D&D 5E Difficulty Settings for 5e

[OB1]

As part of yet another GWM discussion in another thread, the concept of the base difficulty level of 5E has come up once again. I've made the argument for quite a while that 5e is designed to be more like the Uncharted series that the Dark Soul series of video games, in that it's default difficulty is geared more towards casual rather than expert level gamers.

But one of the great things about Uncharted (or Dragon Age or Fallout or a host of others) is that difficulty level can be set to match your ability very easily. Now, of course 5e can always depend on the DM to do this, or, as I have argued, players can self police their ability choices to purposefully nerf themselves to greater challenge, but it got me thinking that there may be an easy way to standardize some difficulty settings so that players can still have the joy of doing all they can to optimize while not making the DM have to rewrite pre-published adventures to accommodate. Thus, my proposal below for a set of starting ability arrays to mimic the difficulty settings in modern video games. I plan to test these out with my group for TftYP, but would love to get the communities thought on if this will have the intended effect.

Narrative Array - 18, 18, 17, 16, 14, 12
Easy Array - 17, 16, 15, 14, 12, 10
Standard Array - 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8
Average Array - 11, 11, 11, 10, 10, 10
Hard Array - 13, 12, 10, 8, 8, 8
Legendary Array - 11, 10, 9, 8, 8, 6
Legacy Array - Roll 3d6 in order

What I'm hoping Hard and Legendary accomplish is to make the ability decision tree much more complicated. For example, GWM is really -6/+9 until you get to 20 STR, which would take until your 4th ABI with Hard or 5th on Legendary (assuming maxed racial bonus), but in choosing to go after that feat, you are also leaving yourself vulnerable on a host of saves. Party synergy, spell selection and combat tactics should all get more critical to overcome baseline challenges.

At the end of the day, 5e is about creating exciting stories about bold adventurers facing deadly perils. What better story is there than those adventurers who weren't born for greatness, but through courage, luck and determination found glory anyhow!

 

[Horwath]

I would only accept standard and easy array(if I wanted to have some fun)

Narrative is overkill, but it could be also fun

but lower than that?

There is a reason why adventurers have above average scores.

Because you need to be above average to make is as an adventurer.

Legacy array? Good luck getting to lvl3 with standard encounters and no DM in "guardian angel" mode.

Reality is that adventurer with stat of 11,10,9,8,8,6 is either too weak, too slow or too dumb to survive that life.

while single dump stat of 6-8 can be fun and very good roleplay material, having 4 negative stats is simply too much of an handicap to make it as adventurer.

 

[Xeviat]

The difficulty of the game has more to do with the difficulty of the challenges you throw at the players. Ability score spreads influence the feel of the game, though.


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[Shiroiken]

I find the ability scores don't make that much of a difference in the difficulty level of the game. As the DM, I regularly use Hard and Deadly encounters, and totally ignore the "Encounter XP per day." I just set up good combats (or a LOT of easy ones that drain spells and HP), and let the players figure it out. Exploration and Social DCs are generally higher than they might otherwise be, because I know the players abilities and have designed things to challenge them, but not be overwhelming or a cakewalk (but occasionally both happen).

Of course, I'm a big fan of roll in order, so

 

[ccs]

while single dump stat of 6-8 can be fun and very good roleplay material, having 4 negative stats is simply too much of an handicap to make it as adventurer.

Garth, my special needs 1/2ling disagrees with you.
Stat wise the best that could be said for him was that "Well, he doesn't have a negative modifier to his Con....".

When the game he was played in ended he'd survived 6 months of play & achieved almost 7th lv.
Game died, Garth didnt. And he was a hilarious challenge to play.

 

[ccs]

The entire party can take that narrative array (or better) & I'll still manage to challenge them.
It's NOT at all about how high/low your modifiers are.

 

[OB1]

[MENTION=6803664]ccs[/MENTION] and @ xeviat- not saying that you can't challenge or cakewalk a party with low/high array, saying that if you use the adventures as written or strictly follow XP by day guidelines, changing the starting array will lead to a more difficult or easier time.
[MENTION=6801299]Horwath[/MENTION] - Are you so sure? There are many a thread on these boards talking about how easy 5e is and how certain feats allow PCs to completely dominate pre-published adventures. Again, that's why I'm going to try some of these out with TftYP. We are doing new characters for each chapter anyhow, and this will be a way to further test the skill of the players.

What I'm not sure of is if these array's will end up giving the feeling that I'm going for, that of ramping up or turning down the difficulty in a modern video game.

 

[Lanefan]

What I'm not sure of is if these array's will end up giving the feeling that I'm going for, that of ramping up or turning down the difficulty in a modern video game.

In a very small way it might, but there's so much more going on than just the base stats that in the end it'll still be pretty random who survives and who doesn't.

As DM your better option might be to leave the stats alone (and for gawds sake roll 'em, rather than point-buy or array!) and just dial the challenges up. I don't mean turn them all up to 11, but if you make each and every challenge just a bit harder than what seems to be the norm (module calls for an ogre and 5 orcs? make it an ogre and 7 orcs), in the long run you'll achieve your ends.

For the reverse effect - an easier game - dial them all down a bit instead.

Lan-"but this game goes to 11"-efan

 

[Xeviat]

If you're running modules, then yes.


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[Henry]

I could deal with the "hard" array - we do something similar in Pathfinder with my group right now (a 10 point buy). At legendary, you're dealing with characters tht can't have more than a +1 in their primary stat, and that's pretty bad from a "keep on living" aspect. The "legacy" though has the opposite effect from what is intended - the average in every stat is a 10, actually better than legendary, and has the very problem we use point buy to avoid - exceptionally swingy scores from one person to the next. So instead of making things harder, the STR 4 INT 9 wizard stands beside the STR 18 INT 16 fighter and watches him pound the goblins to powder.

I will however agree with the premise - challenge level calculations need to be addressed, and not just to gloss over it by saying,"oh, it's because the game is meant to have x fights a day". Quite frankly, most games I play are 3 to 4 hours long, and running more than 1 or 2 fights in a session is just infeasible (3 is a busy sesion!) and even then, they've probably had at least a short rest between the 2nd and 3rd combat. That seems to be a pretty frequent circumstance from what I've heard, and much as I like 5e I don't think I've yet had a fight that even approached the guidelines of CL, usually "deadly+" once we get over 5th level.