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

[FormerlyHemlock]

Would your party be ok with Mephit spam? Mine would be maybe once twice they would be -----, third time you bet I'm getting daggers across the table and the odd dick move comment I do it again there walking. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

In-character, no, of course they wouldn't be okay with Mephit spam. That's what makes the lich an enemy instead of a friend.

Out of character, yes, they'd be okay with it, and they'd handle the situation correctly--probably by running away, but possibly by some creative stuff that I can't predict in advance.

 

[Azurewraith]

In-character, no, of course they wouldn't be okay with Mephit spam. That's what makes the lich an enemy instead of a friend.

Out of character, yes, they'd be okay with it, and they'd handle the situation correctly--probably by running away, but possibly by some creative stuff that I can't predict in advance.

Retreat isn't allways an option to me and my players it would be seen as cheesy. To each there own I guess

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Retreat isn't allways an option to me and my players it would be seen as cheesy. To each there own I guess

Yes, to each his own. I couldn't stand a game where retreat was never an option--it means that either (1) your DM is being a metagaming jerk, or (2) the party has done something in-character to really, really, annoy the lich, or (3) the players are idiots and have no retreat capability.

5E is D&D: Mobile Edition, and any party should be able to easily retreat from a bunch of Magma Mephits with 30' movement. If nothing else, Dash away for a few minutes and then kill them. Now the next batch of mephits will have a tougher time catching up to you unless the lich babysits them, and you may be able to reach wherever you left your horses. Once you're on your horses you are home free with 60' movement and free Dashes--the mephits will never catch up. Edit: and of course high-level adventurers have more options including Teleport.

It would be cheesy to me as a DM if the lich always pursued the party to the death. Whatever it is that's bringing him into conflict with the PCs is likely to be resolved when they just leave. The exception would be if he were actively seeking them out for some reason because he wants their bodies to use in experiments or something; in that case they're pretty much toast. Not that that couldn't be a great plot-hook, it's just that a lich proactively seeking you out is scary. In that case I advise you to change your name and appearance (Reincarnation?) and learn to never mention your past. You can't handle the lich.

 

[pemerton]

In 3E the adventuring day wasnt discussed and the action economy were never factored into encounter difficulty.

Didn't the 3E DMG talk about a CR-N encounter using approximately 25% of the resources of a level-N party? And hence about having adventuring days of roughly 4 * CR-N encounters?

 

[Azurewraith]

Yes, to each his own. I couldn't stand a game where retreat was never an option--it means that either (1) your DM is being a metagaming jerk, or (2) the party has done something in-character to really, really, annoy the lich, or (3) the players are idiots and have no retreat capability.

5E is D&D: Mobile Edition, and any party should be able to easily retreat from a bunch of Magma Mephits with 30' movement. If nothing else, Dash away for a few minutes and then kill them. Now the next batch of mephits will have a tougher time catching up to you unless the lich babysits them, and you may be able to reach wherever you left your horses. Once you're on your horses you are home free with 60' movement and free Dashes--the mephits will never catch up. Edit: and of course high-level adventurers have more options including Teleport.

It would be cheesy to me as a DM if the lich always pursued the party to the death. Whatever it is that's bringing him into conflict with the PCs is likely to be resolved when they just leave. The exception would be if he were actively seeking them out for some reason because he wants their bodies to use in experiments or something; in that case they're pretty much toast. Not that that couldn't be a great plot-hook, it's just that a lich proactively seeking you out is scary. In that case I advise you to change your name and appearance (Reincarnation?) and learn to never mention your past. You can't handle the lich.

I was more thinking retreat was not an option due to lich completing his ritual to turn everyone into a grape than a physical issue.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I was more thinking retreat was not an option due to lich completing his ritual to turn everyone into a grape than a physical issue.

Remember, Celtavian said this was essentially a random encounter. The campaign is about demons, not the lich, and there is no super-ritual.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Okay so you agree with the claim 5th edition breaks down under pressure.

Finally. You, Sir, are a greater man than those apologists that absolutely refuse to see anything wrong with the game, instead preferring to throw blame around (mostly on the DM).

Now then, the discussion can move on to the next question, which I suspect has been Celt's real destination all along:

Does 5E break down more easily than other editions?

Regarding the first part...I agree the math that supports the game won't always work.

I don't think it's as binary as you want it to be, and that you can "win" this discussion.

An 8 year old can play and enjoy basketball. I can play against him. I can swat every shot he makes and I can steal the ball from him almost at will. Or I can take it easy on him and let him enjoy himself. On the other hand, you can put me up against Lebron James. I will have to step my game up to have even a faint glimmer of a hope of scoring a basket. Unless Lebron takes it easy on me.

In order for the game of basketball to be fun, the opponents need to be pretty evenly matched. When they're not, I don't draw the conclusion that basketball breaks under pressure. An admittedly simple analogy, but that's kind of how I view it.

So although I agree with your conclusion (the math in 5E doesn't always work), I don't agree that it indicates a major flaw in the game itself.

As to the second part, comparing this to other editions, I'd say it's in the middle. I think there was less variance overall in player ability and many other factors in 2E and earlier iterations of the game. I think 3E and 4E have such an abundance of mechanical options that it's much more likely for there to be combinations that blow the encounter design guidelines out of the water.

 

[matskralc]

In order for the game of basketball to be fun, the opponents need to be pretty evenly matched. When they're not, I don't draw the conclusion that basketball breaks under pressure. An admittedly simple analogy, but that's kind of how I view it.

Yeah. Celtavian has PCs that are a team full of Lebron Jameses, he's spotted them a 60 point lead, lets all their baskets count for double, and given them a hoop the size of a swimming pool to shoot into. Meanwhile, he has to play on his knees, his teammates are all cats, and he has to shoot a basketball into a Coke bottle. Of course the math breaks and there's no challenge. That doesn't mean that the designers of basketball are the ones that screwed up.

 

[matskralc]

What part of just this campaign do you not understand?

Just because you can move the goalposts doesn't mean that you should. You introduced that campaign as your evidence that the game is broken, not me. Your evidence was challenged and shown not to be what you thought it was. You now wish me, and others, to ignore it and just accept your word that this campaign is a crazy outlier and you don't do these things in other ones. Except for the increased point buy...and stat bonuses...and maybe some magic items in this one... and whatever ever other changes that you believe are "minor" that have been made and would eventually be discovered were this evidence to be challenged as well.

I have no issue with the proposition that the game's math fails at points. Plenty of people have written plenty about -5/+10 to demonstrate this, for example. I've readily admitted that balancing high level encounters is very difficult even when I'm not breaking the game myself. You have contributed almost nothing useful towards a discussion of the default math because you keep breaking the math in your games. And still, you want us to ignore everything that you've broken in order for us to figure out why your games are broken.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Yeah. Celtavian has PCs that are a team full of Lebron Jameses, he's spotted them a 60 point lead, lets all their baskets count for double, and given them a hoop the size of a swimming pool to shoot into. Meanwhile, he has to play on his knees, his teammates are all cats, and he has to shoot a basketball into a Coke bottle. Of course the math breaks and there's no challenge. That doesn't mean that the designers of basketball are the ones that screwed up.

Without commenting on Celtavian's specific scenario (he's made his position pretty clear and I'm not interested in criticizing it):

The problem is that the 5E designers deliberately set up all the fights to be exactly the kind of one-sided curbstomp you describe here. The DMG actively encourages you to feed players encounters where all the opposing basketball players are midgets and the PCs get to use handguns on the opposing team. If there's even a chance that the players could face a fair fight, the DMG warns you in strong language to know what you're doing, and certain DMs take that to heart and stringently avoid them in favor of telling everyone that you should just make the PCs play 6-8 games per day against midgets so they run out of bullets--but that doesn't change the fact that the PCs are not midgets (i.e. have better at-will capabilities and more strategic flexibility) and get to decide when to expend their ammunition.

Your analogy is illuminating, but not in the way you presumably intended.

I agree with those who say that the Marilith ought not to be a midget. Dave2008 has an upgraded Marilith here (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?482616-Marilith-Battlemaster) and I see some promising tactical potential there. Ironic that it still clocks in at CR 16 despite being far better-designed than the vanilla Marilith as far as deadliness goes. Just goes to show, yet again, how silly 5E's CR system really is and how slapdash the MM high-level monsters are.