D&D 5E How viable is 5E to play at high levels?

[Helldritch]

To the OP.
Yes it can be done. You can make it challenging without changing the context and using creatures right out of the box. Unfortunately, you need an experienced DM to do that.

That DM will need
1) To know his players, their tactics and most of all, their magic items.

2) To have an extensive knowledge of the monsters he's going to use.

3) To have an extensive knowledge of the spells in the PHB.

4) To design adventures in such a way has to counter the 5 minutes work day. Otherwise the players will steam roll everything (or almost). 5ed is designed with multiple encounters in mind. Only one encounter isn't enough to challenge the players. You will see nova.

5) Will have to be able to adapt quickly and vary his encounters so that the players will not be able to apply a simple receipe to all encounters.

If a DM can do that, it means he has the experience needed to run a high level campaing.

 

[Tormyr]

I'm happy for you, though note the complaint has never been "I am unable to challenge the PCs even when I write my own material".

The complaint has always been "I can't challenge my PCs with the guidelines given, and/or by using printed supplement as is."

No, the question was:

So I was wondering, how viable is the high level game of 5th edition D&D anyway? What kind of adventures do you reasonably play at that level without resorting to silly "you open the random dungeon door and encounter 3 adult dragons"? Are players still interested in their characters after having played them for 10 to 15 levels? Do a lot of people play at higher levels, or is restarting at low level fairly common?

and I gave an opinion on that.

 

[clearstream]

I'd also like to see a return to slower advancement. I ran the numbers, a couple days ago, and to recapture the 1E rate of advancement, even assuming you got twice as many XP from gold as from monsters, you'd have to reduce XP awards for monsters by a factor of 10 and still have to multiply the XP tables for leveling by 50 or even 100. There's just too much focus on the next toy. I don't mind zipping through the first couple levels, though.

Exactly right! I've been crunching and tinkering with the Encounter XP Thresholds / Adventuring Day XP Budgets and I believe a decent fix would be to reduce the CR XP values to two-thirds or half what they are now. The alternative - increase the budgets - has the problematic side effect of accelerating level advancement.

 

[dave2008]

The idea is that any "legendary" (or epic, or solo, or whatever the label is) creature needs "three strikes" from a given spellcaster (that resets if the monster lives to take a short rest). Each time the monster fails a save against a sufficiently high-level spell, that counts as one strike. (For a low-level legendary, this might be as low as 3rd level. For monsters of the highest CR, it would be spells of 6th level or higher, the ones where you only get one per level, to reinforce the "specialness" of those).

Only spells with "strike" info counts. For instance, Fireball would not have strike info. You would not be able to cast two Fireballs against a Legendary Wyvern and then top it off with a single save or suck spell that does have strike info. This is because spells that primarily deal damage has that utility anyway.

For instance, let's invent some strike info for Forcecage:

Forcecage
7th level Bard, Warlock, Wizard Evocation strike spell
[regular info here]
1st strike: The monster visibly struggles against the invisible prison, rendering it effectively grappled.
2nd strike: The monster is losing the fight, barely being able to keep gaps in the prison open. It is restrained.
3rd strike: The spell works as described. (This part is always the same)

Strike info is ignored for regular versions of the monster.

What about keying it to how much you fail the save? Fail by 10 or more, straight to stike 3, fail by 5-9 strike 2, fail by less then 5 and it is stike one. If your not stike 3, you must make a save at the end of each turn or move down the ladder. In theory solo monsters should have better saves (I know that is not necessarily the case) and would normally fail by less on their save.

 

[dave2008]

Exactly right! I've been crunching and tinkering with the Encounter XP Thresholds / Adventuring Day XP Budgets and I believe a decent fix would be to reduce the CR XP values to two-thirds or half what they are now. The alternative - increase the budgets - has the problematic side effect of accelerating level advancement.

Or couldn't you increase the budgets and the advancement table? That is only two tables vs. changing every monster. Regardless of the approach I am in favor of this idea of adjust XP values/budgets to re-balance the expectations for encounters.

 

[CapnZapp]

What about keying it to how much you fail the save? Fail by 10 or more, straight to stike 3, fail by 5-9 strike 2, fail by less then 5 and it is stike one. If your not stike 3, you must make a save at the end of each turn or move down the ladder. In theory solo monsters should have better saves (I know that is not necessarily the case) and would normally fail by less on their save.

Perhaps a question best asked in a separate thread!

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[Sacrosanct]

So if there are two games, one of which manages to challenge the players right out of the box, but the other not...

... the difference is that one DM is good, the other is lazy...?? Under no circumstances could it be that the first game is simply better, more thoughtfully designed, than the other one...?!

Stop blaming the DM, Sacrosanct. Admit WotC has failed to provide enough challenge out the box this time around. You don't need to tell yourself 5E is the best thing since sliced bread to use the game. It is okay to be able to criticize the games you love.

No. I won't stop. This is extra rich coming from the guy who has done nothing but blame WotC for literally everything about 5e since it came out. Why you even play the game or post on the 5e forum is beyond me. You do nothing but complain and blame others. Every day. Every thread.

But more to the point:

a) That is not what I said at all, but it's nice to see you resort to your strawmen immediately. There are many games (since we all have different preferences). It absolutely is up to the DM to tailor their game to fit their player's preferences. It's always been that way. It has to be that way when we all want different things. And a DM who refuses to bother to do that absolutely is a lazy DM. This is not assigning how lazy a DM is by how well the game fits out of the box for them. It is about a DM refusing to put the work in make the game fun for their table. It is absolutely the DM's responsibility to challenge his or her players, especially if his or her players want something most other gamers do not because of their playstyle.

b) what is "better designed" is completely subjective, and for some reason you keep assuming your minority opinion is the one true way of what is better design. It's not.

c) WoTC didn't fail. They succeeded. Extremely well by any reasonable metric. Popularity, sales, etc.. Clearly you don't like it, but guess what? That doesn't mean they failed to provide a good game. By most accounts of the population as a whole, it's one of the best editions

d) I never said you can't criticize games. Yet another strawman because your argument holds no water. Just look at my commentary on the class satisfaction surveys a few days ago, like the sorcerer. The difference is that you do nothing but criticize not only the game, but personally attacking the developers as well.



So maybe, at some point, you will actually take ownership of your gaming preferences and stop demanding they cater to you or else they fail and are bad/lazy/whatever. I'm not holding my breath

 

[Tobold]

Well, a game not working as intended out of the box for higher levels seems like a design flaw to me. Of course a DM has to tailor their game to their group all the time. But if the DM uses the encounter design rules from the book and they work from level 5 to 10, but don't give a good result from level 15 to 20, it is absolutely correct to say that the devs failed *for that specific part of the rules*.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Well, a game not working as intended out of the box for higher levels seems like a design flaw to me. Of course a DM has to tailor their game to their group all the time. But if the DM uses the encounter design rules from the book and they work from level 5 to 10, but don't give a good result from level 15 to 20, it is absolutely correct to say that the devs failed *for that specific part of the rules*.

The thing though is "working as intended" is entirely subjective. Some people don't think it does. Some people think it works just fine. "Intended" is personal. They have no ideas what your intentions are. They only know their own. And as a software analyst in my day job, the only objective way to measure something is if it's is working as they intended. So if the rules are working how the DEV team wants, then it very much is working as intended. By the definition of what that means in a professional sense, actually. I know, I use that term almost every day when I do testing. Doesn't matter if someone over there doesn't like it, or someone over here does.

 

[cmad1977]

Basically if you take responsibility for the game you run it's viable.
Not necessarily easy but that's the DM life.

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