D&D (2024) Command is the Perfect Encapsulation of Everything I Don't Like About 5.5e

[DinoInDisguise]

Er...no, you can't. Because I've seen the products of doing that. It doesn't work, and produces wildly unbalanced encounters, sometimes the PCs doing the curbstomp, sometimes them getting curbstomped.

Just claiming math doesn't work isn't persuasive when people are literally using it in practice. It's the basis for Sly Flourish's wonderful Forge of Foes. The fact WotC failed to use that math in their own monster designs is perplexing to me, and likely more of a commentary on WotC's bad monster balancing than anything.

I will go through a few examples, just to make it very clear that the math is very sound, and very predictable. Unfortunately, dislike for a system doesn't change that.

A level 3 PC with an 18 in the primary stat is going to have a +6 to hit. This is from +4 from the ability and +2 from profieciency. This means with a 16 ac monster, that PC hits 50% of the time. This is again, proven math. Generally you want the players to hit more than they miss, for psychological reasons. So you probably want to be closer to a 14 AC. If you play with lower powered starts, the PC may only have a 17 in that stat which would lower the bar by one. All of this is easily predictable. All of it is simple math. These are trends you will see repeated as we go.

You can do the exact same with "to hit" on the monster. This is because, again, AC is predictable. You know the armors given out, and therefore have the AC of each PC. Building a monster to the average is a good starting point here. At level 3, a +5 is probably good.

Save DCs are also predictable and can scale very similarly to AC on a monster. As are saving throws, if you know the class. This can also be adjusted to reach certain percentages of success and failure on each side. Each +1 or -1 is a 5% change. This works in reverse, as the PC save DC is predictable, and from that number you can easily decide on a saving throw for the monster.

The math is so tight that you can tailor encounters to specific rounds. Assuming your PCs build close to the average HP wise, you can predict the round the PCs lose without ever seeing their characters by adjusting monster damage. There is an average PC hp chart on google if you wish. This gives you a clear benchmark. A monster that deals 20 damage per round, after adjusting for a 60% to hit, kills a party with 200 combined hp in roughly 10 rounds.

Player damage is also predictable. The weapon dice variation is limited, and only ability scores are ever really added consistantly. You can fairly accurately predict the damage per round of a PC using the same math as the monster. Spells don't even mess it up that bad, as you can predict the success of saving throws, and even make educated guesses on number of targets a spell is likely to hit - that chart is also freely available online.

This is literally math. It's demonstrable. The only variables are the players craftiness, and the dice. We can poo-poo 5e for any reason that suits our fancy, but once we start denying mathematics I begin to wonder.

Edit: Either way, I have very little more to say on this topic. I encourage people to check out Sly Flourish's book.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Just claiming math doesn't work isn't persuasive when people are literally using it in practice. It's the basis for Sly Flourish's wonderful Forge of Foes. The fact WotC failed to use that math in their own monster designs is perplexing to me, and likely more of a commentary on WotC's bad monster balancing than anything.

I will go through a few examples, just to make it very clear that the math is very sound, and very predictable. Unfortunately, dislike for a system doesn't change that.

A level 3 PC with an 18 in the primary stat<snip>

All of which is done easier, faster, and more consistently in 4e. That was the whole point.

Save DCs are also predictable and can scale very similarly to AC on a monster. As are saving throws, if you know the class <snip>

....except saving throws are very specifically one of the parts that DON'T work consistently, because most characters will be bad at any given save. Intelligence saves, for example, are extremely dangerous because only three classes get Int save proficiency, and only one gets actual mechanical benefits from their Intelligence (four and two, respectively, if counting Artificer). Strength is even worse, with only two classes getting Str save proficiency,

The math is so tight that you can tailor encounters to specific rounds.

....this is the first time I've ever heard of 5e math being referred to as "tight." It is not tight. It is extraordinarily loose, especially compared to other versions of D&D. Again, 4e did this better in every measurable way.

Player damage is also predictable. <snip>

And, again, 4e was even more predictable than 5e is, despite using many different roads to get to the same destination, e.g. Warlock and Ranger using effectively "called shot" damage (Hunter's Mark/Hex), Rogues getting Sneak Attack dice with Combat Advantage, Avengers being extremely accurate with (as we would call it now) advantage on all attacks vs. their chosen target, Sorcerers and Barbarians getting just flat Big Damage bonuses, etc.

Every alleged virtue you've cited, 5e is simply worse than comparable alternatives. Every single one.

This is literally math. It's demonstrable. The only variables are the players craftiness, and the dice. We can poo-poo 5e for any reason that suits our fancy, but once we start denying mathematics I begin to wonder.

I am not denying mathematics. I am saying that your demonstrated inexperience with 4e being simply better with every single thing you've cited shows that your point isn't anywhere near as strong as you think it is.

Spells don't even mess it up that bad,

....have you actually looked at the spells in the PHB? They CONSTANTLY deviate from those numbers. Sometimes egregiously so! Fireball actively spits in the face of those numbers, and it's just the poster child of that sort of thing. 5e spell design is all over the place, and is one of the major reasons why spellcasters, while not AS egregiously overpowered as they were in 3e, are still fundamentally overpowered compared to non-casters.

Edit: Either way, I have very little more to say on this topic. I encourage people to check out Sly Flourish's book.

I mean, if I can do so without actually spending money (as I have a very, very tight budget at present), I would be happy to do so. But until then, I'm looking at the 5e we got, and compared to 4e, it is a sloppy, buggy, vague mess.

 

[Hussar]

I found it hard to DM because I came to detest many of the core underlying assumptions and the whole thing was a personal fun-sink. However, that's a matter of mismatched requirements, and doesn't mean there's an inherent flaw with 4e, as much as it might have felt otherwise to me. Had I found the underlying concepts and intended game style positive and uplifting, I'm pretty sure it would have been easy to run.

Ah, you mean hard as in, "I don't like this so it's hard for me to do it because I don't enjoy it" rather than "This is difficult to do".

That makes sense.

 

[SableWyvern]

Ah, you mean hard as in, "I don't like this so it's hard for me to do it because I don't enjoy it" rather than "This is difficult to do".

That makes sense.

Yes, I presume so. It's kind of hard to be objective, but I'm reasonably confident it would not have been difficult if I had been more aligned with what it set out to do

 

[Hussar]

This is literally math. It's demonstrable. The only variables are the players craftiness, and the dice. We can poo-poo 5e for any reason that suits our fancy, but once we start denying mathematics I begin to wonder.

For a martial, I would largely agree with you. When I ran an all martial campaign in the early days of 5e, I could pretty much guarantee that the PC's were going to do X damage per round and could balance encounters simply by using multiples of their damage in monster HP. If the party dealt an average of 100 points of damage/round (not unreasonable for a, say, 7th level non-caster group) then a group of monsters with 350 hp should last about four rounds.

And, yup, it was very predictable.

But, casters completely mess that up. Having had a 5 caster group in my last campaign, I watched as they routinely obliterated encounters with ease simply because there are SO MANY save or die (or effectively save or die) effects that the party could punch WAYYYY over it's weight class. The magic system in 5e very much ignores the math of the game. There's no way it can't. How much math does a Wall of Force do? Or a Fear spell which can virtually end an entire encounter in one round? Or a Hallow spell? Or Clone? Or... or ... or...

 

[Lanefan]

And I'm saying that advice is either useless or outright bad for brand-new DMs needing help.

It is, as my analogy above said, like giving a middle schooler e e cummings and Frost and Plath and saying "see! Poets can do whatever they want! Do whatever you want." That's not how you build up good poets. Good poets must master the fundamentals before they can begin doing high-flying stunts with language.

I may not be a master poet but I've been told I'm good enough to be good enough; and I don't recall being taught very many fundamentals that everyone else didn't also get, i.e. readin' and writin' classes in school.

Give a class full of middle-schoolers some examples of various major poets' work, tell 'em they too can be this if they want to be and bang away at it long enough, and what'll you get? Probably one or two of the class will in fact go on to become pretty good poets. Half the class or more won't give a bleep about it, and the rest will maybe try it then go on to something else.

Until someone builds up the necessary intuitions and skills and repertoire of experiences to make such decisions on their own, it is critically important to help them make such decisions. Instead of uselessly telling them "do it yourself!", there are easily half a dozen things you could do instead that would be far more productive:

• Start by asking questions, "Do you have any ideas for how you would like to handle this already?" "What are your players like?" Etc.
• Give examples of what you've done in similar or related situations, "My last group did X" type stuff
• Point to useful rules (a rarity in 5e) or other guidance that helped you with figuring out a solution
• Pointing them to 3rd party rules you have enjoyed (this was obviously not very available in the first year or two of 5e)
• Walk them through how you would make that decision, as if they were one of your players and you were running right that moment
• Provide more general DMing advice and explain why it's relevant and how to use it, rather than tossing a pithy maxim at them and dropping the mic

THAT is how you actually mentor a brand new person seeking advice for how to improve their skill at a complex and challenging task. But of course I essentially never saw people actually doing that. They instead chose the laziest possible approach: "just do it, 4head."

Very few DMs got there without first having been a player*, which means they had a DM to learn from. What was learned there (for good and for bad) is very likely enough to start with. After that, there will only ever be three words that matter when it comes to learning the ropes:

Trial.
And.
Error.

* - those few who start out as DMs without ever having played are almost invariably in a situation where the whole group is new to the game, meaning they'll all learn together.

 

[Shardstone]

DMG organization aside. This idea that 5e is uniquely difficult to DM bothers me on a deeper level than maybe it should. And it bothers me because DMing is just hard in general. And the issues people point to with 5e, and what makes 5e hard to DM in their minds, aren't the issues that you'd see if you played with random DMs off Reddit. And they aren't where the true difficulty lays in the DM role, nor are they objective.

In those games, with random DMs, you will see two main culprits of bad game play. DM table presence, or lack there of, and a lack of proper pacing. Neither of which can be adequately taught in a DMG. You could write an entire book on pacing alone, and people have. And there is an entire branch of science having to do with human behavior and by extension table presence.

We see people on this very forum, repeatedly asking for rules fixes for problems caused by a lacking in these two areas. Blaming 5e's rules for their own inability to handle social problems, or their own poor understanding of the pacing involved in storytelling. Topics that could fill college courses and far outstrip a section in a D&D book.

Yet we are repeatedly led to believe that the real difficulty in DMing is a flexible CR system that requres looking at your players character sheet before blindly throwing enemies at them. Or that a DM has to make a judgement call because a rule isn't spelled out with great specificity. As if memorization is objectively easier than making said judgement calls. Or maybe the real fun is watching the DM flipping through the rule book. Needless to say, all of these are preferences portrayed as truths.

But it all seems like a distraction and a minimization of the true difficulty in DMing which is system agnostic. We are just suppose to pretend 5e is uniquely hard. While in reality, DMing is just hard in general and the examples provided as 5e's issues are, at most, minor pain points and likely just personal preference.

But maybe I just don't understand the true challenge in this role. Maybe Im missing something, and scripting out every DM action by developer fiat would fix all issues, and definately wouldn't end with a mediocre video game with bad graphics. But at least DMing would be "easy."

Agreed. All facts. Its usually a skill issue, more often then not.

 

[Lanefan]

Being able to build a game where the PCs and NPCs work by exactly the same rules is a beautiful dream. It generally doesn't work in reality ...

My reality begs to differ; but you did say "generally", so we're good.

because PCs have to survive several encounters a day most days. Monsters rarely fight more than once.

By the 5e paradigm if the DM makes it so, yes. But (in any edition) if the players sometimes get more in-character choice over what-when they fight and the DM doesn't get too constipated over the idea of a 5-minute adventuring workday, then that 'once' for the monsters can also be 'once' for the PCs and both sides can just giv'er.

 

[Lanefan]

The math is so tight that you can tailor encounters to specific rounds.

While I can kinda see the appeal of this for white-room theorizing, my first thought for actual play is that if the math has gotten this finely tuned it's all been stupendously overthought. Bleah!

 

[Lanefan]

For a martial, I would largely agree with you. When I ran an all martial campaign in the early days of 5e, I could pretty much guarantee that the PC's were going to do X damage per round and could balance encounters simply by using multiples of their damage in monster HP. If the party dealt an average of 100 points of damage/round (not unreasonable for a, say, 7th level non-caster group) then a group of monsters with 350 hp should last about four rounds.

And, yup, it was very predictable.

Which of course quickly raises the question: is that degree of predictability a good thing?

Because if it's that predictable for you-as-DM the pattern of events will become predictable to the players as well after a surprisingly few combats, after which the whole thing becomes very boring.

But, casters completely mess that up. Having had a 5 caster group in my last campaign, I watched as they routinely obliterated encounters with ease simply because there are SO MANY save or die (or effectively save or die) effects that the party could punch WAYYYY over it's weight class. The magic system in 5e very much ignores the math of the game. There's no way it can't. How much math does a Wall of Force do? Or a Fear spell which can virtually end an entire encounter in one round? Or a Hallow spell? Or Clone? Or... or ... or...

Which means you-as-DM can ramp it up on your side as well. Use more spellcasters (or similar) as opponents. Give your opponents and monsters ways of changing the ground rules. In short: do what you can to make it less predictable.