D&D 5E Is 5e "Easy Mode?"

[dave2008]

9. Tailor the terrain and the environmental effects to the monsters’ benefit. You should be doing this already, but it is surprising how often even veteran DMs forget to do it.
10. Have your monsters (especially sentient ones) use smart tactics.

Agreed, but those are edition agnostic and as you state, good practice regardless of difficulty.

 

[Garthanos]

And even though this is true, it really isn't a massive issue. Most of these "knock-on" effects are either corner cases or really easy to spot. Nothing to difficult to adjust if you really want to.

Seems potentially very very broad given how many spells and class abilities the game has admittedly fewer than some editions but I disagree but then again I did not know about the fear effect infinite loop until yesterday or so.

The real goal is not even to make one character style better at this. Its to make movement a more difficult and interesting choice its combined with rules like flanking and similar.

Additionally note in 4e every single character/creature had opportunity attacks that worked that way and if you are trying to make moving around the battle less trivial more of an interesting choice with risks.... Perhaps its better if its only rushing past a specialist in quantity is dangerous or maybe anyone with an extra attack can do extra opportunity ones too.

Regardless just slopping several of these minor somethings in place seems entirely capable of building ok not quite pun pun...

And actually, there is a RAW version of this in the Tunnel Fighter Fighting style from the UA a few years back, so it is something that was considered to be added into the game.

It was massively tossed aside from the looks of it and showing in seriously nerfed form in the Cavalier basically because it can have broad reaching effects

And to a degree that the Cavalier is pretty much worse at everything it does in comparison to a 4e battlemaster, Multiple-marks of enemies that arent even directly adjacent was possible at level 1 with an at-will ability. (ooh ah something everyone could do is now an end game ability of a specialty build also just doesnt impress me)

Yes they chose to not to make that Tunnel fighter more than a online experimental thing... I think because it would have propagation that is far more extreme because other rules like fear inducing quasi-voluntary movement were not designed with it in mind.

And even so it doesnt give me a generally trickier to navigate battle field.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Seems potentially very very broad given how many spells and class abilities the game has I disagree but I did not know about the fear effect infinite loop until yesterday or so.

The real goal is not even to make one character style better at this. Its to make movement a more difficult and interesting choice its combined with rules like flanking and similar.

Additionally note in 4e every single character/creature had opportunity attacks that worked that way and if you are trying to make moving around the battle less trivial more of an interesting choice with risks.... Perhaps its better if its only rushing past a specialist in quantity is dangerous or maybe anyone with an extra attack can do extra opportunity ones too.

Regardless just slopping several of these minor somethings in place seems entirely capable of building ok not quite pun pun...


It was massively tossed aside from the looks of it and showing in seriously nerfed form in the Cavalier basically because it can have broad reaching effects(ooh ah something everyone could do is now an end game ability of a specialty build just doesnt impress me)

And to a degree that the Cavalier is pretty much worse at everything it does in comparison to a 4e battlemaster, Multiple-marks of enemies that arent even directly adjacent was possible at level 1 with an at-will ability.

Yes they chose to not to make that Tunnel fighter more than a online experimental thing... I think because it would have propagation that is far more extreme because other rules like fear inducing quasi-voluntary movement were not designed with it in mind.

And even so it doesnt give me a generally trickier to navigate battle field.

Sorry, I was being unclear.

The abilites have exsited, so you can look up the discussions around those abilities to see if there were any major issues that you need to plug up from giving multiple attacks of opportunity to every player.

As to the fear infinite loop... I don't think it is infinite. Even the most permissive version of multiple attacks of opportunity only allow you to hit a single target a single time per turn. Unless you can figure out a way to get an enemy running back and forth past your fighter multiple times a turn, I don't think you will get more than one attack.

Also, the Fear spell specifies "by the safest route available" so unless you are in a 15 ft tunnel, they will move around the fighter to prevent getting AoO from them.

 

[Garthanos]

As to the fear infinite loop... I don't think it is infinite. Even the most permissive version of multiple attacks of opportunity only allow you to hit a single target a single time per turn. Unless you can figure out a way to get an enemy running back and forth past your fighter multiple times a turn, I don't think you will get more than one attack.

Slight exaggeration of infinite but it really could be damn close
Sentinel ... feat. (maybe a polearm mastery for a bit more)
Whenever you hit a creature with an opportunity attack, its speed drops to 0 for the rest of the turn. This stops any movement they may have been taking.

• Creatures within your reach provoke opportunity attacks even if they took the Disengage action.

• When a creature within your reach makes an attack against a target other than you (and that target doesn't have this feat), you can use your reaction to make a melee weapon attack against the attacking creature.

 

[Garthanos]

Sorry, I was being unclear.

The ability have existed, so you can look up the discussions around those abilities to see if there were any major issues that you need to plug up from giving multiple attacks of opportunity to every player.

Yes that part does provide some feedback about potential issues others have found

 

[Lanefan]

Long rests stay the same, but 90 percent of my adventures have the PC's on the Doom clock (save the princess/ stop the ritual/ destroy-recover-locate the macguffin/ escape the dungeon/ stop the BBEG by [time X] or else [failure condition Y] happens), so it's not an issue for me.

I find that using the Doom Clock idea gets old if overused. Also unless it's a different Clock deadline for each adventure, bang goes any hope of significant downtime for the PCs.

It also means I dont have to think ahead and provide 2-3 convenient places to hole up for an hour in every damn adventure I come up with.

It's not on you to provide these, it's on the PCs to carve them out for themselves. The only thing you might want to do sometimes is let them hold the ground they've taken for long enough to get an hour's rest in.

 

[tetrasodium]

Or Save or A Lot of Poison Damage.

• Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 1 piercing damage, and the target must make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw, taking 5 (2d4) poison damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
• Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 1 piercing damage, and the target must make a DC 15 Constitution saving throw, taking 5 (2d4) poison damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
• Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 1 piercing damage, and the target must make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw, taking 14 (4d6) poison damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
• Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 1 piercing damage, and the target must make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw. being slain on a failed save, or taking 21d4) poision damage on a successful one.
• Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 1 piercing damage, and the target must make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw, taking 5 (2d4) poison damage and is blinded for 1 round on a failed save or taking half as much damage on a successful one.
• Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 1 piercing damage, and the target must make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw, being poisoned on a failed save. A creature poisoned by the snake's bite takes 2d4 poison damage at the start of each turn. At the end of each turn, a creature can make the save to remove the poison.

They may have been SoD in ad&d (I don't remember & looking it up seems superfluous to my point). 3.5 snakes were scary in other ways from 5e snakes

Spoiler: "3.5 dangernoodles!

View attachment 120468
View attachment 120467

That con damage made them pretty scary without resorting to save or die. for a very high con character will be around 20 give or take & likely not much higher at most. It recovers 1 point a day or 1d4 points with a prepared lesser restoration that probably won't be prepared & would certainly be a much more weighty cost than 5e because of spell prep vrs spontanious

Why would a DM change the rest cycle from a daily basis, but not change the magic item renewal cycle?
Or just use the "Wands that don't recharge" variant option from the DMG alongside it?

Page 272 of the DMG.

That's a great question How could someone think such a rule was complete and not mention that or any of the other problems I raised before printing it if there was any goal other than straight up munchkinism.

The rule doesn't need to change any of that, it is just changing HD healing. It does not change the rest mechanics. Perhaps you are thinking about the variant rest mechanics? Combine this with requiring a healing kit and you have a much more dangerous campaign, IME. Have you tried, because I have.


Injuries, DMG 272 w/ "Lingering Injuries" table

I mentioned save or die in one sentence, that comment was not about that specific type of mechanic, if you missed that, I suggest your read it again. However, I said monster stats are discrete rules modules, just add the more difficult parts of older editions you like. Done.

I don't disagree the game defaults to the easier (meaning less deadly) side. I just find it trivially easy to challenge my players. If you can't that is ok, some DMs can handle deadly 5e and some can't.

However, how many options have you tried? I ask because my group has tried a lot. In fact, we got to a point that was too deadly (using lingering injuries from the DMG was part of that experiment) and had to dial it back. Eventually we found a sweet spot that works for us.

Yes, I've even posted about it before, including earlier in this thread

• Healer's kit dependency & Slow natural healing Back with prepared vancian spell casting/slots this would be pretty significant... in 5e though it means that I've literally seen one player scold a second player for "wasting healers kit charges & hit dice" rather than letting her burn some of the spell slots & abilities that her & the paladin are about to recover. This is an attempt to bring back some thought & gravity to recovering hp & hp attrition , but at 3 pounds for 10 charges & the overly gracious encumbrance limits removing any painful choices for carrying a few heal kits. End result was hat it's just kinda pointless once you factor in the impact of spontaneous casting heal spells/slot recovery ease. I bet it works o if you have no healers in the party or you remove/somehow limit other forms of healing to interact with it like in 4e.. but in a normal party it just cranks the dial up a few notches with 5e as written.
• Gritty Realism: I talked about this earlier as did many others through various threads. Not only is it a spitball of a rule, It was never developed beyond the wet cocktail napkin happy hour scribbles. It certainly doesn't help that they called it gritty realism seemingly without understanding what that is when they made this variant rule to mimic the power scale of the upper tier greek gods unless you as the gm go through a lot of work balancing the problems I previously raised with it against each other. There was also the problematic fact that seven short rests were pretty much baked into a week. Finding a god balance between the needs of long & short rest classes was difficult since forced march and other problems stemming from the party staying up for days on end is the alternative to 7 short rests per long rest. Short/long rest classes are very much not designed for that many short rests per long rest. I did not not bring up those problems because they were trivial
• Epic heroism seems pretty contrary to doing anything but cranking the power up massively.
• Healing Surges I've given out healing potions that burn & return 2hd+2, which is less than & more limited than the up to half hd+(con*number if hit dice spent), the intention was to make the action economy cost of taking a potion in combat more attractive, the results were that players would wait until they looked pretty similar to monty python's black knight before scarfing them down & immediately push for a short/long rest after the fight because bob was beat up so badly. Healing surges would be even more generous & quick to recover than the very generous potion allotment I gave them during that campaign. It worked fine for casters & other non-frontline types who might chug them because of a stray fireball or something eating their face, but for frontline types it was a mess
  
  Spoiler: said generosity

  
• Lingering Injuries: I've not used it, but there was some discussion of similar being used in another system earlier & I've used similar in the past while running into the same kind of overly maimed problems noted there. Odds are good that I will use it at some point down the line whev we all get done with self quarantining & social distancing ourselves, but more because I tend to run eberron & eberron-like settings/campaigns and had been considering looking for a rule like that to "encourage" the use of prosthetics since inflicting a limb loss on a pc after a "what.. really?... are you suuuure that you really want to do that?" followed by what was either a crit from an npc or crit fail on the PC's part a year or two back.

Since we are drifting into things that have been tried... I have used an

Spoiler: equipment decay system

& it worked fairly well for a darksun kinda feel even if that wasn't quite what I was hoping for from it.

Spoiler: Ammunition dice

worked extremely well even for things like magic item charges. Orders of magnitude better than recharging magic items & in some ways even better than static nonreplenishing charges since players couldn't bank on how many more were left. Even things like 1d6 of slaying or +N arrows would get used rather than the traditional state of being forgotten because it was never a time desperate enough to justify using them. I've also used a slot based inventory from the same source that was simpler than stock andworked very well at putting some gravity into choices like "should we carry X or bring several extra Y?" without being too strict for characters to equip themselves.

 

[Lanefan]

5e isn't as tunable as 4e, but probably better than the pre 3e versions.

I disagree.

0-1-2e were very tunable. The main difference is in which direction. 0-1-2e were very simple to tune to make them easier on the players/PCs, but difficult to tune to make them any harder without risking a TPK at any moment. The default starting point is 'difficult' for the players/PCs.

4-5e are the opposite: they're tunable to make the game harder on the players/PCs but the default starting point is 'easy' in comparison to the older editions.

 

[Garthanos]

• Lingering Injuries: I've not used it, but there was some discussion of similar being used in another system earlier & I've used similar in the past while running into the same kind of overly maimed problems noted there. Odds are good that I will use it at some point down the line whev we all get done with self quarantining & social distancing ourselves, but more because I tend to run eberron & eberron-like settings/campaigns and had been considering looking for a rule like that to "encourage" the use of prosthetics since inflicting a limb loss on a pc after a "what.. really?... are you suuuure that you really want to do that?" followed by what was either a crit from an npc or crit fail on the PC's part a year or two back.

Prosthetics also have a neat place in Ancient Celtic Style campaigns... Nuada of the Silver hand being a big noticeable example it was a big deal to them that the best healers could do awesome things like that it wasn't something some priest would just pray away. They also had giants with death ray vision and other elements that could make a D&D campaign ripple with style.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I disagree.

0-1-2e were very tunable. The main difference is in which direction. 0-1-2e were very simple to tune to make them easier on the players/PCs, but difficult to tune to make them any harder without risking a TPK at any moment. The default starting point is 'difficult' for the players/PCs.

4-5e are the opposite: they're tunable to make the game harder on the players/PCs but the default starting point is 'easy' in comparison to the older editions.

There's the answer. Can we end the thread now?