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

[ezo]

It seems that folks who keep insisting that 5e is so easy are just parroting some YouTubers comments without doing any of the real testing of these theories.

Well then you would be (at least partially?) wrong. Maybe some people are, but since I don't watch YouTubers...

I keep insisting 5E is so easy because, well, it is--but that is by design. We played 5E RAW for months before we adopted our first house-rule to make it more challenging, playing "published adventures".

For the most part, if you use publish adventures from WotC, don't make any huge mistakes, your party will "win the day". But, hey, they're supposed to, right?

 

[Hussar]

You can overcome that with things like tremorsense, true sight, see invisible, and a few others. There’s also the low tech approach. Have a fight in a kitchen and someone throws flour everywhere. So goes for paint, mud, or anything else that’s appropriate.

Or, I dunno, light a torch or a lantern? I mean, good grief that’s not exactly rocket science.

 

[Hussar]

Well then you would be (at least partially?) wrong. Maybe some people are, but since I don't watch YouTubers...

I keep insisting 5E is so easy because, well, it is--but that is by design. We played 5E RAW for months before we adopted our first house-rule to make it more challenging, playing "published adventures".

For the most part, if you use publish adventures from WotC, don't make any huge mistakes, your party will "win the day". But, hey, they're supposed to, right?

Great. And I mean that.

Now, actually track how easy it is. Tracy the next 20-30 rounds of combat and pinpoint why it’s so easy.

In our drow encounter above, it seems that the dm allowed the gloomstalker to be completely undetectable which is a mistake. Coupled with some different tactics that encounter could have been far more difficult.

That’s my point. We need actual hard numbers. Not just gut feelings.

 

[Clint_L]

I played my main character in AD&D for years, and in different campaigns with different DMs. As did my buddies, with their main characters. Was 1e "easy"?

 

[ezo]

Great. And I mean that.

I know you do, so we're cool for a conversation.

Now, actually track how easy it is. Tracy the next 20-30 rounds of combat and pinpoint why it’s so easy.

I'll bring it up at our next session. If everyone is cool with it, I'll make up a RAW-designed encounter day and report back.

 

[el-remmen]

If the new WotC adventure books weren't such massive compendiums, they could fit in a section of advice for increasing/decreasing danger in the various areas.

Dungeon Magazine used to do this in the 3e era. There would be a sidebar with tips for making changes to raise or lower the challenge of the adventure. It really didn’t take much space.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Great. And I mean that.

Now, actually track how easy it is. Tracy the next 20-30 rounds of combat and pinpoint why it’s so easy.

In our drow encounter above, it seems that the dm allowed the gloomstalker to be completely undetectable which is a mistake. Coupled with some different tactics that encounter could have been far more difficult.

That’s my point. We need actual hard numbers. Not just gut feelings.

Ill have to re-read the Gloomstalker but im fairly sure it says in if there is no light (like in the underdark) they are invisible.

 

[ezo]

I played my main character in AD&D for years, and in different campaigns with different DMs. As did my buddies, with their main characters. Was 1e "easy"?

If you ever only had the one, yeah... they made it easy.

Ok, seriously though, AD&D (using the published modules with the sample PCs) was NOT easy, by any stretch of the imagination. If you found it to be, odds are the DMs you played with were "not playing by the rules" (as written).

But, of course, who can honestly say? After all, one person's "easy" might be another person's "hard".

A couple years ago we introduced our new members to AD&D when we took a break from 5E. Standard party, playing in KotBL, and the party didn't fair well at all. Such low hp, slow healing, limited spells, etc. After a single session, they realized how much harder it was than 5E.

 

[tetrasodium]

Oh goody. Pure theory crafting with zero actual play experience.

This is what I’m talking about. This sort of thing is nice and all but it is still just theory crafting. It’s meaningless without actual evidence to back it up. He can waffle on endlessly about the math of monsters from three modules but it’s still largely lacking in actual evidence.

It seems that folks who keep insisting that 5e is so easy are just parroting some YouTubers comments without doing any of the real testing of these theories.

I don't understand. Did you not want what you plainly asked for?

It seems trying to guess what a skeptic meant to but won't ask is unlikely to be particularly productive. I took your request for wanting what you asked for. Since you mentioned having stories and anecdotes without asking pointed questions that would provide you with specific details of those situations that you felt needed clarification I assumed that you had the experience and system understanding required to put the pieces together once the "actual hard numbers" were gathered and presented for someone of your experience. If the skeptical knowledge & experience you presented is lacking and you wanted something else, you still are not asking pointed questions. I'm not telepathic so can't solve that.

Great. And I mean that.

Now, actually track how easy it is. Tracy the next 20-30 rounds of combat and pinpoint why it’s so easy.

In our drow encounter above, it seems that the dm allowed the gloomstalker to be completely undetectable which is a mistake. Coupled with some different tactics that encounter could have been far more difficult.

That’s my point. We need actual hard numbers. Not just gut feelings.

.Now for a magic trick. We have AC & we have HP. With that we can calculate overall survivability. Lets say that we have a party of four baseline warlocks. Those are warlocks that start with 16 charisma, get plus 2 at 4 & 8 and just spam eldritch blast with agonizing blast and hex. Against this party, hpw many rounds would you expect a monster to survive?... Well I plugged in the numbers and here we are .. it's a flat line, like actually completely consistent right from CR3 to CR20. The target for all challenge ratings appears to be about 1.5 to 2 rounds of survivability. In my opinion, this is the single most interesting thing in this entire video. With the exception of high end tactical games almost every single DM I know complains about monster HP being too low. Some of my friends just flat out double everything. This right here is why. They are expecting a normal party to work through one monster every 1.5 to 2 rounds assuming they are using no special tactics or high damage options. When you start adding in smites fireball advantage generation spirit guardians bonus action attacks bless & all of the crazy things that even a lightly optimized character can do, these monsters are probably going down in 1 turn each & are likely spending that turn in a web spell.

Why would you need 20-30 rounds of crunch for a party & encounter when published monsters are so anemic? Although I made a fancy sheet during covid that can give you that for whatever party you want over 25 attacks here. Just build an output for each PC & compare to the actual monsters & encounter guidelines that wotc has printed.

 

[ezo]

Ill have to re-read the Gloomstalker but im fairly sure it says in if there is no light (like in the underdark) they are invisible.

Correct, but invisible =/= hidden.

So, while he can attack "unseen", having advantage, everyone knows where he is, and attacks against him have disadvantage. And as I mentioned upthread, a fail against faerie fire, which the drow can do innately and would have given advantage to the others attacking the party, would have removed his invisibility.