D&D 5E (2024) Better Monster Design. 6E/BG3 Ideas

[Bae'zel]

When power gamers and optimizers write posts like that, many brain shuts off.

We are very very different kinds of gamers. That’s fine, but you might as well be a martian.

150 damage in one hit? I’ve never seen that kind of output in D&D ever. I wouldn’t have fun playing that kind of game, but to each their own.

 

[Zardnaar]

When power gamers and optimizers write posts like that, many brain shuts off.

We are very very different kinds of gamers. That’s fine, but you might as well be a martian.

150 damage in one hit? I’ve never seen that kind of output in D&D ever. I wouldn’t have fun playing that kind of game, but to each their own.

150 over a round in 5.5. 150 was BG3. A large number popped up and I checked the combat log. Iirc it was 179 150 was psychic danage.

The hard core BG3 have it to up to 400 a hit. I know the basic build but cant be bothered its to OP even for my theory craft.

Normally in BG3 we tone it down to sword and board. Dyal wielding, great weapon are a bit nuts. Normally we dont use the meta builds but we tested one of the new patch things (shadowblade). We had 3 characters that weren't 100% optimized but contained the core combo.

Normally we dont explot vulnerability, strength elixirs+tavern brawler, radiant god builds or water+lightning builds or frost builds. My previous tavern was a thief wife's looking at sword and board Eldritch knight.

Hell we self banned archer builds as well. Think we beat cazador on honor mode 0 damage inflicted.

As said theory crafting an impossible mode tactical run. We are gonna count the amount if times we tpk and see if we can beat it. Impossible mode is 500% health + 3 actions and bonus actions for NPCs.

Wife's scared but pointed out how to get past the first TPK potential.

Sometimes I test basic combos applicable to 5E ttrpg if the mechanics are the same.

For example heroes feast + cloud kill and hex+Scorching ray into a paralyzed opponent works the same.

Paralyzed+hitting someone is a basic well known combo though if you ever use hold person. Its an old spell as well worked great 30 years ago.

BG3 specific abuses are critical hits, vulnerability, water+lightning, haste effects, steength elixirs and unlimited resources.

BG3 monsters as inspiration are fine along with a lot of the equipment (minus the unlimited/cheap part).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Again, I think your view about what is power gaming and what is casual is skewed, or mine is in the other direction, to the point that it might be a fool's errant to design a game for the both of us, at least as a design goal. And that's not a problem, I think.

For instance, your 150 damage a turn fighter is not something appearing in my games. Hence, having monsters designed around this expectation would not suit me at all.

I'm kinda between you guys. I think 5e monsters are weaksauce, but the sort of stuff @Zardnaar talks about still sounds rather outlandish to me.

But I think one can design game that suits both of you, and I think the designers should aim for it. This is done by simply limiting how much one can cheese things. There will always be some difference between an optimised power gamer and a casual, but I think that in a well designed RPG that difference should not be particularly massive. The obvious first thing I would look for is various synergies and how things can stack, as those tend to be the ways to break things most easily. For example in my game I houseruled the magic item bonuses to work in 4e way, ie. they do not stack, only the best bonus applies. One could apply something similar to bonuses to damage rolls.

 

[BenjaminPey]

I'm kinda between you guys. I think 5e monsters are weaksauce, but the sort of stuff @Zardnaar talks about still sounds rather outlandish to me.

I hear you, but I don't find 5.24 monsters to be weak sauce at all. My kids are very much afraid of them.

As for a design aiming both at casual and hardcore gamers, I think 5E is somewhere in the sweet spot. Casuals can't really make bad builds, no character is useless in battles, rules mastery is beneficial but not to the point of being mandatory, and in the other hand it's rather trivial to come up with "hardcore modes": no easy rests, no full-healing on rest, max damage for monsters, no Tiny Hut/Rope Trick/Heroe's Feast, etc.
The 2024 revision is still somewhere near that spot. It made a move towards complexity and rules mastery on the one hand, but also a rather consistent effort to eliminate bad choices.

As for magic item bonuses, magic items are few and far between in my games (as they are in the published campaigns). When they have mechanical weight, they are and should be significant. There is not enough of them for any kind of stacking.

I don't pretend all this to be a particularly well-informed or well-thought-out opinion, though, it's just my experience with the game. Maybe it's possible to be even more adjusted to opposed gaming preferences. But a cursory glance at my (too vast) RPG library tells me that no others have been more successful than 5E at appealing to casual and invested players alike. Hence my position: if OP's style is out of 5E scope, a game already built to please quite a large audience, when mine are pretty much completly subsumed in it, in so far as fantasy adventure games gravitating around combat are concerned, I don't see a way to reconcile our mutual preferences under a single umbrella. Again, I may be wrong, obviously.

 

[FrogReaver]

The only real way to balance all this is to a) eliminate most resource attrition between combats and b) to eliminate most character build choices or make them have nearly the same impact. (Looking very 4e).

But that’s not a) realistic or b) fun.

As such I’d prefer to see good advice around encounter building and how to adjust an encounters difficulty to your party.

This isn’t a striaghtforward problem because nothing scales linearly. AOEs hit everything. Higher ACs reduce damage too significantly. Higher monster damage incentivizes players to build for initiative, control and alpha striking, none of which are linear. Higher monster hp pushes players to focus more on control and sustained damage effects.

And if the players respond appropriately then you’ve likely not increased the difficulty all that much, you’ve mostly just changed what the optimal tactics are.

 

[Zardnaar]

The only real way to balance all this is to a) eliminate most resource attrition between combats and b) to eliminate most character build choices or make them have nearly the same impact. (Looking very 4e).

But that’s not a) realistic or b) fun.

As such I’d prefer to see good advice around encounter building and how to adjust an encounters difficulty to your party.

This isn’t a striaghtforward problem because nothing scales linearly. AOEs hit everything. Higher ACs reduce damage too significantly. Higher monster damage incentivizes players to build for initiative, control and alpha striking, none of which are linear. Higher monster hp pushes players to focus more on control and sustained damage effects.

And if the players respond appropriately then you’ve likely not increased the difficulty all that much, you’ve mostly just changed what the optimal tactics are.

The other option is pre 3E. Have a variety of monsters tgat can challenge a variety of players.

And no easy mode healing.

May be commercial suicide though.

Entire generation of players has bedm trained to like 5E even if theyre complaining about it elsewhere. Takes about 5 years to start get sick of an edition you like imho. Ymmv of course.

Ultimately its is it always problem worth fixing. And if it is how do we do it. The problems also us. We're not doing 20 rounds of encounters but more than 4
9-15 would be typical 20 is higher level dungeon hack.

5.5 4 high encounters is kind of required to deplete a 5th-7th level party of dailies.

Also hard to reconcile short vs long although 6.5 has attempted tgat making most classes have short rest recharge abilities.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm kinda between you guys. I think 5e monsters are weaksauce, but the sort of stuff @Zardnaar talks about still sounds rather outlandish to me.

But I think one can design game that suits both of you, and I think the designers should aim for it. This is done by simply limiting how much one can cheese things. There will always be some difference between an optimised power gamer and a casual, but I think that in a well designed RPG that difference should not be particularly massive. The obvious first thing I would look for is various synergies and how things can stack, as those tend to be the ways to break things most easily. For example in my game I houseruled the magic item bonuses to work in 4e way, ie. they do not stack, only the best bonus applies. One could apply something similar to bonuses to damage rolls.

If you go to BG3 forums its even more outlandish.

They're essentially seeing how far they can push the system hence impossible mode mod (which isn't actually impossible just makes honor mode look easy).

If you think its outlandish in 5.5 look at level 11 Monk, Barbarians, Fighters, Paladins and the obvious feats and weapon masteries. Cross reference it with the dungeon master suggested magic items.

You can literally stumble into builds and situations where you inflict 100+ damage a round. Great weapon master, halberd, action surge and a crit or 3.

The 150 damage was a dual wield champion fighter action surge advantage every attack with the piercer feat and got lucky on crits. Two 20s iirc and another one.

Monks hit 5 attacks naturally, fighters 6 with action surge, 7 if they get bonus action attack. Paladins add an extra dice of radiant damage, smite and get 3 or 4 attacks.

Any magic weapon adding a d6 or more damage. Theres several to choose from. Feats buried in Tashas are now core.

 

[FrogReaver]

The other option is pre 3E. Have a variety of monsters tgat can challenge a variety of players.

And no easy mode healing.

May be commercial suicide though.

Entire generation of players has bedm trained to like 5E even if theyre complaining about it elsewhere. Takes about 5 years to start get sick of an edition you like imho. Ymmv of course.

Ultimately its is it always problem worth fixing. And if it is how do we do it. The problems also us. We're not doing 20 rounds of encounters but more than 4
9-15 would be typical 20 is higher level dungeon hack.

5.5 4 high encounters is kind of required to deplete a 5th-7th level party of dailies.

Also hard to reconcile short vs long although 6.5 has attempted tgat making most classes have short rest recharge abilities.

3e had worse optimization cases than 5e.