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

[Celebrim]

1e was viable for high level campaign. 5e is also viable. Both requires some work to make it work.

As far as I can tell, that's exactly what is being claimed by people like CapnZapp and myself, just slightly reworded. What is being raised is the idea that 5e is not viable for high level play using the published guidelines and as such requires that a DM do some work to make it viable. And by "some work" we seem to agree that it is an amount of work similar to what was needed to make 1e work above 10th level or so.

As for Isle of the Ape, you seem to be missing the central point, which is that Isle of the Ape pretty much proves that "some work" was required. Gygax's answer doesn't in fact prove the complaints wrong, as among other things it made rule changes to the game. All it does is show that you can continue to challenge high level characters provided you are willing to do things that the published material to that point didn't really do.

In all my years, in all my groups, I never met a single group that I could not shut down.

There is nothing less interesting for a DM to claim than that. The resources of a DM are infinite. The contest is not only rigged in the DMs favor, but the DM gets to make up all the rules of the contest. So there is no contest. If you are ever struggling to challenge your PC's it's because you don't really want to do so, either because you have a deep seated fear that doing so wouldn't be "fair" or a deep seated fear of being rejected if you do so. But no one is impressed by a DMs ability to defeat players. Of course someone with infinite resources and complete metagame knowledge can find a counter to everything.

Globe of invulnerability, Force cage, Wall (dome) of force and so many others to count.

Maybe so, but the number of published enemies for 1e capable of casting those spells probably could be counted on one hand. There might be something interesting to say about turning the tactics of the players against them, in the same way at low level a great reliance on burning oil might be met with enemies that employed burning oil. But one thing is certain, citing the fact that you could counter a high level character with globe of invulnerability, force cage, or wall of force in no fashion shows that 1e was viable out of the box and explained to the DM how to design appropriate challenges for high level parties so that DMs could walk that fine line you talk about. That highly experienced DMs could do so has been denied by no one.

 

[Oofta]

As far as I can tell, that's exactly what is being claimed by people like CapnZapp and myself, just slightly reworded. What is being raised is the idea that 5e is not viable for high level play using the published guidelines and as such requires that a DM do some work to make it viable. And by "some work" we seem to agree that it is an amount of work similar to what was needed to make 1e work above 10th level or so.

Yet I'm still waiting for an explanation of how it is you think they could have accomplished this perfectly balanced system some people seem to expect. One that magically works exactly for their particular group, and how many encounters they have between short and long rests. Without ending in constant TPKs for the newbie group using the basic rules.

What other option is there? I think it's appropriate to aim towards a low threshold because that's where most new DMs start. Experienced DMs know (or should know) that they have to tailor encounters to their groups, especially at higher levels.

 

[Tony Vargas]

What's the point of high level play if the DM has to eliminate all the bonuses of higher levels?]

Players get a sense of being 'really better,' between getting all those perks and losing them. Typically, back in the day, the DM may have been getting a sense of something in that same period that inspired him to 'eliminate' a few things...

 

[MichaelSomething]

He is refering to the Gygaxian method as an answer to uncontroled campaign (Monty Haul). That is you create a dungeon/adventure/demi-plane or whatever you need to completely shut down the players. Be it a place where such and such spells do not work or magic items will slowly decay or simply won't work to a group of special individual specially fitted to kill the group by playing on its weaknesses.. It is not an elegant playstyle but it can work to create artificial challenge to get rid of a Monty Haul problem.

What he said. Also here is a relevant Order of the Stick Comic; because there's always a relevant Order of the Stick Comic.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0837.html

 

[Helldritch]

She's also a lot smarter than a hobgoblin warlord. Which means she can and should come up with better tactical use of the creatures under her. It's the DM's job to use everything under her description, and not just use defined abilities while ignoring all the rest. Why some people can't grasp, or refuse to admit that is beyond me.

Yep, but then again, low level demons are not noted for their brain power. Hobgoblins are disciplined willing to listen to orders while demons are quite the opposite. That is why the marilith needs both intelligence and strength to keep her troops in check.

Personally, I think it's a huge fallacy to assume "advancements from edition to edition" are automatically better than the previous edition. They aren't. Calling them "advancements" is just an opinion. Other people think of them as faults. Just like new Coke was not an advancement over regular coke just because it replaced the previous recipe. And how did that work out? It's also inherently contradictory. I.e., by that logic, then since 5e is the most recent, then the "advancements" in 5e are inherently better than previous editions. So that line of argument falls flat on several levels. What it comes down to, is someone defining an "advancement" by what they personally like on a line they personally and arbitrarily drew between editions, but they are trying to position it as some sort of objective gaming advancement when it's not.

Did you really brought the New Coke in this trend??????? (at least it's a good example of a company not listening to its fanbase...)

But you're right on that. Not every advancements in every edition was great. Some were bad, others were good. And speaking of advancement, 5e is in some ways, a step back from the direction D&D was taking. 5e is mostly good, again that is my opinion. So I guess we have to go to which edition sold better so far. We know the winner of that already.

Then again we could use the longest lived selling edition. So far 1e wins. We have to see how 5ed will fare on that front.

5e like its predecessor has pros and cons attached to it. What I like is that you can do almost anything with it and it will hold out if you know what you're doing.

 

[Helldritch]

As far as I can tell, that's exactly what is being claimed by people like CapnZapp and myself, just slightly reworded. What is being raised is the idea that 5e is not viable for high level play using the published guidelines and as such requires that a DM do some work to make it viable. And by "some work" we seem to agree that it is an amount of work similar to what was needed to make 1e work above 10th level or so.

Just no. Read the trend again. The work I am refering to is the kind of work any DM should do. I am not talking about a whole rewrite of the game as you seem to imply.

As for Isle of the Ape, you seem to be missing the central point, which is that Isle of the Ape pretty much proves that "some work" was required. Gygax's answer doesn't in fact prove the complaints wrong, as among other things it made rule changes to the game. All it does is show that you can continue to challenge high level characters provided you are willing to do things that the published material to that point didn't really do.

Are you sure you read my post? Isle of the ape is a way to counter a Monty haul campaign. It can also be used as is in a normal campaign. Which is good Gygaxian design. Your campaign is out of control and you don't want to appear a push over DM? Use Isle of the ape. Success is almost assured. (the meaning of success is in the mind of the beholder however...)

There is nothing less interesting for a DM to claim than that. The resources of a DM are infinite. The contest is not only rigged in the DMs favor, but the DM gets to make up all the rules of the contest. So there is no contest. If you are ever struggling to challenge your PC's it's because you don't really want to do so, either because you have a deep seated fear that doing so wouldn't be "fair" or a deep seated fear of being rejected if you do so. But no one is impressed by a DMs ability to defeat players. Of course someone with infinite resources and complete metagame knowledge can find a counter to everything.

Again you missed the point. The goal was to do it with ressources a lot less powerful than the players. Or to replay encounters with another DM (me) to show how to play. So nope, no infinite resources to kill them. Just what they had already done or with simply things that they should be destroying with ease. Remember that these were Monty haul campaigns. I just showed them how it could play out with a different DM. I am not a push over DM. I am quite generous but I play fair. Both for the players and the monsters.

Maybe so, but the number of published enemies for 1e capable of casting those spells probably could be counted on one hand. There might be something interesting to say about turning the tactics of the players against them, in the same way at low level a great reliance on burning oil might be met with enemies that employed burning oil. But one thing is certain, citing the fact that you could counter a high level character with globe of invulnerability, force cage, or wall of force in no fashion shows that 1e was viable out of the box and explained to the DM how to design appropriate challenges for high level parties so that DMs could walk that fine line you talk about. That highly experienced DMs could do so has been denied by no one.

(Check the underline)Ho well... check the 1e Forgotten Realms campaign guide... Check the DMG...
And if you think that these spells (globe of invulnerability, force cage, or wall of force) are not a way, out of the box, to shut down players because no one can cast these spells... I'll just have to say no again. I don't think that it is written in the rules that only the players can cast these spells. Right in the DM you can encounter high level parties that can cast these spells.

to BOLD.
Not directly, but it was implied. You need time to be an adequate DM. You need even more time to be a good DM. And you need quite a lot of time to be really good at it. You can't expect to be up to all challenges at all time as a DM.

You're good my friend I can tell that just by reading you. I appreciate your interventions because they make me (us?) think harder and for that I thank you greatly. I really like that. But your views are strangely tainted. Defending and debunking the same topic from trend to trend. I think you like to stir the brew in the pot a wee bit to much my friend.

 

[Eric V]

She is. Given the kind of troops she has. She is working miracles.

Come on. I did use the word 'tangibly.' There is no in-game effect she has for her troops, unlike a lot of other military leader types in the MM and VGTM. If they had just described her as a brute or shock trooper in this edition, it would be much less of an issue.

Oh and spare me the INT score argument. WotC themselves admit it has no effect on CR unless it increases damage somehow. I call bull on anyone who claims they know how to properly differentiate tactics between a 14 INT creature and a 17 INT creature; usually such people have an over-inflated sense of their own INT score...

It is a good step back. The sales proves that.

The sales prove that having over-simplified monsters and CR guidelines that don't really work was a good move? Come on, man, there's some serious logic issues with that. I tend to think 5e is doing really well for lots of other reasons myself; making monsters into bag-o-hp and not providing all the relevant info in their stat blocks (a nightmare editing issue for spell-using monsters) are not amongst them.

 

[Helldritch]

Come on. I did use the word 'tangibly.' There is no in-game effect she has for her troops, unlike a lot of other military leader types in the MM and VGTM. If they had just described her as a brute or shock trooper in this edition, it would be much less of an issue.

1e marilith had nothing to help her troop. 5e marilith has nothing to help her. There is a follow up here. The marilith simply doesn't care about her troop. Why would she? There millions upon millions where they came from. They were just the "unlucky" that got forced into an army.

Oh and spare me the INT score argument. WotC themselves admit it has no effect on CR unless it increases damage somehow. I call bull on anyone who claims they know how to properly differentiate tactics between a 14 INT creature and a 17 INT creature; usually such people have an over-inflated sense of their own INT score....

Do no go that route. It looks too much like a personal attack. You are better than that.

The sales prove that having over-simplified monsters and CR guidelines that don't really work was a good move? Come on, man, there's some serious logic issues with that. I tend to think 5e is doing really well for lots of other reasons myself; making monsters into bag-o-hp and not providing all the relevant info in their stat blocks (a nightmare editing issue for spell-using monsters) are not amongst them..

The popularity of a game IS a good indicator of wheter it is liked or not. The reasons for this can be many. What you like maybe I dislike and so can the reverse be true. The both of us could even like same parts of the game but for totaly different reasons. The bag of hp was a simple solution to low AC. You can increase it if you feel the need to.

As I said earlier, the mariliths in 1e were not single solo monsters. That is a thing that 2e but mainly 3e and 4e brought in. In 1e you could see up to 6 of them together and if the dungeon you encountered them in was higher than a dungeon level VIII; you could encounter up to triple that number (dungeon level X). Exception of the balor, all demons in 1e were meant to be met in masses. You were supposed to slay demons by the dozens. 5e took a small step toward that direction. It is not a fully retro thing far from that. But it is a small step toward 1e. I am glad they did not went full way back to 1e. They did kept a few things from 3e and 4e and that is great. Some others were left out for a reason.

Not everything is perfect in this edition; nothing ever is.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Do no go that route. It looks too much like a personal attack. You are better than that.

Two things. 1. There is a difference between a 14 and 18. It's the difference between pretty smart and genius. And as a DM, I would very much take that into account. As I said in that other tread on the topic, since I don't consider myself a genius, how I would handle it in the game is to do prepare work. Look up and jot down ideas from resources that are geniuses (like tactics used historically by genius generals, or read up on effective tactics, etc). Create a list of ways she would handle various scenarios that come up so I don't need to come up with them on the fly. I wouldn't do that with a hobgoblin warlord, because with my own background in tactical combat (military experience and history buff), I feel I can effectively run a 14 INT hobgoblin with accurate representation of "pretty smart" on my own without assistance. So if you want a real life example on the difference INT makes and how it translates into a game, there you go. It's the difference between a hobgoblin warlord setting up a phalanx and positioning his troops, and a marilith who sees who to use the environment in creative ways (traps) that most other people won't see, and her being able to identify the strengths, weaknesses, and tactics used by her enemies a lot sooner than the hobgoblin would, and adjust accordingly (which, as I also noted in the other thread, very much impacts the challenge of the encounter).

2. Did WoTC come out and say that INT should have no bearing on CR? I have not seen that. Can someone point me to that tweet or comment?

 

[Eric V]

1e marilith had nothing to help her troop. 5e marilith has nothing to help her. There is a follow up here. The marilith simply doesn't care about her troop. Why would she? There millions upon millions where they came from. They were just the "unlucky" that got forced into an army.

...so the line about them having a "finely honed sense of tactics" and their high INT score has no tangible effect then, right? Which is what I've been saying. Then why have you been arguing with me about this fact? Jeez!

From 2e to 3e, the Marilith had abilities to help it function as the tactician it supposedly is. 4e reduced all those abilities, true, but made it a lvl 24 Elite, making it more likely to be used as a BBEG. Now, it does not have any tangible leader-type abilities, nor can it realistically function as a BBEG. But at least it's a bag of hit points now.

Worth noting that, between its psionics and spell-like abilities, even the 1e Marilith was better suited to its supposed role than the 5e one.