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

[Helldritch]

@Celebrim
I won't cite your previous post. But most of what you now write is good.

Yet, even with UA. It was possible to challenge your players. Unless you saw a lot of monty haul type campaing really powerful magic items were not that easy to get. The +1 to +3 variety were easy to get/create but the other types of magic were not so easy to find/create. I saw maybe 4 or 5 holy avengers in my 10 years or so in 1e. The girdle, glove and hammer of thunderbolt combo I have seen once. A vorpal sword? Never gave one, never saw one. Belts of giant strength were not that easy to get either.

Don't get me wrong, magic was plentiful in 1e. On that I agree with you. But not to the extent that you are describing. In an other trend you claimed that magic item was rare as **** and in here you make it almost common place to see the most powerful items/combo in one group! Even with the published adventures, it was hard to get all of these together at the same time.

Magic resistant monsters were the bane of magic users and they had to rely on boosting the fighters to get them out of the picture asap. That is a standard tactic. Energy drain was not a trivial thing. I had a group of level 17 brought down to level 12 in a matter of minutes. It all depend on the play style. I saw a 20th level fighter slain by a 12th flying wizard with a magic missile wand. Anything is/was possible.

And if you're group has all these wonders, it's time to rely on a Gygaxian play style

Edit: Thank you for the link. I was searching for it.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I think you seriously need to go back and look at the 1e books again before responding. You have some serious errors there. For example, any monster with more than 10 or so HD is probably going to have as much HP as any PC. When you get into the teens, that's almost assured, even for the fighter, because PCs only get 1-3 hp per level after 9th, and monsters keep getting 1d8 for infinity. Except dragons, which is determined by age. So an ancient dragon of the same HD as that fighter will have 80 hp. This is important, because that means the dragon does 80hp of damage with it's breath weapon. Enough to kill any PC that fails it's save, and most PCs that make their save. Outright.

I also suggest you read the entire description of slow poison, and not just bold the top part because the last part is probably the most important. It doesn't cure the poison. After those turns are up, you need to have been cured or you're still dead. Looking at typical AD&D adventures and monsters, it's entirely possible to have to make poison saves several times in an adventuring day, from the plethora of traps or the numerous monsters that have poison attacks. And that's not even considering all of the petrification or other instant death saves.

Speaking of saves, even with magic items (you must be playing monty haul if you factor in every PC having several items that give saving throws), that's only a few points added to your save roll. If you still fail on a 5 or lower, that's still a failure of 25% of the time. Not odds I'm comfortable with sine failure often means instant death.

And yeah, I know UA pretty much guarantees an 18 stat in your primary attributes, but none of that takes away from the list of things I gave earlier.

And you definitely must be smoking something if you think high level monsters pretty much need a natural 20 to hit higher level PCs. A 12 HD monster needs a 9 to hit AC 0. 12th level PCs didn't have ACs of -10 (the max) for all party members.

The only way your argument holds any water is if you played monty haul, and maxed out your PCs with the best magic items and gear extremely soon. Using the rules, with random treasure generation, there is no way you would have your entire party decked out with +5 magic items. Statistically almost impossible. Go look at the gear most NPCs had for all of those modules, and it's pretty typical of what a PC would have.

I have played 1e continuously for 31 years. And I'm telling you, your assumptions are flawed. It is a lot less challenging to create challenging adventures for 1e PC above level 10 than it is in 5e for PCs above level 15. I don't have to change anything, unless I'm playing in a monty haul style of game. Which of course if I'm doing that and deviating from the expected assumption of play, of course I'd have to make changes.

 

[Tony Vargas]

"Experiences vary", could perhaps be 1e AD&D's essential motto. That's in part because of the different rules different tables may have ignored, and in part because of the very different approaches tables could take to optimization, leveling speed and magic item access.

Not that anyone called it 'optimization' - "Monty Haul," maybe - but, yes, 1e encouraged a dynamic in which the DM was expected to know the rules better than his players, and, in part to that end (and in part because it was just how he rolled), EGG wrote an awful lot of rules (by the standards of the day, when other full RPGs were in 64-pg books) for it, in a quixotically-organized, verbose, college-level-English, style that could be politely described as 'opaque' or 'inaccessible' or something else other than 'crystal clear.'

Plus it was the 70s, so, y'know, YMMV!

The second thing to consider is did you use Unearthed Arcana. It makes a big difference.

Weapon Specialization did turn fighter-types into DPR machines, among other little things, sure.

I'm being snarky, but did you play 1e?

Better to ask "did you play anything else?"

... since a fighter can use his magical armor and shield bonus against breath weapons....

A good example of a rule not everyone may even have been aware of at the time, let alone chosen to use, let alone remembered...

Very few of them have spell resistance high enough to really thwart characters about 10th

... 'nother obscure rule: magic resistance went up/down 5% per level of the caster different from 11th, I think it was...

Of course CR is not equal to Hit Die. CR is more like monster level...

'Monster level' was barely a thing. There were summoning spells that referenced a 'level X monster' and encounter tables 'by level' (monster level? dungeon level?). And "HD/levels," implying equivalency, wasn't an uncommon thing to see, either...

...anyway, CR was AFAIK, new in 3.0...

For example, any monster with more than 10 or so HD is probably going to have as much HP as any PC. When you get into the teens, that's almost assured, even for the fighter, because PCs only get 1-3 hp per level after 9th

OTOH, the high-CON fighter could have +3 or even +4 per die. A 10th level fighter might have right around 90 hps. Or, he might have half that, or less. Random generation of CON plus randomly rolled hps = no universal experience to be found, here.

monsters keep getting 1d8 for infinity

Monsters didn't level or anything, nor did HD/level /quite/ correspond. They just got an arbitrary number of HD plus an equally arbitrary number of bonus hps added to that (or not). The Type V demon y'all keep harping on didn't have all that many HD.

I also suggest you read the entire description of slow poison, and not just bold the top part because the last part is probably the most important. It doesn't cure the poison.

While this spell does not neutralize the venom, it does prevent it from substantially harming the individual for the duration of its magic

;|

(you must be playing monty haul if you factor in every PC having several items that give saving throws), that's only a few points added to your save roll. ...
The only way your argument holds any water is if you played monty haul, and maxed out your PCs with the best magic items and gear extremely soon.

We haven't had the term 'Monty Haul' for so long because no one ever played that way.

And, the published modules and the Treasure Types also gave out (what always seemed to me like) a lot of magic items.

And, in a way, the 5e assumption of few/no magic items and magic items 'making you just better' /supports/ that style.
FWIW.

And yeah, I know UA pretty much guarantees an 18 stat in your primary attributes, but none of that takes away from the list of things I gave earlier.

Some of the DMG methods made multiple high stats (and thus higher hps than you listed, above) pretty likely. Different assumptions, different rule books in use, differences in how the DM selectively applied rules, interpreted or changed rules, etc, etc...

I have played 1e continuously for 31 years. And I'm telling you, your assumptions are flawed.

I think you're talking about his experiences, not his assumptions, and them being different from yours, not 'flawed.'

It is a lot less challenging to create challenging adventures for 1e PC above level 10 than it is in 5e for PCs above level 15.

It was harder to run 1e at any level than it is to run 5e - it was just that quixotic a design - but aside from that consideration, I don't see how one could be judged hugely more difficult to run, specifically, at high level vs low, than the other. Both do get more difficult to concoct interesting/plausible challenges as you climb the level ladder, sure.
The variation from group to group, in both cases, would be a lot greater.

 

[Helldritch]

I have read the linked post that Celebrim gave us.
Some of his numbers are off the charts.
The best an archer can achieve is assuming point blank range: 1d8 + 3 (max strength for an elf) +1 (magic bow) +3 (magic arrows) +2 (range) or 12pts on average per attack multiplied by 2 if within 30'. That means 24 per hit or 96 dmg total. If haste is used double that number again. But haste was aging every character by 1 year. So our archer, to use that many haste spells and potions would have to be an elf. Unfortunately, unless the elf had an 18.00 strength score, he would be limited to 5th or 6th level... or not even enough to fire more than two arrows. So the elven archer would, at his max level, able to shoot four arrows. Great.

The human counter part would fare better. Assuming the same strength 18.51, the above example can be viable. Unfortunately, haste ages a characters. By the age of 61, the character now has 16 Strength and is near retirement. A human character can use haste a total of 40 times assuming a starting age 21. And even before then, some of the penalties for aging would be affecting the character in adverse ways.

Potions of youth could postpone this by 10 years per potions (or 10 haste effects). The haste trick would not have been used in any long campaigns. Making it a moot point. A possibility, but hardly a common tactics. And so subjective to dispel even then.

The same logic would apply to melee characters.
Just the sheer amount of high end magic item required for such a happening is astronomical. And if only one character is boosted that way, a simple dome of force would be more than enough to shut down such a boosted character while the other players would get toasted. Even a force cage would do the "trick".

I am starting to believe that our friend here was in a Monty Haul campaign...

Edit: Replaced the word dex for strength.

 

[S'mon]

I don't know about official 5e adventures, but I've not had any problem running 5e with high level PCs - 16th-19th in one group. 13th-16th in another. There are situationally OP spells, notably Dimension Door, but the game certainly works vastly better than high level 3e/PF. I don't use the DMG encounter builder but I can certainly challenge my PCs with monsters that normally give appropriate-looking XP awards.

 

[S'mon]

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.

None of the other editions worked "out of the box" either, though. Not at high level. 4e post-MM3
came closest, but has its own problems. 5e sits between 3e & 4e in terms of tweaking required.

 

[S'mon]

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.

I use XP as-is at high level with no problem. I increase challenge by having more monsters/not
using the XP budget calculator. A horde of CR 5 creatures can challenge 15th level PCs, with a
moderate BTB XP award.

 

[Tony Vargas]

None of the other editions worked "out of the box" either, though. Not at high level. 4e post-MM3
came closest, but has its own problems. 5e sits between 3e & 4e in terms of tweaking required.

'Right out the box' D&D is typically played at low level, anyway...

 

[Eric V]

Lots of monsters that were tougher in previous editions are weaker now; Marilith is really just one (good) example. Got to set aside previous expectations, I guess. It's too bad, though; some old favourites really got neutered (Babau, I hardly knew ye).

5e is my edition of choice, but monsters is where I feel they really took a step backwards from previous editions. At least someone (I am really sorry, I can't remember who) did a 4e-style all-in-one-block reformatting of a lot of spellcasting monsters, and that helps.

The issue for me (and a few others, I'm sure) is that for all the talk of being a great tactician, the Marilith does less for her troops than a Hobgoblin warlord, as far as the game is concerned. That's weird to me.

 

[Celebrim]

I am starting to believe that our friend here was in a Monty Haul campaign...

First of all, I was in several different games with different styles and different assumptions about play. Secondly, the treasure and ability scores and the like I'm describing are in the same scale as the pregenerated characters in "Isle of the Ape", which you claimed familiarity with and called out as a good example of high level 1e play. Granted, the characters are for the most part poorly designed given the amount of XP and ability scores that they have, and for the same XP, same abilities, and same equipment you could have a much more potent party, but it's still in the same scale of what I'm talking about. Thirdly, if you read the thread, I note that in practice rarely will high level characters have everything that they want, but that if characters can generate even 1/2 of the damage in my examples, then 6-8 characters can kill pretty much every published monster in one round. Even half of my examples results in a party of 6-8 doing around 300 damage a round to almost anything. Fourthly, going back to your example of "Isle of the Ape", to obtain that degree of challenge all of the following occurred:

a) Gygax gave all of the NPC's basically maximum hit points per level (for example, shamans had 10 hit points per HD) and cheesed the demographics to insane levels.
b) Gygax invented new rules, publishing a much needed extension to the monster 'to hit' table that took the table beyond 16HD, given high HD monsters some ability to hit high AC PC's. (Note the AC's of the PC's run from about -4 to -8, which would generally mean even 12HD monsters would struggle to generate a meaningful amount of damage).
c) Gygax created a dungeon in a special demiplane that can destroy the PCs gear eliminating at a stroke much of the advantage that PC's can expect to have over foes. And like many demiplanes, it has its own laws regarding magic that eliminate some of the more potent end game spells and strategies that PC's might otherwise have access to. The environment also forces extremely high spell attrition on the party, forcing them to rely on magic for most essentials and leaving few spells in reserve for combat. Essentially everything is worse than the worst natural environment described in the DMG.
d) Gygax published new more potent monsters (the Gargantuan Apes) as well as questionably balanced spells ('serpent missiles' and 'log to lizard') to give NPC's more fighting punch.

In short, Gygax did basically the sort of creative things that I said a DM would have to do to challenge a high level party at the end of my essay I linked to and Gygax had in mind what a high level party would look like that looks very much like what I have described.

As for the rest, of your comments, read the freaking rules. By your own calculations an archer can fire for 24 damage per arrow when within 30'. On page 18 of the Unearthed Arcana it clearly shows that a 13th level fighter or ranger specialized in the bow can fire 4 arrows per round, which is an average damage of about 91 damage per round assuming hit on a 2 or better (which for most monsters is reasonable). That's one character out of 6, without having to pop haste and burn a year of age or anything you might do if facing off against a BBEG. Six characters with similar process will therefore do like 540 damage per round. Again, even if we assume the characters are half as effective as what you consider the optimal case, that is still 270 damage per round - enough to one shot Demogorgon or Asmodeus, or enough to kill multiple 16HD creatures per round.