D&D General What does the mundane high level fighter look like? [+]

[Oofta]

I'm duly impressed that you managed to disagree with my post where I was agreeing with you.

I thought I was agreeing, just in different words. Maybe I need more sleep!

 

[Gammadoodler]

To be clear, there’s a huge difference between a lunge by a RW highly skilled swordsman making a couple of attack lunges and being able to attack everyone in a 706 square foot area (a 15’ radius circle) in 6 seconds. That’s almost 50% bigger than my entire apartment in law school, and about 80% bigger than the house I was brought to the day I was born. That doesn’t sound mundane to me.

I’m a LOT more comfortable with a 10’ radius area (approximately 315’ square feet).

I have been noting through several posts that what is mundane may differ based on species abilities.

Spelling it out and going back to my first post’s methodology of being system agnostic:

If a character’s base speed is based on his species (not class), then a high level mundane fighter’s speed might max out at 2 times* normal for his species. (The 3.X monks did something like this by simply adding 10’ base speed every few levels.)

That “heroic max” could be applied to a variety of metrics & mechanics.

If a normal human hold their breath for a number of rounds = 2x their Con bonus (or whatever), the high-level mundane warrior could hold their breath for 4x their Con bonus. But a high-level mundane warrior of a species that could already do 4x would be able to hold their breath 8x their Con.

See also things like max encumbrance, bonuses to saves regarding endurance, bonuses to resisting harmful magic, and so on.



* or maybe even 3 or 4 times. The exact number doesn’t really matter for this discussion, and if used, would need to be determined by playtesting.

I think this is one of those things where the game model for combat (particularly on a grid) and real-world capabilities are so out of synch that it makes it difficult to talk about them.

A dash in combat is 30 feet in 6 seconds (60 feet including free movement) for most fighters in 5e. A dash for a 250-350 lb dude whose main job is to push other 250-350 lb dudes around is 120 feet in 5 seconds in the real world (the slowest 40-yard time in the last decade is at 6.06 seconds).

We put our Offensive Lineman on a D&D grid and use RW dash distances and that dude is covering 600 square feet just in the path he's running. Add adjacencies and that number doubles or triples.

Basically in the real world, 6 seconds is longer than you think.

There's an easy test for it too...

Hand a child a rake and invite them to hit as many things in your house as they can in 6 seconds. Maybe double check your insurance coverage first..

 

[Minigiant]

You saying that it is a widespread problem also means nothing. Which is not what you said, you stated as a matter of fact is that 5E doesn't work at higher levels.

I make no claims whatsoever about what people other than the ones I've played with to level 20 say or think. All I can say is that the issue is not universal.

I didn't say it's a widespread issue.

It's just widespread known.

There are only a fraction of the fanbase who plays high level. And they have a problem.

 

[Minigiant]

You saying that it is a widespread problem also means nothing. Which is not what you said, you stated as a matter of fact is that 5E doesn't work at higher levels.

I make no claims whatsoever about what people other than the ones I've played with to level 20 say or think. All I can say is that the issue is not universal.

I didn't say it's a widespread issue.

It's just widespread known.

There are only a fraction of the fanbase who plays high level. And they have a problem.

 

[Oofta]

I didn't say it's a widespread issue.

It's just widespread known.

The only thing I can guarantee is that some people have no issues with high level. Some people do. Percentages? Most? A few? Pick either side and we just don't know.

Saying that "It's well known that..." or "The majority ..." is an appeal to authority fallacy that simply can't be justified.

There are only a fraction of the fanbase who plays high level. And they have a problem.

False. Some people may have a problem, others do not. As far as I can tell the former refuse to make any adjustments to style to fix the issue even when the latter offer to discuss ways that might help.

In any case, your statements of fact are not true but you will never, ever admit to that so have a good one.

 

[Tony Vargas]

No one said a majority of fans want to play high level.

I mean, they might, if high level play had ever actually worked well. 50 years of "this doesn't really work" is going to put a lot of people off trying it. And, the balance problem D&D has always had at all levels do get harder to ignore or fix as level increased.

Saying that "It's well known that..." or "The majority ..." is an appeal to authority fallacy that simply can't be justified.

Well "the majority ..." is an appeal to popularity fallacy.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Ok. Then explain to me what character stats scaling up represent and what do some enemies becoming minions represent?

A game element that determines your abilities and a game element to represent mowing through foes that pose a physical threat but don't present a physical obstacle respectively.

'Game Element' being the important part because game is game.

Because don't they both represent the same thing, the characters becoming more powerful?

One is the structure for scaling abilities, the other is something to demonstrate those abilities on.

Why use two different methods to represent the same things, the latter of which is not actually codified in any way and is up to GMs whims?

The don't represent the same thing and in 4e, it is codified. The game tells you how to use minions.

And how to handle the foes facing characters and allies of varying levels at the same time?

Oh, that's easy: don't.

The allies scale to the PCs too and there's no longer that thing where you're expected to be all different levels.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I felt that in 4e the monster HP was bloated and fights took too long. I haven’t had that impression in 5e, things die pretty fast.

IMO in 5E tough things die too fast, chump things live too long. Boss monsters just get dogpiled with the PC's superior action economy while their minions are ignored unless they have some kind of gimmick that makes the 20hp spud with a sword somehow matter to a 10th level party. Swinging a sword once a round with a +4 to hit for d8+2 ain't it.

I don't want to track individual hit points for 10+ chumps but that is astonishingly what 5E expects. Minions worked great for me in 4E. I also had a mook system, where they had a HP threshold. Deal that, they die. Deal less, they're bloodied. Any damage or condition defeats a bloodied mook. Basically Savage World's fine/shaken/defeated.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

IMO in 5E tough things die too fast, chump things live too long. Boss monsters just get dogpiled with the PC's superior action economy while their minions are ignored unless they have some kind of gimmick that makes the 20hp spud with a sword somehow matter to a 10th level party. Swinging a sword once a round with a +4 to hit for d8+2 ain't it.

I don't want to track individual hit points for 10+ chumps but that is astonishingly what 5E expects. Minions worked great for me in 4E. I also had a mook system, where they had a HP threshold. Deal that, they die. Deal less, they're bloodied. Any damage or condition defeats a bloodied mook. Basically Savage World's fine/shaken/defeated.

Fair. Extras that somew provide some benefit to the bosses are better. Though I feel masses of lesser foes are capable of dealing decent damage, especially if they’re ranged and concentrate fire. Your mook system is pretty similar to what I use for really big combats.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Ok. Then explain to me what character stats scaling up represent and what do some enemies becoming minions represent?

Scaling with character level represents the character getting broadly better at adventuring, particularly the class's abilities.
Enemies being statted as minions represent them being far below the party in general combat ability, and, for whatever reason, fighting all-out against them for a shot at slowing them down or harming them in whatever way they can, consequently leaving themselves open to killing blows, having very fragile morale, or whatever, such that they're easily knocked out of the fight. The exact same enemies, facing a much lower-level parties could be fighting them on equal footing, and represented by standard blocks, or against an even less experienced party, could toy with them, pulling off otherwise low-percentage tricks that'd never work against an equal, as represented by a Solo or Elite stat block.
Minions also work well for creature that are highly skilled non-combatants, since they can have skills & other abilities in line with their nominal level, without having a ton of hp from leveling in some class.

None of that is actually unrealistic, counter to genre, or bad at representing the world. It's just designed around the actual focal point of the game: the PCs.
A detailed simulation of all the factors that make a monster that gave you a terrifying battle by itself when you were just starting out, but now you mow through hordes of them, would be downright prohibitive. D&D has consistently failed in giving one set of stats that actually deliver a powerful 1-vs-party threat at low level, and a credible threat at mid level, and then a trivially dispatched but not trivial, threat at high level. It's not impossible, it'd just require a lot of detail, different-level combat maneuvers, rules for toying with lesser enemies, or making desperate attack against greater ones, overwhelming situational modifiers, etc, etc....

To me it is clear that this is far more convoluted than just having the character stats scale up as they level thus the lower level enemies becoming easier to beat..

As above, that might work, in a far more detailed and nuanced simulation. One not, for instance, limited to the flat distribution curve of the d20.

What is desired is the consistent representation of fictional reality by the mechanics.

Aside from 'fictional reality' being a bit of an oxymoron, fictional settings aren't that consistent - particularly, not that kind of consistent. All orcs using the same stat blocks isn't consistency, it's a simplification for playability. A representation of 'the world' where the orcs aren't existentially mooks and the PCs not Heroes, would have each orc unique and modeled in the same level of detail as a PC. When the PCs encounter a particularly bad-ass orc leader at first level and he nearly takes them down single-handed, then, later, having undergone rapid leveling, the PCs take him on again, he wouldn't, if the game were faithfully modeling some imaginary objective reality, have the same stats, maybe the orc wouldn't have had as much experience as the PCs in the meantime, but time as passed and he may have gained a level or switched to different gear or picked up a new trick or even have something he's been working on in hopes of a rematch...

Ultimately, a TTRPG is a game, not a simulation. And whether the DM wants to focus on challenging the players, craft a story that the players hve staring (or secondary) roles in, or present a world for the players to explore, it all happens through the PCs, making them the focal point, if not the focus. Even if the PCs aren't the whole point, they're the point of view.