D&D General Is WotC's 5E D&D easy? Trust me this isn't what you think... maybe

[Stormonu]

The official modules DO NOT always follow the CR/Encounter guidelines and will often throw PCs into situations that aren't easy to overcome - things like the initial goblin ambush in Lost Mines, the solo combat in Greenest in Tyranny and so on. And when these show up, the designers catch hell for it.

I don't know what me and my gaming group(s) are doing differently, but we've never felt things were super-easy and its very easy for things to go sideways and someone's character dies. We usually have at least two character death per campaign, and I've seen a couple TPK's or near enough TPK's to always have me keep my guard up in the game.

 

[Mannahnin]

This made me wonder, at what point do you even need to roll the dice if they are just going to succeed 80% of the time anyways? I give WotC crap from this but it's actually something I like about Shadowdark. The difference is in combat, SD's combat is old school and can be deadly. WotC's is still that 80% or better success rate, why even waste the time? Why not just tell me what happens?

I think you're misunderstanding the math here, and honestly understating it because of the misunderstanding.

Here's a statistic I remember off the top of my head from my old Warhammer days. Your odds of rolling a 5+ on a d6 are ~33%. Your odds of rolling a 5+ on at least one of two d6s are ~54%. So the "unlikely" result, the one in three chance, becomes more likely than not to crop up at least once, assuming just two tries.

Similarly, if you stack a bunch of encounters in a row whose odds are individually 80% to win, it actually doesn't take that many tries to reach a greater than 50/50 odds of a loss occurring. If I'm doing my back-of-the-napkin math right, it's only four rolls until we cross the 50% threshold (about 59%, from ~48.8% in three trials). If that 20% loss means a TPK, only having 80% odds in any given fight, and assuming that 80% remains consistent, within the space of four encounters you can expect it to be slightly more likely than not that the party will lose one of them and die.

I have two takeaways from this.

1. The baseline encounter math must assume better than 80% odds.
2. This is done for a reason, because TPKs aren't fun if they happen often. And they will happen pretty regularly unless you put your thumb on the scales or let the players do so.

I dig old school games, but the math still has to be in the players' favor for parties to survive those. Although as folks have noted, in order to survive under less forgiving rules and encounter scaling, old school encourages the players to think tactically and stack the odds in their favor.

 

[el-remmen]

I said no, but that's because I have never run D&D of any edition "as written" (to be honest, I am not even sure what that means or how that works, as what is written cannot account for what is happening at any particular table at any particular time).

I do think 5E is probably easier for newbie players than previous editions were (for a variety of reasons depending on the edition) but still challenging because they are newbies. As for an experienced player with an experienced DM, there is no reason why it has to be "easy."

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

If I want a serious or slapstick meatgrinder, I will participate in a specific, short adventure for that purpose. Those can be fun, but only in that context.

I don't want a campaign to be actually super deadly all the time. It's so frustrating when every player builds a background and story and at least one of those characters dies every other session and all that effort is wasted? Terrible, whether I am the DM or the player. It feels like all that work for the player to develop the character, and the DM to integrate the character meaningfully into the story was meaningless, so there was no point to adding depth to the character. Then having to bring in another PC that isn't as connected to the story as the other players? The heroes just lost a friend and now they have to build rapport with a new character while they are grieving? It's already annoying when it does happen. Meatgrinders make that happen all the time. It makes no sense.

I want story-based adventures where mysteries and puzzles are uncovered, and surprises occur due to discovery and dialogue, and experiencing and surviving the unknown, like the occasional great tactic or surprising attack capabilities that cause the PCs to scramble and adapt rather than just die outright. The players feel pressure, and back luck and tactics can occasionally threaten them with death.

The PCs do not feel like heroes if they take out the dragon, only to die from unimportant fight of lesser minions. In the campaigns I run, character death should be rare and memorable.

We have seen PC deaths in the published campaigns, but not too many. The danger level has been appropriate for the most part. Some encounters harder than others.

 

[DarkCrisis]

I think you're misunderstanding the math here, and honestly understating it because of the misunderstanding.

Here's a statistic I remember off the top of my head from my old Warhammer days. Your odds of rolling a 5+ on a d6 are ~33%. Your odds of rolling a 5+ on at least one of two d6s are ~54%. So the "unlikely" result, the one in three chance, becomes more likely than not to crop up at least once, assuming just two tries.

Similarly, if you stack a bunch of encounters in a row whose odds are individually 80% to win, it actually doesn't take that many tries to reach a greater than 50/50 odds of a loss occurring. If I'm doing my back-of-the-napkin math right, it's only four rolls until we cross the 50% threshold (about 59%, from ~48.8% in three trials). If that 20% loss means a TPK, only having 80% odds in any given fight, and assuming that 80% remains consistent, within the space of four encounters you can expect it to be slightly more likely than not that the party will lose one of them and die.

I have two takeaways from this.

1. The baseline encounter math must assume better than 80% odds.
2. This is done for a reason, because TPKs aren't fun if they happen often. And they will happen pretty regularly unless you put your thumb on the scales or let the players do so.

I dig old school games, but the math still has to be in the players' favor for parties to survive those. Although as folks have noted, in order to survive under less forgiving rules and encounter scaling, old school encourages the players to think tactically and stack the odds in their favor.

The math was hyperbole, point was they steamroll most combats.

 

[Mannahnin]

The math was hyperbole, point was they steamroll most combats.

Sure, sure. I'm just saying that if their odds were ONLY 80% they'd be dead after a single adventuring day.

 

[Oofta]

The official modules DO NOT always follow the CR/Encounter guidelines and will often throw PCs into situations that aren't easy to overcome - things like the initial goblin ambush in Lost Mines, the solo combat in Greenest in Tyranny and so on. And when these show up, the designers catch hell for it.

I don't know what me and my gaming group(s) are doing differently, but we've never felt things were super-easy and its very easy for things to go sideways and someone's character dies. We usually have at least two character death per campaign, and I've seen a couple TPK's or near enough TPK's to always have me keep my guard up in the game.

It's funny. People complain 5E is too easy, but I've never had a problem challenging groups. By default, the general difficulty is targeted at the lower end. That makes sense to me, you don't want new DMs killing off PCs left and right. But as a DM, it's up to you to gauge what the party can handle and adjust accordingly. It's not always going to work of course, recently I just about had a TPK because the PCs had really poor tactics added to really poor rolls.

But when I talk about how I have no issue challenging groups at any level people insist that it's too easy and their groups just stomp all over their encounters. But offer advice it's ignored, ask for details on an example so maybe I can say what I would have done differently as a DM and ... crickets.

Maybe every group I've ever DMed for has been exceptionally bad at tactics and builds. Some groups are certainly more difficult to challenge than others. But I have to tone down combats every once in a while so I don't kill off more PCs*. I'm not doing anything particularly difficult, I make no claims to being a tactical genius. Several of the monsters, especially from the MM, seem to hit below their CR which is something they seem to be addressing. So occasionally I'll bump up attack bonuses and damage or something similar, tweaking monsters is something I've done in pretty much every editions. But much like you, I just don't see the issue.

*my players don't want a super lethal campaign, it's something we discuss in session 0.

 

[DarkCrisis]

A lot of people like to say it's either "too easy" or "Super lethal". Can't there be a middle ground?

 

[aco175]

I am prepping an upcoming adventure and the module lists an evoker as the bad guy. The old evoker had 12HD, 50something HP, and a list of spells making it a CR9. The new Mords evoker has 22HD, 125ish HP, a 50% recharge fireball, a cantrip that shoots (3) 4d10 force bolts and some extra spells, but still a CR9. I'm interested in seeing if the new one is something scary and makes the fight more than a walk for 8th level PCs.

Is the monster math in the new books coming out going to look this scary or still be flat to the power of the PCs.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Not quite an "official" WotC adventure, but Call of the Neatherdeap has some encounters that are far too hard for the level they are intended for.