D&D 5E (2024) Mike Mearls explains why your boss monsters die too easily

[Micah Sweet]

It would be simple to do so.

Treat the game like a game. Stop worrying about verisimilitude.

Rest Update: You cannot take a long rest until you've had ~20 rounds of combat.

Done.

It's kinda hilarious though.

Such obvious things as "rest as often as possible" and "hit fast and hard" were completely overlooked in the game's basic design.

A later post by Mearls. "A party that unloads with their best powers simply breaks the system."

If you stop caring about verisimilitude and "treat the game as a game", you will divide the player base rather severely IMO. 4e more or less tried this, and we all know how that turned out. On the other hand, if you want a game targeted at a smaller fraction of the fantasy RPG player base, have at it! Pretty much all the games I most enjoy are going after a sub-grouping too.

 

[Zardnaar]

10 minute combats seem very quick to me. @SlyFlourish estimates 45 minutes per scene (Scenes – The Catch-all Step of the Lazy Dungeon Master). That seems more realistic. Obviously, it changes depending on character level, number of players, player familiarity with their abilities, encounter difficulty, etc.

Mine are probably 30-45 minutes.

Battlemats slow things down.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Wow, 20 rounds of combat between long rests, with combats assumed to last about 3 rounds means they were expecting approximately 6 or 7 combats between long rests.

Which is what the 2014 DMG recommended.

Which is what a lot of us have been saying for the past 10 years.

Find a group that wants to play that way, and Bob's your uncle!

 

[Parmandur]

10 minute combats seem very quick to me. @SlyFlourish estimates 45 minutes per scene (Scenes – The Catch-all Step of the Lazy Dungeon Master). That seems more realistic. Obviously, it changes depending on character level, number of players, player familiarity with their abilities, encounter difficulty, etc.

5E fights taking 45 minutes??? That seems a bit much.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yep. Despite the DMG saying exactly that, people have been denying it for a decade.

There's a difference between denying what the game recommends, and just not wanting to play that way.

 

[Zardnaar]

Find a group that wants to play that way, and Bob's your uncle!

Yup.

Me are typically 3-5 encounters a day. 30-45 minutes.

Level 1
0-2,
3 2-4

It varies. Lower level a lot less higher level can creep up.

If PCs start 5MWD dungeons go into reaction mode with reinforcements arriving eery 1-2 rounds (essentially I combine multiple encounters).

Or monsters bug out and PCs miss out on loot/quest items.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Oh, they did. It’s just that no one read the DMG. And when people quoted the DMG saying “look, it says right here you should have 6-8 combats per adventuring day,” no one believed it. They argued it was just a recommendation of how much a party can handle, not how much they need to be facing every day for combat to be balanced.

Maybe the WotC 5e designers should have been more clear about their intentions. Maybe they still need to do that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Or that people just don't want to play that way (with lots of filler encounters that exist basically for attrition).
One thing that would likely help is making a long rest more like stopping at Rivendell for an extended period and less like taking a nap.

Agreed. Big fan of having to take your long rest at a haven myself.

 

[Charlaquin]

In principle, yes. In practice, I've never seen combat in any 5e-ish game I've been a part of run anything as quickly as you--and that's leaving aside any narrative concerns about the fights fitting into things.

Do you build encounters according to the guidelines in the 2014 DMG? Including the XP multiplier based on the number of monsters in the encounter? And do you build those encounters for somewhere above the threshold for Medium difficulty and below the threshold for Deadly? Because if you’re doing those things, combats should take about 3 rounds. Maybe 4 if the dice are running really cold for your players. How long 3 rounds of combat takes your group to execute will of course depend on factors outside the designers’ control - I know well what it’s like to have players who can’t remember their own abilities or spells, or where anything is on their character sheet. But, if a single round of combat is taking you more than 5 minutes to get through, I’m not surprised you find the idea of more than one or two combats per session boring.

 

[Zardnaar]

Maybe the WotC 5e designers should have been more clear about their intentions. Maybe they still need to do that.

Na its changing demographics.

They did ask about how many encounters. But huge influx of new players play differently.

I've noted online and IRL they blow spelks a lot faster.

In BG3 spaces theyre long resting after every fight or two.

We clear Act 2 in 3 long rests, Act 3 in 3 by comparison. Plus fake ones to get story cut scenes.

In both though you ask them how they're casting so many level 5 and 6 spells and that's how. Blow them all ASAP.

Not 5MWD more like 1MWD if that. Mearls is saying 24 second work day.