D&D 5E 5e, Heal Thyself! Is Healing Too Weak in D&D?

[Eric V]

They don't drop with one hit, but they drop with a round's attack if you're a martial and they drop on AoE otherwise. This is not much different from 4e in which you only had one attack in a round anyway.

We have used "minions" like this time and time again without any special problem, including their attack, just roll as many d20s as necessary, it's fast.



But then they did not often drop from an AoE since they had such high saves.

More than a few classes had either multiple attacks or attacks that affected multiple opponents in 4e. I don't remember NADs being so high that attacks often missed, either. The point is that the same fight in 5e takes longer and is less exciting, due largely (though not exclusively) to how many more d20 rolls must be made.

 

[Manbearcat]

And they can deal with them so easily that the slightest blow kills them. But still, they are horrifying to said heroes ? => Disconnect

Yeah. Just like Jose Aldo (up to that point possibly the greatest pound for pound MMA Fighter in history) can go down in 13 seconds...to a single punch...to Conor McGregor.

The variability of fighting is extremely high. You can be enormously dangerous (a world class fighter) and take one shot on the button and its lights out (as has happened 100s and 100s of times just in my 40 years of being involved with combat sports and watching combat sports).

Minions are a trope. They're dangerous creatures except the heroes are so much more dangerous and robust that when they deal with these_particular_ghouls, it reliably spits out Conor McGregor vs Jose Aldo fiction; a trope.

You may not like the trope but that is its purpose and it does it beautifully (in terms of its reliability due to implementation and in terms of the tactical overhead managed by players to make it so through their PC).

Only it's not necrotic spittle doing necrotic damage, it's untyped damage and it's called "unending hunger"...

Again, its a trope. See my explanation for HP loss above. Not a single blow or spittle needs to land to explain the 5 HP loss for being adjacent at the beginning of your turn.

You're evading the spittle and its fangs by grasping the underside of its jaw and recoiling from it while your other hands desperately fight off its claws.

The spittle falls short or your armor intercedes.

Your grasp of its jaws protects you from its fangs.

You have wrist control of one claw while the other slashes futilely against your armor.

It then releases you and attacks your friend (with its aura) with wild abandon.

Nothing lands. No spittle, no fangs, no jaws.

Yet still you lose 5 HP. Because HP aren't meat. You're not standing around static in a tiny space, attacking once every 6 (or whatever seconds), trading with a monster and cleaving chunks of meat off each other.

You're tired, you're dismayed, you're frustrated, your luck is running out, your deity or you are deeply offended, etc etc etc. 5 HP worth of damage.

 

[Lyxen]

More than a few classes had either multiple attacks or attacks that affected multiple opponents in 4e.

I don't remember multi-attack as such, honestly, although some attacks might have been described as such.

I don't remember NADs being so high that attacks often missed, either.

Seeing that the minions had the same defenses as standard monsters, they were relatively easy to hit, but not more than 50% of the time IIRC.

The point is that the same fight in 5e takes longer and is less exciting, due largely (though not exclusively) to how many more d20 rolls must be made.

And honestly this is pure absurdity, fights in 5e are way quicker and (at least to us) way more exciting. In our case, when I say "way quicker" we are speaking of a factor of at least 2 and very often 3 and more. We had some fights in 4e (and 3e) that lasted a complete evening, that NEVER happened in 5e except for one specific battle that involved multiple armies in addition to PC actions at multiple places on a huge battlefield. Most fights are over in less than 30 minutes, which NEVER happened with 4e, and we can conduct multiple fights in one evening in addition to spending more time on the other pillars, again something that never happened with 4e. Or actually meshing all the pillars (assassination, pursuit, ambush, flight, etc.), rather than stopping everything else to play a combat mini-game (which was mandatory in 3e and 4e because of the grid).

Now, about the "exciting", it's another topic, some people are excited by a technical hard fight where they can show their technical prowess of using the gaming system, others are more excited by a fight that is extremely quick, to the point, integrated in the other pillars, that does not require laying out a grid and counting squares, and/or that resembles the way they have been playing D&D wit TotM ever since D&D existed. I'm not saying one is objectively better than the other, but there are differences and preferences.

 

[Lyxen]

The variability of fighting is extremely high.

But here, there is no variability. ONE hit point.

Minions are a trope.

And while I agree that, inherently, tropes are not good or bad, but having the same trope repeating the same way for all fights is actually absurd and destructive to anything else than the trope. As a result, once more, you deal with it purely in gaming terms.

They're dangerous creatures except the heroes are so much more dangerous and robust

But they are still scared by the aura (see below). => disconnect.

You may not like the trope but that is its purpose and it does it beautifully (in terms of its reliability due to implementation and in terms of the tactical overhead managed by players to make it so through their PC).

It does so beautifull in GAME terms, I agree, it is unmanageable in story or game world consistency terms.

It then releases you and attacks your friend (with its aura) with wild abandon.

So it's not an aura, it's actually an attack against everyone standing close to it ? And an attack against which there is no defense despite you being one of the greatest heroes in the multiverse ? And which makes no difference as to which hero and hero type you are ?

Sorry, once more, it's purely gamist.

You're tired, you're dismayed, you're frustrated

That I am, indeed, but as a DM, faced with a system that is technically really good but at the cost of having constructs that make no sense in the fantasy.

 

[Manbearcat]

So it's not an aura, it's actually an attack against everyone standing close to it ? And an attack against which there is no defense despite you being one of the greatest heroes in the multiverse ? And which makes no difference as to which hero and hero type you are ?

Sorry, once more, it's purely gamist.

Yes. An aura. Which is a game term. Which you then map to whatever the fiction should look like. Whether its a cloud of whirling daggers orbiting you, an infernal corona, or a crazy level of martial prowess/speed/ferocity/implacability, its all the same stuff. And it ablates HP all the same...because HP is a giant pile of "heroic goo" that you map into the fiction as required to resolve play.

For instance, in 5e, you have Cloud of Daggers. A measly 2nd level spell. You have a bunch of daggers that do slashing damage. Not force. Not elements. Actual_daggers_conjured_doing_actual_slashing_damage. Guess what happens if a level 20 hero in 5e, adorned in Full Plate, starts their turn in it? No save. No attack roll. That epic hero is going to take 4-16 damage from these whirling daggers. Even a level 20 hero, adorned in Full Plate, with Heavy Armor Mastery will still take at least 1-13 HP of damage!

So what is happening here? Is this nonsensical fiction? No. Because this fully plate clad, otherworldy skilled, mythological hero doesn't even have to get nicked to lose 1-13 HP. That can trivially be them spending their prowess gas tank to stay in the fight. They're more tired, less lucky, less capable of deploying the apex processing skills a martial artist must deploy to come out on top. Whatever.

Now, about the "exciting", it's another topic, some people are excited by a technical hard fight where they can show their technical prowess of using the gaming system, others are more excited by a fight that is extremely quick, to the point, integrated in the other pillars, that does not require laying out a grid and counting squares, and/or that resembles the way they have been playing D&D wit TotM ever since D&D existed. I'm not saying one is objectively better than the other, but there are differences and preferences.

And this is totally cool.

Totally legitimate take.

4e D&D combat is wildly different from Torchbearer Kill Conflicts or Dogs in the VIneyard "Escalate to Guns" Conflicts.

The latter two are extremely visceral experiences with some engaging tactical overhead. They're also over much, much more quickly than 4e combats (I ran 2 * campaigns 1-30 and 3 more campaigns whose levels totaled about another 40...so about 100 levels worth of 4e GMing). My group of 3 PCs + 1 GM (me) was extremely quick in our processing/managing of a 4e combat and we used an eggshell timer so even Level +5 Encounter Budget ("deadly") fights averaged only 35 minutes-ish. But that is about 3 x as long as a TB or Dogs conflict.

And I enjoy Cortex+ Conflicts and Dread resolution and PBtA resolution and FitD resolution and Sorcerer resolution and Shadows of Yesterday resolution and My Life With Master resolution and Everway resolution and Moldvay Basic and RC D&D resolution. And plenty of others, all with profoundly divergent system architecture, too many to enumerate.

And I enjoy 5e's combat minigame and 5e social-combat-as-Pictionary/Wheel of Fortune that is its Social Interaction conflict mechanics.

There are all kinds of ways to skin a TTRPG cat. But every_single_one of them relies upon obviously game constructs meant to facilitate play of a game. The problem comes when someone tries to make a claim that their autobiographical cognitive orientation toward system is a fundamental truism of reality...an objective, verifiable fault of a game engine (rather than, at least in no small part, an autobiographical fact about them)- see Lyxen "Sorry, once more, its purely gamist." My ability to toggle when I would run 4e and then run Torchbearer and then run Apocalypse World and then run a Moldvay Basic dungeon crawl in the span of 1 week back in 2014 (all massively divergent systems) isn't a superpower. But I can toggle naturally or...where I've had to...I've conscientiously worked to develop my ability to toggle. And plenty of others can do the same and have done the same. That is empirical evidence that these extremely divergent systems are not exclusively responsible for my personal cognitive state nor your inability to toggle cognitively when thinking about them or playing them (either innately or develop it). There is all 3 of system + a biological footprint + a level of ownership by the user.

It becomes especially problematic when they forgive their favored systems of the same "indiscretions" that they hold other systems to account for. D&D's history is utterly riddled with gamist artifacts that couldn't be further away from process simulation (hence why so many fled to BRP and Rolemaster and the like early on) which get looked past or apologized for when its expedient for partisanship/factionalism but hammered on relentlessly when its expedient for partisanship/factionalism in the opposite direction.

"I can't easily get my brain around this game but I can get my brain around this other game so screw it I'm going to play the 2nd one" is a totally legit opinion about any game whether its 4e D&D or Dogs in the Vineyard or Everway or Ars Magica or even Moldvay Basic with all of its extreme gamist trappings. But "this game is uniquely and objectively filled with purely gamist mechanics and I have no ownership over my response to it" is not.

 

[Eric V]

And honestly this is pure absurdity,

I am discussing, specifically, minion fights in 4e vs minion fights in 5e. I don't need to be told that other kinds of fights in 5e are quicker (if less exciting); I have a lot of experience with both.

Minion fights in 4e are quicker, period, because they involve less die-rolling. Any party had someone who could hand out bonuses to make success more than 50% of the time, and a hit = a kill. It's just faster.

More exciting too, since the minions were actually a threat, as opposed to dealing 1d8+2 hp of damage on a 15% chance of success to a character that had over 100 hp.

 

[Undrave]

And have you run such an encounter ? I am pretty sure you have not, it would have been an absolute slaughter. In any case, it's not in E2 or any publication.

Never at that high level but I believe so? I've run an encounter that was nothing but a bunch of minions on different level of a structure. It makes for some badass moments.

ou might encounter 1 orc at level 1, 5 orcs at level 5 and 100 orcs at level 10, but they will be the same orcs, with the same capabilities, there won't be artificial gradation of their abilities, and especially not quantum leaps in what they are doing just to adjust an encounter technically.

If nothing else that sounds pretty monotonous. After an encounter your PC will know what target number to hit and how much to fear the Orcs. It's like you're just fighting the same dude over and over again.

It's not even grappling you, it's just standing there and actually attacking someone else, and it's still doing damage to you ?

I assumed it was just stinky or some sort of soul draining aura of magic.

So, training then ? But then why does the 3rd level standard have 46 hit points and the 9th level minions have 1 ? The answer is not because it makes sense in the world, for sure. It's purely a gamist construct.

They might be well trained, but they don't have the resolve to keep going. HP aren't meat after all. When you go through their defence they realize, with dread, "I am completely outclassed and now I'm going to die."

 

[James Gasik]

Yes, a lot of times, 4e skimped on the details of "how" a game element or power was doing the thing that it was doing. And often, this created a disconnect. In my longest running game, the Barbarian had an attack that "sundered" the enemy's armor, giving them vulnerability to damage...for one turn. They often wondered how the armor they'd just broke magically got better in a few seconds.

I told him that if every ability had a paragraph of how exactly it did it's thing, the book would be bloated, and sometimes you had to use your imagination. For example, I didn't think he was breaking an entire suit of armor, but creating a small, exploitable opening, that, once the opponent realized they had a weak point, was skilled enough to negate by not presenting it, or putting forth more effort to guard that location.

Fountain of Flame creates an area of flames that harm all enemies who enter, but doesn't harm your allies? How? Why? I don't know, but it's sure darned useful.

I'll note that 5e skimps on a lot of details in it's ability descriptions as well. A Battlemaster can hit you so hard that you become terrified of them...or so hard that you want to kill them more than anyone else (regardless of what you hit them with, or how much damage you deal). Heck, a Battlemaster can allow an ally to move up to half their speed when it's not even their turn! Like, sure, creating an opening for you to move makes sense, but where is that extra speed coming from?

A Hordebreaker Ranger gets an extra attack each turn, but it can only be used on someone other than the guy they attacked. Why? They eventually can attack every person adjacent to them on their turn, but a Fighter might not be able to replicate the same stunt.

You can create explanations for how this works in either edition, but the game doesn't come out and say exactly how you do it- it says you do it and lets you figure out the rest.

Multiattack powers did exist in 4e, but the most commonly found ones were Ranger powers. The Barbarian had one at least AFAICR. A Paragon Path I saw once had Demon-Soul Bolts, an encounter power that let you attack thrice.

 

[Undrave]

I don't remember multi-attack as such, honestly, although some attacks might have been described as such.

Many Martial had 'close burst' powers and the Rogue (prob. Ranger too) even had 'close blast' powers, most of which would target 'All enemies in range' and not 'all creatures in range' the way a magical burst or blast would do. Heck, the Fighter could cleave at-will (hit a guy, inflict STR damage to another), and both Ranger and Fighter had Twin Strike style at-wills. So yeah, it wasn't that hard. And the Wizard had Scorching Burst, a burst 1 ranged At-Will, and Thunderwave was also At-Will.

 

[Voadam]

I'll give you a simple example:

• Orc Raider: AC 17 ( Leather Armor, Int 8, Dex 15)
• Orc Warrior: AC 21 (Leather Armor, Int 8, Dex 11)

Can you explain why the Orc Warrior's AC is 4 points higher than the raider' one when he is wearing the same armor but has much lower dex ? Is he perchance wearing magical armor ? But then why can't I loot it of him ?

Can you explain why the raider has 46 hit points (enough to absorb many blows) but the warrior always dies on the first blow received although he is 3 times higher in level and way more dangerous (attacks at +14 instead of +6) ?

It's totally inconsistent with the world and with any explanation outside of "it's a game, and therefore it's a gamist concept".

Here is my off the cuff map to the narrative game world.

The Orc warrior has more skill and a more high risk aggressive fighting style, he puts it all on the line in both offense and defense which means that he is more successful in hitting and blocking incoming attacks, but is also much more vulnerable if anything gets past his defenses.

(A bit similar to 5e's barbarian reckless attack power, but tuned to the minion 1 hp and higher AC).

The Orc raider in contrast is not as skilled but also not as reckless on defense so it takes a little while to hammer the raider down for the killing blow.

Or alternatively the Orc raider is a less skilled combatant but they get themself so pumped up on Waaagh rage that it takes more to put them down.

A knife to the throat can kill anyone, this is usually good enough narratively for anyone in the game world to have 1 hp and it to make sense for me.