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

[OB1]

Sorry, Capn. I don't want monsters that are so easily beaten they should be running from the PCs (unless they're designed to be that way like kobolds or goblins of course). I just don't. Right now, that is the case in my experience. When our group destroyed an adult green dragon in its lair supported by dragon cultists, I didn't feel challenged. I was very disappointed. I like a good challenge as a DM and a player. Too easy is boring.

So fight creatures 10 levels over the party, or 15 or 20. The baseline is there to challenge average players who have average characters. If the baseline were at the level you are asking for, new and casual players wouldn't stand a chance.
Above average players playing above average characters with above average tactics need an above average dm or above average monsters.
It's not bad design to expect expert players to have to change the baseline assumptions. They are the players who have shown that they can do so! New and casual players wouldn't have the skills needed ease a too difficult system.
That said, I would love to see the Advanced Players Handbook they are hinting at take this head on and be designed to give players like yourself the challenge you seek as the baseline and be coupled with an Advanced Monster Manual to make it easier for the DM to do do.

 

[Flamestrike]

So fight creatures 10 levels over the party, or 15 or 20.

I couldnt disagree with this advice more. The trick is to use more encounters, not ridiculously difficult ones.

Throwing ultra deadly encounters at the party is lazy DMing, and leads to an escalation of the very problem that leads to to the issue in the first place (generally Nova tactics by the party).

If the PCs are having too easy a time of it, firstly ask yourself why? Are they hitting every encounter fully rested, and blowing [action surge/ highest level slot/ smite nova/ rage] on round 1 as a matter of course? If so, place a time constraint on your adventures to make this a choice. Are they relying on uber high stealth scores and perception scores to sneak up on your encounters and gain surprise and take them down from range? Find creative ways to counter this (have the monsters stumble upon the PCs, use clairvoyance or other divination magic to locate them, use incorporeal monsters to walk through walls to get at them, set your encounters in tight spaces like dungeons, use environmental challeenges to counter those tactics and have the PCs think outside the box, have the monsters warn others of the PCs approach etc).

Are your PC's all 'Str dumping' casters and ranged archers? Awesome - let them sneak up on a group of monsters and wipe them out with a nova strike. Then before they have a chance to recover, have a bunch of shadows spring up through multiple grills in the floor and ambush them hard, forcing them into melee and draining that measly Str. Do your PCs' routinely dump Int 'because its useless in 5E?" Have an Illithid planeshift in (after scrying them) gaining surprise and hit them with a mindblast.

Design your encounters aroud your groups characters - both the number of them, the characters levels (i.e. CR and XP budgets) AND with regard to your groups tactics and powers. You (as DM) are there to design a challenge your players rememeber!

Lazy DMing such as ramping up the difficulty by throwing tougher monsters just encourages the PC's to [rest - nova - rest] and forces them to optimise in a particular direction just to avoid a TPK. Youre just making the problem worse, and reinforcing bad behaviour. Instead of upping the raw numbers of your encounters, hit the PCs in a weak spot (force them through multiple encounters without rest, force them into melee when they prefer ranged attacks, render their tactics obsolete with environmental challenges etc). Your players will adjust their tactics accordingly.

As DM you control the environment (time constraints, environmental challenges, and location), just as much as you control the monster selection itself. Nova tactics, metagaming, or one dimensional tactics from the party are never the fault of the players, they're always the fault of the DM.

 

[Celtavian]

I couldnt disagree with this advice more. The trick is to use more encounters, not ridiculously difficult ones.

Throwing ultra deadly encounters at the party is lazy DMing, and leads to an escalation of the very problem that leads to to the issue in the first place (generally Nova tactics by the party).

If the PCs are having too easy a time of it, firstly ask yourself why? Are they hitting every encounter fully rested, and blowing [action surge/ highest level slot/ smite nova/ rage] on round 1 as a matter of course? If so, place a time constraint on your adventures to make this a choice. Are they relying on uber high stealth scores and perception scores to sneak up on your encounters and gain surprise and take them down from range? Find creative ways to counter this (have the monsters stumble upon the PCs, use clairvoyance or other divination magic to locate them, use incorporeal monsters to walk through walls to get at them, set your encounters in tight spaces like dungeons, use environmental challeenges to counter those tactics and have the PCs think outside the box, have the monsters warn others of the PCs approach etc).

Are your PC's all 'Str dumping' casters and ranged archers? Awesome - let them sneak up on a group of monsters and wipe them out with a nova strike. Then before they have a chance to recover, have a bunch of shadows spring up through multiple grills in the floor and ambush them hard, forcing them into melee and draining that measly Str. Do your PCs' routinely dump Int 'because its useless in 5E?" Have an Illithid planeshift in (after scrying them) gaining surprise and hit them with a mindblast.

Design your encounters aroud your groups characters - both the number of them, the characters levels (i.e. CR and XP budgets) AND with regard to your groups tactics and powers. You (as DM) are there to design a challenge your players rememeber!

Lazy DMing such as ramping up the difficulty by throwing tougher monsters just encourages the PC's to [rest - nova - rest] and forces them to optimise in a particular direction just to avoid a TPK. Youre just making the problem worse, and reinforcing bad behaviour. Instead of upping the raw numbers of your encounters, hit the PCs in a weak spot (force them through multiple encounters without rest, force them into melee when they prefer ranged attacks, render their tactics obsolete with environmental challenges etc). Your players will adjust their tactics accordingly.

As DM you control the environment (time constraints, environmental challenges, and location), just as much as you control the monster selection itself. Nova tactics, metagaming, or one dimensional tactics from the party are never the fault of the players, they're always the fault of the DM.

The answer to your question is no. They are not novaing. They are using certain feat, power, and class combinations that are enormously effective over a nearly indefinite period. I've pointed these combinations out, but you don't believe me. I cannot force you to believe something you don't want to believe. All this stuff is coming not just from me, but from multiple sources using the exact same combinations that are highly useful in a huge variety of situations. The bless and aura of protection combination is useful against anything with a saving throw. We point this out and are told it isn't a problem. Aura of Protection is always up. Bless is a 1st level spell castable by multiple classes. It's enormously easy to keep up for every encounter even if you have to recast it a few times. There are mutliple effects like this. Devil Sight requires 2 levels of warlock synergizing with other charisma based classes. It's up all the time. It can't be shut down by anything unless I just make it up. It allows for a great deal of effective ambushing.

I don't understand why you can't admit there are quite a few power combinations in 5E that are easy to obtain and hard for a DM to counteract adventure after adventure after adventure.

 

[Flamestrike]

The answer to your question is no. They are not novaing. They are using certain feat, power, and class combinations that are enormously effective over a nearly indefinite period.

Most such combinations are resource dependent. Ergo hit them with more encounters. Drain those resources.

You claim to be a good DM; are you suggesting that you cant design [CR/ XP budget] appropriate encounters for your own groups PCs?

I've pointed these combinations out, but you don't believe me. I cannot force you to believe something you don't want to believe. All this stuff is coming not just from me, but from multiple sources using the exact same combinations that are highly useful in a huge variety of situations. The bless and aura of protection combination is useful against anything with a saving throw. We point this out and are told it isn't a problem. Aura of Protection is always up. Bless is a 1st level spell castable by multiple classes. It's enormously easy to keep up for every encounter even if you have to recast it a few times. There are mutliple effects like this.

Bless isnt an issue. Its a nifty spell that adds +2.5 to attack rolls and saves for the party while it's active - for the price of your concentration slot (so no walls of force, spirit guardians, polymorph etc). Great buff, but not a game breaker by any stretch of the imagination.

I don't understand why you can't admit there are quite a few power combinations in 5E that are easy to obtain and hard for a DM to counteract adventure after adventure after adventure.

Im not saying that they arent hard for a DM to counteract. DnD has always gotten harder to DM appropriately at higher levels. Clairvoyance, teleport, high level divination effects, power combo synergies etc are (and always pretty much have been) a thing. The higher the PCs level, the more skill you need as a DM to do it.

As a low level DM you can throw a bunch of orcs in a few rooms, throw some goblins in a few more, an Ogre here, a gelatanous cube there, maybe whack in some ghouls and 'presto' youre done. As your party advances in level, you need to be more creative and put more thought into what youre doing - your players options increase, so does your DMing ability need to be on song.

Watch what happens when an inexperienced DM throws a one shot high level adventure for experienced players. He designs a tower with the BBEG on the top floor, and designs 7 levels of devious traps and monsters - only for the PCs to use divination magic, teleport in invisibly, and turn the tower foundations to mud with stone to earth, or ethereally bypass the lower levels and head straight to the BBEG, or teleport/ fly to the top and raze the BBEG from surprise. Thats not bad players (quite the opposite) - thats bad DMing - the DM did not know his players capabilities and failed to design the encounter to challenge them.

It takes a good DM to challenge higher level PCs. Its an art form, not a science. And you dont do it by ratcheting up the difficulty of encounters - you do it by playing to your parties weaknesses and negating your partes strengths (not always though - let them shine from time to time).

Again, I could take the PC's you provided for this experiment and design a chain of 6-8 medium-hard encounters specifically for them that I guarantee you would challenge them despite 'optimised choices and tactics'. I would DM it accordingly too - not many players would be harping on about 'optimised options' at my table, becuase they know its pointless; 'anything you can do, the DM can do better' is my mantra. Play your character and have fun.

TL; DR - Dont be a lazy DM. Know your players and their characters. If theyre always metagaming, mix up your monster capabilities and challenge those expectations. If theyre always using fixed tactics, design your encounters so those tactics are unavailable to them, or even are the worst option and not the best. If theyre nova-ing, force more encounters on them via the environment. Give them the odd encounter where their tactics work. Mix it up.

You do it properly and your Players are always on their toes, always guessing and much more enganged with the game.

 

[Celtavian]

So fight creatures 10 levels over the party, or 15 or 20. The baseline is there to challenge average players who have average characters. If the baseline were at the level you are asking for, new and casual players wouldn't stand a chance.
Above average players playing above average characters with above average tactics need an above average dm or above average monsters.
It's not bad design to expect expert players to have to change the baseline assumptions. They are the players who have shown that they can do so! New and casual players wouldn't have the skills needed ease a too difficult system.
That said, I would love to see the Advanced Players Handbook they are hinting at take this head on and be designed to give players like yourself the challenge you seek as the baseline and be coupled with an Advanced Monster Manual to make it easier for the DM to do do.

As more players become experts, I think this edition will have more trouble challenging PCs. 5E is still fairly early in its run. Optimizers see the problems more quickly because they're looking for ways to break the game, but eventually these problems start showing up community wide and require fixing. Then again we may not see fixes since a few of the problems are feats and multiclassing, both optional features. It could be why both are optional because the game designers knew the inclusion of feats and multiclassing lead to problems challenging the PCs.

As long as I understand the problems, I can modify accordingly. I finally found a modification to Sharpshooter that should make that feat attractive, yet still allow the DM to use his toolset to challenge a Sharpshooter. That feat was the most problematic feat on the list. Every other feat is fairly well balanced. The Devil Sight combinations become less powerful as PCs face more creatures with truesight. The bless and archery style combination should be somewhat mitigated by our changes to Sharpshooter. The bless aura of protection problem is ongoing and is only fixable by not having a paladin. You just have to deal with it at the moment and not be overly concerned. The Expertise Athletics/Shield Style or knock prone ability isn't used too often in my group because they don't like spending actions to knock people down. And Shield Style players need something. The heavy plate wearer with shield and shield of faith is pretty annoying. It creatures an insane AC disparity that you have to be careful addressing, so you don't kill other players trying to challenge the high AC player. I wish Bounded Accuracy didn't have the exceptions it does. The possible AC ranges are way too wide between low and high AC.

We'll see what happens as more players develop system mastery. I expect more will see the problems and something will be done to address them.

 

[Celtavian]

What's stopping you from giving the marilith three longbows? Her Dexterity is better than her Strength.

It doesn't matter when she dies in three rounds. She's still not going to challenge the party.

 

[Azurewraith]

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.

Missed the bard but I got a sharpshooting fighter. Was a toss up between the wizard and bard I ended up on the wizard can't remember why though

 

[CapnZapp]

I couldnt disagree with this advice more. The trick is to use more encounters, not ridiculously difficult ones.

Throwing ultra deadly encounters at the party is lazy DMing, and leads to an escalation of the very problem that leads to to the issue in the first place (generally Nova tactics by the party).

If the PCs are having too easy a time of it, firstly ask yourself why? Are they hitting every encounter fully rested, and blowing [action surge/ highest level slot/ smite nova/ rage] on round 1 as a matter of course? If so, place a time constraint on your adventures to make this a choice. Are they relying on uber high stealth scores and perception scores to sneak up on your encounters and gain surprise and take them down from range? Find creative ways to counter this (have the monsters stumble upon the PCs, use clairvoyance or other divination magic to locate them, use incorporeal monsters to walk through walls to get at them, set your encounters in tight spaces like dungeons, use environmental challeenges to counter those tactics and have the PCs think outside the box, have the monsters warn others of the PCs approach etc).

Are your PC's all 'Str dumping' casters and ranged archers? Awesome - let them sneak up on a group of monsters and wipe them out with a nova strike. Then before they have a chance to recover, have a bunch of shadows spring up through multiple grills in the floor and ambush them hard, forcing them into melee and draining that measly Str. Do your PCs' routinely dump Int 'because its useless in 5E?" Have an Illithid planeshift in (after scrying them) gaining surprise and hit them with a mindblast.

Design your encounters aroud your groups characters - both the number of them, the characters levels (i.e. CR and XP budgets) AND with regard to your groups tactics and powers. You (as DM) are there to design a challenge your players rememeber!

Lazy DMing such as ramping up the difficulty by throwing tougher monsters just encourages the PC's to [rest - nova - rest] and forces them to optimise in a particular direction just to avoid a TPK. Youre just making the problem worse, and reinforcing bad behaviour. Instead of upping the raw numbers of your encounters, hit the PCs in a weak spot (force them through multiple encounters without rest, force them into melee when they prefer ranged attacks, render their tactics obsolete with environmental challenges etc). Your players will adjust their tactics accordingly.

As DM you control the environment (time constraints, environmental challenges, and location), just as much as you control the monster selection itself. Nova tactics, metagaming, or one dimensional tactics from the party are never the fault of the players, they're always the fault of the DM.

You simply live in a different reality than many DMs.

I'm not saying your advice is wrong,but I am saying it's ridiculously impractical to expect, nay, demand, that DMs spend all that time and effort when that is something we want WotC to do for us and our money.

I really wish you'd stop making it out to sound easy, when it's anything but.

I really wish you'd have anything to say to the DM that picks up a copy of the rulebook and an official published adventure, expecting that giving it a read and then playing will be enough.

But it's not.

And you don't.
(Have anything to say to that DM, that is)

 

[CapnZapp]

.

As DM you control the environment (time constraints, environmental challenges, and location), just as much as you control the monster selection itself. Nova tactics, metagaming, or one dimensional tactics from the party are never the fault of the players, they're always the fault of the DM.

That's an incredibly shifty thing to say, and the core of why I belive you've got everything absolutely wrong.

You have good ideas, Flamestrike, but always blaming the DM's and never admitting even the teeniest inadequacy of the game is, well...

It's better I don't say it out loud.

 

[Celtavian]

The monster isnt badly designed; its a melee monster. Some monsters are good at some things, and bad at others. Its more of a case of you (as DM) selecting a melee critter, and then placing it poorly (relative to your party) and then ran the enounter in such a way as to make the encounter trivial.

Its no different to placing a monster with no ranged attacks, out in the open, against a party of flying PCs. It's not bad monster design; its bad monster placement and encounter design by the DM.

Know your PCs. From there create your encounters to hit their weaknesses and occasionally allow them to demonstrate their strengths. There is nothing wrong with PCs steamrolling a nasty encounter once in a while using a certain set of tactics. But If you let them do it every encounter, youre not doing your job as DM.

For the Marilith (assuming you wanted it as a 'solo') it has more than a few problems (namely lack of legendary actions and legendary saves). If I was going to throw a 'solo' Marilith at a party, I'd give it 2 legendary resistance saves, and 2 legendary actions of (either: makes 1 longsword attack, or teleports 120'). I'd also then, specifically tailor the environment to make the encounter more challenging for the party (permanent invisible walls of force criss cross the room in a maze like pattern, with pits down dead ends - the Marilith can use its teleport action and legendary action to move around them at will, etc).

Encounter design doesnt stop at 'select one or more monsters and throw them at the PCs'. You design your encounters with the party in mind, designed to test and challenge them, take advantage of their weaknesses and ocasionally let them show of their strengths.

Mariliths should not be melee monsters in my opinion. That is what I plan to change in the future. I want to bring back some of their spellcasting. They are supposed to be master strategists. It's very hard to do without magic.

This idea of constantly incorporating strange environments doesn't interest me. As I stated, a monster like a marilith should be a challenge when mobile. If they show up in a town leading a demonic horde, they should be hard to beat and able to counter an adventuring party. They are war leaders that often lead forays into other realms. A pure melee monster is not great at doing this. I prefer the 3E/Pathfinder version with substantial spellcasting. I plan to return spellpower to both the balor and the marlith to make them more dangerous.

Nothing you mentioned changes the underlying problems with some abilities in 5E. A part of the game as a DM is also knowing when particular combinations are far too advantageous in far too many circumstances and require some toning down. That has also been a part of every edition of D&D. In 2E, two-weapon fighting was a big problem for a long time, which is why they nerfed the living crap out of it in every edition since 2E. I can't remember which edition the Unearthed Arcana Cavalier came out in, but that combination and the barbarian were insanely powerful in 1E/2E. 3E had so many overpowered combinations that I can't even mention them all. 5E has a few power combinations that a DM should be aware of and be willing to adjust to make the game easier to run. Overpowered combinations are as much a part of every edition of D&D as modifying monsters, creating great stories, and everything else in every edition of D&D.

Admitting there are problem combinations or weakly designed creatures doesn't mean 5E is a bad game. It just means certain design decisions don't work very well or cause problems with gameplay. This type of analysis has also been a part of every edition of D&D since it was made. As long as you know which combinations are causing the problem and what the problem is, you can modify to get the result you want. That's what I'm doing.

And yes, sometimes I do create some nasty environments. I don't and can't do it all the time or it becomes stale or discouraging. I definitely don't like environments that take away the main focus of a PC. Players want to use their abilities. It's how they have fun. Best to work out some kind of compromise with problematic abilities to make the game easier on the DM while still giving the players their toys.

I'll stop this discussion here. Let's get back to seeing how the PCs finish the job at White Plume Mountain. I'm waiting to see how Azurewraith's party does.