D&D 5E [+]Exploration Falls Short For Many Groups, Let’s Talk About It

[Starfox]

Indeed!

The deadliness of AD&D combat oftentimes would come down to whether or not there was AoE effects available for the party at the time of the encounter. A "difficult" encounter made by the DM using lots of less-powerful monsters with lower HP could be removed quite easily through the use of a single Sleep spell or heaven-forbid a Fireball a few levels later. [...]

Area effects and AC. Particularly in 3E and derivates, AC was king. This is still so in 5E, if to a lesser degree with bounded accuracy. If the monsters only hit on a 20, numbers don't matter nearly as much.

A hearsay anecdote from a campaign I never played in, that feature lots and lots of groups of low-level foes. The fighter-types in the party all had an AC that these monsters need a 20 to hit - except the player relating the anecdote, whose AC was one worse, so the monsters hit on a 19 or 20, thus taking 100% more damage than the rest of the team! They did not use critical hits or had to verify critical hits, not sure which.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Then why are you playing a 5e style game. It is not like there are not a plethora of games that strive towards that style?

My players like 5e, and I don't hate it. Level Up is the closest version of 5e to my sensibilities, so we play that. And I still homebrew.

We don't always get to play our favorite games. Sometimes you have to play your second favorite. If I could get my current table to let me run some OSR, like OSE, ACKS, or DCC, you know I would.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Indeed!

The deadliness of AD&D combat oftentimes would come down to whether or not there was AoE effects available for the party at the time of the encounter. A "difficult" encounter made by the DM using lots of less-powerful monsters with lower HP could be removed quite easily through the use of a single Sleep spell or heaven-forbid a Fireball a few levels later. If that M-U rolled high enough on Initiative and could cast those spells out there at the top of the combat, a huge swathe of the supposed difficulty would be removed immediately and now the rest of the party could clean up the rest. Thus an encounter meant to be difficult due to disproportional numbers no longer was.

But if you didn't have a caster able to do that and the party instead had to repeatedly face swarms of enemies using just melee... the feeling for the players would of course be different. They might think most combats were hard as hell.

Neither side is right or wrong on this... it all comes down to how players approached their games and how DMs chose to run them. And the only way to see if there was any "proof" that certain problems existed for most tables is to see what TSR and WotC designers attempted to "fix" with each subsequent edition. If something got changed when the new book came out... that's an indicator that perhaps the designers were aware of an issue hitting a lot of the playerbase and their hope to rectify it.

Yup. Spells didn't always work, and usually only one player at a time ever went magic-user. Initiative be a harsh mistress.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You probably know this but might as well say it for anyone new to DMing here.

5e monsters, in WotC and in 3pp books, are presented with an average HP total as well as the HD+CON that gets us there. If a DM wants to lower (or raise) HP within the guidelines, just use a number at the lower (or higher) end.

For example: The basic Ogre in the Monster Manual has 59 HP, which is the average total of 7d10 + 21. Want lower HP according to the designers' intent? Present your Ogres with as little as 28 HP. Want higher? Math it up.

What do you mean, "designer's intent"? Where does it say the designers intended monsters to have less than average hp?

And more to the point, hit points need to be lowered in conjunction with damage, and on both sides of the screen. You can probably predict what would happen if you just lower monster hit points.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

you miss my point, i'm saying if 5e had been built up from the ground roughly as it is but it had been the first edition of DnD without all the 'classic DnD traditions' influencing it, with other classes like sorcerer and warlock around rather than just the wizard as the sole arcane caster around to recieve it, would the designers who would've been making it chosen to give the wizard fireball that time around? or would they of thought 'no i don't think this really fits this class's studious and intelectual themes'

edit: or to put it another way, which of these class premise's sounds most apropriate for the guy slinging magical explosions?
-the one who channels raw magic power from their blood
-the one who bargined with an extraplanar entity for magical power
-the one who learned power through extensive study and research

i mean, before we get to that, fireball wouldn't even be the abnormally powerful (for it's level) standout spell that it currently is without the previous editions influencing how it was designed...

None of that has anything to do with what you were replying to.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

My players like 5e, and I don't hate it. Level Up is the closest version of 5e to my sensibilities, so we play that. And I still homebrew.

We don't always get to play our favorite games. Sometimes you have to play your second favorite. If I could get my current table to let me run some OSR, like OSE, ACKS, or DCC, you know I would.

Out of curiosity, have you tried them on a 5e based retro game?

 

[Swarmkeeper]

What do you mean, "designer's intent"? Where does it say the designers intended monsters to have less than average hp?

Not what I was implying. To clarify: the designers intended for monsters to have a range of HP. They present an average for ease of use.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Out of curiosity, have you tried them on a 5e based retro game?

Not sure what you mean. My current Level Up game is a hexcrawl.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Not sure what you mean. My current Level Up game is a hexcrawl.

ok, so, first off, I am not really an OSR fan, but it is my understanding that most OSR games are re-engineered version of older versions of D&D like AD&D, B/X or BECMI. That is, they are taking the open content of the 3.x SRDs and the OGL to achieve this.
Now, I bought Level Up to look at the exploration/travel rules and only skimmed to rest. My impression was that this was 5e but with added crunch.
I do not see the attraction to use this to achieve an old school feel over say a modern 5e derived game like Shadowdark or 5 Torches Deep. Not that I know much about either of them but the commentary here and on YouTube that they are built on the 5e chassis.

 

[Micah Sweet]

ok, so, first off, I am not really an OSR fan, but it is my understanding that most OSR games are re-engineered version of older versions of D&D like AD&D, B/X or BECMI. That is, they are taking the open content of the 3.x SRDs and the OGL to achieve this.
Now, I bought Level Up to look at the exploration/travel rules and only skimmed to rest. My impression was that this was 5e but with added crunch.
I do not see the attraction to use this to achieve an old school feel over say a modern 5e derived game like Shadowdark or 5 Torches Deep. Not that I know much about either of them but the commentary here and on YouTube that they are built on the 5e chassis.

I've heard good things about both, but haven't perused either yet. I would need to know how "narrative" their mechanics trend. I don't want a game that in any way plays like, say, FATE or PBtA.