D&D (2024) 4e design in 5.5e ?

[UngeheuerLich]

I agree, but if people are not taking the number of Short Rests that WotC assumes they would and balanced around, then that obviously poses some issue for the Short Rest-based character options. WotC's solution seems to be abandoning Short Rests in favor of putting everyone on the same Per Day cycle.


IMHO, 4e was the most flexible that WotC ever designed them as it was primarily framed around encounters and healing surges rather than assumptions about "X number of Y in an adventuring day." This left players and GMs free to focus on pacing from their respective sides.

But at the same time, it made combats meaningless as PCs were always at the peak of their power (a bit hyperbole of course).

I do like the game of attrition in DnD. But I do agree, that in 5e the balance between short rests and long rests is off by default.
8 encounters per day means 1 level per two or three days or level 20 in two months...
That does in no way reflect anyone's game I guess. Only maybe in a dungeon there might be a few days on that schedule. This is why I use custom picked healing options...

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Let's just put it this way: back in AD&D, your character would die upon reaching 0 HP. No appeal (no, the -10 thing wasn't in the base rules and was actually based on a misunderstanding of a particularly obscure option discussed in the DMG).

Now in 5e though? You cannot die unless you somehow get one shot to a negative HP equal to your maximum. Death by bleeding out is virtually impossible if you are in a party of four and the DM doesn't go out of his way to stab you on the ground.

So yea, I would disagree with your assessment that 1e and 2e were easier.

Speaking about easy or hard in a game where the DM can chose any enemy they like is pointless.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Shrug I mean... I understand the language you all are using when you say it's a pacing mechanic, but I don't see (and never did see) why that supposed pacing gained from them was necessarily a useful thing. I mean, hit points and spell slots are a pacing mechanic too (you run low on both, you better rest) so why healing surges are better (if indeed those of you in favor of them feel they are) just doesn't resonate with me. Which isn't surprising, because like I said.. what we don't know, we don't know.

Because spell slots (not so much hitpoints) are the pacing mechanism in pretty much every other edition of D&D. When the casters can't cast, you stop. When the cleric can no longer cast spells to heal you, you stop. It's not so much hitpoints (unless you're playing with no casters, which is uncommon) as slots. This is absolutely the pacing mechanism in 5e, and it trades on whether or not the casters can continue to contribute at all.

4e, though, with the power structure, didn't have slots, so these were never going to be a pacing mechanism. Instead, it invented and then used healing surges, as these represented the ability to continue for all classes not just the casters. It was part of the rebalancing of play so that the wizard/cleric wasn't the pacing mechanism for the whole party. It was a response to the 5-minute workday that was strongly prevalent in 3.x (and even 2e before it).

If you didn't play 4e the way the rules said to (again, it was very clear about the expectations the game had for encounter pacing), then, sure, you're not going to notice this pacing mechanism. Just like you don't notice the pacing mechanism in 5e when you only have an encounter or two a day, either. The difference here is that in 5e the nominal pacing mechanism (slots and other x/day) can be overloaded on smaller encounters to make them very trivial. This was reduced in 4e, as only the daily power slot(s) represented any ability to nova, so you came into the 5th encounter with roughly the same arsenal you entered the 1st with.

And this isn't to say one way is better than the other. It's discussing the differences.

 

[Ovinomancer]

But at the same time, it made combats meaningless as PCs were always at the peak of their power (a bit hyperbole of course).

I do like the game of attrition in DnD. But I do agree, that in 5e the balance between short rests and long rests is off by default.
8 encounters per day means 1 level per two or three days or level 20 in two months...
That does in no way reflect anyone's game I guess. Only maybe in a dungeon there might be a few days on that schedule. This is why I use custom picked healing options...

This very much depends on how you're structuring the combats, though. If you're just using combats as a vehicle for attrition and the system doesn't do attrition like that, then, yes, you're going to set yourself up for boring combats. If, however, you set up encounters so they aren't primarily based on the attrition model but on different goals, then the fact that you're not limited by an attrition model can be quite liberating in design.

There are similar argument for 5e about hp bloat and how it leads to boring combats of hp-bags beating on each other and similar solutions are often presented -- don't make the combats about attrition of hp.

 

[Ovinomancer]

As an example. I’m running a 5E West Marches game. I conducted a little experiment. I rounded up some players and told them the plan. They made characters. And then I doled out the small list of house rules, which included the optional encumbrance rules. And then half the group changed their characters to either higher STR characters or races with powerful build, which doubles your encumbrance limits. I mentioned that I also wanted to restrict the use of bags of holding...and a player switched to an artificer so they could make their own bag of holding at 2nd level.

I don't blame them at all! The encumbrance system for 5e is the same terrible, fiddly, stop-and-count-beans system inherited from previous editions. It's not a fun system to deal with, even if you want to deal with scarcity of resources. There are other games that do this waaaaay better than D&D does -- get to scarce resources and having to plan loadouts without the tedious accounting and detailed lists.

And then, well, there's the part where you're indicating to them that you're going to make encumbrance a pain-point, so mitigating that in some way means that they're going to be more successful at what they want from the game. "This is a problem I intend to be a common one" is usually going to be followed by strategies to deal with that problem, no matter what the game is. What you've discovered are rational actors, not players not wanting a challenge.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I'm aware of that. I've encountered it. It's very frustrating, because what it's saying is that people played the game in a way that was different from how the game told you to play it (and 4e is exceedingly clear on encounter design and pacing) and then say that it's the game and the mechanics that are the problem. I recognize that I'm probably not going to get much traction with this, but there it is -- it's saying the mechanics don't work as intended based on not using them as intended.

Yeah, but this is D&D... to think every single person is going to run the game exactly the same is silly, regardless of what the rules say. D&D is a game that has always been one that was never played the same way at every single table. Not even at the beginning. So while I do not doubt you are frustrated that people are decrying a system you think is great (mainly because you think people aren't playing the system as it was meant to be run)... considering that's not how Dungeons & Dragons as a game has ever been it's probably hard for anybody else to sympathize with your frustration. And thus it shouldn't be surprising when the idea of bringing parts of it forward into 5E gets blowback.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Yeah, but this is D&D... to think every single person is going to run the game exactly the same is silly, regardless of what the rules say. D&D is a game that has always been one that was never played the same way at every single table. Not even at the beginning. So while I do not doubt you are frustrated that people are decrying a system you think is great (mainly because you think people aren't playing the system as it was meant to be run)... considering that's not how Dungeons & Dragons as a game has ever been it's probably hard for anybody else to sympathize with your frustration. And thus it shouldn't be surprising when the idea of bringing parts of it forward into 5E gets blowback.

Let's agree with your opening point and say, sure, people are going to play the game however they want. It's when they do this and then blame the game for their poor experiences that's the issue. This isn't a 4e thing for me -- I've been making this same point about 5e. If you deviate from the way the game is designed, and tells you it's designed, and play it some other way, then this is on you, not the game. Yet, it's often attributed and complained about as the game's problem, to the point that there's a sub-thread here that games should be designed for everyone to play however they want when that's just not even close to feasible.

In other words, it's like blaming Monopoly because it's rules sucked when you tried to play it like Risk. I mean, that's clearly exaggeration, but it's the same point.

 

[clearstream]

Speaking about easy or hard in a game where the DM can chose any enemy they like is pointless.

It refers to the baseline balance implied by game guidelines and systems, right? So in 5e, guidelines around encounter sizes in terms of CR if followed create low challenge. More subtly, the value of XP connected with creatures relative to XP costs to advance levels, establishes an implicit difficulty curve.

An RPG is 'easy' if the guideline and systemic balance will offer players encounters that their characters will easily defeat. A DM can override the built-in difficulty. That doesn't change that there is a built-in difficulty.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Let's agree with your opening point and say, sure, people are going to play the game however they want. It's when they do this and then blame the game for their poor experiences that's the issue. This isn't a 4e thing for me -- I've been making this same point about 5e. If you deviate from the way the game is designed, and tells you it's designed, and play it some other way, then this is on you, not the game. Yet, it's often attributed and complained about as the game's problem, to the point that there's a sub-thread here that games should be designed for everyone to play however they want when that's just not even close to feasible.

In other words, it's like blaming Monopoly because it's rules sucked when you tried to play it like Risk. I mean, that's clearly exaggeration, but it's the same point.

You mean I shouldn't have been putting $500 under Australia?

 

[Nefermandias]

Speaking about easy or hard in a game where the DM can chose any enemy they like is pointless.

I don't think it's pointless. System matters a great deal when it comes to lethality.