D&D 5E 5th Edition has broken Bounded Accuracy

[Celtavian]

OTOH, both Kamikaze Midget and myself have been playing a 5e conversion of Dragonlance for the past six or so months. We've had numerous dragon encounters with dragons both large and small, in lair and not. Does that mean we get to contribute here?

Because, [MENTION=5834]Celtavian[/MENTION], if all you are talking about are the encounters found in a single module series, then how are any of your points valid outside of those specific encounters? It cuts both ways. You are the one claiming that Fly is an absolute requirement when facing dragons. That thrown weapons for Str based fighter types just won't cut it, no other spells will work, and only the experience that you had is valid.

Do you not see how unbelievably arrogant that comes across as? Do you not understand why you are getting such push back?

No. I do not think either of you would provide good guidance for someone playing 5E using the point buy system with the generic limitations of the game in place using a WotC designed module run in a very straightforward fashion. The conventions in Dragonlance are very different. They have very little applicability to core D&D. If someone were asking about Dragonlance, I think you would both be extremely helpful.

I think this is the usual on a forum of folks with vastly differing play-style and experiences entering a discussion that did not apply to them in any way, taking what another poster says in an unintended fashion, and making an issue where there was none.

 

[pemerton]

both Kamikaze Midget and myself have been playing a 5e conversion of Dragonlance for the past six or so months. We've had numerous dragon encounters with dragons both large and small, in lair and not.

How did your melee specialists deal with flying dragons?

 

[DaveDash]

However, an all-thief group could certainly tailor the game to themselves by choosing objectives to pursue which matched their capabilities. It wouldn't work perfectly--sometimes you do have to bite the bullet and tackle something you're awful at--but if their fate is really in their own hands it should work pretty well, and it results in a campaign which is pretty different from your run-of-the-mill D&D campaign. And then a responsible DM will tailor his preparation to correspond with his PCs' likely actions, so to a certain extent you wind up tailoring things to your players' desires, as filtered through the lens of PC actions.

In other words, in an all-thief campaign, spending several days surveilling a mansion prior to breaking in would be totally normal and anticipated in DM preparations. In a regular D&D campaign that typically doesn't happen, although it could.

Absolutely. If they wanted an all Rogue party that's awesome. I'm not changing a single thing for them though because of that decision. As reactions in game because of that? Sure. But I'm not going to go "Hrm well they don't have a tank so I'll change this, and maybe give that a tweak."

I also have a hireling costs table however where you can hire NPC's out of the Monsters Manual up to CR5 for certain amounts of GP based on their CR. Above that they might come along for a quest, item, boon, or something else, but they have options available to them in game.

 

[DaveDash]

OTOH, both Kamikaze Midget and myself have been playing a 5e conversion of Dragonlance for the past six or so months. We've had numerous dragon encounters with dragons both large and small, in lair and not. Does that mean we get to contribute here?

Because, [MENTION=5834]Celtavian[/MENTION], if all you are talking about are the encounters found in a single module series, then how are any of your points valid outside of those specific encounters? It cuts both ways. You are the one claiming that Fly is an absolute requirement when facing dragons. That thrown weapons for Str based fighter types just won't cut it, no other spells will work, and only the experience that you had is valid.

Do you not see how unbelievably arrogant that comes across as? Do you not understand why you are getting such push back?

Yeah. So how did you deal with Adult (huge) sized Dragons and larger then?

 

[Celtavian]

Absolutely. If they wanted an all Rogue party that's awesome. I'm not changing a single thing for them though because of that decision. As reactions in game because of that? Sure. But I'm not going to go "Hrm well they don't have a tank so I'll change this, and maybe give that a tweak."

I also have a hireling costs table however where you can hire NPC's out of the Monsters Manual up to CR5 for certain amounts of GP based on their CR. Above that they might come along for a quest, item, boon, or something else, but they have options available to them in game.

Do you give NPC hirelings a portion of Xp as they recommend or just gold cost?

 

[DaveDash]

Do you give NPC hirelings a portion of Xp as they recommend or just gold cost?

If they're close to their CR then they split up XP. If they're way below they don't. I just use judgment on that.

My high level group doesnt bother with it, but the idea came about when running some casual 1-3p games after work to try out various things, and I'll use it for Princes. I found my players got attached to some of these hirelings.

 

[Celtavian]

If they're close to their CR then they split up XP. If they're way below they don't. I just use judgment on that.

My high level group doesnt bother with it, but the idea came about when running some casual 1-3p games after work to try out various things, and I'll use it for Princes. I found my players got attached to some of these hirelings.

That's always fun. I like attachments. So much you can do with them as a DM.

I'm starting to understand you better. You don't so much need rules to be perfect or spell everything out, you just want consistent rules to use as a touchstone for your players whether they are provided by the designers or your house rules. We are very similar. We like lots of combat, preferably hard combats. We want the rules to be known ahead of time. We tolerate a little off the cuff DMing involving NPC choice like not every enemy fighting to the death ending a fight early when they surrender or try to run. Overall, consistent, understandable rules are preferred.

 

[Hussar]

How did your melee specialists deal with flying dragons?

It's never really been an issue. Thrown weapons do more than enough damage to keep me lee characters in the game and there are so many ways to reduce something's speed to zero that you can knock things out of the sky fairly reliably.

 

[SkidAce]

Yep.

I don't tailor campaigns to players. Ever.

Their fate is COMPLETELY in their own hands, and the dice.

When my guys hit level 20, which will be in the next 2 months, it will be a great achievement, our first ever D&D campaign to reach level 20. And one they made on their own backs.

You may have misunderstood, my folks make their levels "off their own backs" also.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The playstyle that [MENTION=5834]Celtavian[/MENTION] describes doesn't seem that unique to me. I think there's a long tradition, within the overall range of D&D play, of treating the game as a challenge, and of looking for rational tactical strategies within the parameters that the rules set for such a challenge. And even within this thread, we've seen more than one other poster (and I'm not including myself) taking an approach that's similar even if not identical.

"Unique" was probably not the best choice of words (though I might say EVERY table is unique, certainly looking to D&D for challenge-fun isn't unique). But if you're significantly twisting the game to get that experience, you are playing in a way that is going to produce a much different play experience from most other tables. Even folks who pursue challenge-based gameplay out of D&D don't do it the same way. For instance, some make dungeon survival the challenge rather than lopsided combats.

I don't think anyone plays the game the same way. That's why these discussions go off in unforeseen directions as everyone speaks from the point of view of their experience. None of them exactly like the other. At best you find some with somewhat similar experiences that can at least relate, but rarely exactly alike.

Everyone plays the game their way, but the scope of house rule can be different from table to table. What I'm kind of getting at is that when you make pretty significant tweaks to the game - like laughing off encounter guidelines so you have a more binary challenge experience - you have to expect that to change your play experience relative to a group who does not. It then sort of introduces a caveat whenever you talk about your experience that someone who doesn't tweak the game like that doesn't have. You can talk about multiple concurrent buffs being necessary in your experience, but your experience is wildly out of whack fights, it's a bit of a "well, yeah," kind of moment. Clearly the game wasn't meant to do what you do with it - break one significant rule and you'll probably have to break others! This is why in my talk about dragonfights, I add the caveat of "well, we had dragon allies and high-damage dragon-slaying weapons when we went up against big ones," because I can be reasonably confident that this isn't a lot of tables' experience.

That doesn't mean the rule has a problem in and of itself.

It doesn't mean dragons are weak just because my party of 6th level characters took down a party of 5 dragons including two adults. It just means we found the encounter a little on the easy side. But you know, two dragonlances and three adult dragons helped us out, so well, yeah, that would be our experience.

I don't think it's controversial to say that D&D 5e wasn't built to give people who seek success in massively unbalanced encounters a satisfying experience. That doesn't seem to be among its design goals. It's not an asymmetric skirmish game. It doesn't bill itself that way. If it was meant to be played that way, you'd see different rules in place. If that's what you're seeking out of the game, you'll have to expect that you're going to have a distorted experience relative to a group whose changes are less significant.

That's not a problem, but it does sort of mean when you say "ranged is OP," or "concentration is too limiting," that this isn't always an issue with the game, it may have become an issue because of the ways you're altering the game. When you're trying to kill a single creature 5 CR's above your level on a regular basis, yeah, that makes sense that that would be your experience - the damage output it has in melee is high and it's defenses require a huuuuuuuuuuuge bonus to hit that only buffs can provide.