D&D (2024) Wrapping up first 2-20 2024 campaign this week, some of my thoughts

[Zardnaar]

It’s fun to see different tables and how they game, not from a bad wrong fun perspective but what they enjoy, then add a joke to it….reading Zard’s some had staffs of power and maybe the EK, it feels like a butcher shop, I’d like to buy another staff of power…sorry bud, fresh out, come see me early next week, we should have more in

Warlock had one not EK.

I think the EK was a hypothetical build. Well the Staff of power one.

May not have been warlock but there was only 1 in test party.

 

[mamba]

Is this a lie? " Characters and monsters are built to face each other without the help of magic items."

I am not sure what that even means. Aren’t there monsters immune / resistant to nonmagical damage, at least in 2014?

Also, a monster is not an encounter, should they not talk about encounter building rules rather than monsters when it comes to game balance?

If an AP contains magic items, does that mean the encounters do not assume the party found them?

 

[Oofta]

I beleive the module we are using is one of the newest campaigns available on DD&D Beyond. I am not positive about that, but I think it was published around the same time as Vecna Eve of Ruin.

I'm not saying the DM should not have made adjustments, but this was the first adventure using the new rules and I don't think he expected the level of power creep we got.

I don't use modules but I am constantly keeping an eye on difficulty I expect compared to actual play experience. I then adjust, making the encounters more or less difficult to provide a balance that works for the group.

So if I found that the group was steamrolling every encounter, after the first few encounters I would be turning up the challenge. So to me what could have been informative would have been a comparison of the XP budget in the module to the adjusted XP budget. Throw in rough number of items and rarity the group has and we can talk about challenge levels.

So let's take a look at your post where you list monsters.

Spoiler: Post 338

2014 at very high level probably was about 2-3 rounds for a average combat and 4-8 for a boss fight, but it was lower than that if it was a caster heavy. There were 1 round combats though in 2014, ended with a forcecage or something, but it was not every combat like it is now.

So here are a few of the fights from the last session:

Fight 1: 2 CR10 Force Of Iron Elementals and one Force of Earth Elemental (CR5). The force of Earth was underground and we did not know he was there when the fight started. This happens at the front gate to a tower the Iron guys are gaurding it.

Initiative Order:
Valor Bard/Paladin/Warlock - Attacked one of the Force of Iron using extra attack, truestrike and battla magic did some damage (maybe 100 hps).

Me (Rogue/Warlock/Paladin - Entered the fight invisible from one with shadows dropped a 2nd level Tashas Hideous Laughter on both Elementals we saw (turning visible), DC 21 and they save with disadvantage due to Arcane Ambush. Both failed.

Force of Iron 1 (uninjured) - incapacitated due to THL, can take no actions. Crawls next to the Rogue. Fails save at end of turn

Force of Earth pops up next to me and attacks me and misses (if I knew he was there I would have used a 3rd level slot)

Fighter kills the Force of Earth in 2 attacks with a Vicous Maul, attacks the wounded guy who never even got a turn with 2 more attacks, then action surges and kills him, uses remaining 2 attacks on the other Force of Iron and heavily damages him.

The Wizard and Cleric use cantrips on the remaining Force of Iron. He has failed every save and is still laughing.

Round 2: Bard does the Coup degras.

1st turn in the 2nd round, three enemies got to use 1 action. Key differences from 2014: being able to target 2 enemies with THL and the extreme/increased damage done by the fighter and Valor Bard.

Fight 2: We go through the doors into a room with a lot (I am guessing 40ish) Water Sparks. DM gives them all average initiative using the new MM rules instead of rolling for 40 creatures. They all go on initiative 14 which is 4th.

Bard: Fireballs a bunch of them and then shoots one of them with a pistol.

Me: I started invisible, I used Misty Step (without using a spell slot) and movement to move to an ideal location in the room (stayed invisible after casting Misty Step because of Misty Escape). I cast Fear on many of them (20?), DC 21 with disadvantage because I am invisible. Maybe 1 or 2 made the save, these were the ones that were not fireballed.

Light Cleric moved in and used Channel divinity to damage a bunch of the non-frightened/fireballed, focusing on the area where I did not use Fear, he also cast sanctuary on me (to protect concentration).

The enemies who were Feared ran to the opposite side of the room as per the spell. The remainder swarmed me, the Cleric as well as the Fighter and Bard who were in the door. None of them hit me, I am not sure any of them even get to attack me because of the Sanctuary.

The Wizard casts Fireball right on top of me. I save and take no damage (evasion). That kills most of those remaining that are not frightened.

The Fighter kills some, there might be 2 or 3 left that are near death and not Frightened, but there is 3 PCs going before them. The DM ends combat at this point. There are still about 20 that are frightened and not badly injured but they can't run, can't take actions and don't get any saves against the Fear.

Key 2024 differences in this fight: Relaxed bonus action spell rule let's me cast 2 leveled spells in a turn forcing disadvantage on a spell that is an encounter ender.

Fight 3: 2nd floor of the tower, Essence of tides, Essence of Storms and force of Earth. I don't really remember this fight, but I don't think I even got a turn. This room was mostly a puzzle to activate a teleporter.

Fight 4: Teleport to 3rd floor of the tower using teleporter, which was relatively small we are surprised by a CR19 Force of Blood and a CR12 Sunlight Nexus who were waiting for us.

Bard wins Initiative and I don't remember what he does exactly. I do remember he damaged the Sunlight Nexus but stayed near the teleporter and did moce up into melee.

Force of Blood went next moved next to me and the Bard but did not see me because I was invisible. Does like I'm guessing 80 damage total to the Bard making 2 spear attacks a rend from within attack and boil blood bonus action.

Sunlight Nexus goes next, she makes 2 ranged attacks against the bard and uses a save or suck ability on him. I don't think any of that damaged him, but I could be wrong. Then she uses an ability that heals herslef and puts out a Blinding aura that blinds non-elementals. I am barely in it and the Wizard is in it. Because of the cramped quarters no one else is.

I go next: I move to the side a little bit to exit the blindness while still being in melee Range of the Force of Blood. I cast Dissonant Whispers without a slot. He fails his save (with disadvantage), takes whatever damage and provokes an attack from me, the Bard and the Fighter. The Bard and I both have Warcaster. The Bard hits him with Truestrike using a Vicous Longsword. I hit him with a Vicous dagger and Agonizing Booming Blade and drop 5d6 sneak attack and a 4th level Divine Smite on his head. The fighter hits him with a Vicous Maul and uses Heroic Inspiration to reroll and try to turn it into a crit (does not crit). My Quasit Familiar and uses Scare on the Sunlight Nexus (DC19). She amazingly makes her save.

Fighter goes next, goes through the Blinded area, takes an AOO from the Sunlight Nexus, kills the force of Blood in 2 shots I think and gets a crit so he can move back again. Makes two attacks against the Sunlight Nexus while Blinded. Action Surges and makes 3 more attacks. Misses on one of 7 attacks.

The Cleric and the Wizard clean up what is left of the sunlight nexus.

After the battle, I summoned a new familiar (1 action for a Warlock) so Scare was recharged. The cleric casts Prayer of Healing on the Fighter and Wizard and me so we recharge short rest abilities. I use Musician and Inspiring Leader to give everyone (including my familiar) 23 temp hit points and everyone except me a heroic inspiration. Cleric casts another out of combat healing spell to heal the Bard and some scrapes on the rest of us.

Key changes from 5e: relaxed bonus action spell rule, heroic inspiration every turn for Champions, Steadied Attacks, Prayer of Healing, Warlock Find Familiar, Musician Feat.

So the next fight was the boss fight. At this point the Fighter, Wizard and I are coming off a short rest, everyone is fully healed with 23 temp hit points and the Wizard has something like 100 hit points in his Abjuration shield thing.

Boss Fight:
This boss fight actually lasted 4 rounds, but mostly because of 2 reasons - every time an elemental died she came back to life with 25 hit points and because she used a Lair action that Dazed me, my Familiar and the Cleric on Round 1.

I am not going to go through this in detail because it would take too long, but I will give you the gist. We went up through a trap door in the Celing and got surprised by the boss and friends: the boss CR23 Elemental, a CR 19 force of Blood, CR10 Force of Iron, CR13 Essence of Mist and 20 low level minions.

Basically what happened is she used a Lair action that causes Dazed with a save at the end of every turn and 3 of us failed. The Fighter (who used indomitable) charged her, going around her two bodyguard, attacking her and action surging her. I was invisible and although some of them could see me most of them ignored me the first round, probably because I was Dazed. The Bard got hit hard by a bunch of things and something that basically banished him for a round, the Wizard and Fighter got attacked a bunch, the fighter got damage but made a bunch of saves against the boss and the other bigs. The Wizard concentrated on the minions and I don;t think he got damaged at all. The Cleric threw healing at the fighter. My familiar got killed by AOE, I think I saved and took no damage. I went late in the round. My first turn I cast Tashas Laughter on all 4 big enemies, two of them rolled with disadvantage because of the invisibility, the boss made her save, the other 3 did not. I could not move or take a bonus action. I failed my save to shake dazed the end of my turn. The second round went quicker because her three allies were all incapacitated, and two of them stayed incapacitated. The second round the Fighter nearly cut down the big boss, the Wizard still chipping away at minions, the Bard came back cast something to incapacitate the guy that just shook Tashas and gave me a D12 inspiration. On my turn the boss was actually close enough to throw my viscous dagger at which I did and killed her with the sneak attack and truestrike damage. Then with the d12 I successfully shook dazed. The third round the Wizard cast Power Word Fortify on the Bard, giving him 120 temp points. Cleric killed all the remaining minions and the Fighter attacked and killed one of the incapacitated guys and that is when we realized she came back. Luckily he had an attack left over (probably from a crit) and so he killed her again. Between me and the bard we killed another incapacitated guy and then she came back a 3rd time. Any one of use could one shot her with 25 hit points so it was just a matter of making sure we had someone ready to kill her before her turn every time we killed another baddie. Essentally it took 4 rounds, with careful planning and coordination but the fight was more or less over at the end of round 2. As I don't think any enemy except their minions got an action in round 3 or 4.

Key 2024 differences in boss fight: Heroic Warrior, Indomitable, Mage Slayer legendary-type saves, Tahsas hideous Laughter changes.

XP Budget Cap for 5 level 18 PCs is

Low

25,000

Med

43,500

High

71,000

Since you didn't include PC levels for level 20 it would be

Low

32,000

Med

66,000

High

110,000

Considering how much magic you guys have, I'd probably up your effective PC level by 2 or more. But that's always going to be a DM's call and part of balancing encounters.

Fight 1: 2 CR 10, 1 CR 5. XP budget: 13,600 XP. Significantly below the Low budget.

As a general rule I don't throw many monsters that have CR 5 levels lower than the PCs unless I give them some significant advantage. We may have bounded accuracy but it only goes so far. I don't use monsters with CR 10 below the PC's level unless I'm using mob rules.

Fight 2: 40 minions from a book I don't have

You don't give CR and the last time I used minions it was in 4E where I almost never had an all-minion encounter. I will note that they are either in fireball formation or bunched up closely enough to be affected by your cone of fear which makes it easier than it could have been. If I had been DM, these would have been coming from different directions, possibly half on 1 round, half on the second or similar. Also, the ones that ran away never came back?

Fight 3: ?

Fight 4: 1 CR 19, 1 CR 12. XP budget 30,400. Low end of medium.

This is about the easiest I would ever make an encounter, especially since I would consider this almost a solo fight. Personally I wouldn't consider a lone CR 12 monster much of a threat because it's so much lower.

Fight 5: 1 CR23, 1 CR 19, 1 CR13, 1 CR10

This should be a tough fight but you are all basically at full. On the other hand it did take 4 rounds so fairly typical combat.

So assuming y'all are level 18 you had 1 super easy combat, 1 low-end medium and one difficult combat that took 4 rounds. If you're higher level, you had 2 fights that didn't hit the medium cap and only had 1 combat that didn't even hit the "high".

Assuming my guesses at level are correct, I'm not really that surprised by the results you're seeing. A big issue is that you're using 2024 PCs but not 2024 encounter XP budgets. Yes, the PCs are more effective in the 2024 rules, but you're also loaded up with a ton of magic (did you ever have this much in other games?) and the encounters are simply too easy IMHO. You basically had 1 difficult fight at effectively full resources and it took 4 rounds.

 

[Oofta]

I am not sure what that even means. Aren’t there monsters immune / resistant to nonmagical damage, at least in 2014?

Also, a monster is not an encounter, should they not talk about encounter building rules rather than monsters when it comes to game balance?

If an AP contains magic items, does that mean the encounters do not assume the party found them?

Magic weapons have no effect on resistance or immunity in the 2024 MM. A black pudding is immune to slashing damage whether or not you're hitting it with a magic sword.

 

[FrogReaver]

2014 at very high level probably was about 2-3 rounds for a average combat and 4-8 for a boss fight, but it was lower than that if it was a caster heavy. There were 1 round combats though in 2014, ended with a forcecage or something, but it was not every combat like it is now.

So here are a few of the fights from the last session:

First of all thanks for the highly detailed response! I don't have a long time but a few things stood out to me as a bit odd.

Fight 1: 2 CR10 Force Of Iron Elementals and one Force of Earth Elemental (CR5). The force of Earth was underground and we did not know he was there when the fight started. This happens at the front gate to a tower the Iron guys are gaurding it.

Initiative Order:
Valor Bard/Paladin/Warlock - Attacked one of the Force of Iron using extra attack, truestrike and battla magic did some damage (maybe 100 hps).

Even with a vicious weapon and all attacks hitting 100 hp of damage seems high for a valor bard. 1d8+2d6+5 per attack. Then 1d8+3d6+2d6+5 per true strike. That totals to 70.5 for 2 true strikes and an attack. Rolling extremely high could hit 100 damage but is extremely unlikely. Is there something else other than the vicious weapon really boosting the bards damage? I mean even the combat inspiration ability is at most adding 3d12 = +19.5. What am I missing?

Fighter kills the Force of Earth in 2 attacks with a Vicous Maul, attacks the wounded guy who never even got a turn with 2 more attacks, then action surges and kills him, uses remaining 2 attacks on the other Force of Iron and heavily damages him.

Fighter is only doing an average of 19 per attack with a vicious maul. That's maybe 38 damage on those 2 attacks (a bit more if he crits, which he has a really good chance to, but still). A normal earth elemental has 126 hp and possibly resistance to the damage depending on 2014 vs 2024 version. These are supposed to be stronger. I'm having a hard time seeing how a champion fighter kills one with 2 attacks. What am I missing?

The Wizard and Cleric use cantrips on the remaining Force of Iron. He has failed every save and is still laughing.

Round 2: Bard does the Coup degras.

1st turn in the 2nd round, three enemies got to use 1 action. Key differences from 2014: being able to target 2 enemies with THL and the extreme/increased damage done by the fighter and Valor Bard.

THL is great now. But it didn't have much of a huge effect on this encounter. Enemies died too fast, and seemingly faster than they should have.

The Fighter kills some, there might be 2 or 3 left that are near death and not Frightened, but there is 3 PCs going before them. The DM ends combat at this point. There are still about 20 that are frightened and not badly injured but they can't run, can't take actions and don't get any saves against the Fear.

That's not how fear works. If they have no where further to run they don't lose their action even if they can see the caster.

Fear
"...A Frightened creature takes the Dash action and moves away from you by the safest route on each of its turns unless there is nowhere to move..."

Maybe more thoughts later, I have to go for now

 

[Swarmkeeper]

@ECMO3 thanks for sharing the details of the last session's combats

Did 2024 change the rules on Invisibility to not only grant advantage on attacks while a PC is invisible but also to grant disadvantage on any saving throws against spells cast by an invisible PC? (Answered by @Oofta below)

Also, hoping you could answer my questions about rests
To be more concise with those questions:
How often did your party get a long rest?
Was a long rest granted at the end of most/all sessions?
Was a long rest granted when you leveled up?

 

[Oofta]

Good points, one comment...

...

Fear
"...A Frightened creature takes the Dash action and moves away from you by the safest route on each of its turns unless there is nowhere to move..."

Maybe more thoughts later, I have to go for now

I would also note that "If the creature ends its turn in a space where it doesn’t have line of sight to you, the creature makes a Wisdom saving throw. On a successful save, the spell ends on that creature."

Which is why I was asking if the ones that were frightened didn't have a chance to come back. Either they're not going to be able to move or they're going to be out of line of sight.

 

[Oofta]

@ECMO3 thanks for sharing the details of the last session's combats

Did 2024 change the rules on Invisibility to not only grant advantage on attacks while a PC is invisible but also to grant disadvantage on any saving throws against spells cast by an invisible PC?

Trickster rogue level 9 ability "Magical Ambush". It hasn't changed from 2014.

 

[FrogReaver]

I don't use modules but I am constantly keeping an eye on difficulty I expect compared to actual play experience. I then adjust, making the encounters more or less difficult to provide a balance that works for the group.

So if I found that the group was steamrolling every encounter, after the first few encounters I would be turning up the challenge. So to me what could have been informative would have been a comparison of the XP budget in the module to the adjusted XP budget. Throw in rough number of items and rarity the group has and we can talk about challenge levels.

So let's take a look at your post where you list monsters.


XP Budget Cap for 5 level 18 PCs is

Low

25,000

Med

43,500

High

71,000

Since you didn't include PC levels for level 20 it would be

Low

32,000

Med

66,000

High

110,000

Considering how much magic you guys have, I'd probably up your effective PC level by 2 or more. But that's always going to be a DM's call and part of balancing encounters.

Fight 1: 2 CR 10, 1 CR 5. XP budget: 13,600 XP. Significantly below the Low budget.

As a general rule I don't throw many monsters that have CR 5 levels lower than the PCs unless I give them some significant advantage. We may have bounded accuracy but it only goes so far. I don't use monsters with CR 10 below the PC's level unless I'm using mob rules.

Fight 2: 40 minions from a book I don't have

You don't give CR and the last time I used minions it was in 4E where I almost never had an all-minion encounter. I will note that they are either in fireball formation or bunched up closely enough to be affected by your cone of fear which makes it easier than it could have been. If I had been DM, these would have been coming from different directions, possibly half on 1 round, half on the second or similar. Also, the ones that ran away never came back?

Fight 3: ?

Fight 4: 1 CR 19, 1 CR 12. XP budget 30,400. Low end of medium.

This is about the easiest I would ever make an encounter, especially since I would consider this almost a solo fight. Personally I wouldn't consider a lone CR 12 monster much of a threat because it's so much lower.

Fight 5: 1 CR23, 1 CR 19, 1 CR13, 1 CR10

This should be a tough fight but you are all basically at full. On the other hand it did take 4 rounds so fairly typical combat.

So assuming y'all are level 18 you had 1 super easy combat, 1 low-end medium and one difficult combat that took 4 rounds. If you're higher level, you had 2 fights that didn't hit the medium cap and only had 1 combat that didn't even hit the "high".

Assuming my guesses at level are correct, I'm not really that surprised by the results you're seeing. A big issue is that you're using 2024 PCs but not 2024 encounter XP budgets. Yes, the PCs are more effective in the 2024 rules, but you're also loaded up with a ton of magic (did you ever have this much in other games?) and the encounters are simply too easy IMHO. You basically had 1 difficult fight at effectively full resources and it took 4 rounds.

Just so I’m clear, are these 2014 xp budgets or 2024?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

For the most part I've had a hard time keeping the size of the group down to 6. As far as 1 round combats? I just double checked with my wife, she can't remember any either. The only exception (and she was speculating because she couldn't remember one) would have been at level 1 or 2 where the group won initiative. Which could make sense because it wasn't supposed to be a difficult fight in any case. But after the first few levels? neither one of us could think of a single example.

As far as the 4 beholders, no I've never done that and probably wouldn't. On the other hand a necromancer beholder with multiple undead beholders made from the corpses of slain enemies? That could be an interesting encounter.

To be honest, I only know we had a fair few because one campaign we ran, one of the players decided to keep track of damage done and who killed what monster, and his notes included rounds, so we could see what I (another player) was able to identify as Medium and Hard (by 2014 standards) encounters sometimes ended in one round. A lot more were essentially "over" by the end of round 1, with round 2/3 being "mop up" rather than there being any potential for the PCs to suffer serious setbacks. Almost none lasted more than 3 unless there was some kind of "immunity" phase or the like. This was with a 5-PC party. But if you'd asked me I dunno if I would have remembered many 1-rounders.

Playing through Strahd with a mostly a 3-PC party we had a LOT of stuff hit round 4 or even 5 or later though, even though the PCs were being played more optimally. I am now wondering if the DM was just giving us 4 or 5 person encounters though! Perhaps that's the secret! Add an extra PC for your calculations if they're too sassy damage-wise!