False truisms in 5th edition

[Parmandur]

It is only a "mistake" if those spells used were not necessary to a previous encounter, or otherwise saved some other resource you'd rather have. Sure, if you overkill one goblin with a fireball, that's a preventable mistake. But if you are hard pressed to succeed without them, then using them isn't an error. I mean, you don't gain extra XP for having them left over at the end, or something like that.



It doesn't have to be an absolute given in every fight. I'm saying that if you want to give a fair shot to everyone in your party, you ought to press each type in heir own way from time to time. Yo dont' punish a player for choices, but if you don't push them, they aren't really challenged, now are they?

And really, the creatures live in the world 24/7 (or however many hours in a day, and days in the week-like unit). They have the full knowledge of the types of things there are in the world as you have knowledge of things in our world - they may not know detailed mechanics, but they'll know general behavior. You have to live a pretty sheltered life to not know what a barbarian or a wizard is in most settings. You may not be able to suss out whether the woman in robes waving her hands and muttering is a wizard, sorcerer or warlock, but you know she's going to sling magic at you and be kind of squishy. And the big guy who isn't wearing armor, but roars and comes running at you with melee weapons, if you backpedal a bit, may not be so hot to engage...



Given that the second sentence in the OP notes this is about challenging games, I find this comment rather out of place - yes, being intentionally challenging *IS* a valid assumption in this thread. We are merely discussing how variable that task can be. If the GM is not trying to challenge the players, then how effective one class is compared to another is entirely irrelevant, and you should stop arguing with me about it.

And the slippery slope business is really out of left field. The GM is present to show the players a good time. Sure, in some games, that doesn't mean presenting them with a mechanical challenge. And, as above, in those games, who is better at what is largely irrelevant! But, if the players want a challenge, then ignoring various ways of doing that is not really serving the purpose of their being at the table. And, if the players want a challenge, then failing to give the gamut of ways of challenging them comes up with *exactly* the issue raised here - some characters will seem to shine, because you aren't challenging them!

This is all quite true.

At some point in one of the Happy Fun Hour episodes (binged them recently, kind of a blur), Mearls states that their goal is not to balance around optimized play, both to reward people who know how to and wish to optimize, and not to punish people who play the game non-optimally. It seems to be a strange assumption, in my experience, that people won't get caught up and overextend their resources, such as spell slots or rages. If the game was designed assuming optimal play, it would be rather inaccessible.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I mean, you don't gain extra XP for having them left over at the end, or something like that.

No, but since you put it that way, that's definitely an option worth considering. There's no reason why you couldn't use resources un-spent as a modifier to XP earned, except that it would require a bit more math on the part of the DM.

Given that the second sentence in the OP notes this is about challenging games, I find this comment rather out of place - yes, being intentionally challenging *IS* a valid assumption in this thread.

I may have mis-read the premise, then. I thought 'challenging' was being used to describe the difficulty level (i.e. somewhere between 'moderate' and 'deadly'), rather then implying directed intent (i.e. that the DM is specifically challenging the players).

 

[Ratskinner]

A cheerleader bard archetype (who's also optimistic all the time but this could get a little grating) would be pretty rad.

...and now I know my next character!

 

[Stalker0]

Define what "cakewalk" means to you, please. In my mind, it generally isn't a cakewalk if any character has to make a death save, for instance. By the usual way of calculating these things, it was a "Hard" verging on "Deadly".

And that plays out, in that, for example, a thrown rock from the Fire Giant does 4d10+7 damage. This averages to 29 damage on a hit.

A wizard without a con bonus by standard progression (max at 1st, and 4 points each level after) has 26 hit points. An *average* hit will down the party wizard in one shot. And did.


Interesting. Somehow I'm thinking something went rather sub-optimal for that CR 20, whatever it was.

I was more commenting on your note about mileage varying. I am quite sure that encounter was difficult for your group. For my group, it would have been a snooze fight. It continues to amaze me how wildly varying groups can be in terms of their combat potential....which is why a lot of these generalisms about class and combat performance are simply silly....no two groups are the same.


Further, the more I play 5e, the more I've learned that the circumstance of the fight is not just a factor in the difficulty, its the primary variable. As DM, I will take a monster dropped in close quarters with a surprise round and a high initiative over a monster 10 CRs higher in an open field.

Case in point, that CR 20 I mentioned (a Nightwalker for reference). The party attacked it in an open field. The monster started off good, really scared the crap out of one of the players. Then got hit with a polymorph....its wisdom save was garbage....and it became a sloth. The party then put it in a bag of holding. Interesting about bags of holding, when it holds a thing too large from it, the bag is torn and creates a rift to the Astral Plane. So when the sloth became a huge creature, bag pops....and off to the Astral with the monster!

 

[MechaPilot]

I know posters have been making recommendations to improve the fighter's dpr, but that's because it's the metric @MechaPilot introduced.

I didn't introduce that metric. If you go back to post #25, you'll see it was Paramandur who brought up the fighter getting two attacks per attack action. And on post #29 he made the claim that the champion fighter does more damage. I didn't make this about damage, I just introduced an anecdote about how a totem barbarian is a better fighter than the two fighter classed characters at my table and then responded when someone else made the discussion about damage output.

Sure. Has the champion achieved their goals, though? Their goal was to be a turtle, so are they? If so, then it's working. You should not compare the "focused on damage" barbarian to the "focused on defense" fighter on the basis of damage output alone.

I don't judge them on damage output alone (see above). Damage output is just one of the factors. Defense is another, and they're pretty much equal on that front (see below). Plus, all the strong-guy stuff the fighter might attempt is easier for the barbarian because of advantage on Strength checks. The barbarian is also more mobile. On the damage front, the barbarian gets two attacks, just like the fighter, and brutal critical effectively gives him a triple-damage crit.

Flip the question: how often does the barbarian get hit and fail saves compared to the fighter? Why aren't you complaining about how much easier it is to hit the barbarian than the fighter?

The barbarian is easier to hit. But, he has significantly more HPs, and he takes half damage from literally everything thanks to the bear totem and the PotA helmet that grants psychic resistance. He also has a pretty decent Dex score and advantage on most Dex saves from Danger Sense.

 

[Umbran]

Case in point, that CR 20 I mentioned (a Nightwalker for reference).

Oh, so, the CR 20 that you yourself recalculated to be more like a CR 16?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?655425-Nightwalker-Really-a-CR-20

So, here's a question for you - did the players *know* the weaknesses of the monster before they took it on? Because foreknowledge makes a *huge* difference in how things play out - quite possibly more than circumstances.

 

[Warpiglet]

Additionally, a campaign may be designed to challenge the players' creativity and cunning, rather than their mastery of the game mechanics.

"You are a 6th-level party. There are a hundred ogres marching toward your hometown. The cavalry is on its way, but it's going to be six days before they arrive and the ogres will be here in three. What are you going to do?"

Good luck combat-optimizing your way out of that one.

Man that sounds like d and d! I would love to play in that kind of situation! It's not a board game...do we warn the townsfolk? Raise a resistance? Get the ogres to give chase to draw them off? So much fun to be had....

 

[Ash Mantle]

...and now I know my next character!

That's awesome as! Would like to hear how that turns out

 

[Ash Mantle]

Further, the more I play 5e, the more I've learned that the circumstance of the fight is not just a factor in the difficulty, its the primary variable. As DM, I will take a monster dropped in close quarters with a surprise round and a high initiative over a monster 10 CRs higher in an open field.

Case in point, that CR 20 I mentioned (a Nightwalker for reference). The party attacked it in an open field. The monster started off good, really scared the crap out of one of the players. Then got hit with a polymorph....its wisdom save was garbage....and it became a sloth. The party then put it in a bag of holding. Interesting about bags of holding, when it holds a thing too large from it, the bag is torn and creates a rift to the Astral Plane. So when the sloth became a huge creature, bag pops....and off to the Astral with the monster!

Yeah, I found out the hard way that an encounter on an open field against a party of 4 free-willed, quite intelligent and strategic thinking players is basically tantamount to suicide for a single boss encounter, even if that boss has Legendary Actions. The players' more advantageous action economy would trump every time. I would even go so far to say that you need at least 2-4 CRs above the player character levels to really challenge them.

 

[Hussar]

In my actual play experience, the Champion is an unstoppable killing machine, yes, and the Barbarian has some shining nova moments with resource management. Indeed, my Mountain Dwarf Champion was the single most effective PC I've ever played across multiple editions of D&D.

But these anecdotes are irrelevant to how the system is designed to work in the aggregate, as they lack the statistical relevance that WotC has with their feedback system. A given table might have the Warlock be the best performing fightign type, it doesn't mean the Warlock is the best at fighting in the system.

It’s funny. This is completely opposite to my experience. To me a fighter is a pointless class unless you want a bit of beefing up for a multi class.

I’ve played fighters and I’ve seen them played and I have to say that there is zero chance I’ll ever play another one.