D&D 5E Flamestrike and Stalker0's little adventure

[Asisreo]

Interesting little adventure. It puts good grounds on what a typical mid-level campaign adventure would entail and it provided challenges that demonstrated how the system works without too much modifications. It also shows how resource management can cause dilemmas over a long adventure.

 

[Flamestrike]

Interesting little adventure. It puts good grounds on what a typical mid-level campaign adventure would entail and it provided challenges that demonstrated how the system works without too much modifications. It also shows how resource management can cause dilemmas over a long adventure.

And how great a tool a Doom clock is. They:

1) Drive the story forward,
2) Provide a level of risk/ reward for every decision made to use a resource in that time limit
3) Add a level of strategic play to the game
4) Prevents rocket tag, and balances the classes
5) Brings the world to life, where the PCs decisions and actions, matter.

In a single encounter AD, our Wizard buddy would have simply dropped his 4th level slot, then 3rds willy nilly, while the Bard/Paladin smote at will, and the Fighter action surged and spammed all his sup dice. It's button mashing, with little to no strategic thought put into it.

It's OK to have those days from time to time, but you need to balance them out with longer days (allowing multiple short rests, but long rests being hard to come by) to alter the encounter context and give the short rest based classes a moment to shine.

When ever I head 'Wizards rule' or 'Monks/ Warlocks suck' it ALWAYS comes down to the rest paradigm in that game. There are levers there to pull to change that, and so many DMs are stubbornly reluctant to do it for some reason.

 

[Stalker0]

My thoughts:

First off, thank you for taking the effort to DM this little expedition. DMing can be fun but its always work as well, so I commend the effort.

In general I agree with your assessments, a few of my own:

• I think the combination of both the encounters AND the time pressure was the key on my character. This both consumed my resources and ensured that I could not make heavy use of my rituals....though I did slip a few in.
• In general I do agree that everyone had their bright spots this game, and I think all the players would have felt "cool" at one point or another. I think the Bard may be the MVP....those bardic inspirations were gold this game.
• Your right that in this scenario I felt a lot of pressure on my spells, both in slots and spells prepared. In hindsight I would have made a few spell adjustments, for example, having banishment and evards was a bit overkill.
• First time I've seen the new rogue AIM action. I'm not sure if I like the rogue being able to just have advantage all the time for such a trivial cost, feels like it takes a little something away from the game. That said, I agree the rogue and fighter both had their moments.
• Counterspell as a DM has always been a personal pet peeve of mine. I honestly hate shutting down the fun of my players in such a "slap your face" kind of manner. Now having faced it as a player.... I really just hate that spell so much, so anti-fun. Obviously a personal belief that not everyone will agree with.
• So I am used to larger groups, and I will say the biggest thing I learned this game was just how incredibly oppressive Legendary Resistances can feel to a caster. When we fought the demon, I had assumed it had 3 resistances. In my groups when you have like 3 spellcasters, burning 1 spell to blow through his defenses (assuming everyone does it) is not TOO bad. But when you feel like it may literally be you or one other caster, and you have to consider blowing 2 or even 3 spells.... that is just incredibly daunting.
• Thank you for helping me apparently air out dozens of years of dice karma I was telling my entire group about it, I can't believe how cold my dice were at the beginning. But it looks like things balanced out, I had some really good damage rolls toward the end.

So to the question that started this all. Are Casters or Martials OP in anyway? So for groups that play heavily or exclusively in this kinds of scenarios (which granted is the WOTC baseline), than I think there is good balance there. Fighters can just go nuts fight after fight. Casters have to be little accountants....but you get rewarded for that big moment when the monster goes pop and you feel like a million bucks. At no point did I feel dominant or worthless, just varied from encounter to encounter.

Ultimately though, in my experience many campaigns are not exclusively these kind of days. There are 1 encounter kind of days, and there are downtime segments where time is not really a factor. In those scenarios?....I think casters still come off looking pretty darn good in terms of both power and flexibility.

So I think what this shows is that if you play the WOTC baseline....there is very nice balance between the classes, and all classes contribute in different but useful ways. And that pressure can be fun for a caster, who has to really make key decisions on what to cast when.

So there we go.... and now the debates can continue to rage

There are levers there to pull to change that, and so many DMs are stubbornly reluctant to do it for some reason.

The simple reason.... is that the levers are as much narrative ones as mechanical ones. Sometimes your party is exploring a place and there isn't always a doom clock....its just an ancient place they found that they are going to check out. Sometimes you have a party scene, where it doesn't make sense to burn away lots of resources, and it would be expected to use your "big guns" if your going to use any at all.

Sometimes your players take on a great long journey, and it would feel weird to have 6 encounters in a single day....and then have no encounters the rest of the trip. And if you decide to make everyday a 6 encounter day....well just getting there could be your entire campaign.

So your right that doom clocks are very useful (and frankly at high level Dnd I consider them absolutely essential to have any real game session....otherwise the players are just going to win)....but lets also respect that utilizing them isn't "free", they do have narrative cost....and for many campaigns the story of why the encounters are happening is often more important than what the encounters are.

 

[Asisreo]

Ultimately though, in my experience many campaigns are not exclusively these kind of days. There are 1 encounter kind of days, and there are downtime segments where time is not really a factor. In those scenarios?....I think casters still come off looking pretty darn good in terms of both power and flexibility.

Well, for this, I'll continue with my high-level mini-adventure so that we can see whether downtime/high-level/One-Encounter Days (OED's) truly pushes casters to a level beyond martials in a way that makes them feel greatly irrelevant.

I'm hoping to do it in a way I would consider "most campaigns to be run." So I' including context in the form of history/lore and treasure equivalent to the recommended Treasure Hordes.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

So to the question that started this all. Are Casters or Martials OP in anyway? So for groups that play heavily or exclusively in this kinds of scenarios (which granted is the WOTC baseline), than I think there is good balance there. Fighters can just go nuts fight after fight. Casters have to be little accountants....but you get rewarded for that big moment when the monster goes pop and you feel like a million bucks. At no point did I feel dominant or worthless, just varied from encounter to encounter.

Ultimately though, in my experience many campaigns are not exclusively these kind of days.

I enjoyed this little exercise.

So, was the original idea to test the following 2 point of views?

Camp 1 - Wizards (full casters?) overshadow other classes, even starting at low/mid levels, like 7th. Wizards can contribute at the top during combat as well as have a ton of narrative / out of combat spells to invalidate the need for other classes.

Camp 2 - That's not really true except for thought exercises/white room. It's true that there probably is a spell for almost anything, but real play considerations make it so that in reality Wizards don't always have the right spell and can't always spam their highest level spells. Based on the system assumed 2-2-2 encounters per day (6 encounters total with 2 short rests), Wizards have to carefully ration their spells and there are many circumstances (some social, exploration, etc.) where it is just better party-wise to let the non-limited resource characters open the door, parley, etc. so the Wizard can save slots (shifting "spotlight"). The Wizard is by no means weak, but won't overshadow others in an expected day.

Camp 1 Rebuttal - That's true for 2-2-2 days but most campaigns have a variety of encounters/day and it's artificial to force 2-2-2 days everyday. There are a lot of 1 to 2 encounter days for narrative purposes where the Wizard then becomes much, much better...

Is that fair?

This demonstration points to Camp 2 being right for a 2-2-2 day at 7th level, but is it also true at 11th or 15th? I don't have a lot of high level 5e play, but experience from previous editions says the problem usually gets worse at higher levels as there are more spell slots to devote to the "other stuff".

As for the adventuring day, I agree with Stalker0. To always force a 2-2-2 day narratively is tough. It would be ideal if the 2-2-2 could sometimes happen over more than 1 in game day but seems like these concepts are too strictly tied to the narrative in RAW 5e. This is ripe for a home brew / official variant rule where "spell regain" is after 6 encounters and "short rest power regain" is after every 2 encounters. You just need some in game justification not so tightly tied to "resting". That does take some of the tactical "do we short rest or not?" / "do we retreat and get our spells back" decisions away. But these decisions are only meaningful in the ticking clock situations which should happen, but feel artificial to always happen.

 

[Stalker0]

This demonstration points to Camp 2 being right for a 2-2-2 day at 7th level, but is it also true at 11th or 15th?

WOTC's data has show cased that high level play is actually pretty rare, so for the point of debate on whether casters or martials are OP at the levels people actually play at, I think 7th level is a pretty good candidate, because its both still decently high but still a level you would expect a decent amount of actual play to occur. 10th for example, people do play at it, but its often the "last level of the campaign", so its doesn't see that much use in comparison.

Most classes have some subclass abilities, casters get 1 4th level spell and a few thirds, martials have their 2nd attack. I think that's a pretty reasonable level to run tests out.

 

[tetrasodium]

I enjoyed this little exercise.

So, was the original idea to test the following 2 point of views?

Camp 1 - Wizards (full casters?) overshadow other classes, even starting at low/mid levels, like 7th. Wizards can contribute at the top during combat as well as have a ton of narrative / out of combat spells to invalidate the need for other classes.

Camp 2 - That's not really true except for thought exercises/white room. It's true that there probably is a spell for almost anything, but real play considerations make it so that in reality Wizards don't always have the right spell and can't always spam their highest level spells. Based on the system assumed 2-2-2 encounters per day (6 encounters total with 2 short rests), Wizards have to carefully ration their spells and there are many circumstances (some social, exploration, etc.) where it is just better party-wise to let the non-limited resource characters open the door, parley, etc. so the Wizard can save slots (shifting "spotlight"). The Wizard is by no means weak, but won't overshadow others in an expected day.

Camp 1 Rebuttal - That's true for 2-2-2 days but most campaigns have a variety of encounters/day and it's artificial to force 2-2-2 days everyday. There are a lot of 1 to 2 encounter days for narrative purposes where the Wizard then becomes much, much better...

Is that fair?

This demonstration points to Camp 2 being right for a 2-2-2 day at 7th level, but is it also true at 11th or 15th? I don't have a lot of high level 5e play, but experience from previous editions says the problem usually gets worse at higher levels as there are more spell slots to devote to the "other stuff".

As for the adventuring day, I agree with Stalker0. To always force a 2-2-2 day narratively is tough. It would be ideal if the 2-2-2 could sometimes happen over more than 1 in game day but seems like these concepts are too strictly tied to the narrative in RAW 5e. This is ripe for a home brew / official variant rule where "spell regain" is after 6 encounters and "short rest power regain" is after every 2 encounters. You just need some in game justification not so tightly tied to "resting". That does take some of the tactical "do we short rest or not?" / "do we retreat and get our spells back" decisions away. But these decisions are only meaningful in the ticking clock situations which should happen, but feel artificial to always happen.

It actually gets worse at higher levels where noncasters are more likely to have maxed primary attribuse plus powerful feats (or vice versa) along with the continued accumulation of magical weapons. From then on it gets much worse as spell slot progression pretty much freezes

 

[Flamestrike]

I enjoyed this little exercise.

Thanks

This demonstration points to Camp 2 being right for a 2-2-2 day at 7th level, but is it also true at 11th or 15th?

It is, and I would be happy to demonstrate how this is so for 15th level play.

As for the adventuring day, I agree with Stalker0. To always force a 2-2-2 day narratively is tough.

It's not that bad once you accept it.

And you dont need to do it all the time; just set a 6ish encounters between long rests as a rough median. Some days will be longer and some days will be shorter, and some will have more short rests and some will have less - which is fine - it gives every class a chance to shine and moves the spotlight around.

Plus, players will naturally pace themselves according to the meta of the campaign. @Stalker0 was initially pretty keen to blow spell slots on encounters that didnt really need it, but quickly reigned himself in once it became apparent that he was going to need to pace himself.

And remember - a long rest doesnt have to be an overnight affair; it can be set narratively or linked to a different period of resting (a whole week in town for example) if your campaign fits that model better.

It would be ideal if the 2-2-2 could sometimes happen over more than 1 in game day but seems like these concepts are too strictly tied to the narrative in RAW 5e. This is ripe for a home brew / official variant rule where "spell regain" is after 6 encounters and "short rest power regain" is after every 2 encounters. You just need some in game justification not so tightly tied to "resting". That does take some of the tactical "do we short rest or not?" / "do we retreat and get our spells back" decisions away. But these decisions are only meaningful in the ticking clock situations which should happen, but feel artificial to always happen.

Your 'Doom clock' shouldnt feel artificial. It should make sense in the context of the adventure - in real life we rarely have all the time in the world to get things done - we have a time limit to get to the airport for our holidays, and only have 2 weeks to enjoy them, and have deadlines at work daily.

Same thing in a high adrenaline moving scenario like warfare. Your enemy arent going to be there for ever, that squad you're trying to stop is trying to do something, and the battlefield is constantly changing. You dont have the luxury of hitting an enemy position or compound, blowing all your ammo, falling back overnight to resupply, and then hitting it again in the morning.

I DM'd all of Age of Worms, all the AD&D C series of modules, and several Pathfinder modules with the campaign running from 1st to 20th+ in 5E, and was eaisily able to frame every section of the adventures via a doom clock of sorts.

It's an extra layer of work, and something to turn your mind to as DM, but the pay offs are definitely worth it.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

And remember - a long rest doesnt have to be an overnight affair; it can be set narratively or linked to a different period of resting (a whole week in town for example) if your campaign fits that model better.

Your 'Doom clock' shouldnt feel artificial. It should make sense in the context of the adventure - in real life we rarely have all the time in the world to get things done - we have a time limit to get to the airport for our holidays, and only have 2 weeks to enjoy them, and have deadlines at wordaily.

The simple reason.... is that the levers are as much narrative ones as mechanical ones. Sometimes your party is exploring a place and there isn't always a doom clock....its just an ancient place they found that they are going to check out. Sometimes you have a party scene, where it doesn't make sense to burn away lots of resources, and it would be expected to use your "big guns" if your going to use any at all.

Sometimes your players take on a great long journey, and it would feel weird to have 6 encounters in a single day....and then have no encounters the rest of the trip. And if you decide to make everyday a 6 encounter day....well just getting there could be your entire campaign.

So your right that doom clocks are very useful (and frankly at high level Dnd I consider them absolutely essential to have any real game session....otherwise the players are just going to win)....but lets also respect that utilizing them isn't "free", they do have narrative cost....and for many campaigns the story of why the encounters are happening is often more important than what the encounters are.

Yeah, I wasn't referring to the "Doom clock" in general. Agree, there are often ways to work this in to the context of the adventure so it's not artificial. Almost any worthy goal has some opposition which creates time pressure.

However, the 2-2-2 workday is a very specific assumption tied to "in-game days" as Stalker0 points out. You can change this to "rest must be done in a TOR-like sanctuary" or "a week in a sanctuary" or whatever, and this might help some scenerios but will likely have negative implications on other scenerios.

For example, say the PCs need to go to 4 islands and get the McGuffin from each, and then confront the big bad in his island lair on a 5th Island. The islands are all 2 days apart. There is time pressure. The islands have 2, 1, 1, 1 encounter set up, with the final island a 6 encounter. Under normal 5e, the Wizard is high powered (OP?) for 4 of the islands and at par for the final island. Under a sanctuary model, the Wizard is way underpowered as she can't rest for 11 encounters. There are of course other rest models, but anything tied directly to in-game time tends to create complications when not all PCs use the same mechanism.

I play with friends that also play and like more narrative games, so if 2-2-2 leads to a much, much better "game" we'll make it work narratively on both the GM and player side if needed. Maybe even "dramatic" recovery where DM calls the recovery with a heads up. So PCs should assume spell recovery after 6 encounters, short rest recover after every 2 unless notified. So in the island adventure, the DM would deem recovery after island 4 (5 encounters). Why? We can come up with something. In this universe, you have to be constantly studying, praying, communing, etc. and the refresh happenes when you have an "insight" for arcane magic and the diety "bestows" at its choosing for divine. This "insight" just happens to happen usually after ~6 encounters... I'm not sure how many D&D tables are willing to go there though.

I think I slightly prefer other forms of recovery mechanisms (more independant from in-game, all the same for PCs like 4e), but it's not a huge hurdle to overcome as long as you are aware of the underlying assumptions.

 

[Stalker0]

I will say to Flamestrike's point.... considering the benefits of the doom clock both to interesting play and mechanical balance, can we as DMs incorporate them more readily in our narratives?

My knee jerk reaction, already presented is.... "lots of my game are not doom clock compatible".

But that is an assumption....and the question becomes, considering the benefits, is it worth it to me as a DM to rethink my narrative a bit, and try to incorporate doom clocks as a stronger narrative construct, to really make an earnest effort to put them in...and then see how well I can get them to fit my narrative.

Probably the simplest example would be the long journey notion. I've already mentioned that narrative issues with having lots of encounters over the journey....and I stick by those.

However, an alternative would be to have the wilderness encounter on the last day of the journey, just as the parties are getting into XYZ location to do the thing. Assuming a time pressure is already set, than this last encounter would add to the stakes, as the players don't have the luxury of a full rest. So now I can add this to the encounters per day, even if it is just a "random wilderness encounter".