D&D 5E (2024) The Most Meta Party to Make the DM Cry?

[Zardnaar]

The "all marathon, all the time" meta are "World's Largest Dungeons" and games where each dungeon must be cleared without leaving and there are no non-dungeon encounters. Once the campaign includes traveling encounters, scouting parties, enemies that flee, etc you get a mix of 5MWD and marathon. So a tiny fraction of games are pure marathon.

And I would think that once you add those non-dungeon encounters they would outnumber the dungeon days by a noticeable margin. I mean, two road encounters for each day of dungeon is 33% marathon days.


The real question is the percentage of "boss battles" that are marathon/5mwd. And at higher levels, short rests are also pretty key for many classes....so the 70mwd?

I feel like from a rationality standpoint, most boss battles should not allow the 5mwd, or even the 70mwd, because the boss should get up and leave.

"Boss, 5 adventurers just killed 80% of the camp!"
"Where are they now?!?"
"Ummm....they are fluffing pillows and laying out bedrolls."
"Fantastic! Find a couple of survivors you hate and tell them to make a commotion when the invaders decamp and then run away from us. Then tell everyone else to grab their most important gear and head to fallback point A. You and I will go to fallback point B as I suspect these heroes will pursue and kill everyone at point A."
"Excellent plan boss!"

Alternately, when the boss has to protect their lair (e.g. dragons and hoards) or ca not afford to simply flee (charismatic leader), they attack during the rest to keep the PCs weak. It doesn't have to be a particularly credible threat, just enough to ruin rest.

I've played one WotC 5e adventure path and it was filthy with short rest opportunities. We could take 2-3 short rests per boss, which was a terrible design imo.

Ours varies. 5MWD is probably overland exploration encounter.
Can be as many as 10 encounters.

My players dont do 5MWD as I run a living world. Theres consequences if they do. Enemies just flee, get reinforcements or concentrate in the worst areas to fight in.

Best loot is found. If the NPCs flee taking the loot with them.....

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I said wizards syck and full casters tend to suck at damage with the exceptions of emanations and vs paralyzed.

What you--very explicitly--said in this very thread, as I specifically quoted, was that people are finally realizing that spellcasters suck.

No. Spellcasters do not suck. Wizards do not suck. You have this crusade championing the idea that non-spellcasters are somehow OP simply because they don't COMPLETELY SUCK anymore.

A Wizard is still extremely powerful. You just massively inflate the small ways that it isn't the Supreme Deity it was back in 3e, and massively downplay the remaining benefits.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I feel like from a rationality standpoint, most boss battles should not allow the 5mwd, or even the 70mwd, because the boss should get up and leave.

There are three problems.

First, it's just not particularly fun to have constant, never-ending, never-fading time pressure. But if it isn't constant, any of the times it isn't around are the times you exploit the "70mwd" to its fullest. The irony being that, because short rests ARE such a large time commitment, it's actually better if you're in a mostly long-rest-dependent group, because then you can just do the one short rest per day, as opposed to spending nearly a quarter of it just sitting around doing diddly-squat so that the Battle Master feels included.

Second, despite your rationality standpoint statement, it's also against a "rationality" situation for there to be eternal time pressure. But, as stated, if the time pressure isn't eternal, then all you're doing is (very, very) slightly drifting during those times when it's utterly essential to waste no time. Any other time--which should be most of the time, few things are SO dire that a single day off is going to ruin everything--you're right back where you started.

Third, we have the data to show that people demonstrably don't play the way you describe in the vast majority of cases. That's literally one of the explicitly-stated reasons for why we got 5.5e. They could observe that players were not actually playing the way the game was designed to be played, and when asked, players (and GMs!) said it just wasn't a great experience to play it so all the time, which is what is needed.

A game designed around maximum time pressure 24/7 is going to burn its players out. That's simply a fact.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I think the

There are three problems.

First, it's just not particularly fun to have constant, never-ending, never-fading time pressure.

Agreed, but again, I posited time constraints should be limited to bosses for the most part. So it should NOT be "constant, never-ending, never-fading time pressure". There should be a lot of scenarios where there are opportunities to take a break/rest (though it does let enemies recover and react).

Second, despite your rationality standpoint statement, it's also against a "rationality" situation for there to be eternal time pressure.

I pointed out that not all foes are able (or willing) to flee and those, rationally, should fight back. Which changes the equations. If there are more baddies, they can afford to sleep in shifts to harass the PCs. It means those troops will be asleep/degraded when the PCs act, but if 15% of the baddies can inhibit 100% of the PCs, its a valid trade. So then the PCs have to retreat further back to rest, which gives the baddies more opportunities to rebuild/reinforce.

Actions have consequences. The baddies were bad so PCs arrived and carved through a lot of them. The PCs rested so the baddies harassed them while setting new traps.

Third, we have the data to show that people demonstrably don't play the way you describe in the vast majority of cases.

Which is a-ok, if people are fine in the baddie getting away to fight another day. I mean, the "big bad" getting away is usually the norm, isn't it? That's what makes them the "big" bad. The classic stunt for the big bad is to do something to innocents, distracting PCs, so they can flee. Setting an orphanage on fire, suspending a princess over a hungry monster, throwing a sack of kittens in a river, etc.

I'm OK with my players fleeing from a foe. I'm OK with them deciding to take a rest because they think they can't survive unless they rest. I'm OK with the baddie getting away. I'm OK if they beat the baddie.

The only thing I'm not OK with is when the baddies' actions don't make sense. So the players rest and....the bad guys just wait around? No counter-attack? Not running away? No new traps or dead falls? That's the province of video games, not TTRPGs. And not the majority of video games. Most times the baddies reset.

 

[Zardnaar]

What you--very explicitly--said in this very thread, as I specifically quoted, was that people are finally realizing that spellcasters suck.

No. Spellcasters do not suck. Wizards do not suck. You have this crusade championing the idea that non-spellcasters are somehow OP simply because they don't COMPLETELY SUCK anymore.

A Wizard is still extremely powerful. You just massively inflate the small ways that it isn't the Supreme Deity it was back in 3e, and massively downplay the remaining benefits.

Context. I think a high level wizard is great.

I don't rate the bladesinger as a gish. If youre 5MWD use spells instead. If you'e doing 5MWD go control.

My anti spell caster thing is mostly low levels.

Wizard thing they've been power crept out by other spellcasters.

What level is your bladesinger now? How would you hold up vs a war cleric?