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General Tabletop Discussion
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Conundrum: Ranged attack sequence/cover bonus for players
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<blockquote data-quote="groody" data-source="post: 7949812" data-attributes="member: 7022056"><p>I‘m one of the players. In my opinion, the issue is not with the individual moves but with the fact that a joint initiative roll for all monsters increases variance of the game, which always - while superficially fair as the same is applied to players and monsters - favors monsters.</p><p></p><p>Sure players enjoy if the monsters roll low on and then they all get fried in a fireball before they ever get to shoot. It also sure sucks from the player perspective if the monsters roll high and turn the wizard into a pincushion so that he cannot fireball them. If a PC dies, that is much worse than having a victory without getting hit at all is good.</p><p></p><p>That group of monsters acts only for a single encounter. For the PCs the game is a long chain of encounters. 5e tends to favor a gradual wearing down of player resources with each encounter, increasing predictability and reducing variance. I believe this is also the reason why 5e does not as a default have instant kill critical hits - they increase variance, which while superficially fair is deadlier for the PCs who have lots of encounters. </p><p></p><p>In my view, the GM should break up the monsters into a few logical groups if possible, each with their own initiative. One for the bugbears, one for the goblins coming from one side, and one for those from the other side. That seems a fair balance between management overhead and outlier reduction.</p><p></p><p>Enough lecturing. My Wizard has some goblins to fry.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="groody, post: 7949812, member: 7022056"] I‘m one of the players. In my opinion, the issue is not with the individual moves but with the fact that a joint initiative roll for all monsters increases variance of the game, which always - while superficially fair as the same is applied to players and monsters - favors monsters. Sure players enjoy if the monsters roll low on and then they all get fried in a fireball before they ever get to shoot. It also sure sucks from the player perspective if the monsters roll high and turn the wizard into a pincushion so that he cannot fireball them. If a PC dies, that is much worse than having a victory without getting hit at all is good. That group of monsters acts only for a single encounter. For the PCs the game is a long chain of encounters. 5e tends to favor a gradual wearing down of player resources with each encounter, increasing predictability and reducing variance. I believe this is also the reason why 5e does not as a default have instant kill critical hits - they increase variance, which while superficially fair is deadlier for the PCs who have lots of encounters. In my view, the GM should break up the monsters into a few logical groups if possible, each with their own initiative. One for the bugbears, one for the goblins coming from one side, and one for those from the other side. That seems a fair balance between management overhead and outlier reduction. Enough lecturing. My Wizard has some goblins to fry. [/QUOTE]
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Conundrum: Ranged attack sequence/cover bonus for players
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