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

[Ovinomancer]

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

Heh, you can play Monopoly any way you want!

 

[Hussar]

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.

Ah, now that's true. In 5e, it's really, really clear when the DM is whacking your character . Now, I'm up front about that with my players that in many situations, I absolutely will kill downed characters to stop them from getting up. Which has completely put paid to the whole whack a mole thing that people talk about. It doesn't happen in my game, because, if you go down, there's a very good chance that you won't get back up.

 

[Hussar]

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.

But, that's not what the CR system tells us. The CR system isn't telling you how to design your adventure. It's telling you that if you use X, then the result should be Y. If you want a more difficult encounter, use a higher CR.

CR is a predictive system so that DM's can better gauge how to design their adventures without having to know exactly how the game works. But, where does it say that your adventure should have X CR encounters?

 

[clearstream]

But, that's not what the CR system tells us. The CR system isn't telling you how to design your adventure. It's telling you that if you use X, then the result should be Y. If you want a more difficult encounter, use a higher CR.

CR is a predictive system so that DM's can better gauge how to design their adventures without having to know exactly how the game works. But, where does it say that your adventure should have X CR encounters?

We can quibble over whether the advice about on DMG82-85 amount to 'telling you'? A group can do as they like, I am addressing only what they are advised to do by the game designers, and what the system encourages. I am thinking of guidelines such as 'Building Encounters on a Budget'. Elements that factor strongly in that, if followed, include the scaling for groups of creatures. That scaling leans into a low difficulty challenge.

That question aside,

1. The pricing of creatures in XP establishes a relevance to them as interesting foes for a party of a given level, if for no other reason than the relation with XP cost to advance.
2. Echoing @Nefermandias' excellent point, 5th edition is inherently less lethal due to the combination of its mechanics for dying and healing. I see 'whack-a-mole' healing often-referenced in these and other forums.

Like many here I have played all editions of D&D extensively. 5e has the lowest baseline difficulty of any edition. It happens due to spells like healing word and guidance, choices like the simplification to druid HP on reverting, the death saves system, the low likelihood of instant death under PHB RAW, the relaxed recovery rules, the generous HP at start and on levelling rules, and so on.

You are right about a DM ignoring the game as written to use higher CR creatures. That will increase difficulty. That doesn't mean the game as written has a high baseline difficulty. And such a DM will find themselves swimming far from shore: lacking solid support from the game designers.

 

[Undrave]

Sure, but there's nothing special about that-- it's just another pool of something that gets drained. That's essentially no different than the Exhaustion table. You start full, things happen, and you starting losing parts of it until you're dead.

Now the fact that healing surges kind of combine hit points and the exhaustion table together into one grouping might have its merits, I would never deny that (since obviously many people found that to be true.) But at least in my case personally... I still never saw healing surge loss to occur so much prior to extended resting that it ever was going to be an issue or cause player concern.

I'll be honest... I think part of that might very well have been just how many hit points PCs had total when you took into account healing surges. I mean, a 1st level PC with 25 HP and 6 healing surges (just throwing out random numbers here) had essentially 150 total HP available to them in a day. So at least the way I ran my games, I was never going to blow through all that to make running out of HS a thing to worry about. If others could pull it off, I could definitely see why it would appeal... but if we couldn't, it's no wonder the system just never resonated.

I can see that. However, it's just a matter of calibration, not a flaw intrinsic to the system.

Personally I love the concept of HS being your TRUE daily vitality total and your max HP just being an encounter ressource. By tweaking the numbers you can make each individual combat more dangerous, without making so the players always have to go on long rests to avoid dying. HP become more luck and skill, while HS become vitality. Personally I would have also added that each death saving throw you make costs a healing surge, just to add consequences to that clock a little. And you can have HP scale more slowly but healing surges more rapidly so that experienced adventurers would be able to do more fights in a day but still be 2-3 good hits away from being downed by lower level enemies.

Basically, I think they gave up on a good system with a flawed execution instead of giving it tweaks and went for the inferior Hit Dice we have.

 

[Stalker0]

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

That’s not exactly true, for we have to remember the narrative of combat.

for example, sake of argument let’s say a 1st level party could “easily” kill an adult red dragon. Mechanically that’s no problem, we could always add a second dragon.

but it changes the narrative of the game. No longer are dragons considered major threats in the world, they are merely speed bumps. Only a horde of dragons could be considered “a real kingdom threat”.

again, we could adjust our narrative to fit that mold….but do we want to? I think this is where we can say there are true mechanical issues with difficulty, when the ease or difficulty of something no longer fits the standard narrative.

 

[overgeeked]

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

Not really. That’s why there are guidelines for what’s appropriate to put in front of the party in modern games and why older games had things like surprise, encounter distance, and reaction tables. To give the players a chance to get the drop on whatever monster they faced, to have plenty of distance between them (to hide or run), and/or have a neutral or friendly encounter with any monster in the game. So they could choose to engage or not and had the chance to engage in non-violent ways. Your comments are telling. The mindset is everything is a fight. The rest are not options. The rules support for talking with monsters didn’t even enter 5E until Tasha’s...6 years into the lifecycle of 5E.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

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

I can tell you. My encounters are lethal, even if I just stick to CR guidelines, if I want.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

That’s not exactly true, for we have to remember the narrative of combat.

for example, sake of argument let’s say a 1st level party could “easily” kill an adult red dragon. Mechanically that’s no problem, we could always add a second dragon.

but it changes the narrative of the game. No longer are dragons considered major threats in the world, they are merely speed bumps. Only a horde of dragons could be considered “a real kingdom threat”.

again, we could adjust our narrative to fit that mold….but do we want to? I think this is where we can say there are true mechanical issues with difficulty, when the ease or difficulty of something no longer fits the standard narrative.

Ok... that is a hypebole... I think this example is a bit off the mark.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Your comments are telling. The mindset is everything is a fight. The rest are not options. The rules support for talking with monsters didn’t even enter 5E until Tasha’s...6 years into the lifecycle of 5E.

I think it is interesting how you read minds... and inappropriate, as I have never seen you at my table...

Also it is interesting, that you need rules to talk to monsters...