D&D 5E High Level 5e - any actual play? How's the balance?

[S'mon]

My 'add prof to saving throw' thread brought up this question - has anyone played 5e at high level (say 13+) yet? If so, how is the caster/non-caster balance in actual play? I have the impression that bounded accuracy strongly favours casters, that a high level Wizard can wipe out 30 orcs with a couple fireballs whereas 30 orcs would butcher a high level Fighter. Is that right?

 

[S'mon]

Any actual play at high level? How's the caster/non-caster balance?

My 'add prof to saving throw' thread brought up this question - has anyone played 5e at high level (say 13+) yet? If so, how is the caster/non-caster balance in actual play? I have the impression that bounded accuracy strongly favours casters, that a high level Wizard can wipe out 30 orcs with a couple fireballs whereas 30 orcs would butcher a high level Fighter. Is that right?

 

[Minigiant]

High level 5e is more segmented by jobs for balance.

Noncasters and hybrids are best at killing over an adventure, making checks, and doing their one special thing.
Casters can do everything else with the caveat that they can only do them 3-5 times a day as low level spells become useless against high level threats which arent mobs.

 

[Tormyr]

The orcs will swarm the caster just as well. There will generally only be 1 turn where they are in fireball range but cannot attack. The fireball will wipe out a group, but the orcs can move 90 feet when not attacking and 60 feet when attacking.

There are plenty of things the caster can do to survive. An evoker can blast itself with another fireball. It could put up a wall. It could run and shoot fireballs to delay things a bit. There is always shield, and dimension door can get it to safety. But well over 20 orcs could probably make it to to the wizard, and then bad things happen.

The fighter is more reliable in terms of just dealing damage. It will easily take 1 to 2 orcs down per round, and the orcs will have trouble hitting it and moving through its hp.

My table has only made it to level 11, but I have found that everyone still contributes well to the skills, the combat, and the role play. The thing is, there will always be situations where one class may do better than another, but the group has to work together to survive. It is not a case of each PC fights on its own.

 

[Jack99]

At high level casters become very effective against lower level foes, as they have a very hard time making any save targetting one of their poorer stats. On the other hand, legendary creatures can make casters cry at times.

Melee types shine more against the single big bad monster (in general) while dealing with hordes can be somewhat more challenging.

 

[Prism]

We have played a single high level session (20th) and it seemed to work out pretty well. We have another in a couple of weeks. Things I observed...

Bounded accuracy seemed to work. We fought against several horned devils (CR11) and a horned devil boss (max hit points and a magic weapon) and they were still very threatening

We used high level spells out of combat to get to the encounter (particularly gate). Had we arrived fully loaded it would have been easier

Shield is still a great spell at high level - it protected the rogue against a full round of attacks from several devils

Shield is still a difficult spell to judge at high level - after casting shield all of the devils surrounding the rogue charged at the wizard without fear of opportunity attacks and nearly took him out in a single round

A high level fighter does lots of damage and is pretty adaptable

Magic resistance is awesome (or not if you are the caster trying to work out how to take out devils with spells)

Illusions are still surprisingly effective until they are not (you run into the big guys). A single seeming spell got us through a devil army for the most part

 

[DaveDash]

I've played lots of high level combat and the balance is fine. Better than any edition of D&D to date.

Yes, spells can be powerful against low level foes, but they're a much more limited resource now. A wizard could wipe out 30 Orc but when facing a dragon he's going to want Mr Fighter. As mentioned martials tend to out damage casters against single powerful tough foes, casters out damage martials against groups.

 

[Mouseferatu]

To expand on what Minigiant said, high-level casters may exceed high-level fighters against huge numbers of weaker creatures, but against one or two big bads? Fighters come out way ahead. In the upper teens, the champion fighter and the paladin (thanks to smite) were easily responsible for the vast majority of damage dealt against what in 4E would have been called solos.

Were the casters useless? Not remotely. But the idea that high-level play favors the casters in combat is simply not borne out by anything I've experienced.

 

[Celtavian]

My 'add prof to saving throw' thread brought up this question - has anyone played 5e at high level (say 13+) yet? If so, how is the caster/non-caster balance in actual play? I have the impression that bounded accuracy strongly favours casters, that a high level Wizard can wipe out 30 orcs with a couple fireballs whereas 30 orcs would butcher a high level Fighter. Is that right?

It kind of depends. You talking standard orcs? Thirty standard orcs would not butcher a high level fighter unless he was built extremely poor and used poor tactics. A high level fighter's AC will be in the 18-20 range. He'll have well over a 100 hit points. He'll be able to dish 22 points of damage or more a hit against orcs using Great Weapon Mastery. That is usually enough to kill an orc a hit. He should be able to take them down at three to four a round eliminating attacks as she does so. It won't be as easy as a caster, but he' can do it. The fighter and paladin in our group motor through trash mobs. They take some damage, but every enemy doesn't hit. They hit almost every attack. My wizard tosses in a fireball or other AoE attack to speed things up.

The high level martials shine against single tough mobs or groups of semi-tough mobs. Whereas life as a caster is tough against creatures with magic or legendary resistance. You have to plan your spell use carefully to deal with those abilities.

It's pretty balanced as far as I can tell. Our party is 15th level. Everyone is contributing at a relatively equal level. The martials do the most damage. The casters make sure the party can match the mobility and special abilities of the opponent. That's the main thing casters do is allow a party to meet or exceed what the opponent is doing beyond dealing damage. They get to do some nice damage themselves while doing so.

I can say for certain the caster-martial disparity is a lot closer than in 3E, meaning a DM doesn't have to do as much to make sure casters don't dominate fights. Martial damage has been toned down, so DMs don't have to do as much to deal with crazy crit damage and the like. Seems to make for a better experience for everyone involved.

 

[TerraDave]

There are two of these threads.

And I thought I was just going crazy.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...igh-level-How-s-the-caster-non-caster-balance

Mods: please merge.

 

[S'mon]

It kind of depends. You talking standard orcs? Thirty standard orcs would not butcher a high level fighter unless he was built extremely poor and used poor tactics. A high level fighter's AC will be in the 18-20 range. He'll have well over a 100 hit points. He'll be able to dish 22 points of damage or more a hit against orcs using Great Weapon Mastery. That is usually enough to kill an orc a hit. He should be able to take them down at three to four a round eliminating attacks as she does so. It won't be as easy as a caster, but he' can do it.

Back of envelope: on an open field with 8 orcs attacking/round (wolf pack tactics cycling cheese) AC 20 Fighter would get hit by 30% of orc attacks (15+) for avg ca 10 dmg, so 3 hp/orc/round, 3x8=24 dmg, he'd last around 5 rounds, killing around 18-20 orcs first. A big change from pre-3e where he'd typically kill a couple hundred orcs.

If he were holding a choke point he'd be ok, though.

It looks as if a Fighter-20 can be Horatio on the bridge at Rome, but not Ares at Troy, or Arthur at
Badon Hill, unless maybe he had +3 plate & +3 shield - then the orcs would be hitting on a '20' only.

 

[Celtavian]

Back of envelope: on an open field with 8 orcs attacking/round (wolf pack tactics cycling cheese) AC 20 Fighter would get hit by 30% of orc attacks (15+) for avg ca 10 dmg, so 3 hp/orc/round, 3x8=24 dmg, he'd last around 5 rounds, killing around 18-20 orcs first. A big change from pre-3e where he'd typically kill a couple hundred orcs.

If he were holding a choke point he'd be ok, though.

It looks as if a Fighter-20 can be Horatio on the bridge at Rome, but not Ares at Troy, or Arthur at
Badon Hill, unless maybe he had +3 plate & +3 shield - then the orcs would be hitting on a '20' only.

Hopefully he doesn't allow himself to get surrounded. Sure, a defensive fighter would stand up longer. If he were an Eldritch Knight, he could boost his AC with shield quite often. If he were a battle master, he could riposte a few times too. As far as wading into a crowd of orcs, not recommended in this edition. Same thing for a wizard though. If he doesn't kill them with his fireball, they will chew him up. He might be able to use his one concentration spell to fly around. He won't be able to do that and be invisible. Power is toned down in this edition. Dangerous to take on hordes in this game for anyone.

 

[Chocolategravy]

Back of envelope: on an open field with 8 orcs attacking/round (wolf pack tactics cycling cheese) AC 20 Fighter would get hit by 30% of orc attacks (15+) for avg ca 10 dmg, so 3 hp/orc/round, 3x8=24 dmg, he'd last around 5 rounds, killing around 18-20 orcs first. A big change from pre-3e where he'd typically kill a couple hundred orcs. If he were holding a choke point he'd be ok, though. It looks as if a Fighter-20 can be Horatio on the bridge at Rome, but not Ares at Troy, or Arthur at Badon Hill, unless maybe he had +3 plate & +3 shield - then the orcs would be hitting on a '20' only.

Kinda dumb to melee without barbarian levels to halve damage or at least heavy armor master. If he's both he's only taking 3 points on a hit, easily kill all the orcs and regenerate all the axe wounds instantly with second wind. Hour's rest and he's fine. Wizard needs 8 hours to recover his spells used and depending on how his HD work out, to close his wounds.

 

[Tony Vargas]

As far as wading into a crowd of orcs, not recommended in this edition. Same thing for a wizard though. If he doesn't kill them with his fireball, they will chew him up.

That's prettymuch iff he doesn't catch them all in the fireball, because 1/2 damage is going to kill them.

He might be able to use his one concentration spell to fly around. He won't be able to do that and be invisible.

Either one sounds like a pretty profound advantage to have over creatures you can auto-kill with 40' wide explosions.

Power is toned down in this edition.

Well, relative to 3.5, anyway.

Dangerous to take on hordes in this game for anyone.

Which kinda sucks for the whole Conan-standing-on-a-pile-of-bodies trope.

That is, the wizard archetype is supposed to defeat armies by standing on an unassailable tower or mountain peak or cloud castle or whatever and raining down spells on them - or scare them away with an illusion - if he's supposed to defeat armies at all. That still works, if you can arrange for such a spot. The archetypes represented by the fighter, OTOH, are supposed to defeat armies by scything through them like wheat and ending up standing on a rampart of their dead - again, if they're supposed to defeat armies single-handed, at all. 5e has issues with delivering on that. It's not alone, most editions of D&D had problems, either with the fighter getting killed, or the player & DM getting repetitive motion injuries from rolling so many dice trying to resolve the tedious scene.

You could always hand-wave such things, play through the first round of slicing through orcs and just 'story mode' the rest, conveniently ignoring that the PC would be beaten down in less than a minute. Or adopt some alternate mechanic, like the 'mooks' mechanic from 13A, which conveniently converts high DPR to piles of dead enemies.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I've played lots of high level combat and the balance is fine. Better than any edition of D&D to date.

While that's a very weak claim (D&D, for most of its 40 year history, suffering from pretty poor class balance at most levels, and generally balanced even worse at higher levels), I still find it difficult to believe.

What's 'lots' and 'high' level in this statement? Were these white room combats, or part of an actual campaign where everyone played up from 1st?

Yes, spells can be powerful against low level foes, but they're a much more limited resource now.

So you meant 'better balanced' than editions that had spells as a less-limited resource than in 5e.
So, 3.5/Pathfinder.

(Classic D&D may have given high-level casters more high-level slots, but they gave lower-level casters even fewer than 5e, and hand no cantrips or short-rest spell recovery, and they piled restrictions on spells and the act of casting, itself, that made them a much more heavily-limited, less flexible resource than they are in 5e.)

"5e better balanced at high level than 3.5" is a much more plausible headline.

A wizard could wipe out 30 Orc but when facing a dragon he's going to want Mr Fighter. As mentioned martials tend to out damage casters against single powerful tough foes, casters out damage martials against groups.

That's what theorycrafting has suggested, so far, yes. The reality in play, I've seen though, while only at lower levels, already diverges from it slightly. Caster-martial synergy, such as Hold Person followed up by Sneak Attacks - seems to deliver the most single-target DPR, in actual practice, for instance.

I wouldn't be surprised if having a martial 'blocker' or 3 helps casters output the AE DPR more efficiently, too. Well, or some sort of blocker (companion creatures, summoned monsters, animated dead, illusions, wall spells,etc), anyway.

 

[LapBandit]

If I am a level 20 fighter with the appropriate level magic items, I will tear through those orcs in just a few rounds.
First round : 10 attacks: 4 normal, 4 action surge, 1 reaction, 1 bonus (all likely to be used against that many enemies)
Second round : 6 attacks : 4 normal, 1 reaction, 1 bonus
Third round : 6 attacks : 4 normal, 1 reaction, 1 bonus
....

They are not going to kill me in that span of time, and that is without Battlemaster, Champion, or Eldritch Knight abilities.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Using the variant rules for Cleaving and Large Mobs in the DMG. A party of 5 level 20's defeated 300 Orcs. (Party was a Devotion Paladin, Hunter Ranger, Draconic Sorcerer, Tempest Cleric, and Valor Bard.) It took a lot of resources but the party killed all the Orcs with out a single one of them dropping.

 

[Remathilis]

Using the variant rules for Cleaving and Large Mobs in the DMG. A party of 5 level 20's defeated 300 Orcs. (Party was a Devotion Paladin, Hunter Ranger, Draconic Sorcerer, Tempest Cleric, and Valor Bard.) It took a lot of resources but the party killed all the Orcs with out a single one of them dropping.

Three hundred orcs.
I have but a butter knife,
Of course, I attack.

 

[DaveDash]

While that's a very weak claim (D&D, for most of its 40 year history, suffering from pretty poor class balance at most levels, and generally balanced even worse at higher levels), I still find it difficult to believe.

What's 'lots' and 'high' level in this statement? Were these white room combats, or part of an actual campaign where everyone played up from 1st?

So you meant 'better balanced' than editions that had spells as a less-limited resource than in 5e.
So, 3.5/Pathfinder.

(Classic D&D may have given high-level casters more high-level slots, but they gave lower-level casters even fewer than 5e, and hand no cantrips or short-rest spell recovery, and they piled restrictions on spells and the act of casting, itself, that made them a much more heavily-limited, less flexible resource than they are in 5e.)

"5e better balanced at high level than 3.5" is a much more plausible headline.

That's what theorycrafting has suggested, so far, yes. The reality in play, I've seen though, while only at lower levels, already diverges from it slightly. Caster-martial synergy, such as Hold Person followed up by Sneak Attacks - seems to deliver the most single-target DPR, in actual practice, for instance.

I wouldn't be surprised if having a martial 'blocker' or 3 helps casters output the AE DPR more efficiently, too. Well, or some sort of blocker (companion creatures, summoned monsters, animated dead, illusions, wall spells,etc), anyway.

My current campaign is level 15, and I've play tested almost every class in the game against almost every monster in the book in a series of encounters, across level 17-20. I stand by my statement 100%, and beyond this post, unless you have actually chalked up any experience yourself, I don't plan on getting into a 30 page argument about it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

My current campaign is level 15

Did it start with 5e at 1st, or with Next or something else and then convert when 5e finally arrived?

How many players?

What mix of classes? Did players stick with the same characters & classes throughout, or was there some turnover?

I've play tested almost every class in the game against almost every monster in the book in a series of encounters, across level 17-20.

OK, so 'white-room' then. Thanks for making that effort, BTW: It's interesting to hear the results of such experiments, even if only in generalities.