D&D 5E (2014) Every Fight a Nova: Consequences and Considerations

[jmartkdr2]

I don't intend for this thread to discuss whether having every fight be a nova (i.e. PCs expend all of their most powerful abilities) is necessarily good or bad. Rather, I want to talk about what consequences and consideration should be taken into account ASSUMING that every fight is going to be a nova.

Should every challenge be set to deadly? Can we make adjustments to how numbers of enemies impact that difficulty? What does a nova set piece look like that is different than a "standard" set piece?

Other thoughts and considerations?

1. Don't try to make the combat minigame challenging. You can make it risky but you can't make it all about player decisions in combat. Either everything is super-deadly and initiative is the most important thing, or your fights are easy. But it won't be challenging as a game. Roleplay is not affected (and possibly enhanced as you can have a lower ration of fights per play time)

2. Every fight should be a set-piece. Not trash mobs unless the point is to giggle as the party totally wrecks a trash mob. If you want excitement, start at deadly and work your way up, but don't go for challenge, go for risk, but not too much unless all fights are optional.

3. You can introduce challenge in the sense of picking fights - ie all fights are risky but those risks can be managed via choosing who to fight and how to approach - going for surprise or going around the enemy should nearly always be an option, even if those present new, different risks.

4. Certain classes are now just weaker. Warlocks and monks especially. Certain classes are stronger, paladins and sorcerers especially because they have features that make it easy to spend more resources per round. Sorcadins are potentially broken. If "picking your battles" is moved to a core part of gameplay, stealthy characters are better, which means rapier paladins instead of knights in shining armor.

Note that there is a style of play where these things are not at all problems, even without using point 3: when you want power fantasy more than you want challenge. (Isekai's continuing popularity means there's definitely and audience for this.) You might want some houserules/special magic items to shore up classes designed for endurance to make sure they don't get left behind, but frankly the best answers are going to be very table-dependent.

 

[Baldurs_Underdark]

If every fight is a nova, then you gotta make sure that the PCs make a strategic decision to nova now, or later in the fight.

You can put doors in the room through which enemies can enter. Have the actual BBEG enter in round 3 or 4 of the fight. And make the BBEG's lieutenant look like the BBEG, so the PCs will spend resources killing it. Essentially, make the NPCs dynamic and combine multiple rooms of a dungeon.

Or have a battle map where baddies can hide really well. Or add small tunnels that the elementals can pass through but not the PCs. Either way, make sure that the PCs never gain the upper hand on all parts of the map until they realize that everything is dead. The uncertainty will probably make them save their last high level spells or abilities.

 

[iserith]

For these sorts of things, having a goal or goals other than reducing all enemies to 0 hit points works quite well. Having to manage that while wave after wave of monsters comes at you makes for a lot of meaningful decisions for the players and downplays their nova abilities since killing everything isn't necessarily the goal.

 

[TheSword]

I’m confused. Surely a nova is something players choose to do, rather than something the DM chooses to do. I guess the DM can choose to design encounters that force the players to expend all their most powerful resources quickly or fail, so I’ll respond to that rather that the Nova itself.

What consequences?

• Players are encouraged to prioritize combat abilities over non-combat abilities
• Players are driven towards efficiency and survivability.
• Tolerance for characters who don’t contribute sufficiently to combat could drop.
• Players of warlocks and other per encounter type classes will be disincentivized.
• Players will be encouraged to reduce the length of the adventuring day.
• Players are more likely to be suspicious (or dare I say paranoid) because the risk of death outweighs the risk of derailing what might otherwise be a straightforward opening a door.

Lastly Players could become risk averse… for me the greatest danger in every combat encounter becoming an epic one. Unless PCs are at full strength they would be wise to baulk at challenges. This is linked to the last category. In short it could easily cause otherwise straightforward tasks to become painfully of planned and cautious.

I used to think a fight wasn’t fun unless there was sufficiently jeopardy for the players. I have recently revised this approach. What most players want are interesting challenges for the most part not difficult ones.

 

[Mort]

I'll echo @Baldurs_Underdark and @iserith that having 1) dynamic fights where things are constantly moving (be it the PCs or the monsters or better yet, the terrain) and 2) having the goal be something other than simply reduce all enemies to 0, works really well for the OP purpose.

And the nice thing with the above, is you don't have to worry nearly as much about under or overclocking the encounter CR - since it's not 100% the focus.

 

[Reynard]

1. Don't try to make the combat minigame challenging. You can make it risky but you can't make it all about player decisions in combat. Either everything is super-deadly and initiative is the most important thing, or your fights are easy. But it won't be challenging as a game. Roleplay is not affected (and possibly enhanced as you can have a lower ration of fights per play time)

2. Every fight should be a set-piece. Not trash mobs unless the point is to giggle as the party totally wrecks a trash mob. If you want excitement, start at deadly and work your way up, but don't go for challenge, go for risk, but not too much unless all fights are optional.

3. You can introduce challenge in the sense of picking fights - ie all fights are risky but those risks can be managed via choosing who to fight and how to approach - going for surprise or going around the enemy should nearly always be an option, even if those present new, different risks.

4. Certain classes are now just weaker. Warlocks and monks especially. Certain classes are stronger, paladins and sorcerers especially because they have features that make it easy to spend more resources per round. Sorcadins are potentially broken. If "picking your battles" is moved to a core part of gameplay, stealthy characters are better, which means rapier paladins instead of knights in shining armor.

Note that there is a style of play where these things are not at all problems, even without using point 3: when you want power fantasy more than you want challenge. (Isekai's continuing popularity means there's definitely and audience for this.) You might want some houserules/special magic items to shore up classes designed for endurance to make sure they don't get left behind, but frankly the best answers are going to be very table-dependent.

I don't think I grok how you are using "challenging" in the above. Can you explain?

 

[Mort]

I used to think a fight wasn’t fun unless there was sufficiently jeopardy for the players. I have recently revised this approach. What most players want are interesting challenges for the most part not difficult ones.

I'll agree, which is why it's best to often NOT have the actual goal of fight be reduce the other side into the ground. That can be fun for a bit, but gets old pretty fast.

So, for example, a fight where the players have to get from point A to point B (and interact with the terrain as well as whatever baddies there are) is generally much more interesting then just having bad guys attack and movement, other than tactical positioning stops.

 

[Reynard]

I’m confused. Surely a nova is something players choose to do, rather than something the DM chooses to do. I guess the DM can choose to design encounters that force the players to expend all their most powerful resources quickly or fail, so I’ll respond to that rather that the Nova itself.

What consequences?

• Players are encouraged to prioritize combat abilities over non-combat abilities
• Players are driven towards efficiency and survivability.
• Tolerance for characters who don’t contribute sufficiently to combat could drop.
• Players of warlocks and other per encounter type classes will be disincentivized.
• Players will be encouraged to reduce the length of the adventuring day.
• Players are more likely to be suspicious (or dare I say paranoid) because the risk of death outweighs the risk of derailing what might otherwise be a straightforward opening a door.

Lastly Players could become risk averse… for me the greatest danger in every combat encounter becoming an epic one. Unless PCs are at full strength they would be wise to baulk at challenges. This is linked to the last category. In short it could easily cause otherwise straightforward tasks to become painfully of planned and cautious.

I used to think a fight wasn’t fun unless there was sufficiently jeopardy for the players. I have recently revised this approach. What most players want are interesting challenges for the most part not difficult ones.

I don't feel like you understood the premise, which is probably my fault for being unclear: the assumption by everyone at the table going in is that the combat challenges in the game (however the come about) will be the only one for the "day" (between long rests) and it is presumed that PCs will be able to unload without concern over whether they will not have anything left in the tank for the next fight because there explicitly will not be one before the next rest. So, given that, what are the consequences and considerations, both fore the GM on the design side and for the players.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I don't think I grok how you are using "challenging" in the above. Can you explain?

Where the player's meaningful choices are the key deciding factor in victory.

Challenge is not gambling - just because it's unlikely doesn't mean it's challenging- victory needs to come from how you play not how lucky you are. That's why just using higher CR isn't gonna help.

Meaningful choices are easier to describe by what they're not: they're not guesses (you have information you can use to decide between options) and they're not just calculations (options are orthogonal or otherwise not directly comparable: you're not choosing between a weak attack and a strong one with the same to-hit: you're choosing between options with their own pros and cons) This isn't usually an issue in DnD combat unless the encounter is designed to remove existing player options - but over-leveled enemies can do that by making normally available strategies useless.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Consequences for players: without going into all the details, they (or at least I) would approach the mechanics differently, because the usefulness of various class features will change. Basically, per long rest is now the same as per short rest. This means re-thinking how good various stuff is.

There's also a roleplay side to this: presumably we're not going to be doing any dungeon-delving, so what are we going to be doing? That will influence what type of personality r backstory will fit the best and be the most fun, and that in turn might influence my choice of race/class/background.