Fiddling around with Fifth Ed

[UngeheuerLich]

Optimization is absolutely mandatory in order to ensure the best chance of survival. If you don't optimize, and someone else in the party dies as a result, then it's entirely your fault.

As a player, it is your obligation to everyone else at the table, to optimize to the best of your ability (within the bounds allowed to you). To not do so would be disrespectful of the time and effort they have invested into the common cause.Optimization isn't meta-gaming. Optimization is making intelligent and thoughtful decisions as your character, and them asking advice from their peers. Optimization is a form of role-playing, as long as you're role-playing a competent adventurer.

Making an inferior character, because you want a challenge, is meta-gaming. If you want a challenge, and you aren't a meta-gamer, then those decisions need to be taken out of your hands.

That sounds so wrong on so many levels. You really blame other people if you die because they might have taken the wrong feat... or do I understand it wrong what you are saying...

How can you even judge if a single choice might be the reason for your demise. Do you account for the fact that the fighter who raised cha to 20 and took the actor feat actually prevented a combat your most optimkzed party could have never won?

We used to not show our character sheets to each other in 2nd edition and we still hide it from each other in the beginning of our campaigns. I would never show mine to you even if I was optimized.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

If they have a solid grasp of the underlying principles they should be more inclined to create unique, outlier builds for the challenge of it.

Show off your system mastery with a 15 str, 14 Con, 8 Dex elf fighter who never increases those stats with an ABI but is still effective.

That is a solid array... never increasing str is hard but this could be my choices:
Heavy armor.
High elf 14 int.
Eldritch knight
Start with greenflame blade
At level 3 chose a melee and a range cantrip.
Actually take attack spells
Increase int.

Or wood elf
Feat wood eld magic
14 wis.
Shilelagh
Pole arm mastery with quatterstaff
Increase wisdom

Sounds fun enough.

You could also multiclass if it not forbidden.

 

[OB1]

How can you even judge if a single choice might be the reason for your demise. Do you account for the fact that the fighter who raised cha to 20 and took the actor feat actually prevented a combat your most optimkzed party could have never won?

So much this! Once you reach the base power level for combat, the optimal choice is taking abilities that allow you to avoid fights in the first place!

 

[guachi]

A few observations I've made (and some that my players have shared with me):
1) 5e doesn't seem to support high level play. Most official products tap out at 11th level. There's little to no help in showing DMs how to craft adventures or encounters for higher level. It's as if there is no intention that characters should play beyond mid level.
2) The encounter creation math just doesn't work. Some monsters (such as hellhounds) can decimate low level parties. Others are not even challenging at all.
3) Most combats are boring. There are few tactical options, and most monsters are just bags of hit points, ever-increasing as characters level up. (This seems to originate from the bounded accuracy design goal.) Most monsters can't reliably hit PC Armor Class.
4) You either have a TPK or no character ever dies. (Not that I like character death, but it should at least feel threatening without being "campaign-ending")
5) Few groups (or official products) actually follow the encounters per day guideline, creating overpowered casters and underpowered martial characters.

I've found all five of the above points issues I've had to deal with when DMing or playing 5e. Frankly, many of the points are why I don't play much D&D as it would usually be AL and many of the above issues can't be readily fixed by many of the things people typically do to fix them.

1) I find this disappointing that we don't currently have any published adventures that go to level 20. Personally, I've never had a campaign go to high levels even my favorite 2e game that lasted three years. But I'd still like to see what the designers of the game could come up with.

2) PCs can typically take on harder encounters than the guidelines specify. Given that, I found the updated guidelines work well and once you get a feel for what your PCs can handle the CRs are quite useful.

On the other hand, I totally agree about hellhounds. Only PC deaths I've had (outside of a fluke TPK of level 1 PCs) were from hellhounds. Just brutal.

3) What makes combat potentially doubly boring is that in addition to 'bags of HP' is that it's easy for the DM and players to get bogged down in mechanical details and it takes away from the time I can devote to fun descriptions. The latter issue isn't particular to 5e or even D&D, but it's by far my biggest problem with RPGs in general - combat that takes too long or is too boring. It's always a joy when players take the burden of description from the DM.

4) So true. I've added a bunch of house rules and optional rules to my games. I eventually started telling new players that I wanted to add challenges beyond living/dying as it was too binary. Even something like granting a level of exhaustion for dropping to 0 HP can meaningfully add something to combat.

5) I don't run hardback published adventures but I've noticed this problem when I've run a PC in those games. It's by far the biggest issue for me in 5e. I ended up ditching short rests and effectively lengthening the time between long rests.

 

[Salthorae]

I've found all five of the above points issues I've had to deal with when DMing or playing 5e. Frankly, many of the points are why I don't play much D&D as it would usually be AL and many of the above issues can't be readily fixed by many of the things people typically do to fix them.

1) I find this disappointing that we don't currently have any published adventures that go to level 20. Personally, I've never had a campaign go to high levels even my favorite 2e game that lasted three years. But I'd still like to see what the designers of the game could come up with.
.

The next adventure coming out from wizards of the coast is a 1 to 20 adventure.

I could see how AL only play could feel like some of these issues are bigger deal, Thanks for bringing that into the discussion as I had not considered people whose main outlet is only AL games

 

[The Crimson Binome]

That sounds so wrong on so many levels. You really blame other people if you die because they might have taken the wrong feat... or do I understand it wrong what you are saying....

I don't blame other people when I die. I blame myself, when anyone else dies.

I do expect other players to blame themselves, if I die, regardless of whether or not they could have actually made a difference. This is a group effort, and the death of any individual represents a failure for everyone involved. The only consolation is when you can know, with reasonable certainty, that there's nothing more you could have done.

If you intentionally go into it with the plan of not really trying, then you're letting down the group. There's social pressure against intentionally building a weak character, which is why the game should not be designed under the assumption that anyone would intentionally choose to do so.

 

[Mouseferatu]

There's social pressure against intentionally building a weak character, which is why the game should not be designed under the assumption that anyone would intentionally choose to do so.

Project, much?

There's zero such social pressure in my group. We are absolutely an "interesting concept over optimization" group. We've had players choose a truly suboptimal combination of multiclasses (just for instance) during higher-than-first-level character creation, and not only is there no pressure not to do so, as long as the character fits the campaign, we actively have fun seeing what the combination is and is not capable of.

As long as the role-playing is solid and someone's not doing it just to be disruptive, I would not only not discourage a player from doing this, I'd walk out of a group that did.

 

[Salthorae]

I don't blame other people when I die. I blame myself, when anyone else dies.

I do expect other players to blame themselves, if I die, regardless of whether or not they could have actually made a difference. This is a group effort, and the death of any individual represents a failure for everyone involved. The only consolation is when you can know, with reasonable certainty, that there's nothing more you could have done.

If you intentionally go into it with the plan of not really trying, then you're letting down the group. There's social pressure against intentionally building a weak character, which is why the game should not be designed under the assumption that anyone would intentionally choose to do so.

Man, you would not enjoy gaming with my group. We have no such collective will to cohesion like this.

I cannot count the number of times where PCs were left left to die because that’s what made sense in The context of the moment for the PCs who could do something about it.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I cannot count the number of times where PCs were left left to die because that’s what made sense in The context of the moment for the PCs who could do something about it.

I thought we were supposed to be heroes. Isn't that the premise?

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I don't blame other people when I die. I blame myself, when anyone else dies.

I do expect other players to blame themselves, if I die, regardless of whether or not they could have actually made a difference. This is a group effort, and the death of any individual represents a failure for everyone involved. The only consolation is when you can know, with reasonable certainty, that there's nothing more you could have done.

If you intentionally go into it with the plan of not really trying, then you're letting down the group. There's social pressure against intentionally building a weak character, which is why the game should not be designed under the assumption that anyone would intentionally choose to do so.

That sounds better. But only a bit. There is no social pressure. Ir there should not be. I expect everyone to play their character. If you are playing in a game that has a social contract about the power level of characters then of course you should try to fulfill it. But it is no board game where you win or lose if you don't overcome given challenges. A roleplaying game for us is a game where you as a DM habe a multitude of challenges most of which are not overcoming the hardest encounters ever. Fighting is usally only one of many options. And fights don't always play towards the optimizers strength.
And now to adress your concerns about intentionally shopting in your own foot. I am sure that everyone tries to build a character that is fun for him. Shooting in your own foot is not. And I don't like to play in games with evil completely selfish characters that play against their group. But a character that only hangs around for social challenges? We once rolled for stats in 3.0 and our bard had stats of 8 9 10 12 13 14. I think in that order. Was the best bard you could wish for. Not only focussed completely to be the best social character ever selling every piece of loot with profit bit also used inspiration to probably deal the most damage by lmproving all other characters. I don't know if that would have qualified as a legit character for you.