D&D General 5.5 and making the game easier for players and harder for DMs

[haakon1]

As always no one true way yada, yada, yada.

Yup.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I assume being an adventurer is a deadly profession (or should be) and resolve to get as much fun out of my PC as possible before something happens to them or the campaign ends.

I just talked about that with one player. We agreed that playing in character is more important than being a tactical genius and the PC surviving everything.

If one dies, one can roll up a new character, which is also fun.

 

[Charlaquin]

Harder to challenge the PCs though.

Not really. You’re the DM, it’s always within you power to add more encounters, add more monsters to your encounters, use higher CR monsters, increase the monsters’ HP, give them better equipment, even use your own homebrew monsters. And that’s just combat. You can also use more traps, make your traps more dangerous, add more puzzles, make them more complex to solve, write more complex mysteries, etc, etc.

 

[Distracted DM]

Not really. You’re the DM, it’s always within you power to add more encounters, add more monsters to your encounters, use higher CR monsters, increase the monsters’ HP, give them better equipment, even use your own homebrew monsters. And that’s just combat. You can also use more traps, make your traps more dangerous, add more puzzles, make them more complex to solve, write more complex mysteries, etc, etc.

I don't think they're saying that it's impossible to challenge the PCs, it's harder. The system as it's designed isn't helping you, so you need to take on more work to make the challenge happen.

 

[Umbran]

... and if you accused any of our characters of having no flaws, the table would laugh you out of the room. We have a multitude of flaws and are a hot mess. I understand it is clearly a table difference, but I think it is worth noting that everyone in the party having high stats... is fine.

So, the moment you note this as a table difference is really important. If everyone was your exact table, it would work for everyone, but there would be little variation in play throughout the hobby.

Doesn't really make the game harder to DM nor does it leave the characters without flaws.

It doesn't make the game harder for you folks to DM. It doesn't leave your characters without flaws. Awesome!

But that doesn't mean it generalizes to everyone else's game. This leaves open the questions of how or why it works for you, the answers to which are apt to reveal some elements that would be difficult for others to replicate.

 

[Umbran]

Not really. You’re the DM, it’s always within you power to add more ...

In practice, one of the hardest GM skills to build is getting game difficulty to hit the sweet spot for the party.

You breeze by that as if it is trivial. And maybe for you it is. But more broadly, the discussions we see on these boards strongly suggest otherwise.

 

[Oofta]

In practice, one of the hardest GM skills to build is getting game difficulty to hit the sweet spot for the party.

You breeze by that as if it is trivial. And maybe for you it is. But more broadly, the discussions we see on these boards strongly suggest otherwise.

Hopefully the new DMG will have more advice on how to balance encounters because it's always been more art than science. The only other thing I will add is that there are times when people seem really resistant to advice on how to make combats more difficult for reasons I don't understand.

Difficulty will never be perfect, sometimes the players will stomp on what I though was a tough encounter and other times I practically wipe them out with a medium difficulty. But there are simple things I think can be widely used to make encounters more difficult with only relatively simple adjustments. Which set of adjustments work for you and your group will, of course vary. But that's a separate thread.

 

[Stormonu]

Hopefully the new DMG will have more advice on how to balance encounters because it's always been more art than science. The only other thing I will add is that there are times when people seem really resistant to advice on how to make combats more difficult for reasons I don't understand.

Difficulty will never be perfect, sometimes the players will stomp on what I though was a tough encounter and other times I practically wipe them out with a medium difficulty. But there are simple things I think can be widely used to make encounters more difficult with only relatively simple adjustments. Which set of adjustments work for you and your group will, of course vary. But that's a separate thread.

CR really is a guess based on an "average" party, but the game has been trying to pass it off as absolute law for at least a couple editions. If the DMG could do better about relaying that it's a ballpark value to start with I think it'd help a lot of tables and new DMs. Problem is, with this revision they seem to be doubling down on it being an absolute principle, which I think is a bad idea.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Hopefully the new DMG will have more advice on how to balance encounters because it's always been more art than science. The only other thing I will add is that there are times when people seem really resistant to advice on how to make combats more difficult for reasons I don't understand.

Difficulty will never be perfect, sometimes the players will stomp on what I though was a tough encounter and other times I practically wipe them out with a medium difficulty. But there are simple things I think can be widely used to make encounters more difficult with only relatively simple adjustments. Which set of adjustments work for you and your group will, of course vary. But that's a separate thread.

What needs reevaluation is that party’s don’t get into 6 fights a day or whatever. It’s one or two and the party can unleash all their high powered stuff with a rest. Every fight has its super novas and the monsters need to step up. Especially singular biss fights.

When the party can go ham in round 1 needs to be taken into consideration

Battles shouldn’t be mostly pointless. Not after all the set up.

 

[OB1]

What needs reevaluation is that party’s don’t get into 6 fights a day or whatever. It’s one or two and the party can unleash all their high powered stuff with a rest. Every fight has its super novas and the monsters need to step up. Especially singular biss fights.

When the party can go ham in round 1 needs to be taken into consideration

Battles shouldn’t be mostly pointless. Not after all the set up.

And in that way, the reduced nova capability in 24 should help make the game easier for DMs, and combined with the revised CR system make combat more predictable than it was in 14.

That said, d20 resolution combined with bounded accuracy will still lead to some fights being way easier than expected, and some way harder (one of the reasons BG3 has so much replayability for me is because every combat plays out completely different due to that dang d20) but overall players will likely hold their novas for when they need it to turn a combat around rather than it just being the default spam option.