What I find really strange is that WotC modules don't follow Flamestrike's 6 to 8 encounter day model. The very game company that designed the game is producing adventures that don't follow the model Flamestrike believes is so integral to the creation of a challenging adventure. I've played Tyranny of Dragons, Princes of the Apocalypse, Mines of Phandelver, and Out of the Abyss, only Mines of Phandelver[/b] came close to the six to eight encounter day model and it was a low level modules. Every other one has been a sort of sandbox or set piece encounter adventure that let's the player set their rest periods very easily. It's why Flamestrike's claim of the entire game working fine if you use the 6 to 8 encounter day so strange given the company making the game doesn't seem to follow this idea at all.
D&D 5E Design Debate: 13th-level PCs vs. 6- to 8-Encounter Adventuring Day
- Thread starter iserith
- Start date
What I find really strange is that WotC modules don't follow Flamestrike's 6 to 8 encounter day model. The very game company that designed the game is producing adventures that don't follow the model Flamestrike believes is so integral to the creation of a challenging adventure. I've played Tyranny of Dragons, Princes of the Apocalypse, Mines of Phandelver, and Out of the Abyss, only Mines of Phandelver[/b] came close to the six to eight encounter day model and it was a low level modules. Every other one has been a sort of sandbox or set piece encounter adventure that let's the player set their rest periods very easily. It's why Flamestrike's claim of the entire game working fine if you use the 6 to 8 encounter day so strange given the company making the game doesn't seem to follow this idea at all.
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
That lich was an idiot. A lich in its lair gets unlimited 1st through 8th level slots due to lair actions. It can afford to do crazy stuff like scry out the party's location via Clairvoyance/Arcane Eye, conjure up twelve magma mephits via Conjure Minor Elementals VIII, Longstrider them all just for fun, use Seeming to disguise them as halfling zombies (to fake the party out into the wrong countermeasures), and then send them all off to hunt PCs. And if that fails it can repeat as many times as it wants, or switch to Invisible Stalkers, or accompany the mephits in person (wearing a nice Blink spell and some Mirror Images at the moment of contact) and Mass Suggestion or Forcecage PCs at the worst possible moment before opening up a Demiplane filled with a functionally-unlimited number of zombies and skeleton archers (the lich is limited only by availability of equipment and bodies, not spell slots), chucking a Chain Lightning, and then Teleporting away, laughing.
All this comes out of infinitely-renewable resources. If the lich instead breaks out his 9th level spell slot and Shapechanges into a shadow dragon, things get even worse.
Why would magma mephits last that long against a party? Even if they think they're Halfling zombies, they're not going to waste any resources against them other than kill them as fast as a they can. Do magma mephits have many hit points?
The lich was hardly an idiot. He wasn't in his lair. He had no prior awareness of the PCs. It was a random encounter I set up where the lich had been created by Orcus and placed along the path of travel because Orcus is a bastard. He had no time to set up a lair. Given the power level of this particular group I'm running, I've been testing really potent random encounters.
Though I would never use the tactics you outline as that's not my style, a lich in a lair with some preparation and awareness of the PCs would be more of a nuisance than random, newly created lich outside of his lair. I found out a beholder in a well designed lair is much more dangerous than a beholder in the open. I would say the CR difference between a creature in its lair and outside its lair is much, much higher than a 1 or 2 CR difference.
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hawkeyefan
Legend
I added the emphasis because I don't think that's accurate. If this is the group of PCs described over the last few pages, a lone lich not in his lair is not a really potent encounter.
I don't know why you stick to logic based things like the lich not having time to find a lair, given that there is little logic in how your players build their characters. Why wouldn't Orcus corrupt the area in which he placed the lich, so that it therefore had a lair? There's no reason not to have that happen. Then it may have been a potent encounter.
But even in its lair and with all that grants, it would still struggle against the Justice League.
Honestly, I am not a huge proponent of the 6 to 8 encounters a day style....I don't think it's wrong, and I think it can be followed to challenge any party....but my games are more all over the place. Some days it's a lot of encounters, other days it's a few. It all depends on what the story determines and what the players do and so on. I don't use the encounter building guidelines at this point, I feel comfortable knowing what my group can handle and what they can't, and how to design around that.
But you're kind of ignoring every bit of advice anyone presents in this thread about how to create more potent encounters, or how to keep your PCs abilities in line so that there isn't just an ongoing arms race. Your only solution seems to be to increase monster stats and abilities. Which isn't bad as a method to use occasionally, or for certain encounters. But there's been plenty of alternative options offered, and you almost always go "nah, not my style" and then insist that the guidelines don't work.
That group of PCs is one of the most powerful I've ever seen, relative to the edition that spawned it. Only a little bit of that is due to "optimization".
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
Magma Mephits are great because they can each cast Heat Metal once a day, plus they have a 15' cone breath weapon. Twelve Magma Mephits means 24d8 damage to party per round (using their bonus action) plus forcing disadvantage on the party plus 24d6 of breath weapon on the next round. I'm AFB but I believe each Magma Mephit has about 20 HP, so roughly 240 HP for the whole group. It's not so much that that's a ton of HP as that it's more HP than the original lich had, and from the lich's perspective he's burning the party's spells/action surges/etc. AND doing a hundred or so points of fire damage. And he can do this every minute or so for as long as he wants, without even having to be physically present, and he can Teleport whenever he feels like it to wherever he feels like it.
The first group of zombie children (Magma Mephits) might strike your party as easy. The second group a minute later might strike them as annoying. The tenth group will have them running. And that's when they run into a Shadow Dragon (Shapechanged lich) backed up what appears to be an army of several hundred zombie children (actually Wights under a Seeming spell).
The first group of zombie children (Magma Mephits) might strike your party as easy. The second group a minute later might strike them as annoying. The tenth group will have them running. And that's when they run into a Shadow Dragon (Shapechanged lich) backed up what appears to be an army of several hundred zombie children (actually Wights under a Seeming spell).
I added the emphasis because I don't think that's accurate. If this is the group of PCs described over the last few pages, a lone lich not in his lair is not a really potent encounter.
I don't know why you stick to logic based things like the lich not having time to find a lair, given that there is little logic in how your players build their characters. Why wouldn't Orcus corrupt the area in which he placed the lich, so that it therefore had a lair? There's no reason not to have that happen. Then it may have been a potent encounter.
But even in its lair and with all that grants, it would still struggle against the Justice League.
True. I admit this particular group was built for a Justice League type of adventure: defeat the Demon Lords of The Abyss. If that isn't a superhero level fantasy adventure, I don't know what is.
Ignoring? More like already aware of all those options. I understand and have used many times the resource depletion tactic to make an encounter more difficult. I don't need advice, not even a little bit. I've done everything mentioned and more many, many times before. This isn't some neophyte asking for advice. This is someone discussing the math of the game. I gather not many people spend time concerned with the math of the game or they would see the problems I'm talking about with expertise with Stealth and Perception against the environment using the Passive Perception rule, certain spells, certain feats, and some of the monster design in the MM. Some things are better than others and it is clear when you look at the game math. Something I've done in every edition of D&D.
This campaign is not a good example of what I'm talking about. But all the problems I've mentioned have happened in every single campaign we've played in, even without potent magic items. The game reached a point from around 8 to 9 where the players' advantages became so great that monsters became fairly trivial to defeat. It didn't matter if it was dragons, undead, demons, or elemental prophets. The game math started to break down in favor of the PCs more often than not at a level I find unenjoyable as a DM because the game seems to be too easy for my tastes.
I don't get why some people are dismissive of empirical problems with the game math that are not addressed in the monster design in the base game. They must be addressed by individual DMs, usually by developing some counter to them with custom environments or monsters that put the monsters on equal footing with the PCs when it comes to the base game rules aka game math.
matskralc
Explorer
The math of skills, spells, feats, and monster design is not your problem. That's why nobody is talking about it.
It is beyond obvious that your decision to ignore the math that the game is designed around is what is breaking your game. You rolled 4d6 drop the lowest seven times. You handed out triple legendary artifact magic items to everybody. You allow everybody to concentrate on extra buff spells. You allow Unearthed Arcana material that is playtest quality at best. You created another -5/+10 feat for sword-and-boarders to use. You allow players to hold three uses of Inspiration at a time.
Those were all your decisions. Those decisions were not the PHB's, not the DMG's, not the MM's, not UA's, not OotA's, not Jeremy Crawford's, not Gary Gygax's, not flamestrike's, not Hemlock's, not mine, not your PCs'. It was your decision to permit every single one of those things (and whichever ones you've not told us about yet). Your lack of acceptance of any responsibility for the role that you have played in your current predicament is frustrating.
And, once again, as this new lich example demonstrates, you run your monsters as though they aren't just on suicide missions but as though the suicide is their primary objective on the mission. So even after making all of those decisions, you take your last line of defense (tactics) and implement suboptimal ones.
The math of the encounter guidelines and CR calculation are utterly inapplicable to your group's play style. Math will not save you. You are barely playing the same game that page 82 of the DMG thinks you are playing.
I doubt very much that your group's style is significantly different in the other campaigns you've played. It has been like pulling teeth over the course of this thread for us to discover the various and sundry ways in which you have altered the game from the one that the encounter math is designed around.
Do you truly believe the encounter math is designed around PC's getting the equivalent of a +1 to every ability score via 4d6 drop the lowest times 7? Do you truly believe the encounter math is designed around level 10 characters possessing multiple magic items each that are beyond epic legendary, many of which possess more power than the PCs themselves do? Do you truly believe that the encounter math is designed around 6 PCs being able to concentrate on buff spells and other concentration spells at the same time?
And yet you still refuse to appreciate the fact that your PCs are invincible because you allowed them to be invincible. You blame the game. Your problem has nothing to do with what a marilith's challenge rating should be or what a deadly encounter consists of. The game math is absolutely not the armor that your PCs are wearing.
There are problems with the game math. High level encounters can be a trick to balance. I just played through a high level adventure the other day where we defeated the 3x deadly encounter much more smoothly than we did the medium encounter that followed it. There was no nova involved because we know our DM doesn't run single-encounter Adventuring Days.
Your campaign is not evidence of problems with the game math. That is why I, for one, am not discussing the game math with you.
I address it by not instituting a million and one house rules that almost all serve PC power. I address it by not allowing untested material in my games (unless the game is explicitly a "let's just goof off and murder some stuff" type of game, in which case the challenges of the encounter math don't bother me because challenging the PCs isn't the point in that game). I address it by not handing out world-changing magical items like they're candy at levels way earlier than a PC should even see them, let alone possess them. I address it by running my intelligent monsters like the intelligent monsters that they are. And, so far, the game math has served me fairly well.
Your entire complaint has been "the game doesn't work". But you refuse to recognize the fact that you're not playing the same game as (most of) the rest of us. If all you want to talk about is the encounter math and not the overpowered rules changes and content decisions that you've made, well then of course we can't help you.
matskralc
Explorer
Heck, you don't even need to change his spell list. If you want a by-the-MM lich to be nearly impossible to kill, then as long as he has at least a 4th level spell slot (and he's got 10!), then dimension door alone will make him maddeningly frustrating to get ahold of.
And if they do kill him, then unless you do something stupid like put the phylactery in an amulet around his neck with an engraving on the back that says "WARNING: PHYLACTERY. LICH WILL REJUVENATE IF THIS ISN'T DESTROYED", he gets a current model year, brand new body in the next 1d10 days. And now he's angry.
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
Or even worse, amused and invigorated.
Can you imagine anything worse for a party of adventurers than a lich who shows up to fight you to the death with his bare hands (or whatever handicap he feels is appropriate to make the challenge interesting) every time he gets bored? He'll likely try hard not to kill you, in the same way I try to avoid killing all of the Antarans in Master of Orion 2, because that ends the game in a victory screen and it's more fun to sadistically Cherry Tap the enemy almost to death every time. (Warning, TVTropes link: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CherryTapping) But he probably won't have any real compunction about beating you unconscious.
"Today, let's see if I can beat Gromph to death with a nonmagical club and exactly one 5th level spell, not counting Teleport."
Edit: now I want to add a bunch of legends and stories to my campaign about unpredictable evil liches who torment and/or reward people for various reasons all over the world... and a hidden secret: they're all the same lich!
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hawkeyefan
Legend
Absolutely. I have been in games like those, and they can be a blast. Nothing wrong with that style at all, really, except it makes for a poor example to use in discussions of game balance.
Ignoring as in dismissing. Sure, you may have been aware of everything that's been mentioned by others in the thread. But you also routinely dismiss these ideas. You label them as not your style, or that they shouldn't be necessary. It seems a bit strange to dismiss these points and then ask why no one is willing to acknowledge that the game's baseline math is flawed. I think that most folks would say that the math is not perfect...and there are probably a few glaring errors in design that highlight this fact.
But I also think that many here think that, overall, the math works. They are looking at your descriptions of encounters and how easily they are overcome by your party, and they are more concerned about other areas than the math.
I think the issue is that others are finding a somewhat different experience. My own group is 8-9 level, and their capability has certainly jumped up over the last level or so. I can understand what you're saying in that regard. They are finding encounters easier in general, although I can still challenge them pretty easily. Now, my players are not optimizers to the extreme that yours are. They generally have a character concept in mind and then create that as best they can with the rules. So not every single choice is about the impact it will have on combat. Race seems to be the biggest difference here based on your descriptions...my players do not automatically pick a race so they can see in the dark and so on.
Having said that, these are long time players, and they know how to make effective characters and an effective party. The group they've made is very capable. There are 5 PCs in total. They have a few magic items, mostly utility items and a decent cache of potions. When it comes to armor and weapons...the fighter has +1 armor and a +1 sword, the rogue has a +1 short sword, and that's it. Oh and the monk has a ring of protection +1.
All of that stuff is doled out at the DM discretion. That's controllable. And I would say that the level of treasure and magic gear can have a huge impact on the game. Especially when you start to incorporate all kinds of home brew aspects like double concentration and intelligent weapons that get actual combat turns and the like.
Now, I know that you said that campaign is a bad example because you're going for an over the top heroic feel...but it kind of implies that at least some of this power scale issue may be at play in any game you run.
I think the demon lords may be the only thing that can challenge that group at this point. And, if that group was hunting them down, it might actually be enough for Demogorgon, Orcus, and Graz'zt to set aside their differences this one time. These characters are epic style characters at level 9.
The math is flawed. There are ways to address this. Controlling the number of encounters and availability for rest, as the original exercise stated. Adding creatures or adding environmental concerns, or even adjusting a creature a bit. These are options, and they've been mentioned. None of them will solve all the problems, though....there's always going to be times when the game just breaks down a bit.
I think the core issue, though, is that the default game is at a volume of 5 on the dial. So if the players are also at volume 5, then things are balanced, and the system works as described. The more those volumes differ, the more one side winds up drowning the other out. You have to adjust things to bring them back in balance.
Your players have the volume dialed up to 8 with their optimization. And then you cranked it up to 11 by breaking the mechanics of the game with all kinds of options. Yet the game out of the box is at volume 5.
