D&D General 5e System Redesign through New Classes and Setting. A Thought Experiment.

[Steampunkette]

I'm not following you well here. I get the relative values, but when you start talking about 2 actions per turn at level 5 I'm completely lost.

It's a thing, yeah. After level 5 you get two Actions per turn. One of which can be a Daily or Encounter. The other of which can be an At-Will, such as Disengage, a Weapon Attack, Grappling, Etc.

Here's the thing. It doesn't matter how much better actual encounter powers are than at-wills. You get that same allotment every encounter. Your encounter powers + your at wills produces your floor. Your ceiling would then be adding your one daily power to it. So in your example for a 4 round encounter (assuming that's what you are designing for) using 1x for at will, 2x for encounter and 5x for daily. Then it looks something like:

Floor = 2x+2x+1x+1x = 6x
Ceiling = 5x+2x+2x+1x = 10x

Which skews these up to:

Floor at level 1: 2x+2x+1x+1x = 6x
Floor at level 5: 3x+3x+2x+2x = 10x
Ceiling at level 6: 6x+3x+3x+2x = 14x (3/day)

But... also taking into account at level 5 your Proficiency increases to +3, so your encounter powers go up one.

Floor at level 1: 2x+2x+1x+1x = 6x
Floor at level 5-8: 4x+4x+2x+2x = 12x
Ceiling at level 6-8: 6x+4x+4x+2x = 16x (3/day)

And then this advances at 9th, 13th, and 17th

Floor at level 9-11: 5x+5x+2x+2x = 14x
Ceiling at level 9-11: 7x+5x+5x+2x = 19x (3/day)

Floor at level 13-16: 6x+6x+2x+2x = 16x
Ceiling at level 13-16: 8x+6x+6x+2x = 22x (3/day)

Floor at level 17-20: 7x+7x+2x+2x = 18x
Ceiling at level 17-20: 9x+7x+7x+2x = 25x (3/day)

But that's still an expectation of each character being able to put a floor throughput of 145 on average at level 17-20. A party of 4 would throw out about 704 damage over the course of a 4 round combat. Just using encounters only. (Assuming everyone is just dealing as much damage as possible)

That's enough to take down an Adult Red Dragon in about a round and a half if the dragon is able to be hit by everyone's attacks and can't resist any of the damage dealt. (256 HP Dragon) Assuming maxed attack stat (+5), maxed out magic weapon bonus (+3) at 17-20 you've got a +14 to hit and an Adult Red Dragon has an AC of 19, so a 5 or higher hits.

Missing with a weapon swing would hurt your damage a bit (about 13ish damage) but missing your Encounter drops 35 average. Missing with a daily is 44. To average things out, though, let's just call it a 20% damage loss total, putting individual floor damage to 116.

So it would probably wind up being a 3-5 round combat if the Dragon were to fly around. If there were additional targets in the encounter, they'd also be soaking up a decent portion of those attacks, as well.

If everyone drops their Dailies, the damage jumps to 176 each and 704 as a group. Drop 20% for miss chance and it's 140 and 560.

These are also average (4.5) numbers. The actual range is 82-208 individually (65 and 166 with the 20% taken off) and 328-832 over the 4 rounds for the party (262-665 with the 20% taken off)

However.

Some of that straight throughput is also going to be lost to your class's role. While a Blaster is meant to put out 25x damage at level 17+ if they drop their daily, that damage is meant to be spread across an AoE rather than spiking a single target with it, so the actual value will probably be closer to 20x for ceiling and 13x for floor. So 122 floor and 154 ceiling.

A Support character is similarly going to be losing some of that strict throughput into healing or helping allies. And both of them may try to pin the dragon down so a Tank can get close enough to reasonably fight it through control effects. So, again, 20x and 13x.

And some of that Tank's throughput is going to be eaten up by buffing their own defenses, self healing, or control, as well, in order to keep the dragon from attacking the other party members. Drop that thing down to 20x and 13x, too.

So one tanky fighter, a supporty cleric, a blasty wizard, and a skirmishing rogue is looking at more of a 511 floor and 638 ceiling before factoring AC, resistances, etc. With AC involved that's 408 and 510.

So a single CR 17 dragon is not going to stomp a party of level 17+ adventurers as a solo encounter, but it will probably consume one or two dailies over a 4 round fight. Two CR 17 dragons are going to be a significant threat, though. Or a CR 17 dragon with some minions cluttering up a battlefield.

Meanwhile the CR 24 Ancient Red Dragon is gonna be more of a problem. With AC 22 and 546hp on average, we're looking at a 35% damage loss instead of 20%, so bringing the encounter 4 round damage down to 94 for one character and 377 for the whole party. With dailies that's down to 114 individually and 457. Not enough to kill him without crossing the 5 round thresh hold even if everyone's throughput is 100% damage focused unless they land some important crits.

With a more reasonable party spread, though... that damage is dropping to 332 and 414 over 4 rounds. You might need the whole party to Catch Their Breath and drop another set of encounters in rounds after 5.

And god forbid that Ancient Red Dragon flies around and picks at the party to any degree. You'll be at this all day. Downing healing potions and stuff!

Can you imagine? A CR 24 Ancient Red Dragon being a serious challenge to a high level party for more than 5 rounds?

*Note: In practice this would allow the encounter to be over in 2 rounds as 7x>6x and 6x ended the encounter in 4 rounds. Having your abilities take a 4 round encounter down to a 2 seems like the exact kind of 5 MWD problem we want to avoid.

Kinda sorta not really? The 5MWD issue isn't that fights are over quickly, it's that fights are over quickly -and- the party doesn't have the resources to continue on so they immediately take a long rest.

Dailies are more attractive than encounter powers, obviously, but if the floor is high enough that people feel fairly confident about continuing, they can. It also means that easier encounters won't require big power use which encourages saving dailies for later.

However, I think you also previously said you'd give more daily power uses per day (limited to once per encounter) than there would be likely encounters. If that's the case then:

Floor & Ceiling = 5x+2x+2x+1x = 10x. There's no variance here (other than built in die rolls for damage and attack and possibly powers that are slightly better/worse in some situations than others).

This tightens up the game balance drastically, but also means if anything goes wrong, DM miscalibrates encounter difficulty, low player die rolls, high monster die rolls, unfavorable terrain not accounted for, etc then the players lack any levers they can pull to equalize to the encounter difficulty given these factors.

The first seeming solution that's really a non-solution is to just make the encounters easier to deal with the potential dice variance and ignore DM miscalibration. Assuming no DM miscalibration then you've likely made most encounters much to easy. It's only the ones where the dice variance swings badly for the players that the encounter gets to your initially desired difficulty. Essentially you've built in cakewalk mode to the games math.

Then consider what happens if the DM does actually miscalibrate. If you've not previously made the game easy cakewalk mode by accounting for dice variance then DM miscalibration is highly likely to lead to very bad player results and while such miscalibration can happen in any game, in this one the balance is so tight that it's much easier to cause negative effects.

As such I'd recommend

1. The planned encounter floor for your designed number of rounds must be meaningfully lower than the potential ceiling
2. That being able to spend resources to achieve near double output for some encounters is too much of a spike. Double output means encounter length gets cut in half. A more reasonable value might 3x daily. That would be 3x+2x+2x+1x=8x vs 6x (and also showing the encounter can be ended in 3 rounds due to 3x+2x+2x=7x>6x).

If your using base 5e spells I'd say that's probably too much as an every encounter thing. If it's 2 per 1 hour long short rest that's more reasonable, but then you've contributed to the floor and ceiling problem.

This is a misunderstanding. You have 3 daily uses per day, 1/encounter. But you wind up knowing 6 different options to use with those 3 slots. I apologize for miscommunicating that, before!

(Also characters who prepare spells or abilities could prepare 6 each day, and have a list of options instead of being stuck with the first 6 they pick. Everyone else needs to spend some downtime to retrain their stuff)

 

[Lanefan]

Totally get that. It was also hell on wheels to try and build anything for because of the powers structure. SO repetitive to make a 30 level class where you're re-writing upgraded earlier material and trying to add more flowers to it.

30 is too many levels, period. Scale it back. A lot.

Hmm... what about a "Catch your Breath" action? "So long as you make no attacks and cast no spells on your turn, and move no more than half your movement, you recover two exertion, one spell slot, your channel divinity, or a psi die, and may expend a number of hit dice up to your proficiency bonus to recover hit points."

So in the middle of the battle, after the Sorcerer dumps a couple of big spells on the battlefield, she backs off from the fight, catches her breath, -doesn't- use any cantrips or attacks against the enemies, and just spends her time recovering long enough to pull out one more spell.

This might be on to something.

That said, I'm fine with death spirals. They force hard choices between burning resources and beginning/continuing to spiral or conserving resources in order to avoid the spiral.

 

[Lanefan]

What kinds of settings and art styles do you think would work best for something this dramatic?

Setting: mid-to-high fantasy.

Art: not cartoons. Cartoon art, particularly on book covers, screams "cheap, hokey, don't in any way take this product seriously".

 

[Remathilis]

Players who think a 1st-level party can handle two Ogres are also part of the problem, even more so after the first PC or two goes down and the Ogres have barely a scratch on 'em.

"Cut your losses and run" used to be a standard piece in every player's toolbox. "Survival is job one" was another.

Two PCs out of five go splat, the other three run away, the party - and thus the game - continues, the two players roll up new PCs, and the DM learns a little. All is good. Carry on.

This is an absolute mismatch of expectations on both ends. New players don't know what they are and aren't capable of. New DMs don't know what PCs are able to handle fairly. That creates a double set of errors: PCs don't know when (or even that they can or should) run, and the DM doesn't know to adjuciate the power they have because there is nothing giving them guidance.

You can teach a group of toddlers how to swim by throwing them one by one into a pool and letting them figure it out. Then you hope the latter toddlers will figure out what to do after they see the earlier toddlers face down in the bottom of the pool. But that's not a particularly good method of fostering a life-long love of swimming.

And I don't really care what was the expectation 30 years ago when AC went downwards. The game has moved on. I want the new generations experience to be a positive one, not one of blindly fumbling around trying to figure what to do and failing miserably. They can get enough of that dating.

Did you mean "overestimating" here?

I've never seen a problem with giving out too much magic too early - with one exception: too much defensive magic can make the PCs either think they're invulnerable or in fact be invulnerable, neither of which is any fun for different reasons.

I meant underestimating as "Oh, this fight should be challenging" and then the PCs destroy it in one round without major resource expenditure. Overestimating would be assuming the fight is properly difficult and then destroying the PCs in a few rounds without them ever mounting a reasonable offense.

While I do love magic items, I have learned to temper the good stuff for later on. Giving a paladin a holy avenger at level 3, breaks the game in ways a +1 longsword or even a frostbrand doesn't. And lets not forget what a Deck of Many Things can do to a campaign, especially if the DM doesn't know the rammifications that one item can have...

 

[Remathilis]

30 is too many levels, period. Scale it back. A lot.

Sad BECMI noises.

 

[Remathilis]

That said, I'm fine with death spirals. They force hard choices between burning resources and beginning/continuing to spiral or conserving resources in order to avoid the spiral.

The worst death spiral game I ever played was Star Wars. For a genre that was supposed to be about swashbuckling heroic action, the group of players I was with quickly turned into battle-hardened Nam vets who jumped at every shadow and only acted when they had overwhelming firepower.

"Attack the Death Star? Not unless you have several battalions up your skirt sister!"

 

[Zardnaar]

The worst death spiral game I ever played was Star Wars. For a genre that was supposed to be about swashbuckling heroic action, the group of players I was with quickly turned into battle-hardened Nam vets who jumped at every shadow and only acted when they had overwhelming firepower.

"Attack the Death Star? Not unless you have several battalions up your skirt sister!"

What version of Star Wars?

 

[Zardnaar]

Sad BECMI noises.

Center has said it was to many levels. He would reduce it to 20 in hindsight.

They stretched B/X over 36 levels vs 14.

 

[Steampunkette]

This is an absolute mismatch of expectations on both ends. New players don't know what they are and aren't capable of. New DMs don't know what PCs are able to handle fairly. That creates a double set of errors: PCs don't know when (or even that they can or should) run, and the DM doesn't know to adjuciate the power they have because there is nothing giving them guidance.

Also: Running away is not actually an option, in this scenario.

Even assuming the players disengage and dash every chance they get, unless one of the party members is a Rogue, they're all getting clubbed.

And if one of them -is- a Rogue, he can get bouldered instead.

That is without even getting into a chase sequence instead of combat sequence (which the DM might not even know about or understand). If it -does- wind up in a chase sequence, the ogre's higher stats will let him overtake pretty quickly, too.

You can teach a group of toddlers how to swim by throwing them one by one into a pool and letting them figure it out. Then you hope the latter toddlers will figure out what to do after they see the earlier toddlers face down in the bottom of the pool. But that's not a particularly good method of fostering a life-long love of swimming.

It will be life long. But it won't be a long life!

And I don't really care what was the expectation 30 years ago when AC went downwards. The game has moved on. I want the new generations experience to be a positive one, not one of blindly fumbling around trying to figure what to do and failing miserably. They can get enough of that dating.

"I suffered, thus everyone else must suffer equally" is a tried and true method of getting people to walk away from you real fast, yup!

"Life isn't fair" so make it fair, Coward. If life sucks then do what you can to make it suck less. It's not hard if you're not scared of helping people.

(This is me making jokes on your post and agreeing with you! For clarity's sake!)

 

[Remathilis]

What version of Star Wars?

Saga. The condition track quickly made each fight spiral. Though my group was used to Revised, where a single crit is death, so maybe there was some PTSD involved from that.