D&D 5E D&D Basic DM rules updated

[Chocolategravy]

"It doesn't matter if they do not get it perfect the first few times. Besides which, cold or hot dice will throw off encounter balance just as well as anything else." This is very true, my PC's easily took out a boss in the starter set but nearly had a TPK in a random encounter all due to bad dice rolls.

This is largely the system's fault for not dealing with dice rolls better. Part of it is unavoidable, the shorter you make combat the more swingy it will tend to get. Part of it is bad design choices like not having any subtraction in the game so there are no penalties on successive attacks. Part of it is just dumb like buckets full of dice on crits will obviously cause problems.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I understand that, and I certainly will. I just think it sends the wrong message to have this written in the rules. (By the way, I'm only referring to XP rewards in my rant, not treasure.)

In many cases, XP is an illusion, anyway. DMs everywhere fudge here and there to make the party level up when the DM feels it's appropriate. But if you're going to go to all the trouble of making up charts and formulas for an XP budget and balanced encounters, it's extremely bad form to turn around and chuck the notion of risk and reward out the window.

I disagree entirely. A big part of playing smart is minimizing your ratio of risk to reward. Accomplishing your goals without risking your neck more than you have to. So if you have the choice of carefully and stealthily taking out the enemy in small groups, or even actively dividing their forces, why the heck should that give you 1/4 the xp of just knocking on the front door and risking your butt fighting everyone at once?

 

[Joe Liker]

I disagree entirely. A big part of playing smart is minimizing your ratio of risk to reward. Accomplishing your goals without risking your neck more than you have to. So if you have the choice of carefully and stealthily taking out the enemy in small groups, or even actively dividing their forces, why the heck should that give you 1/4 the xp of just knocking on the front door and risking your butt fighting everyone at once?

If you are better at fighting than stealth, or if that's the way you like to roll, it's not the wrong approach. There is no "wrong" approach in D&D, unless you die (and sometimes not even then!). I don't feel it's for the DM to decide how the players should go about their business as long as they are enjoying themselves.

Furthermore, you don't always have a choice. If you're in the gladiatorial arena, the first round is two ogres, and the second round is 12 kobolds, I promise you that kobold fight is going to be a lot deadlier. And you had zero choice in the matter because you're a slave.

 

[Tormyr]

If you are better at fighting than stealth, or if that's the way you like to roll, it's not the wrong approach. There is no "wrong" approach in D&D, unless you die (and sometimes not even then!). I don't feel it's for the DM to decide how the players should go about their business as long as they are enjoying themselves.

Furthermore, you don't always have a choice. If you're in the gladiatorial arena, the first round is two ogres, and the second round is 12 kobolds, I promise you that kobold fight is going to be a lot deadlier. And you had zero choice in the matter because you're a slave.

I am hoping the DMG gives some insight, into alternate avenues for XP. In my opinion, if you solve a problem, you should get XP. A party can solve an encounter problem by fighting the encounter or by avoiding it. Although they should not get XP for both avoiding the encounter and then circling around and fighting it. If I was using XP instead of milestones in my AP, I would be giving the full encounter XP for dealing with the encounter almost no matter how it was solved.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

They also mentioned that the multiplier should not be increased for enemies that are not actually challenging enough to make a big difference in the fight. So say your level 7 and fighting a Mindflayer and it's Grimlock slaves. You would not increase the multiplier for the Grimlocks as they are not challenging enough to warrant the multiplier rising.

It's awfully nebulous language, particularly for a new DM who is going to be uncertain of what constitutes "significantly lower CR" or whether monsters will "significantly contribute to the difficulty of an encounter."

Even after playtesting and playing one game of 5e, I am not entirely certain how to apply that guideline. The example of a Lich and 3 Skeletons clearly qualifies, but what about 12 Skeletons? Or what if the CR was only 5 different?

The thing that bothers me about it is exactly that: 1 powerful creature and a horde of weaklings. If you fought the horde individually, you should still multiply the XP for evaluation of difficulty. But if you stick them with a much more powerful creature, suddenly they matter less? The skeletons shouldn't cause the lich to be multiplied, but shouldn't they still multiply themselves?

What makes sense to me in that case is that you simply treat the lich and the 12 skeletons as separate encounters for XP purposes. Multiply the skeleton XP, then add the unmodified lich XP to see how tough it should be.

 

[Joe Liker]

The thing that bothers me about it is exactly that: 1 powerful creature and a horde of weaklings. If you fought the horde individually, you should still multiply the XP for evaluation of difficulty. But if you stick them with a much more powerful creature, suddenly they matter less? The skeletons shouldn't cause the lich to be multiplied, but shouldn't they still multiply themselves?

What makes sense to me in that case is that you simply treat the lich and the 12 skeletons as separate encounters for XP purposes. Multiply the skeleton XP, then add the unmodified lich XP to see how tough it should be.

Obviously, it's going to break down even worse the more different types of monsters you throw in, but it it does seem reasonable to multiply the XP of the low-power group. But I'd count the lich as a skeleton when choosing a multiplier (and then apply that multiplier only to the actual skeletons). Don't ask me why; I just would.

 

[Quickleaf]

The thing that bothers me about it is exactly that: 1 powerful creature and a horde of weaklings. If you fought the horde individually, you should still multiply the XP for evaluation of difficulty. But if you stick them with a much more powerful creature, suddenly they matter less? The skeletons shouldn't cause the lich to be multiplied, but shouldn't they still multiply themselves?

What makes sense to me in that case is that you simply treat the lich and the 12 skeletons as separate encounters for XP purposes. Multiply the skeleton XP, then add the unmodified lich XP to see how tough it should be.

That is kind of my thinking too. However, even with bounded accuracy I wonder if there is a cut-off point at which monsters of much lower CR become significantly reduced threats... IIRC Star Wars Saga had a rule where a more than 5 or 8 level difference between monster and PC resulted in the monster's XP value being downgraded by 1/10. I wonder if a guideline along those lines applies in 5e or not.

 

[Tormyr]

The thing that bothers me about it is exactly that: 1 powerful creature and a horde of weaklings. If you fought the horde individually, you should still multiply the XP for evaluation of difficulty. But if you stick them with a much more powerful creature, suddenly they matter less? The skeletons shouldn't cause the lich to be multiplied, but shouldn't they still multiply themselves?

What makes sense to me in that case is that you simply treat the lich and the 12 skeletons as separate encounters for XP purposes. Multiply the skeleton XP, then add the unmodified lich XP to see how tough it should be.

But does it really matter in that case? The skeletons contribute 1/10th the XP of an easy encounter for a group of 4 20th level adventurers (a reasonable party for the lich). There are a couple ways you could assess the difficulty:
1. Only count the lich for 33,000 XP (Medium)
2. Count the lich and the skeletons separately and add them together 33,000 + 1,800 = 34,800 (Hard)
3. Multiply everything together 100,800.

I don't really think the skeletons will affect the encounter much unless they are interacting in some special way with the lich, the PCs, or each other. Otherwise, the cleric is going to sneeze, and the skeletons all go *poof*. So option 1 would probably be best, but option 2 could work as well. But if there were a dozen skeletons and a dozen stirge, I would multiply all of those together because they are close in CR to each other.

 

[Joe Liker]

In fact, how about this:

In an encounter with several different tiers of monsters, calculate each tier separately. But when doing so, add up the number of monsters in the tier plus the number of monsters in all higher tiers to get the multiplier for that tier.

So if there are 3 skeletons, 6 wights, and a lich, you'd pretend there are 10 skeletons when finding the skeleton multiplier, then you'd pretend there are 7 wights when finding the wight multiplier. The lich doesn't get a multiplier because there's only one.

Again, don't ask me why. It just feels right-ish. Math is about instinct, I'm pretty sure.

 

[Joe Liker]

I don't really think the skeletons will affect the encounter much unless they are interacting in some special way with the lich, the PCs, or each other. Otherwise, the cleric is going to sneeze, and the skeletons all go *poof*. So option 1 would probably be best, but option 2 could work as well. But if there were a dozen skeletons and a dozen stirge, I would multiply all of those together because they are close in CR to each other.

Everyone always acts like all the monsters are neatly bundled up into one tidy little 15-foot square. Such is almost never the case in encounters I design.