D&D 5E (2014) Design Debate: 13th-level PCs vs. 6- to 8-Encounter Adventuring Day

[BoldItalic]

Internet is an excellent place for having a debate where the intent is to reinforce rather than reevaluate your beliefs.

Someone should invent a bot that ignores things it thinks you don't agree with and only shows you things it thinks you would like.

Call it a personal assistant, build it into Windows and ...

Ah.

 

[Azurewraith]

Someone should invent a bot that ignores things it thinks you don't agree with and only shows you things it thinks you would like.

Call it a personal assistant, build it into Windows and ...

Ah.

Before you know it the internet is just your own Facebook page where you hhave 7billion friends yet no one ever pokes you?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

It's a shame that it didn't work out - it had potential

Yes, I think the basic idea is sound. Which is one reason I so badly want good tools. Ideally, you'd be able to post a challenge scenario somewhere (a number of pre-set scenarios, which people tackle either linearly or in some more complex flow), and people would play through the encounters (with actions/HP/etc. being tracked through the scenario, and little animations to show what happens in what order). Then they hit the Save button and it goes out to the cloud somewhere, and the scenario designer marks it as accepted or not accepted based on whether it conforms to the rules and expectations he had, and if it's accepted it goes on some kind of a leaderboard/database of encounter logs.

I think it would really be quite valuable to see how dozens or hundreds of DMs and players approach the same scenario, to get statistics like average number of HP expended, spells cast, risk of death, etc. That would help you see whether or not "Hard" and "Deadly" encounters are really as hard as they claim to be, and to analyze patterns in what makes them hard or not.

But the tools are not there yet to do this effectively.

 

[Celtavian]

Never fear my chars are pretty optimized and my pcs are finally picking up the plan

On a side note no session thus week due to Easter.

True. Most of your party is optimized. Do you have a Sharpshooter and Lore Bard? Those are the two classes that are cornerstones of 5E optimization. I'll have to take a look at your party again. I remember your wizard and paladin were well built.

 

[Celtavian]

Well, since you seem think you are the only one capable of optimizing, finish testing it then, it's all there for you to run it.

It's a great idea in concept and worthwhile to have a crack at it. The more the better. And, it does not matter what type of group play tests this; since it is set to test optimized characters, if that level of difficulty is proven, a subpar group will fall short.

Cant have results by standing on the sideline boohooing, get in there and show us what you got.

I did show it. Got told I was doing it wrong. No wish to have that discussion again.

 

[Celtavian]

Internet is an excellent place for having a debate where the intent is to reinforce rather than reevaluate your beliefs.

I have changed my opinion several times due to Internet debate on this forum. Sometimes it works out. I changed my opinion on healing word and in combat healing in 5E after debate here. I changed my opinion in this thread on how much impact the Winter Wolves had on the Frost Giant combat. I ended up agreeing with Flamestrike that Winter Wolves weren't a significant enough increase in difficulty. The entire reason I wanted to do this test is because I generally like empirical evidence. If the evidence shows me something else, I will adjust my opinion. I do understand most don't change their minds even when presented with empirical evidence. That is disappointing.

 

[MostlyDm]

They can't survive in it because they aren't immune to poison or even resistant to it. They have no ranged attacks besides fireball. They cannot attack in the cloud. The party would clear the cloud in a single move because heavy obscurement does not impede movement. The slaad don't have the power set to take full advantage of a cloudkill. If the slaad were immune to poison or had amazing ranged attacks, it would be in their best interest to fill the entire room with a cloudkill. But they don't. Their main damage is melee. So they have to close the distance. Cloudkill for all intents and purposes is exactly like fireball in the circumstances in the room. A damage spell that will likely do one round of damage.

Cloudkill has always been a somewhat hard to use spell. One of the best uses in 3E was coordinated or quickened. You cast cloudkill[/k] and quicken a wall of force to seal creatures in with a cloudkill. If the slaad had a wall of force, that could have been nasty as well.

Death slaad just don't have the combination to use cloudkill against a PC party as much more than a direct damage spell.

I'm only on page 13, but...

Iserith offers reasons why it might be worth it for them to hang out in the cloud kill. But on top of that: Per DMG rules it wouldn't adjust the Slaadi CR in the slightest to give them poison immunity. It's all there in black and white, one of the most rudimentary changes one can make to a monster.

Or do you consider that to be an example of excessively redesigning the monsters, and thus not allowed in this thought experiment?

 

[Flamestrike]

Or do you consider that to be an example of excessively redesigning the monsters, and thus not allowed in this thought experiment?

The thing is 'redesigning monsters' isnt outside of the thought experiment. Changing monsters has been a staple of the game since 1E (which encouraged you as DM to throw intresting things at the party like skeletons who fired their fingers off as magic missiles etc). In 3E it was codified with templates, class levels and such.

For 5E, both the MM and the DMG give fairly extensive encouragement and guidelines on how to do it. Where I changed a monster, those changes were minor (swapping out spells known, bumping HP or a stat) and were reflected in increased CR's.

No-one has yet to challenge the CR's of any of the monsters that I altered, so my gut's telling me that the CR's were about right. There was some argument on whether to multiply the overall encounter difficulty due to the presence of multiple CR3 monsters vs a 13th level party, but thats at least been dispelled due to the fact that parties have been getting though those encounters expending around 10-15 percent resources (which is the expectation for a medium-hard encounter) so the experiment wasnt a total waste.

From a metagame perspectve the experiment also showed what happens when there is a breakdown in trust (or in this case, there never was any trust) between a player and DM. But thats been done to death, and I really dont want to go over it again.

I find it very unlikely that any party is going to finish the 7 encounters not largely drained of resources. Which is kind of the whole point of the experiment.

 

[Flamestrike]

double post.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I'm only on page 13, but...

Iserith offers reasons why it might be worth it for them to hang out in the cloud kill. But on top of that: Per DMG rules it wouldn't adjust the Slaadi CR in the slightest to give them poison immunity. It's all there in black and white, one of the most rudimentary changes one can make to a monster.

Or do you consider that to be an example of excessively redesigning the monsters, and thus not allowed in this thought experiment?

I didn't read Iserith's post so hopefully this isn't redundant:

They don't even really need poison immunity to hang out in Cloudkill. Since the expected damage for hanging out in a Cloudkill for a round is just shy of 14 points of damage (+4 to Con saves with advantage, vs. 5d8 DC 15 Con save for half) and they regenerate 10 HP per round, the Slaads can basically hang out in the Cloudkill for as long as they can keep making their Concentration saves to keep the cloud intact. Concentration, not HP, is going to be the limiting factor.

And just the sheer advantage the cloud gives them because of heavy obscurement + blindsight is going to make hanging out in the cloud more than worthwhile.

The encounter would be more fun if the Death Slaads were paired with Shadows though. Poison-immune creatures that drain strength and get a bonus action hide? Yes, please. (Well, from a DM's perspective. "No thanks" if I'm one of the PCs. )