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

[Maxperson]

what about the Death Domain Cleric then?

To me they are in the DMG because the DM can decide to not allow them as they are villain class options (per their header).

The Death Domain cleric, yes. The Oathbreaker is DM applied to a PC paladin. It's in the 5e PHB. Breaking an oath =/= villain. It can be a villain, but it can also be someone who made a large and tragic mistake and seeks to atone.

 

[pemerton]

I GMed 4e D&D with the same group for something like 150+ sessions (the full 30 levels, over nearly 8 years). These rest issues didn't come up.

I can think of two main reasons for this:

(1) There was no intra-party tension, because everyone was on the same schedule.

(2) The players understood that a big part of the game (from the technical/tactical perspective) is cleverly rationing your daily resources. They enjoyed the challenge of eking out their last ounce of ability; and If they acted a bit wimpy, I (as GM) would make fun of them!

Here's an example that shows what I mean: The PCs defeat Calastryx (and get up to some other hijinks)

I guess if there are 5e players who just aren't interested in the challenge aspect of the game, then the challenge-oriented aspects (including the resource-and-rest framework) will be a bit of a fizzer . . .

 

[AnotherGuy]

All over the place. I’ve run 5E for the better part of the last decade in person, over VTTs, play-by-post, etc. Easily 200+ different players over that time. I’ve run several large West Marches style games, so that’s probably a low estimate.

That's impressive!
In 15 years of our face to face game I have 6 past players and 5 current players, so not even a 10th of your count.

The vast majority only cared about maximum power, i.e. always prioritizing resting over fictional consequences. Adding in more consequences or time pressure, or limiting rests, only caused players to rage quit rather than engage with the fiction.

I suspect a factor here may be that many of the players were just acquaintances thus being unfamiliar with DMing style and therefore it's easier to gravitate to maximum power and caution.
Also aggravated by the above as well as the temporary nature of the campaign may indicate less focus by player investment on actor, explorer, instigator, storyteller and problem-solver (DMG page 6)

In my one long-term D&D group, I’m also the second youngest at almost 50. When the referee there tries to push time constraints, limit rests, etc most of the other players just roll their eyes.

How does the referee push the time constraint?

The limiting rests is an issue I feel and that is IMO at its core, a design failure. If one inserted a travel rest (with its own criteria) between short rests and long rests one wouldn't have this problem. Players would understand intrinsically why they could only benefit from a travel rest and not a long rest.
You really need a group that works with the GM to better the game in instances where the game fails the playstyle being attempted otherwise its as @pemerton insightfully described upthread - it feels like GM railroading and fostering a GM vs Players battle.

I haven't checked out 5e 2024 to see if they have alleviated this issue.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Didn't say you go back to town. I said you clear and area then rest. Your abilities recharge quickly but you don't get back to full until you've killed all the stuff in the area because you’re constantly fighting and aggroing everything.

You don’t generally need to clear the area for Diablo clones. Your abilities are on cooldowns that recharge during combat, and your health and mana recovery should match the rate at which you are depleting them. Also, you can run away.

 

[pemerton]

Is there anything you can do differently?

Consider that there is no "reduced power" statblock for any creature. Or that the CR system doesn't take anything like reduced party resources into account. If an encounter is ECL 7, it stays ECL 7 whether it's the first or last fight of the day. There's no way the DM can know, in advance, what state the party will be in when they reach the final encounter of an adventuring day. They could be down a man and struggling to survive. They could be at 50% power, 75% power, or hey, even 100% if they found a way to sneak a long rest in somehow.

The only way a DM can adjust for this is with quantum ogres, fudging die rolls, or other "behind the scenes" manipulation- if you're a "living world" DM, ie, you believe the campaign world is set in stone and shouldn't change for players, then inevitably the party will just fail due to bad luck (conversely, they might trivialize the adventure's challenge due to good luck, but whether or not this is as problematic depends on your point of view).

There is no guideline for the DM for how to do this, really, it's pretty much play it by ear. Conversely, it's the same for the players. There is no advice saying "don't use Action Surge in this fight" or "try to only cast one spell per encounter". You use the resources you have to in order to win. If this means that an encounter implodes because nobody can save against Hypnotic Pattern or that you waste a Fireball on resistant enemies, you'll have more or less resources for the upcoming encounters.

It's perfectly believable that a party could suffer misfortune so significant that they cannot proceed and are stuck on encounter 4 out of 7. Of course they want to rest, they have to! But if "long rest" is a naughty word in the adventure's design, then what?

The problem with resting really is that the DM wants to control when it happens, and it's not really a decision they should get to make- they can discourage it, but if the party believes they cannot face another tough encounter, they're going to attempt to rest (or retreat).

And it's not like monsters are designed to have reduced resources when you encounter them either. Ask yourself when the last time you saw a monster in a fight have reduced hit points or a spellcaster is down a few spell slot. I'm guessing that chances are, this is a rare occurrence, since doing this should lower the difficulty of the encounter, and it's not clear by how much. The CR system isn't built that way!

Let's say you decide a second level party is going to fight three Wights in the broad daylight, so that all their attacks are rolled at disadvantage. Does this make the encounter appropriate? Some would say yes, some would say no, the truth is, nobody knows, because it all depends on the roll of the dice. You can attempt to use statistics, but statistical anomalies happen. Anything you do is an educated guess.

I did this occasionally in 4e D&D - eg when the PCs fought Torog,

After getting distracted by this and that, including a detour via Mal Arundak on the Abyss, they finally made it to the Soul Abattoir, having just reached 25th level.

<snip>

At the end of the session, I made it clear to the players that Torog was after them. The invoker made his monster knowledge check, and I briefed them on Torog's stats - they were suitably impressed by his 34th level status, with his main ability being a 3-target close burst 20. (And the only party member who can attack effectively from outside that range is the archer-ranger, and the invoker is the only other one with a reliable attack above 10 squares, with Mantle of the Infidel).

We then had a three-week break between sessions, during which the players plotted and planned about whether to stay and fight Torog, or instead try and escape to their waiting Planar Dromond (anchored on the Soul Slough and crewed by devils from Stygia harvesting souls for Levistus).

In the end, after a bit more debate at the start of the next session, they decided to stand and fight. They made some preparations, in the form of powering up with Wrath of the Gods (+8 to damage) and also preparing a Wizard's Curtain to improve their chances of hiding in the opening round. The sorcerer also got ready to lay down his auto-damage zone for when Torog broke through from beneath the tunnel floor. (Successful Dungeoneering from the ranger had revealed the direction Torog was coming from.)

I had also told the players that Torog, deprived of dark spikes, would weaken rapidly over the course of a confrontation: to be manifested mechanically in the form of a d8 escalation die (ie a die start at 0 but then counting up by 1 each round) granting a bonus to both attacks and damage for the PCs.

In the end, Torog did not have a chance: he was killed in the round that the escalation die was showing 5.

I haven't dug out my notes to see what level of encounter I treated this as - I suspect level 30, given the expected contribution of the escalation die.

I assume similar sorts of approximations can be used in 5e?

Encounter design has always been borked

That's not my experience. 4e D&D encounter design was great! And classic D&D tends to have fairly robust rules for correlating "number encountered" to the dungeon level.

What's also missing is any real incentive for players to push their luck. If you don't have to face a dragon at 75% power, why would you? Why would anyone, that just sounds suicidal! And yet the game is designed with the idea that of course people will do that, and what guidance is there for the DM about how to handle that issue?

There's a culture of disdain for players who try to rest whenever they can, but the fact is, if the party goes into a fight at 50% power and the Cleric takes a breath weapon to the face and is dropped to 0 hit points in the first turn, how many people would say "the players were dumb to not rest first"?

I can't answer your last question. But as far as how the GM is meant to push the players, my answer - in a game where it is the role of the GM rather than the players to manage pacing and scene-framing - is by pushing the players. Don't relax the pressure. The post I linked to just upthread provides an example; here's another one, from the immediately subsequent session: Doppelganger mayhem (with a long lead up)

 

[overgeeked]

I suspect a factor here may be that many of the players were just acquaintances thus being unfamiliar with DMing style and therefore it's easier to gravitate to maximum power and caution.

Could be. Some were also friends and family. I'm also fairly thorough when bringing people into a game. I want them to know what to expect, so I have a several page document with my referee style, house rules, expectations, etc. Some might not have read it, sure. But I tuck a cookie or two in there so those who have read it will get an obvious reward...and it will be pretty obvious who hasn't read it.

Also aggravated by the above as well as the temporary nature of the campaign may indicate less focus by player investment on actor, explorer, instigator, storyteller and problem-solver (DMG page 6)

I'm not sure why you'd assume they were temporary. Much less why you assume the players would think of the games as temporary when we started playing.

How does the referee push the time constraint?

As mentioned in the thread, making time matter. You have three days to rescue the prince from the dragon.

The limiting rests is an issue I feel and that is IMO at its core, a design failure. If one inserted a travel rest (with its own criteria) between short rests and long rests one wouldn't have this problem. Players would understand intrinsically why they could only benefit from a travel rest and not a long rest.

The excursion resting and safe-haven resting variants do just that.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But as far as how the GM is meant to push the players, my answer - in a game where it is the role of the GM rather than the players to manage pacing and scene-framing - is by pushing the players. Don't relax the pressure.

The problem, of course, is that constant pressure is absolutely exhausting.

Like, you're right that the GM needs to do this, but the materials we get from WotC are...let's call it lacking in guidance or models to follow, at least thus far in 5e (whether 5.0 or 5.5). But the GM also needs to not do it. Variation is important. But that thing is even harder to do, because when you take the pressure off, that's giving the classes designed around time pressure a massive leg up on the ones that are designed around consistency.

Not even 4e entirely addressed this! But I'm certainly of the opinion that it addressed it better than any version of D&D published since 2000.

 

[Zardnaar]

I've been screwing around with things recently.
Designed a DM combo monster. Kinda similar to a mythic critter.

Reskinned a marilth as an Avatar of Bhaal slayer form added some legendary actions., saves, greater magic resistance and unstoppable 12. Buffed the HP.

2nd form was Bhaal. Used a DM special added mostly the above^^^.

Unstoppable to shrug off damage, reskinned Marilith with greater spell resistance to essentially ignore save or sucks. Fight 7 or 8 of the day 2 or 3 short rests including prayer of healing. 500+ hp between the two forms.

Vs level 12 PCs. Cleric finally ran out of spells at least high level ones.used a scroll of sunbeams (vs greater magic resistance)

Sorcerer more or less ran out as well. Had a summon dragon going. 1 lvl 6 spell saved for emergencies. Blew level 3 and 4s on counterspelks and Chromatic orb.

Bhaal had 4 attacks a round. 1d6+piercing damage and murder aura. +8d6poison. 1 reaction per turn, crots 18-20.

PCs had aid level 5 and heroes feast running. And temporary hot points from a variety of sources.

Think the fight went around 5 rounds. Unstoppable soaked up a few PC hits, I had to use legendary saves on stunning strike as the "slayer" flunked some saves.

Marilith rolled well. Shaved off half the rangers HP first round. Eventually they beat it down and it collapsed into a pike of gore. Only to have Bhaal emergencies. Rolled garvage+ wardingvflare. He got a couple of crits in though so 2d6+5X2 +16d6 poison damage.
Warlock Eldritch smites knocked one of them probe monk was burning focus points like candy. Unstoppable essentially negated most crits and 1/3rd the PCs damage 1/6th for monk (bit higher I used it vs his best attacks).

Stunning strikes, command spelks, hold monster, flurry of blowsrone failed.

Hex+level 6 scorching ray shaved off 80hp and I think the ranger piked the kill using this weapon.

Warlock was out of spells.

Sword of Chaos - bg3.wiki

Sword of Chaos is a very rare +2 greatsword which deals additional Necrotic damage and also restores a portion of the wielder's health on each successful hit.

bg3.wiki

So 7 or 8 hours of real time 2 dungeons.

Encounters included.

1. Demons. CR10 one+ pets.
2. Banites
3. Bhaalists
4. Myrkulites
5. More Bhaalists
6. Mutilated adult black dragon. In a river of poo.
7. 8 green dragons pawn, 4 half dragon bhaal spawn. God's slayer dragon spawn
8. Sarevok (reskinned death knight) more bhaalists.
9. Bhaal. Reskinned+buffed Marilith+DM special buffed (elite death reaper of Bhaal buffed).

Might have been 3 sessions or a long one.

400 damage fireball, 25 danage Chromatic orb and a twinned hold monster cakewalked an encounter.

Fantasy Vietnam FML. It was 3 sessions over 5 weeks real time. 4 hour sessions one was 5.

Think I'll consider this a stress test.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Could be. Some were also friends and family. I'm also fairly thorough when bringing people into a game. I want them to know what to expect, so I have a several page document with my referee style, house rules, expectations, etc. Some might not have read it, sure. But I tuck a cookie or two in there so those who have read it will get an obvious reward...and it will be pretty obvious who hasn't read it.

That's interesting. I've only applied or seen 'the cookie' applied to story/setting notes never to the type of documents you mentioned (not that I have made a 'welcome pack' before).

I'm not sure why you'd assume they were temporary. Much less why you assume the players would think of the games as temporary when we started playing.

Apologies I meant short or quick storylines/campaigns. Perhaps some AL.
That's what I kind of imagine it was for a 200+ player experience. What do you consider long term campaign? 25+ sessions?

As mentioned in the thread, making time matter. You have three days to rescue the prince from the dragon.

Yeah I can see that a long campaign which features a deadline often enough with every storyline/quest could feel contrived.

The excursion resting and safe-haven resting variants do just that.

Agree those are simple enough options which made it easier for GMs.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The problem, of course, is that constant pressure is absolutely exhausting

Quite.

Like, you're right that the GM needs to do this

I disagree. My players have had enough constant pressure all day at work. They play D&D to relax.