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

[Vael]

It was clean conceptually, but it didn't work in practice IME. Particularly at higher levels. Has you increased level the monsters got relatively weaker compared to the PCs, but the encounter guidelines didn't accommodate this. So the encounter guidelines didn't really work for the full span of the game.

I have heard PF2 as a similar issue, but not as pronounced.

My experience was this got better when they rebalanced monster math. MM3, Dark Sun and Monster Vault monsters were much better than earlier 4e monsters. And sure, I'd say you have to up the monsters as PCs go up in tiers, but at least it was fairly intuitive and granular enough to allow for easy adaptation.

 

[Oofta]

Well, you just clarified why folks are resistant to advice.

When taking advice is not significantly easier than just doing it themselves, our advice isn't very helpful.

So what am I supposed to say? I think we could go into a ton of details and I'm sure other people also have ideas. But if I don't have issues and others do, we are doing something different. If other people are unwilling or unable to change what they do ... I honestly don't know what else to say. Maybe some of my ideas would help, maybe they wouldn't. But insisting that it's impossible is false.

These same complaints comes up repeatedly. My quick advice? Try to have at least 4 fights between long rests. Change up monster tactics. Don't use solos. If you don't want to use higher level or more monsters make them more difficult, add +2 to +4 to attack bonuses or give the monsters advantage to attack. Don't have monsters appear in fireball formation. If you have a big bad max out their HP and consider legendary resistance.

I'm sure there's other advice and I could add more. But it's simple fact that the DM can always throw more and/or higher CR monsters if fights are too easy. I've DMed for multiple groups now and in every group I've been able to find a balance. Building encounters is more art than science but that doesn't mean you can't use the scientific method of trying different things to see what works. It feels like people want to just complain instead of working to find a solution and I don't know why. So if it's a problem, let's talk about what I do different. Let's discuss specific issues and scenarios. Let's try to help each other.

 

[Oofta]

My experience was this got better when they rebalanced monster math. MM3, Dark Sun and Monster Vault monsters were much better than earlier 4e monsters. And sure, I'd say you have to up the monsters as PCs go up in tiers, but at least it was fairly intuitive and granular enough to allow for easy adaptation.

Most of the monsters from the MM and the earlier books needed more oomph, especially anything that resisted or were immune to magical items once the group had them.

 

[Oofta]

Well, you just clarified why folks are resistant to advice.

When taking advice is not significantly easier than just doing it themselves, our advice isn't very helpful.

One other thing. How is "Which set of adjustments work for you and your group will, of course vary" bad advice? Every group will have different strengths and weaknesses. Every DM will find one style better than others. Some people like deadly combats, some want short and sweet, there is no one size fits all.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Pathfinder 2e seems to have figured out more precise encounter building. I think it's more that 5e's design wants to have it both ways, promising balanced encounters out of the box but in reality leaving it up to DMs to actually make the system work. FWIW, I think if the system is telling you you can have encounter balance, and you're paying $180 for it, it should work out of the box.

Sure, but then you have to play Pathfinder 2. It's definitely not to everyone's tastes.

 

[dave2008]

My experience was this got better when they rebalanced monster math. MM3, Dark Sun and Monster Vault monsters were much better than earlier 4e monsters. And sure, I'd say you have to up the monsters as PCs go up in tiers, but at least it was fairly intuitive and granular enough to allow for easy adaptation.

MM3 didn't solve the problem, not even close. I eventually found a good analysis online (at blog42) and created my own monster damage by level charts (you can still download them from EnWorld too) that were much more accurate.

I find 5e encounter building extremely intuitive, but I know that is not the case for most.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I find 5e encounter building extremely intuitive, but I know that is not the case for most.

5e uses CR, the most DM hostile encounter design system ever devised.

 

[dave2008]

5e uses CR, the most DM hostile encounter design system ever devised.

It is not hostile to me, but I understand it is to others. I will admit it took a minute as I can from 1e (no encounter building logic) to 4e (strict per level encounter building) to 5e (XP encounter building). Once I go the hang of 5e it became very intuitive and my preferred method.

 

[Umbran]

One other thing. How is "Which set of adjustments work for you and your group will, of course vary" bad advice?

I don't know. I didn't say it was "bad" advice.

 

[haakon1]

My quick advice? … I've DMed for multiple groups now and in every group I've been able to find a balance. Building encounters is more art than science but that doesn't mean you can't use the scientific method of trying different things to see what works. It feels like people want to just complain instead of working to find a solution and I don't know why. So if it's a problem, let's talk about what I do different. Let's discuss specific issues and scenarios. Let's try to help each other.

My quick advice?

Every time I see the word “balance”, someone is complaining about other player’s characters or DM’s playing wrong.

So my advise is: stop worrying about balance. As a DM, allow for pushover encounters and nigh unstoppable encounters. Just give warnings and barriers to entry to the “are you sure you want to try this” encounters?

Trying to refine each encounter to be “optimally challenging but you’re definitely going to win” sounds boringly repetitive to me.