D&D 5E attrition mechanic

[zicar]

We are currently playing around with this in my Divine Right campaign:

HOLD THE LINE
When you take this action your speed becomes zero and you have disadvantage on dexterity saving throws UNTIL YOUR NEXT TURN. In return you can cleave thru an enemy, killing it instantly. IF YOU ARE ABLE TO ATTACK MORE THAN ONCE YOU CAN CLEAVE THRU MORE THAN ONE ENEMY. Any creature with resistance to melee attacks OR REGENERATION cannot be killed in this manner. You take attrition damage EQUAL TO 5X THE creature's CR (min. 1)

 

[Skyscraper]

I haven't read beyond page 1 of this thread, but I would reconsider your approach if I were you.

Your problem as I understand it is that you wish to avoid boring portions of the adventure. To you, these are exploration and meaningless random encounters.

What you need to do, is make all encounters meaningful to you and to your story. This is what I do, a few rare exceptions aside. Prepare the encounters in advance. For example, you can select among the encounters, some that you find fit within the story. E.g. if they party is threading through the forest, perhaps the meet with savages (e.g. elves or humans) that could become allies? Or with ogres that are, in fact, keeping some slaves for the BBEG?

If you want your fights to be from one BBEG to the next, then your story is perhaps what needs tinkering. If it's not that, if you accept that there can be other challenges, then it's up to you to invent a story element that fits your game. I've had some memorable recurring villains start of as a standard captain of a patrol, or the like. What can you make of a standard patrol captain? Is he a boring stereotype, or will he have some depth and personality? Perhaps ambitions of his own? Perhaps a sadistic twist? Perhaps he's a good man in an evil army?

I totally agree with you in wanting to avoid meaningless encounters. I disagree with forcing some attrition mechanic on the players over which the players have no control. I would totally be ticked off if my DM were to do this, in a major way.

 

[pukunui]

[MENTION=48518]Skyscraper[/MENTION]: I think you misunderstand. My desire is not to go from one BBEG to the next. I'm running an episodic campaign. I like to keep each session tightly focused with minimal faffing about. Getting lost in the sewers and having to fight off swarms of centipedes and the like isn't appealing. Exploring the lair of the mind flayer, which contains numerous drow thralls, a spirit naga, some octopus-like creatures of the mind flayer's creation, a room full of cursed magic guarded by a vrock, and so on. Plenty of room for exploration, and not entirely focused on the BBEG. Plus, this is part two of the adventure. We began it last session, during which time they were set upon by some doppelgangers and proceeded to explore a seemingly abandoned warehouse on the riverfront.

Also, I have prepped one encounter for the sewers that I wish to play through. As written, the random encounter table in the adventure just has things like centipede swarms and giant rats, with minimal chances of encountering a black pudding or a gelatinous cube. I got to thinking that, since the mind flayer is lairing in the sewers, then there ought to be some critters affected by its presence. So I've modified an encounter from some AL adventures (a sewer map from "The Scroll Thief" and an encounter from "Foulness Beneath Mulmaster") in which the PCs will have the opportunity to rescue a flumph from a pair psychic gray oozes and a modified black pudding (based on Princess Ebonmire from OotA). If they succeed in both rescuing and befriending the flumph, it will then offer to guide them to the mind flayer's lair so they can get rid of it.

 

[Skyscraper]

@Skyscraper: I think you misunderstand. My desire is not to go from one BBEG to the next. I'm running an episodic campaign. I like to keep each session tightly focused with minimal faffing about. Getting lost in the sewers and having to fight off swarms of centipedes and the like isn't appealing. Exploring the lair of the mind flayer, which contains numerous drow thralls, a spirit naga, some octopus-like creatures of the mind flayer's creation, a room full of cursed magic guarded by a vrock, and so on. Plenty of room for exploration, and not entirely focused on the BBEG. Plus, this is part two of the adventure. We began it last session, during which time they were set upon by some doppelgangers and proceeded to explore a seemingly abandoned warehouse on the riverfront.

Also, I have prepped one encounter for the sewers that I wish to play through. As written, the random encounter table in the adventure just has things like centipede swarms and giant rats, with minimal chances of encountering a black pudding or a gelatinous cube. I got to thinking that, since the mind flayer is lairing in the sewers, then there ought to be some critters affected by its presence. So I've modified an encounter from some AL adventures (a sewer map from "The Scroll Thief" and an encounter from "Foulness Beneath Mulmaster") in which the PCs will have the opportunity to rescue a flumph from a pair psychic gray oozes and a modified black pudding (based on Princess Ebonmire from OotA). If they succeed in both rescuing and befriending the flumph, it will then offer to guide them to the mind flayer's lair so they can get rid of it.

Okay gotcha.

Then your problem is perhaps similar to mine: I have trouble playing published adventures, because many encounters are not appealing to me. The ones you describe in the sewers, would get a similar reaction from me as they do from you.

The way I handle things, myself, is to either play a homebrew in which I steal stuff from everywhere; of if I play a published adventure, i'll only use those parts I like from it. I don't play with XP goals, but it I did, I would then insert other elements from other adventures to fill in for the stuff I dislike about the adventure I'm running. A bit like you did for the psychic oozes.

 

[pukunui]

[MENTION=48518]Skyscraper[/MENTION]: Yeah, that's exactly what I've done here. I'm running parts of "The Hall of Harsh Reflections" from the Age of Worms AP. When I played through it as a player, it was heaps of fun; but looking at it as a DM, certain parts of it look like they'd either be boring (eg. the sewers) or quite tricky to run (the doppelgangers in the mirror maze).

I ended up skipping the second part of the doppelganger lair. My players didn't know it was there anyway. And, as it turned out, they did a good job navigating the sewers and had no troubles. They rescued the flumph from the "spawn of the Faceless Lord" and it guided them the rest of the way to the mind flayer's lair (letting them know what it was they were up against in the process).

It wasn't a sure thing, though, as I had a guest playing with us, I gave him an NPC veteran who was a member of the local city watch ... and the player decided that since his watchman had just been attacked by gloopy things, he would be a little freaked out when this floating jellyfish thing appeared, so he fired a warning shot at it. The flumph did its stench spray thing and then started to flee, but the other PCs managed to call it back.

They had fun, and the sewers came to life a little bit without taking up too much time or being boring. They only got halfway through the mind flayer lair, though, so we'll have to spend another session on it. (Was hoping we could get all the way through, but my players can be a bit slow sometimes ...)