D&D is NOT Kobolds surviving Fireball

[AngryMojo]

Honestly, I think the biggest problem with this argument is the same problem with so many edition-war-spawning discussions; the absolute statement of what D&D "should" be. Person A wants adventure scoped balancing, where some players dominate some encounters while others dominate others while person B wants contribution by all characters in all encounters. Neither player is wrong, they just have different styles of play.

The issue comes when one player says their style of play is the way it "should" be or that their style of play is "real D&D," whatever that means. Even if the statement "it's not D&D" is accompanied with "to me," it's still an inflammatory statement. Lots of people get very offended by that.

Stating "I hope 5e contains modules that support my style of play, in which a fireball can kill a large number of kobolds automatically" is a much more constructive statement than "If fireball can't kill kobolds it's not D&D." The first statement proposes a solution, which is in all likelihood a feasible goal. If that's the case, then including a module where monsters don't advance and maintain low hit point levels is an easy fix, and a simple integration into your game.

 

[strmwndgmr]

This is only an issue of you're balancing around the encounter, insisting that everyone do something cool each and every encounter, rather than balancing around the adventure and accepting that some encounters will be dominated by just one or two players, and that is okay, everyone will get their moment in the sun.

Except that nobody, but spellcasters get to shine eventually. Wizards before 4E could do everything anybody else can do. So nobody but them would get a moment in the sun. Been there done it myself.

 

[strmwndgmr]

My 8th lvl 4E wizard can kill any standard 1st or 2nd lvl kobold with one Fireball.

 

[Jack99]

My 3.5 era 5th level Kobold Paladin begs to differ.

And good luck trying to kill a 4+ level Kobld Rouge with Improved Reflexes...

I cant believe I just read 5 pages about too powerful kobolds, and no one mentioned Pun-Pun....

 

[satori01]

My greybeard is showing but to me dnd kobolds are Tuckers Kobolds. Not only will they survive it they will take that wand of fireball and jam it some place uncomfortable most likely.

That is the appeal of Tucker's Kobolds, that 4 Hp monsters so bedeviled a group of adventurers through tactics, that fighting demons and ogres in straight up fights was a relief for the PCs. 40 HP Kobolds lessens the story.


The "depends" answers people give amuse...and like Depends diapers I think they stink. Special cases exist,and frankly do not need to be spelled out, IMHO. Shoot a person in the head with a 50 caliber sniper riffle and they are dead....shoot Superman or Chuck Norris in the head and results may vary.


Again I am looking for relational opinions on what monsters you should expect to outright kill with a Fireball. We do not know the math of 5E, so talking in these terms actually bring to the foreground often hidden assumptions.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I think you will find, when pressed, most D&D players will admit to preferring that most Kobolds will die from most fireballs.

If you really want to narrow the criteria to "How many average Kobolds should die to a maxed-out fireball" as seems to be the question, most D&D players will say "most or all of them"

What more do you want from us?

I think the reason you're finding resistance to answer the question straight is you've imposed limitations on the answer you will accept. Most gamers are like herding cats. Push 'em one way they will go the other.

 

[Hussar]

Again I am looking for relational opinions on what monsters you should expect to outright kill with a Fireball. We do not know the math of 5E, so talking in these terms actually bring to the foreground often hidden assumptions.

But, that's not a cut and dried question.

First off, you're dropping a 5th level character resource on an encounter that is WAY below their weight class. Even in AD&D, fireballing kobolds was overkill by a whole pile. Why would you bother? The fighter is getting 5 attacks per round (lower than 1 HD creature - or is that a Basic/Expert rule that I'm misremembering?) and you've likely got 3 fighter types. 15 attacks per round, why would you bother?

So, sure, in AD&D, you're pretty much autokilling kobolds with a fireball. You probably should since this is about 1/2 way to max level for most campaigns. A better equivalency would be to look at a 5th level 3e spell (1/2 way to max level) and a 15th level power for 4e.

Now, all of a sudden, kobolds automatically die in every case.

The scaling between editions is different. There is no such thing as a 1:1 relationship. Fireball in 1e was the go to combat spell because you're likely not going to see anything higher than about 5th level, ever. Fireball was a fairly minor combat spell in 3e, because the campaign is presumed to go much higher level. Fireball in 4e is a low level attack spell that gets superseded fairly quickly.

Differing scales makes the discussion pretty difficult.

 

[Oni]

Except that nobody, but spellcasters get to shine eventually. Wizards before 4E could do everything anybody else can do. So nobody but them would get a moment in the sun. Been there done it myself.

I hear people say this sometimes, but it's never really been my experience. I always wonder about these people playing wizards that have devoted all their resources to doing all the stuff that the people in their party can already do so they can jump in and steal the spotlight from other players, that doesn't seem very efficient. For instance the old "the wizard stole my job" rogue/thief, if there is a rogue in the party why is the wizard running around wasting resources on doing the rogue's job, and if there isn't a rogue in the party, who cares? Is the rogues job so important that there can be no other means around obstacles? Should they be required?

 

[Gundark]

I just wanted to point this out as a benchmark of what D&D should feel like.

To not even be able to take out Kobolds with a Fireball...well to paraphrase
Homer Simpson: " That is not D&D, That is not even Mexico"
( No offense to Mexico, which has significantly improved since when Fishbulb first uttered that statement).


4E lost me on that point of feel. 4E Kobolds are great, as Goblins, and with about 12 less Hp Fireball should be able to kill both of them.

D&D next won't disappoint you

 

[Oni]

Except that is poor game design. Artificially moderating and micro-managing the game for "spotlight balance" is just another form of railroading. When you can tell a story and everyone has their chance to do some cool things makes the story better for everyone involved. There are a ton of great stories about what has happened in 4E, but it didn't come at the expense of other players' ability to do cool things too, they're cool just stood out because of the situation.

Creativity and narration are just as valid in a balanced game as any other, and the balanced game offers more consistent fun to all involved.

It's also bad when players often have to sit around while others get to do fun things. D&D is an interactive game and party play and synergy are great aspects of it.

Example: It's great fun when a Wizard gets a Big Bad to fail his sleep save and then everyone bum rushes it to get their crits on (often taking attacks from henchmen) but less fun for the wizard to just blast everything in the room to smithereens while everyone else just watches.

In both cases the Wizard used a powerful spell to turn the tide, but in the former everyone else was involved in the fun instead of just watching.

D&D is not a spectator sport.

Except who said anything about artificially monitoring and micro-managing the game for spotlight balance. Player choice and luck of the dice have so much more to do with who gets the spotlight than anything else, but no one ever talks about that. Those are things that you can't really manage, they're outside of the designers' and DM's control. If the volume is turned up to 11 all the time for every character in an effort to make sure that everyone is constantly getting spotlight time, it frankly sucks the specialness out of the moment, it just turns into a big mass of frenetic samey-ness. You need lulls and downbeats to provide contrast.

And you're wizard pops into the room and blows it smithereens in one spells example is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. He got a moment where he was truly the star of the show, without anyone competing or detracting from that. And I don't know about anyone else, but a lot of of the fun of RPGs for me isn't just doing awesome stuff, it's getting to see my friends characters also do awesome stuff. Now if we're not laboring under an intensive encounter centric system this will take only a very little time to resolve and then we're off to the next thing. A single bombastic beat in a much larger piece. If you blow through an encounter in one action, no matter how exciting it might have been, its a blip and you don't dwell on it, that's the nature of emergent play. I want a game that lets the players and chance decide what's important, not DM picking what, a game that surprises the person running it as much as the players. And a game that focuses on maintaining a certain pitch every, single encounter just isn't going to have that kind of beautiful natural variation, it's too controlled, it can't oscillate wildly all over the place in an organic manner.