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

[Celtavian]

Indeed. I guarantee I could run this exact same encounter (well... using the exact same monsters anyway) against the exact same party of 6 x 10th level PCS and crush them.

The only thing I would change would be the encounter environment and the tactics used by the demons.

Weirldy Celtivan seems to be able to play (and implicitly advocate the existence of) 'highly optimised souless killing machines' for PCs; yet when DMing actual soulless killing machines in an army of demons, totally refuses to optimise them despite being in total control of the encounter placing and environment as DM.

For starters I'd probably use a 60' x 60' room. Demons are summoned into room once PCs enter. Door locks behind them trapping PC's in room. No chasme just to make it less of an absurd encounter. Roll initiative.

Vrock 1 screeches, Vrock 2 uses spores, Vrocks 3 and 4 fly to the archer, surround him and proceed to start to rip his face off. They alternate this in repeat turns (screeching, spores and 2 making attacks) until theyre all out of screeches.

Hezrou 1-3 target any 1 obvious spellcaster, surround this PC and proceed to wail on them.

Hezrou 4 uses the Help action to aid the Marilith.

The Marilith advances and makes 7 attacks all on the same PC. She starts with the tail at +9 [with advantage from the Hezrous help action]. This should hit, restraining the target (so her six follow up sword attacks get advantage). If a PC drops at any point duing these 7 attacks (all at advantage), she wails on them a few more times till they fail 3 death saves 'because demon'.

That doesn't fit my vision of the marilith leading a demonic warband that is raiding along the tunnel path in the Underdark wreaking havoc on anything she comes across. The imagery of the equivalent of a demonic barbarian horde is what I was going for. Your choice to run it doesn't fit that. Once again, you using the environment doesn't fit all things that exist in a world. Why shouldn't a demonic warband raiding the tunnels of the Underdark be a sufficient challenge for the PCs? Why do they need a 60 by 60 room? Or special tactics. Why can't they just hammer on a group of humanoids in a chaotic evil manner and go toe to toe? Doesn't that seem like something a demonic horde would do?

I'm not going to try to fix square pegs into round holes. Chaotic Evil demons are forces of chaos. When one of their generals is at their head, they should feel confident engaging a party of surface dwelling humanoids in melee combat. It really shouldn't be so easy to defeat a marilith as one sharpshooting bowman focus firing her using action surge and a bless.

Explain why you think a demonic warband acting in a savage manner trying to tear the PCs apart isn't something you could see in a fantasy world?

This whole target any obvious spellcaster again. Who is the obvious spellcaster in this six person group that has all spellcasters? I don't have a single non-spellcaster in my six man group. The sorcerer wears Elven Chain. Is he the obvious spellcaster?

Which one do you target?
Paladin/Fighter in heavy plate? Nope. Not an obvious spellcaster.
The cleric in breastplate and shield? He is casting spells. He is pretty obvious. Then when you attack him, you find out he's not a very soft target and damaging him is what he wants since your wasting attacks on a low damage dealer.
The high AC bladesinger? He sure does cast. He wears studded leather. Too had he goes into battle with 24 to 26 AC.
The plate armor wearing warlock/paladin/sorcerer? Hmm. He is casting. He does only have a 20 AC. He might be a good target.
The ranger/fighter eldritch knight Sharpshooter? He's a good one to get to. He usually stands behind the others and uses evasive tactics. Maybe you toss him in tight quarters every single battle, over and over and over again until he decides not to make an archer.
The elven chain wearing sorcerer? Hmm. There you go. He's the soft target. He is casting those fire bolts that don't do much damage. If I spend a few attacks on him, I'll really defeat this group.

So who's the obvious spellcaster? Like I told you in this discussion, my PCs don't make obvious characters. The only way that happens is if I get rid of multiclassing. My PCs have latched on to the power of multiclassing and are squeezing every ounce of power they can out of it. The party of four I made is one guy trying to optimize a party. I have six people, each one optimizing in different fashions, and using tactics they come up. Heck, I couldn't do alone what the six of them do.

Why do you think +9 is a good attack roll? You do realize it is extremely easy to get a 24 to 26 AC in this game for optimizers. Plate armor, shield, and defensive style. Take a few levels of a caster to get the shield spell to boost to 26. If you hand out magic armor, woe to you.

Right now, the bladesinger can push his AC to 31. The warlock/paladin/sorcerer can push his AC to 25 quite often. The vengeance paladin has misty step which allows quick removal from restraint. Then you have to hope the hezrou and the marilith's initiative fall right and the party hasn't unloaded on her. So many factors to account for.

Then what do you do if the party holds up in the door letting the monsters come to them one at a time? How big is your entrance? My party quite often lets the monsters come to them because they can just wear them down with range attacks.

Vrocks ripping the archers face off? That's a laugh. Why do you think they hit so easy? I really am wondering. The archer has an 18 AC and the shield spell as well. He can fire his bow in melee range. He does a ton of damage. I had the Vrock attack him. They didn't do much. They didn't hit him much. It didn't go well for them.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

"A few banishment spells"? As in the 4th level spell? That is a considerable expenditure of resources for 10th level casters. Of course this was probably the only encounter for the day, right?

Judging by forum comments, a lot of people appear to run Banishment incorrectly, without requiring the one-minute concentration in order to make the Banishment permanent. Some people seem to treat it as an instantaneous BFR spell. I don't know if that's what happened in this case but it is consistent with the description, because otherwise Banishment is somewhat ineffective against large numbers of demonic troops since all it takes is one hit on the spellcaster for all those troops to pop right back into the fight.

 

[Celtavian]

First, why is the idea of a demonic war band of chaotic evil demons raiding the tunnels of the Underdark acting like a savage barbarian horde inappropriate? Is this really that hard to picture?

Second, why does a demonic warband raiding the tunnels of the Underdark need a complicated environment to make them dangerous? Am I expecting too much to have a demonic warband lead by a mariilth in a neutral environment to be a challenge for level 10 PCs? Is that my bad for expecting a challenging fight in that situation?

Third, can you name all the optimal abilities CapnZapp, Hemlock, and I are talking about? I've had the following in every group I've run with in 5E.

Sharpshooter with archery style.
Double proficiency bonus Perception and Stealth.
Bless used often.
Multiclass paladins that at least get Aura of Protection before choosing another class.
Heavy armor wearer with plate armor, shield, and Defensive style with access to a shield spell.
Devilsight character that likes to hide in darkness.
Lore bard (thankfully that character was gone early in the recent campaign)
Polymorph casters have been in every campaign that exceeded 7th.

The other stuff changes around them, but we've had these types of characters in every campaign except the first one. The Keep on the Borderlands that went to 6th level. The Giantslayer campaign that went to 7th. The Princes of the Apocalypse campaign that went to 9th. The current Out of the Abyss campaign that is at 11th level. I always have these abilities in the group. Is this the case with other DMs? Do your groups make sure to have these abilities in the group?

 

[Celtavian]

Judging by forum comments, a lot of people appear to run Banishment incorrectly, without requiring the one-minute concentration in order to make the Banishment permanent. Some people seem to treat it as an instantaneous BFR spell. I don't know if that's what happened in this case but it is consistent with the description, because otherwise Banishment is somewhat ineffective against large numbers of demonic troops since all it takes is one hit on the spellcaster for all those troops to pop right back into the fight.

Hmm. Reading it again, your interpretation does seem more likely. I have been running that one wrong. Good to know. That will make banishment less effective against fiends. This was the first campaign it was heavily used against fiends. I interpreted that last part incorrectly. Good to learn something new.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Hmm. Reading it again, your interpretation does seem more likely. I have been running that one wrong. Good to know. That will make banishment less effective against fiends. This was the first campaign it was heavily used against fiends. I interpreted that last part incorrectly. Good to learn something new.

You're far from alone in making that mistake initially. Good to know my comment was helpful to you though. Good gaming!

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

First, why is the idea of a demonic war band of chaotic evil demons raiding the tunnels of the Underdark acting like a savage barbarian horde inappropriate? Is this really that hard to picture?

Second, why does a demonic warband raiding the tunnels of the Underdark need a complicated environment to make them dangerous? Am I expecting too much to have a demonic warband lead by a mariilth in a neutral environment to be a challenge for level 10 PCs? Is that my bad for expecting a challenging fight in that situation?

Third, can you name all the optimal abilities CapnZapp, Hemlock, and I are talking about? I've had the following in every group I've run with in 5E.

Sharpshooter with archery style.
Double proficiency bonus Perception and Stealth.
Bless used often.
Multiclass paladins that at least get Aura of Protection before choosing another class.
Heavy armor wearer with plate armor, shield, and Defensive style with access to a shield spell.
Devilsight character that likes to hide in darkness.
Lore bard (thankfully that character was gone early in the recent campaign)
Polymorph casters have been in every campaign that exceeded 7th.

The other stuff changes around them, but we've had these types of characters in every campaign except the first one. The Keep on the Borderlands that went to 6th level. The Giantslayer campaign that went to 7th. The Princes of the Apocalypse campaign that went to 9th. The current Out of the Abyss campaign that is at 11th level. I always have these abilities in the group. Is this the case with other DMs? Do your groups make sure to have these abilities in the group?

Yes. Almost of those abilities that you name are very common at my table, although Sharpshooter is somewhat rarer than the others, and therefore Bless is rarer too. (The relative offensive value of the spell is lower for monks, paladins, warlocks or wizards than for Sharpshooter fighters.) Aura of Vitality is also extremely common at my table, and ditto Conjure Animals and Pass Without Trace.

Edit: except, I have only seen one character IIRC using Devil's Sight + Darkness, and he wasn't really a combat-oriented character. I have seen PCs using Alert + (Shadow Monk) Darkness, and there's at least one PC who is planning on Devil's Sight + Darkness eventually, but invocations are scarce enough, and other ways to exploit vision anomalies are common enough, that Devil's Sight per se hasn't been ubiquitous at my table the way it has apparently been at yours.

 

[Flamestrike]

That doesn't fit my vision of the marilith leading a demonic warband that is raiding along the tunnel path in the Underdark wreaking havoc on anything she comes across. The imagery of the equivalent of a demonic barbarian horde is what I was going for. Your choice to run it doesn't fit that. Once again, you using the environment doesn't fit all things that exist in a world. Why shouldn't a demonic warband raiding the tunnels of the Underdark be a sufficient challenge for the PCs? Why do they need a 60 by 60 room? Or special tactics. Why can't they just hammer on a group of humanoids in a chaotic evil manner and go toe to toe? Doesn't that seem like something a demonic horde would do?

The party enter a large cavern illuminated by an eerie phosphoresent fungus. A large crevasse 60' across, crosses the cavern. As the party finish crossing the crevasse a band of Demons appear from one of the many passages leading into the chamber, 40' away.

Roll initiative.

The faerzess of the room interferes with spellcasting. Creatures must pass a DC 15 intelligence (arcana) check to use conjuration or divination magic of any kind. On a failure the spell slot is expended but nothing happens. The room is shrouded with dim light. Stalagmites and stalagtites litter the room, providing patches of cover, and areas of difficult terrain.

I'm not going to try to fix square pegs into round holes. Chaotic Evil demons are forces of chaos. When one of their generals is at their head, they should feel confident engaging a party of surface dwelling humanoids in melee combat. It really shouldn't be so easy to defeat a marilith as one sharpshooting bowman focus firing her using action surge and a bless.

You impose these restrictions on your monsters, yet happily run your PCs as a bunch of soulless murderhobos who only ever use optimal tactics?

Why is the DM bound to play monsters according to alignment, desires, intelligence, personality, religion and morality, yet not the PCs who are just a bunch of CN optimised murder bots?

This whole target any obvious spellcaster again. Who is the obvious spellcaster in this six person group that has all spellcasters? I don't have a single non-spellcaster in my six man group. The sorcerer wears Elven Chain. Is he the obvious spellcaster?

From the monsters postion, whose in robes? Who looks the most like a vulnerable spellcaster to the monsters? Who have they seen casting spells? Failing that, who looks like the easiest to tear apart, or who is doing the most damage?

That said, your players sound like they dont hold back, routinely taking the most optimal choices (regardless of character knowledge), ganing up on monsters, targetting weak saves, targetting the most optimal targets and metagaming the heck out of stuff. Looking at the battle through the eyes of the players and not the characters.

They wanna do that kind of crap? Do it back to them. Pick on the PC with the lowest AC and wail on him with everything you have. If they complain about how the monsters always seem to know this, let them know the monsters are making the same complaints.

Im only being half serious here. But you as DM should know who is the weakest or most vulnerable, and you as the DM are the one that is allowed to metagame to challenge your players. If theyre having too easy a time of it, do just this. Heck; they certinaly do it themselves so they cant complain.

Why do you think +9 is a good attack roll? You do realize it is extremely easy to get a 24 to 26 AC in this game for optimizers. Plate armor, shield, and defensive style. Take a few levels of a caster to get the shield spell to boost to 26. If you hand out magic armor, woe to you.

Great, you can have an AC of 26 with full plate, shield, defensive style and the shield spell. So only a 36 percent chance of hitting per attack at +9 with advantage. Hardly what I would call invincible.

Your bladesinger is AC 31? Awesome. Hows his Con save looking vs several volleys of Stunning screech, poison and spores? He's bound to fail a DC 14 Con save at some point. Also - hows his Str (athletics) looking when the Hezrou shove him into the crevasse?

These Demons are sure pretty dumb.

Then what do you do if the party holds up in the door letting the monsters come to them one at a time? How big is your entrance? My party quite often lets the monsters come to them because they can just wear them down with range attacks.

Read the above description. The whole band stumbled in through a wide corridor to be 40' away from the PCs who are trapped with backs to a wide chasm.

You (as DM) are letting the PCs dictate the encounter conditions. Stop it. You're the DM. You're the one in charge of where battles take place. If your battles arent challenging the PCs, this is one thing you can control to fix it.

Youre there to set challenges appropriate to your party compostion, experience and level. Set them.

Vrocks ripping the archers face off? That's a laugh. Why do you think they hit so easy? I really am wondering. The archer has an 18 AC and the shield spell as well. He can fire his bow in melee range. He does a ton of damage. I had the Vrock attack him. They didn't do much. They didn't hit him much. It didn't go well for them.

First he has to avoid getting stunned. He also has to save against being poisoned. Maybe a few saves against stench as well if the Hezrous get close. Not everyone is within 10' of the Paladin, and even then he's bound to fail one of the half dozen DC14 Con saves coming his way.

Also, this could happen:

DisarmA creature can use a weapon attack to knock a weapon or another item from a target's grasp. The attacker makes an attack roll contested by the target's Strength (Athletics) check or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check. If the attacker wins the contest, the attack causes no damage or other ill effect, but the defender drops the item.
The attacker has disadvantage on its attack roll if the target is holding the item with two or more hands. The target has advantage on its ability check if it is larger than the attacking creature, or disadvantage if it is smaller

The Vrock makes an attack at +6 (with advantage) against the archers choice of strength athletics or dex acrobatics. It then uses its free object ineraction to kick the bow into the crevasse behind the archer.

If the party prove hard to hit, and hit back hard, this is most definately an option.

 

[Flamestrike]

Sharpshooter with archery style.
Double proficiency bonus Perception and Stealth.
Bless used often.
Multiclass paladins that at least get Aura of Protection before choosing another class.
Heavy armor wearer with plate armor, shield, and Defensive style with access to a shield spell.
Devilsight character that likes to hide in darkness.
Lore bard (thankfully that character was gone early in the recent campaign)
Polymorph casters have been in every campaign that exceeded 7th.

Expendable resources with opportunity costs (mainly concentration on darkness, polymorph and bless).

Spamming shield every round and bless every encounter and you run out of spell slots fast. Polymorph is 4th level so you dont get to many of them to stretch over a 6-8 encounter day at 7th level either (in fact they'll need to be higher than 7th level seeing as everyone in your campaign multiclasses like crazy). Tack on divine smites from the Paladins, banishments from the wizards, walls of force etc and im struggling to see how you can make it through the full 6-8 blowing resources that fast.

The problems youre experiencing at your table, you wouldnt experience at mine. So it cant just be the rules at play here.

 

[Celtavian]

Yes. Almost of those abilities that you name are very common at my table, although Sharpshooter is somewhat rarer than the others, and therefore Bless is rarer too. (The relative offensive value of the spell is lower for monks, paladins, warlocks or wizards than for Sharpshooter fighters.) Aura of Vitality is also extremely common at my table, and ditto Conjure Animals and Pass Without Trace.

Edit: except, I have only seen one character IIRC using Devil's Sight + Darkness, and he wasn't really a combat-oriented character. I have seen PCs using Alert + (Shadow Monk) Darkness, and there's at least one PC who is planning on Devil's Sight + Darkness eventually, but invocations are scarce enough, and other ways to exploit vision anomalies are common enough, that Devil's Sight per se hasn't been ubiquitous at my table the way it has apparently been at yours.

I think it became common because it comes on line at such a low level. One of my players made a warlock/fighter that used the Devilsight with darkness effectively while wearing heavy armor, shield, and defensive style. He was able to really hammer. At higher level the tactic is proving less effective with so many creatures having truesight.

One of the players has been experimenting with Aura of Vitality sometimes combined with Beacon of Hope for potent post combat healing. One I think 2nd or 3rd level spell averages 70 hit points and up to 120 when combined with beacon of hope. Pretty potent healing for a relatively low resource cost.

When they made it so the DM chooses the animals, Conjure Animals became a less useful spell.

 

[Celtavian]

Expendable resources with opportunity costs (mainly concentration on darkness, polymorph and bless).

Spamming shield every round and bless every encounter and you run out of spell slots fast. Polymorph is 4th level so you dont get to many of them to stretch over a 6-8 encounter day at 7th level either (in fact they'll need to be higher than 7th level seeing as everyone in your campaign multiclasses like crazy). Tack on divine smites from the Paladins, banishments from the wizards, walls of force etc and im struggling to see how you can make it through the full 6-8 blowing resources that fast.

The problems youre experiencing at your table, you wouldnt experience at mine. So it cant just be the rules at play here.

You don't have to use them every encounter. Just at key times. These tactics will work at your table as well as mine. For example, building a character with a 26 AC using a 1st level spell will work at your table as well as mine. It isn't like that player has to use shield every round, just enough to mitigate some of your lucky rolls. On average you won't hit a high AC character very often. So he only needs to mitigate damage when you do happen to hit him.

All of these tactics are assuming the players use them at key periods when they are tactically advantageous. You didn't see me use polymorph against the death slaad because it wasn't tactically advantageous. I don't think they're easy to counter during play because monsters don't just get to zip around the battlefield picking ideal targets while the PCs just let them. I haven't found that to be the case. Monsters have about 3 to 4 rounds to execute their tactics. That's 3 to 4 rounds of actions before the PCs murder them. Not a lot of time. From what I understand, this is by design. 5E wanted much faster combats and that is what they got at the expense of complex monster tactics.

D&D by its nature often gives the PCs the advantage because they are the proactive heroes with a much wider range of abilities than the enemies they face. They are usually dealing with reactive monsters that have to take at least a little time to figure out what is going on. Sure, you can flip this some of the time with proactive monsters or design encounters to challenge the common tactics of your PCs, but it isn't something you can do all the time. It's too hard to justify encounter after encounter after encounter.

A group of PCs is formidable. They have a lot of abilities to call upon and usually have twice or more the number of actions as what they are facing with each action having two, three, or several options to choose from compared to monsters that are usually stuck with "I hit the PC" or cast a single spell.

The problem we're having is one of perception. What I consider a too easy fight may well be fine by you. I want PCs on their backs, almost dying in a deadly encounter. I want one PC standing, dealing a final death blow with the party almost dead when they fight a dragon or a balor even if that fight occurs in a wide open field. I want the PCs to need to choose an advantageous environment to defeat the dragon or the balor, not the other way around. I want to the PCs to feel like they just fought a creature so enormously powerful that it scared them and made them think they were going to die. I'm not getting that experience in 5E when the players face off against such powerful creatures.

You fix this by making a dangerous or advantageous environment and running 6 to 8 encounters. That's one way to do it and I'm not going to criticize you for it. I want something else from my monsters. I literally want a dragon to be able to land on a party at full strength and start tearing them apart even if it has to travel 600 feet in wide open territory. It's hide so thick and its bulk so massive it shrugs off arrows and blades like water. When you're looking for that type of experience, 5E isn't providing it out of the box. That seems to be by design. So I'm going to redesign some things to get what I want from the game, just like I've done every edition.

So you are right, it's not the rules. It's my perception of what I want from the rules. 5E isn't satisfying my idea of a challenge.