D&D 5E (2024) 2024 Gladiator: The Narrative Dissonance

[Micah Sweet]

I'm sorry to hear that, because that path is a lot harder to work with. I played d20 (3e and Pathfinder) for two decades and encounter building was such a chore. I basically had to stop using humanoid foes entirely because it was much more work to build them and gear them than it took my players to dismantle them, lol, at which point, their gear was now treasure I had to account for (many, many masterwork weapons dumped into the world as a result).

Not to mention, that approach was just as bad from a world building scenario, like when my party started griping about "5th-level bandits", lol. Even the old adage about "well, 20 guys should at least crit once every turn" gets turned on it's head when players can negate crits, force rerolls, have defensive actions, and of course, can use Whirlwind Attack or Fireball to obliterate those 20 guys!

If I used characters closer to the players in level, the chances of a potential TPK became closer to a coin flip, and if I used stronger NPC's, then I couldn't use as many opponents, which meant I got burned due to action economy- I despise Legendary Actions on principle, but getting a single dragon to survive two combat rounds against a party of PC's is downright difficult!

If games were more about exploration than slaying monsters and taking their stuff, these issues perhaps wouldn't be as prevalent, but since exploration has devolved to "roll an ability check that certain classes are built to trivialize" or "cast a spell that can be recovered with a nap", games inevitably boil down to combat.

I've recently started running Tales of the Valiant, and I'm starting to find combat ever so tedious. While I'm having to juggle multiple basic monsters who have, at best, a single trick, my players seem to have endless toys they can use to make me wonder what the heck I'm even doing- the Fighter can force disadvantage on the first attack each turn, on top of his 20 AC and I feel like I have to roll ten attacks against him just to inflict a paper cut, lol.

I am so tired of rolling that many dice! No wonder so many DM's opt to go digital.

Anyways, enough of that tangent. Again, I just feel like it's go abstract or go insane. I find myself missing 4e, where I can select a monster, raise or lower it's level as needed, and drop it into play. Sure, it's an abstract stat block that rarely explains how or why it does things, and it can be armed with a twig and still do appropriate damage, but it makes prepping and running the game so much easier than trying to figure out "ok, so maybe my party could survive a fight with one CR 5 and two CR 4's...".

Exploration is more important in my game (and Level Up's rule changes and additions help considerably in that regard), as are things like downtime and social stuff. It's really not as hard for me as you're making out, but then we don't really play the same game.

Also, hated 4e for a lot of reasons, not least of which was the increased abstraction.

 

[Chaltab]

It's one reason I kind of miss the game going to level 30+ in the core like RC and 4E did. Levels 1-20 can be reasonbly common, it's the Epic tier that's vanishingly rare. By that time you're probably adventuring deep in the Hells or fighting archangels on the regular.

 

[Distracted DM]

I've recently started running Tales of the Valiant, and I'm starting to find combat ever so tedious. While I'm having to juggle multiple basic monsters who have, at best, a single trick, my players seem to have endless toys they can use to make me wonder what the heck I'm even doing- the Fighter can force disadvantage on the first attack each turn, on top of his 20 AC and I feel like I have to roll ten attacks against him just to inflict a paper cut, lol.

Ha, if you think Tales of the Valiant is bad, don't look into Level Up A5E; I really enjoy a lot of it, but it provides players with WAY more tools and fun bits n bobs- it basically has 3.5e's Tome of Battle built into it; martial maneuvers (all non-casters get them to some degree) can be incredibly effective and it can be a lot more difficult to challenge the PCs. The classes have a lot of non-combat knacks and such that add more to skills (A5E characters at my table tend to end up with, like, 9 skill proficiencies and some expertise), and the exploration pillar of the game. A5E is great if you're looking for "more" 5e but it sounds like you want to move to something simpler, not more complex (which ToV is a tad).

 

[Distracted DM]

I get that. But like I said, if I want to even pretend my campaign world makes sense, it becomes hard to justify where all these high level threats keep coming from, and why they always tend to show up in my party's path, lol. I know D&D is a game, and that's just how things have to be, but it does make it hard to take the game world's seriously- to me, roleplaying means imagining the world is real. Which I find difficult sometimes when I know I'm an actor on a stage and the dragon I'm fighting is just three guys inside a paper mache prop.

Yeah that's my problem with modern (3e+) DnD- it becomes difficult to run a consistent setting that isn't over the top high fantasy.. but it's a bigger problem (IMO) with 5e because the PCs can punch so far above their weight class even in tier 2, but especially at tier 3 and after. One struggles to justify all the threats that they can do away with, just because you want to challenge them. How many ancient dragons are in the area, how many demon lords can be sent against them? I guess that sort of makes sense with how quickly the game goes from ~5-7 adventuring days of encounters per XP level in tier 2, to 1 adventuring day of encounters per level in tier 3-4... basically spend all your time in the plausible power levels, and then race through the later levels in a few sessions so they get a taste of high power but the setting still has some evil left in it by the end.

 

[Sulicius]

Gladiators always been tuned high in terms of damage. Use wisdom saves or better yet intelligence saves they get wrecked.

5E is default easy mode so they cranked up danage to compensate. 5.5 bloated the HP on a lot of monsters.

5.5 didn’t bloat any apart from legendary monsters and monsters who lost b/p/s damage resistance.

For some data analysis, look for Blogofholding and the Finished Book.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

You have to either stop thinking of it in those terms, or you have to do the work to make NPCs make sense. My brain doesn't allow for the first option, much.

Meh, I just feel that there's a LOT more variety in training and fighting styles in the world than the limits of TWELVE CLASSES.

We can argue which one of us has a more "realistic" or "versimilitudinous" (I made that up!) vision for our fantasy worlds. (But we don't have to).

 

[Micah Sweet]

Meh, I just feel that there's a LOT more variety in training and fighting styles in the world than the limits of TWELVE CLASSES.

We can argue which one of us has a more "realistic" or "versimilitudinous" (I made that up!) vision for our fantasy worlds. (But we don't have to).

I have a lot more than twelve classes available in my game.

 

[Sorinth]

You have to either stop thinking of it in those terms, or you have to do the work to make NPCs make sense. My brain doesn't allow for the first option, much.

The simplest in world explanation for why NPCs have a different set of skills/features/rules from PCs is due to the nature of experience. Gaining experience by fighting monsters provides different "lessons learned" then training/study/etc... so it makes sense that the abilities would be different. It's the classic theory vs practice, someone who has studied a subject at school is going to know and do things very differently compared to someone who learnt everything about the subject through on the job training.