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

[matskralc]

I'm confused. A "medium" encounter usually has one or two scary moments and may require healing. A "hard" encounter could go badly, weaker characters may be taken out, and somebody could die (not "drop to zero hit points"...die). That doesn't sound like 6-8 curb stomps per Adventuring Day.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I'm confused. A "medium" encounter usually has one or two scary moments and may require healing. A "hard" encounter could go badly, weaker characters may be taken out, and somebody could die (not "drop to zero hit points"...die). That doesn't sound like 6-8 curb stomps per Adventuring Day.

Really? Here's the DMG text:

Easy. An easy encounter doesn’t tax the characters’
resources or put them in serious peril. They might lose
a few hit points, but victory is pretty much guaranteed.
Medium. A medium encounter usually has one or
two scary moments for the players, but the characters
should emerge victorious with no casualties. One or
more of them might need to use healing resources.
Hard. A hard encounter could go badly for the
adventurers. Weaker characters might get taken out
of the fight, and there’s a slim chance that one or more
characters might die.
Deadly. A deadly encounter could be lethal for one or
more player characters. Survival often requires good
tactics and quick thinking, and the party risks defeat.

Considering that the encounter is likely to be lethal for most or all of the enemy, that sounds a lot like a curbstomp to me.

"A Hard game could go badly for the players. Weaker players might need to sit down and rest for a while, and there's a slim chance that one or more of the enemies will outplay one of the players."

"An Impossible game could result in one or more players getting outplayed. Winning often requires good tactics and quick thinking, and the team risks defeat."

I acknowledge obvious and important differences between basketball and war (e.g. in war you'd have to be crazy to even want to face an enemy on equal terms), but you're the one who originated the basketball analogy, not me. The playing field is deliberately towards the players in a rather extreme way, because the 5E designers know they are designing for casual players and they don't want Uncle Bob and Cousin Ed to get curbstomped by a fight labelled "Fair Fight" (i.e. quadruple-Deadly) because they are new to the game and don't know how to play. So instead the designers chose nomenclature that guides DMs towards selecting super-easy fights and thinking of them as "fair fights", so that Bob and Ed get to feel great. And that's great! That's how it should be! But don't fool yourself into thinking that it actually was a fair fight. If you flip the roles and make Bob and Ed play the monsters and the DM play the PCs, Monster Bob and Monster Ed are going still to get butchered by the erstwhile PCs, because the fight is so lopsided that skill doesn't really even enter the equation.

Hence, curbstomp. 5E out-of-the-box tilts toward escapist fantasy, not a challenge to player skill.

 

[Celtavian]

That's tough, but I don't thinks so. 1e and 2e didn't have CR so they don't really enter into the discussion. I didn't play 3e so I will need someone else to comment on that edition. 4e seems similar to 5e in the break down of monsters; however, given all the PC options and party snyergy possible I would say it broke down faster and to a greater degree than 5e.

3E/Pathfinder broke down as well. I threw out that guideline system early just as I did in 5E. I tend to calculate using the following factors:

1. Party damage output
2. Action Economy of creature.
3. Monster damage output including damage dealt and expected hit roll.
4. In 5E I'm starting to include mobility as a necessity for 5E monsters to be challenging due to the power of mobility in this edition.
5. Caster power: Casters are force multipliers. Their individual damage is not always the best. Casters are able to do things that act as force multipliers or reducers of force multipliers. They work to counteract each other and enhance the group. So you have to determine how exactly that will work in the combat dynamic.

 

[Celtavian]

Trippled HP on a poorly played Lich will only postpone the battle by 300%

This does not equate to 5E encounter building by the book is broken!

How about we erase all of the discussion using the monty haul PC's, which were being touted as the encounter munching party referenced by Celtavian, until he proudly proclaimed we just look at the character sheets when questioned on the topic, and after which when we all were left jaws agape, proclaimed that that was a bad example...
wasn't it they that was his original example?
such circumlocution!

likewise, a poorly played Lich encounter, by the DMs own admission a bad example, yet had been used as AN example...

let's erase that from the conversation as well...
---------------------------------------------------------

Now from my experience, if you have more than 4 or 5 experienced players, the Encounter builder will come off to easy at first. But once the 5E system was dialed in for me, I have little trouble DMing in the same fashion I DM'd 1E and 2E and keeping my group on their toes. But I am an experienced DM, as it would seem are most everyone else posting here; so you all should know that the rules are your guidelines and toolkit, that the idea of building an encounter without fleshing it out and adding factors to create an environment and challenge on par to the gaming level of your players is, well, it isn't good DMing.

Furthermore, I feel that a group of people playing D&D for the first time would not find it as easy, in fact the system would work as intended.

No. They weren't my original example. I've been having this discussion about 5E encounter building problems across four campaigns for months now. I guess you missed those other discussions. Just like the guys that keep jumping in trying to prove Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter aren't a problem even though they've been prove to be a problem over and over again since very early in 5Es run. I guess because you missed the months of other discussions on 5E encounter building problems, you get assume a dismissive stance. All the problems I've outlined have been occurring across multiple campaigns for quite a few of us.

Sorry you missed the Tyranny of Dragons and Princes of the Apocalypse campaign discussions when I was playing those and having the same problems. I'll make sure you send you a private message when I'm playing less of a Monty Haul campaign to ensure you're involved when I'm using point buy and playing closer to the rules. When the same problems occur, I'll see what you think then.

 

[matskralc]

Really? Here's the DMG text:



Considering that the encounter is likely to be lethal for most or all of the enemy, that sounds a lot like a curbstomp to me.

"A Hard game could go badly for the players. Weaker players might need to sit down and rest for a while, and there's a slim chance that one or more of the enemies will outplay one of the players."

"An Impossible game could result in one or more players getting outplayed. Winning often requires good tactics and quick thinking, and the team risks defeat."

I acknowledge obvious and important differences between basketball and war (e.g. in war you'd have to be crazy to even want to face an enemy on equal terms), but you're the one who originated the basketball analogy, not me. The playing field is deliberately towards the players in a rather extreme way, because the 5E designers know they are designing for casual players and they don't want Uncle Bob and Cousin Ed to get curbstomped by a fight labelled "Fair Fight" (i.e. quadruple-Deadly) because they are new to the game and don't know how to play. So instead the designers chose nomenclature that guides DMs towards selecting super-easy fights and thinking of them as "fair fights", so that Bob and Ed get to feel great. And that's great! That's how it should be! But don't fool yourself into thinking that it actually was a fair fight. If you flip the roles and make Bob and Ed play the monsters and the DM play the PCs, Monster Bob and Monster Ed are going still to get butchered by the erstwhile PCs, because the fight is so lopsided that skill doesn't really even enter the equation.

Hence, curbstomp. 5E out-of-the-box tilts toward escapist fantasy, not a challenge to player skill.

I think we have different conceptions of what curbstomp means. There is virtually zero threat to a curbstomper. I don't know that it's fair to characterize a 6-8 medium/hard encounters Adventuring Day as posing zero threat/challenge/problem/what have you to the characters.

If what you mean is that there is virtually zero threat of the players losing the game without the DM resorting to wacky tricks, then yes, I'd generally agree with that statement.

 

[Celtavian]

Would your party be ok with Mephit spam? Mine would be maybe once twice they would be pissed, 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.

This is where I'm at. I read mephits and heat metal. Boy, my martial metal armor wearer players would be pissed beyond belief if I did this over and over again to them, though they would be dead as well. My non-metal using players wouldn't probably be bothered much by the mephits. If I used this tactic too often, my players would have no real means to counter and just become annoyed. This is the equivalent of a DM power gaming the players. Not a bad tactic to humble them now and again, but definitely one that would annoy the players if used too often. I would hear whines about not being able to play the type of character they want to play without getting destroyed.

No save Heat metal by a large group of easily summoned creatures is the type of power gaming tactic both players and DMs can use against certain targets to create a really annoying combat scenario. Heat metal is already one of those spells we debate right now. Fortunately monsters don't wear metal armor as much as players. When a creature does wear metal armor, heat metal is a power spell that makes encounters against metal wearing enemies trivial.

The one nice thing about discussing these things with Hemlock is he finds some really annoying mechanical power gaming tactics for both DMs and players that at least give you a heads up of what to look out for. A player could summon magma mephits to heat metal some metal wearing enemy and that would be annoying as a DM.

 

[Celtavian]

I think we have different conceptions of what curbstomp means. There is virtually zero threat to a curbstomper. I don't know that it's fair to characterize a 6-8 medium/hard encounters Adventuring Day as posing zero threat/challenge/problem/what have you to the characters.

If what you mean is that there is virtually zero threat of the players losing the game without the DM resorting to wacky tricks, then yes, I'd generally agree with that statement.

There's also the fact that monsters vary in power. There are occasionally low CR creatures that are far more dangerous than their CR represents like wolves with Pack Tactics and trip or magma mephitis with heat metal or giants with high strength leading to better to hit rolls and damage. Not all creatures of the same CR are equally potent or powerful, which also skews building encounters based on CR.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think we have different conceptions of what curbstomp means. There is virtually zero threat to a curbstomper. I don't know that it's fair to characterize a 6-8 medium/hard encounters Adventuring Day as posing zero threat/challenge/problem/what have you to the characters.

If what you mean is that there is virtually zero threat of the players losing the game without the DM resorting to wacky tricks, then yes, I'd generally agree with that statement.

Yes, it's possible that this just a semantic disagreement rather than a substantive one. No need to beat a dead horse I guess.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

There's also the fact that monsters vary in power. There are occasionally low CR creatures that are far more dangerous than their CR represents like wolves with Pack Tactics and trip or magma mephitis with heat metal or giants with high strength leading to better to hit rolls and damage. Not all creatures of the same CR are equally potent or powerful, which also skews building encounters based on CR.

Dave2008's revised Marilith is a poster child for this. +12 to hit instead of +9, AC 22 instead of 18, better mobility, spells with syngergies, a reaction that can be either offensive or defensive... it's easily two or three times as deadly as the MM Marilith when played with intelligence, and yet if you run the numbers it still has the exact same CR 16.

The MM Nycaloth, on the other hand, is pretty neat for CR 9. In fact I'd argue that the MM Nycaloth is actually scarier than the MM Marilith.

 

[matskralc]

This is where I'm at. I read mephits and heat metal. Boy, my martial metal armor wearer players would be pissed beyond belief if I did this over and over again to them, though they would be dead as well. My non-metal using players wouldn't probably be bothered much by the mephits. If I used this tactic too often, my players would have no real means to counter and just become annoyed. This is the equivalent of a DM power gaming the players. Not a bad tactic to humble them now and again, but definitely one that would annoy the players if used too often. I would hear whines about not being able to play the type of character they want to play without getting destroyed.

No save Heat metal by a large group of easily summoned creatures is the type of power gaming tactic both players and DMs can use against certain targets to create a really annoying combat scenario. Heat metal is already one of those spells we debate right now. Fortunately monsters don't wear metal armor as much as players. When a creature does wear metal armor, heat metal is a power spell that makes encounters against metal wearing enemies trivial.

The one nice thing about discussing these things with Hemlock is he finds some really annoying mechanical power gaming tactics for both DMs and players that at least give you a heads up of what to look out for. A player could summon magma mephits to heat metal some metal wearing enemy and that would be annoying as a DM.

Within the fiction, though, there is no reason why a highly intelligent lich wouldn't throw wave after wave of heat metal bots at a party loaded up with metal armor, though. Hemlock exaggerated the potential damage slightly, though. You can't get heat metaled by more than one memphit. Well, you can, but effects from the same spell don't stack. So the max damage per round from heat metal is 12d8, and the max to any one character is still only 2d8.

Hemlock aimed those mephits at your party, though: 10th level characters who are powerful enough that you're randomly throwing a lich at them. If they don't have access to counterspell, dispel magic, enough damage to force failures on concentration saves (or outright kill something with 22 HP), or enough ways to incapacitate a bunch of things with poor saving throws, then I'd really have to question just how good at optimization they really are.

To paraphrase something else Hemlock said, the lich isn't there to make friends.