D&D 5E How to Break 5E

[neobolts]

>_>

<_<

>_>

How to un-break D&D

::runs for cover::

 

[ExploderWizard]

Throwing encounters at people rather then have them arise organically for either narrative or simulation reasons sounds like you are trying to hit a quota.

Non combat encounters don't count as they don't drain resources in the same way (& you can easily have lots of these I agree)




While this is true if you are trying to design encounters to be exciting that will be your priority & likely to be the outcome. If your overriding principle is to have your 6-8 attriotional encounters then that's what you are likely to get, with excitement incidental.
Also there can be very rubbish "exciting" encounters. I remember fighting a lone wight (or some other drainy undead) in 3e days with who had the possibility of hitting & ruining someone's day but the fight was just standing round in a ring thumping him. So exciting if you like slot machine style gambling which I don't.

I like that there can be textured encounters - running fights with superior foes or ambushing a couple of scouts (something 4e was terrible at) but they need to be there for a reason not just so there can be 6-8.



Well I often get told that if I am not using 6-8 encounters the game is not properly balanced & I may be projecting my antipathy for that on to you Sorry!

Non combat encounters don't count? An encounter during travel could be a rock slide. The party may escape with only minor injuries, but if their pack mules along with all supplies are swept down the mountainside, and the party is left with almost nothing in the middle of nowhere, then I would call that a significant encounter that impacts the survival chances of the group.

A rule being optional is relevant because it assumes that game is built without the advantages of the rule being taken into account when creating monsters or encounter challenges. Thus a DM must take into account the advantages provided by the rule when designing encounters to challenge players using the optional rule.

DING! An optional rule is one that means base game isn't accounting for it. If you are allowing MC options and feats, and include lots of magic items, and supplement options, etc. then adjustments on the challenge level side need to be made as well. There isn't a hard and fast formula for how much tweaking is required to get things back on even ground because it will vary from group to group. The optional tag is simply a flag that tells the DM " Take Note!".

This is all fine and dandy, but how do you actually do it in practice?

I mean, this isn't the first time I've read stuff like "Resting should be a hard decision the party makes"...

...but there's absolutely no game mechanic to make it so.

It's all dumped in the lap of the adventure designer or DM. Sure, I can come up with a trite variation of the "the princess will be sacrificed in X hours or days" to use story to limit rests, but
a) this feels so very arbitrary: some stories don't have a ticking clock built-in. In fact, if the clock sets a hard uncircumventable limit, I've found this will reek of being there only for rest-denying purposes more often than not.
b) this still does not change the fact that 7 easy fights are boring while 3 challenging ones are exciting

What, exactly, in 5E's design makes it "encourage[] the game to be about more than a string of very difficult encounters"...? (I honestly don't see it!)

If you're talking about pressing on despite being low on spells and hit points, I don't see how this edition differs from any other in that there really isn't any mechanical support that actually encourages you to actually do that.

Adding in a ticking clock that forces you to extend the adventurig day is fine once in a while, but it does nothing to solve the issue more generally.

Contrast this to something like: "the party can't gain the benefits of a short rest until after completing at least two encounters, and the party can't gain the benefits of a long rest until after completing at least two short rests."

NOW YOURE TALKING.

Now suddenly D&D would be transformed into a game where resource depletion would be a real thing, regardless of story. Now the adventure would be freed from the yoke of having to provide rest constraints, and all this talk about how the game "should" do this and "should" do that would suddenly make sense!

But I fear such an edition of the game will never come to pass.

Sigh...

It is true that making the decision to rest a difficult one is up to the DM. A major problem is that all this balanced encounter building, XP budget claptrap that has plagued D&D for the past 15 years or so has encouraged players to make decisions based on meta game factors. Stopping this kind of thinking is up to the DM and I wouldn't want it any other way.

The basic assumption of balanced play is that a fully rested, resource rich party can handle ANY potential single encounter. The DM should make sure this assumption is occasionally a fatal mistake. There may potential encounters that would just curb-stomp a fully rested party if engaged head on recklessly and others that may be easily won. If the DM is unwilling to let PCs die in the fires of their own making, then players will smell it like stink on a monkey.

Once the players are aware that such encounters CAN potentially take place, and that things are a bit more unpredictable, then they will naturally be more concerned with how and when they rest. In order for players to treat the world like a dangerous place, the world must actually BE a dangerous place.

 

[CapnZapp]

words

Sorry but I am specifically talking about the 6-8 encounter day expectation.

The only way trivial fights become interesting is if you KNOW you have to survive five more of them.

But why would you ever expose yourself to that in D&D?

In-character, there is no reason (since for all you know, that final encounter could be a deadly one that you barely can defeat at 100%, much less when at the expected 20%)

Mechanically, there is no reason. Each time anything is suggested, people tear down the heavens with hysterical cries about how much they hate meta.

The only reason left is story-based. Perhaps it's just me who see every princess-on-a-ticking-clock mission just as a clumsily hidden rest negating device? 90% of reasonable missions would still work even with a bonus long rest thrown in!

The reason I would love a mechanic reason is that I don't see that as inherently better or worse than any other reason why you can't rest. I am able to see how its absence only means a more or less forced story based must be invented. Why then not take the rest expectation to its logical conclusion, and build it right into the game itself?

Barring that, I simply don't see how I will ever stomach following this guideline.

But if I don't, most adventuring days will be 0 to 2 encounters with no short rests. How I would wish this was the DMG baseline instead...

 

[mflayermonk]

Non combat encounters don't count? An encounter during travel could be a rock slide. The party may escape with only minor injuries, but if their pack mules along with all supplies are swept down the mountainside, and the party is left with almost nothing in the middle of nowhere, then I would call that a significant encounter that impacts the survival chances of the group.

Gygax would kill you with those rock slides! I never even made it to the Lost Caves of Tsojcanth.

 

[Sacrosanct]

The people at the table is what makes encounters interesting. Not the rules in the books. If your table is handcuffed to mechanics and can't think of ways to make even minor encounters interesting? I truly feel bad for you, because D&D to me has always been about imagination. Mechanics are only there to support the game play in order to maintain a level of consistency. Not the driving force behind all of your game play. Might as well stick to computer games if that's the case.

For example, a "trivial" encounter as defined by the XP budget may be:

* a way to gather information
* introduces an interesting NPC
* advances critical plot
* has to be handled creatively because it may alert the entire dungeon if a standard combat takes place

etc, etc.

If you view the game only in terms of arena style combat or just one combat after the other, you're really doing yourself a disservice to what the game can provide.

 

[Leugren]

Classes to avoid.
Barbarians (its just damage)

By your own admission on other threads, you've never really seen a barbarian in action. The class has a lot more going for it than "just damage". While raging, it's hit points are effectively doubled, which allows it to soak up more punishment than any other class (except moon druids at lower levels of play and at level 20). Raging also grants advantage on all Strength checks starting at first level. The level 7 Champion Fighter feature which you seem to extol does NOT grant advantage on Strength checks. It grants half of your proficiency bonus to any Strength check if none of your existing proficiencies apply. A barbarian can grapple an opponent with advantage, and then shove the opponent prone with advantage. The opponent cannot stand up until it breaks the grapple, and the barbarian gets advantage on its opposed checks to prevent that from happening. All at 1st level, and all without any investment in feats. This provides some of the best control in the game. In short, don't judge the class until you've actually seen it in action.

 

[Zardnaar]

By your own admission on other threads, you've never really seen a barbarian in action. The class has a lot more going for it than "just damage". While raging, it's hit points are effectively doubled, which allows it to soak up more punishment than any other class (except moon druids at lower levels of play and at level 20). Raging also grants advantage on all Strength checks starting at first level. The level 7 Champion Fighter feature which you seem to extol does NOT grant advantage on Strength checks. It grants half of your proficiency bonus to any Strength check if none of your existing proficiencies apply. A barbarian can grapple an opponent with advantage, and then shove the opponent prone with advantage. The opponent cannot stand up until it breaks the grapple, and the barbarian gets advantage on its opposed checks to prevent that from happening. All at 1st level, and all without any investment in feats. This provides some of the best control in the game. In short, don't judge the class until you've actually seen it in action.

You are right on the fighter, got my wires crossed on that one. I have since seen the Barbarian in action it wasn't that impressive although to be fair it was a low level 1 (4 or so)

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Speaking of non-combat encounters, am I the only one here whose sessions feature activities such as PCs running against each other for mayor of their little town, to see who receives tax revenues and is responsible for defense? D&D is a roleplaying game, with combat only 1/3 of the major activities according to the PHB pillars.

 

[Wik]

Speaking of non-combat encounters, am I the only one here whose sessions feature activities such as PCs running against each other for mayor of their little town, to see who receives tax revenues and is responsible for defense? D&D is a roleplaying game, with combat only 1/3 of the major activities according to the PHB pillars.

Inorite? I'm reading all this mechanical stuff, and wondering what's going on. We have lots of fun exploration encounters - a majority of last session was inspecting a weird alchemical room in DCC's "People of the Pit". PCs put a bunch of weird reagant golem-y things in mason jars. Lots of fun.

And as for downtime stuff - those take up entire sessions of awesomeness! We have one PC investigating an ongoing series of murders (spoiler - the murderer is another PC who is a lycanthrope and doesn't know it!), PCs worrying about how to evade their taxes, and another guy who is now a spy for the empress.

And nary a single session was "broken".

 

[Sacrosanct]

D&D was built around three pillars equally. If you (general you) pretty much turn everything into part of a combat pillar, then you must be aware and willing to make additional adjustments to your game to account for that. Complaining that aspects of the game are broken/boring/imbalanced if you're playing in a non-standard playstyle would be like me taking my 68 Camaro out on the track and only driving 30mph, and then complaining how it's not performing as good as I want.