Agreed on all.
However, those ten zombies aren't (usually) the only thing the party will face in a given day/adventure; and the system has a lot to say about accessing the loss condition over a period of time - a series of combats where each one leaves you with fewer resources.
5e waves at this with its stated intent of a 6-to-8 encounter day; but that's unsustainable in most reasonable settings (and anecdotally from what I read on this forum, it seems many don't run it that way), and the characters still get everything back the next day - there's no ongoing attrition to speak of.
You aren't making sense.
You agree with me that the difficulty lays with the DM to formulate the encounters. You then state that resource attrition over the day is something DnD does. Cool.
You then state that 5e was balanced around 6 to 8 BASELINE encounters (my emphasis added) but that that number of fights is unsustainable. Well... cool? Maybe it is hard to have 8 fights in an adventuring day, but then you just need to alter the fights to suck the same number of resources. Again, this is a pure DM tool. Ten Zombies doesn't drain the same number of resources as ten zombies in a maze filled with poison gas. But the base game, and the base assumption of 6 to 8 encounters, only assumes ten Zombies.
So... if you want the same resource attrition, but in fewer encounters, you just increase the difficulty. Not hard.
And as for getting everything back the next day.... how is that bad? You are saying that there is no ONGOING attrition, but the game isn't balanced around ongoing attrition, so why does this matter? It may not be something that YOU like, but it doesn't matter if it is daily or weekly recovery from the perspective of the game balance. The recovery period is just the recovery period.
And if the DM tries to add in any lasting attrition the system quietly encourages the players to fight against this.
So? If the player's don't want a lasting attrition system, why try and force it on them? It doesn't matter if the system encourages or discourages it, all that matters is if the players accept it and want it.
Agreed about having the tools; but examples of how they'd look in use would be helpful too, for a new DM. The Gnoll example I gave might be one such.
Sure, examples are nice. But examples are never required. Again, your initial point was that the health of the game was at risk because the designers were too scared to give the tools to the DMs to make things difficult. That's now false, you have the tools. But now is the health of the game based on having examples provided to you? That's a weird take
I kinda disagree there. Making things easier is - in complete isolation - neither easier nor harder than making things more difficult. But you're not doing it in isolation. You've got players, and they are going to react to the changes you make - almost invariably with pleasure if-when you make things easier and with displeasure if-when you do the opposite.
False. My players have never reacted with displeasure when I make things more difficult. And in fact, I've seen many people complain about things being too easy and being boring. The thing is, too easy and too difficult are both bad. Both are bad for players. You always want to be between the extremes.
And, in actuality, it is more conceptually difficult to tone down a monster without making it too weak, than it is to increase the difficulty of a monster. Addition is just easier than subtraction.
And I'm more or less fine with this. The game expects a certain degree of buy-in and always has. It's not for everyone.
That said, char-gen has been overly complicated ever since 2e; even 1e was a bit much if one went by RAW.
And it is now easier than it was in 3.X. If we aren't lower than 1e Character Creation difficulty, then complaining it is too easy or too few options makes no sense.
I may have more experience as a DM (not sure about that) but none of it is with 5e - you'd have more of a sense of how to tweak 5e than I. My approach would probably start with a sledgehammer and end up with something nigh-unrecognizable as anything 5e-based.
That is because you have purposefully avoided playing 5e. That speaks nothing to the system being badly designed.
My issue is this: that which a new player starts with becomes that which that player quickly becomes accustomed to. Thus starting hard then easing off is likely to produce happier players in the long term (as they're already familiar with the game being difficult) than is the reverse.
False. You don't introduce a kid to baseball by throwing 90 mph fastballs they can't hit, or being harsh on fouls. You start with a ballstand and a wiffle bat. And sure, some players never want to play the game beyond that, but those that enjoy the game often start to find it too easy, and seek more of a challenge.
I have first hand experience with this. I used to enjoy playing chess. Those family members who knew the game and would play with me took a policy of never "going easy" on me, so that I would "learn right". So, chess became this game I lost constantly and never had a chance of winning. That's boring, so I stopped playing. Anyone who would ask me to play now would be far better than me, so I'd lose, so no point in playing.
DnD starting easier is a good thing. Because for as easy as you think it is, I've seen the new players first hand. They are struggling with the game. They would quit if it was suddenly made much more difficult before they've had a chance to figure out the game at this level.
And yes, that can be frustrating. I've never had a group that I felt confident I could go all-out against as a DM. I wish I could sometimes. But that's not a bad thing, because I've also gotten multiple people hooked into my favorite hobby.
