never get powerful enough to prompt that shrinking process to begin. I'm referring to all the now-lesser monsters they've passed along the way, and how their "shrinking" helps steepen the power curve.

Ah, yeah, you CAN do that, and a lot of us did to an extent. I actually never went too crazy with it, but minionizing stuff at a certain point was definitely pretty common. I guess that MAY steepen the power curve, but frankly if you minionize an ogre when you are building a level 16 encounter, the regular level 8 standard ogre wouldn't really be stronger. It MIGHT stick around longer, but then the minion "miss doesn't count" rule is at least supposed to produce a similar result. In effect the standard ogre would be auto-hit, and it might take that blow, where the minion might be missed and even avoid 'half-damage on a miss' type stuff, and survive. Its a toss up if that makes the curve steeper.

 

[Campbell]

@doctorbadwolf

If we are going to play game where our apex priority as a group is playing out the individual stories of these dynamic player characters without trying to shape the direction of play that is at odds with preplanned story arcs, traditional adventure structures, GMs smoothing things out and a number of the other sort of storytelling tactics you have described over the course of this thread. There are also so many counterproductive rules. Sure, it's possible to do so in D&D if you pretty much ignore the DMG, all sorts of play incentives to do otherwise and avoid advocating for story outcomes. It's certainly not ideal or easy. In my experience trying to do so was like trying to build your biceps with a lat pulldown cable. Possible, really painful, and far from efficient. Games like Exalted Third Edition or Vampire - The Masquerade Fifth Edition while not being ideal are still much more suitable for this sort of play.

I don't think the sort of play described at Play Passionately is the apex priority of just about anyone who plays 5e. I would love to be proven wrong on that count, particularly if they had notes about how they accomplished it.

When I say Story Now is not improv I mean in the sense of "Yes, and". We're not in cahoots to bring to a satisfying conclusion. We're all here to see where things go naturally given a tense scenario. The rules help us become audience members for a time instead of authors. Without that in place we have to really work on establishing stakes in a very transparent way.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yeah, I think they are a more formalized version of some things that people did in 4e (both in some of the official stat blocks and less formally). So it is cool that they basically said "this is good, we will make it a regular part of the system, so then designers will know to always do it." I always thought that was an element that 4e brought to D&D design that was good. Like role and power source and monster role/type and the structure of powers kind of gives everyone a solid idea of how to design something.

So, in 3.x my perception is a LOT of things are basically 'duds', or at best stuff that has only very niche applicability. Like a lot of classes, even ones in the PHB, are drastically under-powered, and others over-powered. Same with monsters, a lot of them vary greatly from the CR you would expect, only work in certain situations, or are super deadly in certain situations or combinations. That rarely happens in 4e. It seems to happen fairly rarely in 5e either, and I think all of the various guidelines help. Though, as you observe, overall encounter design in 5e is tricky.

Honestly, every implementation of D&D gets a few things wrong too. 4e would give you a perfectly FUNCTIONAL encounter of level 5 if you put 5 fifth level standard orcs into it, and you could follow a template to say which specific mix of stat blocks to use, and it would play out mechanically. Put that encounter in a fairly mundane static location though, and don't supply any interesting plot elements, and 4e produces something that is OFTEN, maybe USUALLY dull as dust to play. I mean, it may be fun once, but the SECOND such room will have the players off to the kitchen for sure! This is easily solvable, but the books don't really tell you how (they hint, but they're far from pushing their point enough, and they are too mild in their advice).

So, 5e's encounters are not so much of a problem that way (well, they tend to play out a bit faster, or at least you can do stuff more often). OTOH the CR system gets a little wonky, and they seem to be less interested in tactical situations and thus mixes of monsters and clear roles for each monster.

Ah well, maybe 6e will be the God Edition!

I really prefer the action economy of 5e over that of 4e, so I probably value legendary actions even more, becuase they make elite/solo enemies more complex, without making mooks more complex, and they don't demand that a legendary creature be a solo creature. I've had many legendaries who were in control of minions and the like in 5e, and even have legendary actions that command their troops, such as making all allies within 30ft move up to half their speed and make an attack.

5e encounters, though, while faster, are just as bland if you put them in a flat field. So much so that some folks view 5e combat as inherently a game of "run into position and bash until dead", while other view it much more dynamically. Like a lot of stuff, this is a failure of presentation and advice, more than anything.

 

[Don Durito]

I do feel that 13th Age has some significant improvements over 4e in the approach to monsters.

First, Mooks in 13th Age are more solid than Minions and don't get wiped out by auras just because you happen to stand near them. They can also be double or triple strength which can make for more interesting combatatants (higher damage, than normal monsters but don't stick around so long.).

Second, by shrinking the level range to 10 you have a kind of bounded accuracy which means that you have a much greater range you can use monsters at, so they don't become out of date so quickly.

Third, if I think the PCs are likely to keep facing a monster across multiple levels I may start them off as a Triple Strength Mook - a triple strength mook of the same level as the PCs has a nasty punch and will usually survive at least one hit - a triple strength mook of two or three levels below becomes equivalent in many ways to a mook of the same level - just with lower defences - you then make up for this by giving them some kind of threat in numbers ability - eg a bonus to hit if they outnumber the PCs - which doesn't kick in when there's only a few of them at lower levels, but does when they are appearing at greater numbers at higher levels. (Another favourite add on that I use is have the Mooks stop the PCs from using the Escalation die until there is less in their group than the number of PCs, which effectively increases their defences and creates a pretty powerful incentive to actually target them first).

In short, there are solutions to some of the issues with the 4E paradigm, and the end point of 4E does not really indicate the final point in evolution of that paradigm.

 

[Campbell]

So legendary creatures kind of rub me the wrong way. They feel even more meta than solos, which I can kind of justify if we take more abstracted view of creature stats. I have an inner purist for system part of myself that vastly prefers how PF2 builds in that dynamic into the game's math rather than creature stats. I also find legendary resistance and actions a pain in the keister in play from both sides of the screen. I hates it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yes, Legendary monsters are better than 4e solo monsters. MM3 & Threats of the Nentir Value solos are close, but Legendary Mosnters are still better solos. Though the have the same problem as 4e solos, not enough damage.

I mostly agree, and honestly 5e official monsters mostly suck. Encounter design is the biggest weakness of 5e by far, IMO. Using the moving parts of encounter design can result in really cool stuff, though, if you are willing to get creative with it. I recently had a creature with a difficult terrain and save vs slashing damage aura around it from flailing tentacles, and legendary actions that included yeeting one of it's young at an enemy, which then tried to grapple their face, jumping on an enemy, summoning more critters from the surrounding area (they arrived in 1d4 rounds) while also allowing any critters within 100ft to move their speed toward the matriarch, as well as some fun bonus action stuff like eating a critter to regain HP, and a couple different attacks they could do as part of multi-attack, including attacking with the living vines they could summon on a 4-6 recharge by casting entangle.

But you don't get stuff that fun and dynamic from any wotc book, sadly.

Another fun way to hack the moving parts of 5e encounter design is to have really mythic creatures carry their lair with them, but have skill-tasks to disable elements of their lair system (some actual homebrew here, I give enemies a defense DC for each stat, and players can try to target a given ability score with a nonstandard action)

I also enjoy giving a troupe of enemies legendary actions that let them do some stuff as a unit, or respond to what's happening to eachother more fluidly, making trained units much scarier.

 

[Neonchameleon]

And that is a preference thing, and also not necessarily true. In my 4e games, you couldn't laugh at orcs, because there was no such thing as a low level orc, there are just orcs.

Bwuh? In my copy of Monster Vault there are seven different types of orc. There weren't "just orcs", there were entire communities and social structures of them. In 5e your basic orc has 15hp and is far more than a match for commoners. Meanwhile your basic orc in 4e isn't the level 3 "Battletested Orc" - it's a level 4 minion "Orc Savage". Meanwhile the very first orc presented in the Monster Manual 1 is the level 4 minion "orc drudge". And there was explicitly presented for PCs to laugh at the level 9 minion "orc warrior"

A level 4 minion is low level in 4e. If you personally houseruled that there was no such thing as a low level orc in 4e then that's fine - and it's an interesting piece of worldbuilding by you. But it's not particularly relevant as a critique of 4e that you houseruled basic monsters in the monster manual out of existence.

I'd much rather have town's guards be able to hit giants without critting, and have the giant not care unless they get really thoroughly peppered with arrows, and thus have the town being able to drive off the giant and then hire the PCs because they know the giant will be back and boulders will be thrown from the relative safety of a hill and they'll be screwed.

Here 5e is an outlier. An AD&D human had a THAC0 of 20 to a hill giant's AC of 3; 17 to hit. A 3.5 Human guard was rolling probably at +1 to hit against a hill giant's AC of 20; 19 to hit. A 4e human Town Guard has +8 to hit vs a hill giant's AC of 25; 17 to hit. The reason the chance to hit is so low in all editions other than fifth is because the crossbow bolts are effectively bee stings and the giant doesn't care.

Meanwhile in 5e the Hill Giant is AC 13 with 105 hit points. A human guard with a light crossbow is at +3 to hit doing an average of 5.5 damage per hit. It's going to take a mere 40 crossbow bolts to bring the giant down. Easy for a mere ten guardsmen. The giant has to care if two crossbow bolts take an average of over 10% of his hit points.

As for the idea of the 5e giant firing from the relative safety of the hill, the hill giant loses that one hard unless it's completely out of line of sight. It's +8 to hit firing a single rock/round, and guards are listed as AC 16 (chain) in 5e. And light crossbows outrange it. That giant is unlikely to be back unless it's with an entire army of giants because it knows that the guardsmen have its number; no PCs needed thanks to the magic of bounded accuracy.

Meanwhile if I actually wanted to run the type of encounter you suggest probably the best way to do it would be in 4e - when instead of speccing the giant as a level 13 ordinary brute you'd make a custom adventure treating it as a level 4 or so brute solo

Like...in both games, the commoners need the PCs because the PCs can actually fight the giant and hope to win. In 4e, the commoners can't even really drive the giant off except via narrative handwaving, and in 5e you can have the PCs be level 1 characters who help the town drive off the giant, even though they have no hope of beating the giant, yet.

That's because, thanks to the magic of bounded accuracy, the giant isn't really a threat to an even vaguely prepared village unless it uses guerrilla tactics. Is that what you want?

What I feel like you aren't getting, in turn, is that not everyone experiences the intended play experiences as a result of those mechanics. Some of us cannot experience our character's emotional state if a game mechanic determines it for us, rather than our own impulsive experience of the moment. We can only react to that process and portray the prescribed emotional state. Which means, for some of us, Monsterhearts is very cool but ultimately shallow, and will take vastly more effort for us to experience the same heartache, joy, anger, hatred, despair, etc that we routinely experience when the inhabiting of the character is left non-prescribed.

If game mechanics telling you what to feel means you cannot experience your character's emotional state you should prefer Monsterhearts to D&D.

Does D&D have mechanics that tell you what your emotional state is? Sure. Loads of them. Charmed and Frightened both come to mind a standard 5e conditions. Both tell you not only your emotional state but how to react. A frightened character "can’t willingly move closer to the source of its fear". The four standard reactions to fear are known as the "4 Fs" - Fight, Flight, Faun, and mate. You can neither fight, faun, nor mate when you can't approach someone. D&D 5e not only tells you what your emotional state is but how you react in that state.

Does Monsterhearts? The Darkest Self sometimes does. Sometimes your character is irrational - but you picked what yours would be when you picked your skin. "You're turning into your wolfman form and pissed off" is a whole lot less controlling than 5e's Frightened condition especially because you personally chose to play a werewolf. The rest of it just says "You must react. You choose how and here are the normal reactions." Vastly better than 5e's Frightened condition.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I really prefer the action economy of 5e over that of 4e, so I probably value legendary actions even more, becuase they make elite/solo enemies more complex, without making mooks more complex, and they don't demand that a legendary creature be a solo creature. I've had many legendaries who were in control of minions and the like in 5e, and even have legendary actions that command their troops, such as making all allies within 30ft move up to half their speed and make an attack.

5e encounters, though, while faster, are just as bland if you put them in a flat field. So much so that some folks view 5e combat as inherently a game of "run into position and bash until dead", while other view it much more dynamically. Like a lot of stuff, this is a failure of presentation and advice, more than anything.

Both games can certainly produce boring fights, sometimes for the same reasons. I don't see the action economies as THAT different. However, I think the 5e one works. I like the ability to move and attack during your move (pass through fire). I don't get the point of pretending that minor actions don't exist, but whatever. In my own game I did away with the idea of a minor action entirely. There are free actions and major actions, and move actions, you can execute another action of whatever type anywhere in your move action, and then you have a single type of 'reaction'. Some abilities will grant multiple reactions, most PCs have one, but there are few actual use cases outside of OAs.

 

[Campbell]

Here's the basic way I look at roleplaying games:

We all basically start with a base of just sitting down and roleplaying, no character sheets, mechanics or any of that jazz. Just having a conversation about some fiction. Here we can pretty much do anything we set our mind to if we are disciplined and principled about it. We are not really playing a game though and I generally find putting yourself in a position where you have to rely on discipline is a bad long term strategy.

So once you have that freeform base the stuff you add on top can either have a negligible effect, a positive impact on play, or be counterproductive. All of it also has a cognitive cost. We only have so much in our budget. We can't just add on top forever. Our play agenda and personal tolerances will help shape what belongs in each category.

When I say game does not do x well (I'm not a believer in can or cannot here) I mostly mean it adds little in the positive column and too much in the negligent and counterproductive columns.

 

[pemerton]

this is one thing that PtbA games have over almost all other RPGs on the market, in that they do more to attempt to define how a failure can be interpreted by the DM than anything else I can think of. Is that a strike against D&D or a strike against most non-PtbA RPGs though?

I actually think that Burning Wheel is the gold standard in this respect (and it predates AW).