hawkeyefan
Legend
[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] Be safe!
D&D 5E How viable is 5E to play at high levels?
- Thread starter Tobold
- Start date
Coming into this one very late to the Party, but I have been running some 15th level adventures after just finishing a series of 10th levels one (my group is doing a flashback type adventure where we see the characters are various flavors of their career, 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th).
So far my biggest note is.....5e characters are incredibly durable. At 5th they were already showing signs of being hard to kill, but by 10th I took the gloves off completely. One encounter I had planned to start a surprise ambush with 3 fireballs in a row (that negate fire resistance) just to get the party started....and my group ultimately came up none the worse for wear.
The big thing is that the instant death threshold is a joke at mid to high levels. When my spellcasters have 100 hp....nothing is going to kill them in a single hit. So it comes down to beating them up while unconscious to drive those death saving throws. This has lead me to find that a series of weaker attacks and area effects tend to be scarier than the big whammies....when your unconscious 5 damage or 50 is all the same.
So I generally agree that at high levels, monsters are really under CRed. But ultimately that is manageable if you account for it.
I also think high level monsters often aren't equipped to handle high level spells. Dragons are a great example. At mid levels a dragon is a credible threat. At high level, the most ancient red dragon can get locked up in a forcecage without doing a thing. Plane Shift is a very powerful way to knock out physical threats. I think that is fine for your regular monsters....but the big baddies need more mojo than they have currently.
So far my biggest note is.....5e characters are incredibly durable. At 5th they were already showing signs of being hard to kill, but by 10th I took the gloves off completely. One encounter I had planned to start a surprise ambush with 3 fireballs in a row (that negate fire resistance) just to get the party started....and my group ultimately came up none the worse for wear.
The big thing is that the instant death threshold is a joke at mid to high levels. When my spellcasters have 100 hp....nothing is going to kill them in a single hit. So it comes down to beating them up while unconscious to drive those death saving throws. This has lead me to find that a series of weaker attacks and area effects tend to be scarier than the big whammies....when your unconscious 5 damage or 50 is all the same.
So I generally agree that at high levels, monsters are really under CRed. But ultimately that is manageable if you account for it.
I also think high level monsters often aren't equipped to handle high level spells. Dragons are a great example. At mid levels a dragon is a credible threat. At high level, the most ancient red dragon can get locked up in a forcecage without doing a thing. Plane Shift is a very powerful way to knock out physical threats. I think that is fine for your regular monsters....but the big baddies need more mojo than they have currently.
Couple of thoughts. First of all, if a PC is unconscious doing damage to them causes a failed death save. Attacking an unconscious person is an automatic critical. Criticals cause two death saves. So if you try hard enough, it's really not that difficult.
How big is your forcecage and how small are your dragons? An ancient red dragon is gargantuan which can be bigger than 20 by 20. Just say they don't fit. Of course they can still use their breath weapon through the bars even if they are trapped.
Plane shift is an issue, that's where legendary saves come in handy. Or just send the dragon back with a note pinned to it (written in abyssal) that says "I'm tired of your gifts. For the last time I am not interested!"
But I do agree that those two spells are simply too powerful, especially for their level.
CapnZapp
Legend
Thank you. My experiences exactly.
Do beware those who would rather paint you as a bad DM than accept these facts.
Cheers!
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CapnZapp
Legend
The bigger problem is that high level monsters were not given much, if any, tools to prevent, mitigate or confound the player characters.
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MichaelSomething
Legend
Let me start by asking in the DM's Guild over on that sub forum
Edit: and here's the link!
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...level-games-more-viable&p=7220175#post7220175
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Helldritch
Hero
If the target does not fit, it can't be a problem. The spell will simply fail. For smaller threats however...
Plane shift is an issue, that's where legendary saves come in handy. Or just send the dragon back with a note pinned to it (written in abyssal) that says "I'm tired of your gifts. For the last time I am not interested!"
Although hilarious, the gift note can't be done. Plane shift is done only on "willing" subjects. Maybe a charm beforehand would be in order?
I do think however that leaving a "friend" in the abyss should be considered to be quite rude.
To answer to Stalker0
The game can support high level play. You'll have to work harder than in the lower levels. That has always been the case in any editions of D&D so far. I gave small tricks to help DM to deal with high level characters earlier in this post. Check them and try to apply them. It should help you a lot with high level play. Others did gave their own solutions. Most will work ok.
To CapnZapp.
I don't think I ever seen a post saying that people that had trouble managing high level campaigns were bad DM. Maybe I wear rose tinted glasses... High level play differ greatly from group to group and from DM to DM. There is nothing in having trouble with high level play. The fixes are quite easy to do with the current rules and the guidelines. Just avoid the 5mwd like the plague and solo monsters become much more threatening when used at the end of 5 to 6 encounters per day than if they are the first and only one encounter.
Erechel
Explorer
All I can say is that the game clearly breaks down if you use the provided options in the PHB: multiclassing and feats. Also all the cool magic items in the DMG? Forget them if you want to use monsters as-is.
Sure all editions of D&D has become wonky at high levels, but after playing the game for twenty years it has never felt so... empty... like playing a game on easy mode.
[...]
The monsters simply aren't equipped to cope with the player characters, that have more tricks than arguably ever. (Sure high-level wizards have been toned down, but how does that help when everybody in the party can toy with the opposition). They're far too naively designed, with very few built-in ways to work around or negate class abilities and spells.
The game (and now I mean "combat") works much better when there are at least as many bad guys in an encounter as heroes.
[...]
---
I prefer to look it like this:
If we instead say 5th edition is Basic Dungeons & Dragons, perfectly suitable to welcome new players, and to play low- and medium-level content (where most people prefer to be anyway), it is an excellent edition.
All us grognards need now is an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, with a bit more crunch-depth (meaning more ways to make your character mechanically richer than just mc & feats), but mostly with expert monster design in a completely new Monster Manual, so classic solo threats at every level (like a Hydra, or a Banshee, or the Gorgon, or a Marilith, or... you get the point, not just dragons)... actually challenge a party of five even if players are experiences gamers and use the provided crunchy bits and have feats, several classes, magic items and more
My ideal, then, is an AD&D edition that remains 1000% compatible with the existing game, but with a brand new PHB, DMG and MM.
[...]
I'd say I partially agree with the above statements... on the combat pillar, mostly. I've just finished a long (almost two years) campaign, where the characters reached 14th level. And yes, it is very hard to challenge them in combat. The combat resolution tends to negate almost all ill-effects that would hinder the party, so they don't fear any effect from combat, so they don't really risk anything. The party was composed of a land human druid, an ancient's half-orc paladin, a human eldritch knight, a halfling assassin and a high-elf wizard. They were equipped with powerful magic items: the assassin was the direst here, as he used a +3 shortsword of demonic origin, a +1 cape, and custom talisman that gives the benefits of 2nd level Armor of Agathys, but everyone in the party was carrying at least one +2 weapon, and the paladin had an absolutely incredible although seemingly trivial item: the jumping ring, that allowed him to jump up to 60 feet each round. They killed a balor and four chasmes in 2 rounds like it's no biggie. The wizard, the EK and the druid never runned out of spells, although the Paladin was.
The final fight ended when the druid (with 1 HP remaining) turned himself into an elephant and stomped the evil warlock, but ended with 3 characters down (not dead, but almost). But also they have struggled for an hour to bypass a heavily guarded watchtower with siege weapons, they spend the only 7th level spell the wizard has, and lost three knight henchmen in the process. And they don't even attacked the tower. They were stopped also by a smoke-filled dungeon.
I would dare to say that the monsters CR is plain-out wrong. Or at least, it's just stupidly easy if you just use one of them. Let's see: a CR 6 monster has a value of 2.300, that's an easy encounter to a party of 4, whose Medium XP treshold is 2.400. A party of five needs 3000 XP to be minimally challenged: a CR 6 monster is just too weak to be taken account of. Magic items increase amazingly the power of the PCs, so using them would certainly "break" the game, specially at higher levels.
That is partially corrected with the Legendary Actions, but most monsters don't have the stamina to fight for more than 3 to 5 rounds. And that affects the amount of resources the party should exhaust at higher levels (a wizard without short rests alone has 17 spells to cast, compared to the 9 of a 5th level one, WITHOUT COUNTING CANTRIPS), without counting the more powerful effects. And that in company of possibly 4 other powerful companions, everyone with its own spells or features. Compare with a boss: it may even have very powerful resources, but it is completely possible that the monsters don't even come to use them. Many of the demon's powers, for example, are a waste of resources: their action economy is moot (the Teleport of a demon should be a Bonus Action or even a Reaction, not an action, or it is completely useless), or they took a lot of time to be used effectively (and the durability of the monsters is... really bad).
The problem here is that, with many monsters, the time of resolution is a drag, so they are delayed not only in the amount of rounds, but in the lenght of them also. A solo monster should be freakingly easy to use, but it should also increase a lot its survivability: not only by being a big bag of HP, but actually hindering player's possible actions (EG: passively provoking conditions and debuffs). A solo fight should be designed to last for many rounds, but each round to be resolved easily. Also, the solo monster should have a way to "be better" than any single character. But a fighter of 19th level could easily dispatch a Balor in 2 rounds, without magic items whatsoever. The "non-magic weapon resistance" is moot, although 5th edition isn't designed to mathematically require magic weapons, it has a good third of one of the main books dedicated to magic items, and should have some aquitance of this.
That's saying: high CR monsters aren't difficult, and they are generally bad designed.
With that considered, it is entirely possible to make the game run on higher levels. You need:
a) To beef up your combats, EG using terrain, cover and range creatively, and creating obstacles. Also, you need to re-hash your monsters (possibly increasing their AC and HP).
b) focusing on other pillars of the game, like Social Interaction and Exploration. Exploration, EG, is an underused pillar, focused only on "Oh, ok, a trap hit me. Heal me". Poisons, disease, exhaustion; this are excellent sources of danger and resource expenditure. You should enforce this to challenge your players beyond fighting. A sample of poison that doesn't really goes with the damage could be one that every 15 minutes increases exhaustion, or saps hit dice. Poison that only do "XdX poison damage" is just underwhelming.
c) Using straight up the DMG variant rules to healing (gritty realism and healer's kit dependency). This forces using resources to heal, and generally increases the deadliness of combats.
d) You could even house rule certain things, like magical healing ALWAYS requiring spending Hit Dice, and being injured beyond half your max HP causing the character to gain exhaustion.
I don't really agree with [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION] that the AD&D DMG should dedicate its space only to magic items. That resolves nothing and only increase the problem. A new DMG should bring new ways to challenge player characters, like exploration and social encounters, and a rehash of CR.
Imaro
Legend
I for one would love to hear someone relate their experiences with CR, XP budget and difficulty who isn't using magic weapons, or who is at least using them in a minimal sense... Maybe I've missed it in this thread but if so could someone point me to the post? I for one am a believer in magic items actually making characters better (which means yes they perform above the baseline the game expects) otherwise what's the point, if the challenge accounts for them then IMO they are little more than ornamentation. Thus I find it a little bit of a dichotomy for DM's to make the claim that CR is borked while handing out numerous and powerful magic weapons to their players... yeah it's easier, that's what magic weapons do make challenges in the game easier.
Sacrosanct
Legend
Most of our games, especially with official campaigns, use little magic items. For example, the RoT campaign, even at the very end, each PC only had 2 or 3 magic items. Only half of us had magic armor. So none of this game breaking assumptions I've seen in this thread about how a high level PC will have maximum bonuses to saving throws, AC, etc. I think my 15th level tempest cleric had minor magical armor and a javelin of lightning. And healing potions of course. That was pretty much it. The monk had the dragon claws, and the rogue had a dragon dagger. But none of us had more than 3 or 4 items, even by level 15. The only item that caused a significant disruption was the Hazeron, the great sword. And it was a problem because you got it so early in the game, and it almost doubled damage for an already hard hitting weapon.
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