D&D 5E Another Critical Hits 5E Report

[fuindordm]

[MENTION=4475]Sammael[/MENTION]:

Interesting point about the power curve. There is certaintly a trade-off to be made between "flat enough so that players don't always act within their specialty" and "steep enough so that advancement and specialization are rewarding". The trade-off is simply a number. Based on your style of play, what spread between an unspecialized bonus and a specialized bonus is the sweet spot? For me, +4 is a reasonable reward for specialization, but then I like to play generalists.

[MENTION=54846]Rechan[/MENTION]:

Agressive vs cautious exploration is just a style, which is always a compromise between DM and players. If the new edition supports both gritty play ("should have checked for traps, that arrow wound is nasty!") and high fantasy play ("An arrow wound? Bah, I'll walk it off!") then I'll be happy. I'd like it to support both, and that could be done simply enough with variant healing, damage, and death rules in the core. (Cf. Grim Tales)

 

[Remathilis]

Yeah, kind of makes me want to say, "That's it? We're done?"

Reminds of a DCC module where the big bad was waiting for us behind a secret door. He goes into some long spiel about himself and at the end he screams, "I'm the master now!" Combat starts. We kill him in 1 round.

Maybe the 5 minutes is a super pure adrenaline experience. If you go 6 minutes, you'll go into cardiac arrest and fall dead out of your chair.

The alternative was our final battle in 3.5: seven 20th level PCs (rogue, fighter, ranger, wizard, wizard, cleric, eldrich knight) vs. an uber-lich wizard and his death knight companion.

Game time: 10 rounds (1 minute).
Real Time: 6 hours!!

Why so long? Lets see, the ranger had seven attacks (at different attack bonuses and damage/crit ranges), the first wizard had summoned elder earth elementals (3 monsters which had a full attack routines) beyond his spells. The other wizard used quicken spell to cast 2-spells per round. Fighter had 4 attacks per round. The eldrich knight had a full-attack + quicken spell routine, and the cleric cast as well. The rogue did nothing; I failed a save early and was out of the fight. Oh, and the villians weren't quick either; the lich summoned a maralith (full attacks + SLAs) and cast spells, while the death knight had a full attack. Oh, I forgot to add SR to all foes and DR to slow down damage.

We probably would have moved a bit faster if, one one, the lich cast Mordenkainen Disjunction to remove all our buffs and magic items. It took an hour to redo our character's math.

The good news was after a while, combat moved a bit faster; the summons died (were banished), the death knight died in one round of melee, the eldrich knight and one mage died due to failed saves (the rogue was gone from early rounds), and the ranger was paralyzed for the remainder of the combat (roll a 20 to do something was her action for 3 hours, more than what I did, I ran the maralith until its banishment, then used the DS to play Mario Bros).

By the time this "finale" battle ended, we were ready for 4e! Damn shame that...

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Unless that 15 Str grants you a +3 bonus (unlikely), then it makes exactly zero math sense for you to be able to auto-succeed at a DC 13 Strength check with it.

It could be that any DC that is under your Ability score is auto-success (or ability + Skill in skill situations). If you have to roll it's modifier + roll (mathematically the same if the bonus is +1 per ability score over 10).

That would speed up things a lot.

 

[M.L. Martin]

That impression is given because they are testing the 1e-style component (the core rules) and 3e/4e components clearly work best as add-ons once you get the core component working well. Also, the module was 1e so the fluff reports (all we've really gotten) are going to make it sound like 1e if it even remotely did it's job right.

Does it not make sense to start as a 1e emulation (with better actual rules) and add complexity to bring it up to later editions?

Good point. I'm just a little nervous because of the design teams' expressed preferences (Mearls' anti-2E sentiments, the push for the Great Wheel, the assassin and warlock as favorite classes), which don't quite mesh with my own.

(Side note to self and others who may be concerned: Buy the new 4E stuff if you're interested in any of it and are not completely sold on 5E yet. Late edition books seem to really spike on the secondary market after the new edition's released, so if 5E doesn't turn out to be our cup of tea, better to have them on hand than pay above cover price. Do a search on Fiendish Codex II or Drow of the Underdark for 3.5 sometime.)

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Apparently your idea of a "boss fight" differs from mine and many (most?) others. The BBEG is supposed to be climactic and tough, not just some gobbo to "mop up". If you back him in to a corner, he's dangerous.

I don't care if every other fight lasted only a few minutes, this is the big scene in the story. If there were extenuating circumstances it should have been written.

No, not really. I'm just saying it's what Mike could easily have meant.

The only place we disagree on would be that I would find it very formulaic if absolutely every boss-fight had to follow that... formula. I totally think that there should be a climactic battle as you describe. But it doesn't have to come at the very end every time.

 

[Essenti]

I'm a 4e player... and I love playing 4e. I took no offense to the statement made by the blogger and I do not think it was meant as an attack on 4e players or the edition.

I was a bit confused by the level of offense it seemed to instill in my fellow 4e players in this thread. It seemed to me the author was talking about how the 4e mechanics offer an expected high powered progression for the players, which is part of why I like 4e. I like knowing that we can get into the action quickly, and that I'll be able to consistently play a major part in the game and my character will consistently become more powerful as the game moves forward. I guess I just don't find the concept of "entitlement" to be very offensive.

The fact that high power fantasy play is not the default in the core of 5e actually makes me happy, because there are many ways to play "our game" and I don't always want to play with a 4e progression.

If all goes well, it should be easy to add 4e like progression back in with a module (which absolutely should be provided in the core books).

 

[Sammael]

Interesting point about the power curve. There is certaintly a trade-off to be made between "flat enough so that players don't always act within their specialty" and "steep enough so that advancement and specialization are rewarding". The trade-off is simply a number. Based on your style of play, what spread between an unspecialized bonus and a specialized bonus is the sweet spot? For me, +4 is a reasonable reward for specialization, but then I like to play generalists.

It's a question that's been bugging me for years. On one hand, players want to be rewarded for specializing. On the other, I want all players to have a reasonable chance of success when it comes to skill checks.

+4 (20%) sounds like a pretty reasonable difference. I've playtested +2 and it doesn't mean much, and +6 is probably too much (though it might make sense at higher levels).

In any case, a 5% (+1) increase is not worth the bother unless it comes at a very steady pace (every level or every other level).

 

[Sammael]

It could be that any DC that is under your Ability score is auto-success (or ability + Skill in skill situations). If you have to roll it's modifier + roll (mathematically the same if the bonus is +1 per ability score over 10).

That would speed up things a lot.

Unless you are making a metric crapton of checks every session, the speed up thing would be negligible.

I'm not opposed to auto-success, but the math doesn't add up. What's wrong with taking 10 anyway?

 

[IanB]

I peg it at +3 myself. The spread between failure/success gets too punishing otherwise.

 

[Hassassin]

I'm not opposed to auto-success, but the math doesn't add up. What's wrong with taking 10 anyway?

If ability modifier is (score - 10), having a character with Strength 15 auto-succeeding on a DC 13 check is taking 10.