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

[airwalkrr]

I like to picture Legolas and Gimli in The Battle of Hornburg where the two are taking down dozens of orcs and keeping count. They never necessarily encounter an army all by themselves, rather, they heroically take down many orcs while fighting along the forces of Theodan. This, to me, is a high-level fighter in a fantasy setting. Not a one-man-army, but a hero worth dozens of the enemy.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Though I don't intend to be as passive as the wizard in Dave's group. He doesn't want to have a simulacrum with him or summon any creatures to do some hammering, though according to Dave this is because he designs custom monsters and casters that make the use of such spells impossible. But for the standard game, that is not at all the case. Simulacrum and Planar Binding are great spells if you're not making monsters so strong as to make those spells useless and tossing in a horde of casters capable of easily banishing everything you summon.

Even if they do banish your horde, a single failed concentration check will pop your horde right back into existence. The cost is an issue, but when you're getting hundreds of thousands of gold per CR 17+ treasure hoard you can afford to expend some magical "ammunition" on a kill.

BTW, in the original context, "they" is PCs and "you" is the archvillain, once they start making a nuisance of themselves. Because everyone knows PCs have great loot.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

At the risk of being nitpicky, no. No, it really can't. Not by the definitions that the game's laid out.

**snip**

(Sorry, Paul. Not meaning to jump on you specifically. Just seen a lot of people claiming that, because 5E's about "rulings not rules," it means every reading of RAW is equally valid despite what the actual language says. Afraid you caught the spillover. )

No worries. As I said in my post, I also read it as "Action"...meaning a 20th level fighter who uses "Attack" gets 4 swings of his weapons. Thus, 8, 8, 4... for total Attacks on 1st, 2nd, 3rd and onward.

With camels, sometimes you just hear about the straw, sometimes you are the straw... sorry I was your straw.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Tony Vargas]

Anyway, you guys can take my experience at face value or you can not. I'm not going to argue about it, and I don't feel the need to prove anything.

You have nothing to prove, but context would add value to what you have to say.

So, did this campaign start with 5e at 1st level at a higher level, or did it start with Next or some prior ed 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 agree with Dave for the most part. Best balanced edition to date.

Again, not a very strong claim, given D&D's long history of profound class imbalance and poorly balanced to non-existent encounter guidelines.

But, still, an implausible one.

 

[Celtavian]

Even if they do banish your horde, a single failed concentration check will pop your horde right back into existence. The cost is an issue, but when you're getting hundreds of thousands of gold per CR 17+ treasure hoard you can afford to expend some magical "ammunition" on a kill.

BTW, in the original context, "they" is PCs and "you" is the archvillain, once they start making a nuisance of themselves. Because everyone knows PCs have great loot.

If you read the banish spell, it permanently banishes creatures native to other planes permanently. The spell duration is irrelevant. Dispel magic can do the same thing.

Dave's claim was that he had multiple casters with extremely high DCs ready to cast banishment in every major encounter. Of course in scenarios like that, planar binding is of marginal use. But that isn't how most encounters are designed. A summoned creature will be very effective in 90% plus of encounters, including end game dragon encounters which don't usually have casters present. It's not as easy to get rid of summoned creatures as Dave makes it sound. A summoned creature or three combined with a simulacrum and regular spell casting is quite potent for damage dealing. As potent or more than casting foresight on your fighter and letting him swing at things. You can also summon specialized creatures at higher level depending on your needs, such as creatures immune to the breath weapons of dragons or capable of casting spells on your behalf.

Contrary to what Dave says, I think he does have to prove that tactics involving planar binding and simulacrum don't work in the standard game (as in not his custom game) for people to believe what he claims. He made a false claim that those abilities don't work as well as others think. That only applies to his game with customized monsters, not the game as it is designed. What if a DM in a regular game has some wizard pull those tactics out and they toss his game sideways. What will that player think? Gee, I should have made customized monsters that favor martials like Dave? It was a ridiculous assertion DaveDash didn't want to defend because he couldn't defend it. I find it strange when someone is proven wrong, they don't admit it and adjust their viewpoint. It seems to be par for the course for the Internet.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

If you read the banish spell, it permanently banishes creatures native to other planes permanently. The spell duration is irrelevant. Dispel magic can do the same thing.

If you read it again more closely, you'll see that the banishment is not permanent even for other-planar creatures unless you maintain concentration for a full minute. So yeah, you can blow a ninth level spell slot to banish six demons/elements at once, but that eats your concentration for a full minute, and if anyone damages you, those creatures may come right back. It is not an impressive counter for large platoons of enemies.

Yes, Dispel Magic could work, but you'd need a way to survive long enough to cast it repeatedly since it only works on one enemy at a time.