D&D 5E Dwarven Stag Party In The Caves of Chaos?

[slobo777]

However, if you're facing off against a wizard guarded by a few orcs, the better strategy would probably be to pick off the wizard with Deadly Strike first.

One thing I'm not measuring - time to defeat enemies.

In addition to the quoted suggestion, if you have one powerful enemy, who is dishing out effects that you cannot easily Parry, surrounded by others who are tough enough to take a normal weapon attack, then the number of rounds it takes to deal with those guards will be important. And Deadly Strike should be a good choice.

I don't think the monster abilities stack up well to this currently*, due to values for hit points and damage, PCs look like they can "ride out" such a scenario due to the very good results from Parry. Meaning that a constant Parry is likely better even in tactical situations that feel like the opposite could be true. This kind of "riding out" is exactly what is happening with Intoxicated. It takes the PCs typically twice as long to dispatch each enemy due to disadvantage on attacks. This obviously means the PCs are attacked twice as much (and with serious muscle from e.g. Bugbears and an Ogre) - however the amount of that damage that can be soaked more than offsets this effect.

One possible exception I can think of - a necromancer and his zombie cohort might do the trick (the more damage you can put into a zombie, the better chance it will stay down).


* I haven't demonstrated or modeled this at all, and am still a long way from doing so. It's just a general feeling.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I'm not saying don't change anything,

Ah - sorry, it seemed like you were saying that WotC should ignore any and all such models when designing their rules.

And, while I agree that they shouldn't be the only method of testing and verification, they should be a large part of their testing procedure.

And, hopefully, they're putting more brainpower into designing those models than [MENTION=6694877]slobo777[/MENTION] can do in his spare time, so that they can more accurately model complex scenarios.

I sincerely hope that WotC does not make any decisions based solely on computer models

And here I disagree again. Computer modeling can pretty clearly point out certain glaring errors pretty quickly, before such mistakes ever make it out to the public.

So, yes, I support wholeheartedly making decisions based entirely on the results of computer models.

 

[gyor]

No one is ever going to do a party like that is real play, no one. Such a niche example is no way to really test it.

 

[slobo777]

No one is ever going to do a party like that is real play, no one. Such a niche example is no way to really test it.

I agree, but have to start somewhere, and that is with the simplest scenarios. I see the current simulations as a small step forward from simplistic "DPR" and "number of rounds on average" etc calculations already used to assess PC/player choices in a lot of technical discussions.

I'm currently looking at how to model movement, so the test can have positional play, including ranged attacks, blocking access to "squishies" etc. This will however, take a while, as it gets complex very quickly. My current thoughts are I should just embrace that, and dig out some neural nets, evolutionary programming for self-learning, and create something that can play moderately well on a basic grid. It will be fun, and my programming skills are up to it, but it's going to sidetrack me from adding anything else from the playtest docs for a few months probably.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

No one is ever going to do a party like that is real play, no one.

... You've never had an all-martial party?

 

[Gorgoroth]

.

I played a wizard in an otherwise all paladin/martial party once, for five years (okay, there were occasionally clerics or psions in there, but not for the majority of the time). Usually I had my hands tied behind my back in melee, because, well, in AD&D you cannot cast fireball in town or in a dungeon without killing your charge-happy mates, and even lightning bolt is risky indoors. Invisibility and fly are potent combos to throw in, but again, most of the damage this group did was done by the fighters, even though in theory I could have done the most in a single combat by going "nova" (a term that only game into light when I started playing 4e). What I'm saying is that...why not tweak the core DPR expectations in the rules for the edge cases like optimised martial groups? It's on one end of the spectrum, which is very useful thing to have modelled to get an idea of what can be achieved within the rules.

A+ for the effort to the OP!

I believe D&D absolutely should work with an all martial party, but not be able to overcome non-combat situations or have the long-term survivability that you really need in a typical D&D adventure without having a cleric, wizard, or rogue. I don't think I'm alone on this, but it should be possible to have fun with all-martial guys in the group, especially if there are npcs or magic items that can alleviate some of the missing talents (and you pick your background/specialties appropriately enough). If you had, say, one fighter with magic-user background, and had Detect Magic and Mage Hand, and another guy who was a trained Healer, etc...it could work. Not nearly as well, but it would be like having a handicap. Of course it all depends on what the world is like, what the DM is like, etc.

I'd LOVE to play an all dwarf-party! But I'd have a hard time imagining that not even one of them would be a war cleric in that group.