D&D 5E Is 5e the Least-Challenging Edition of D&D?

[Oofta]

You misunderstand. 6-8 encounters every day shifts the game into directions that are problematic to story & setting... Pointing out how someone died in your game to a save or die effect underscores rather than contradicts my point though since I've been saying those effects are the only thing that poke the fear buttons on the player's lizardbrains. Just like when I mentioned playing games & sports with a toddler, I can do things to make it interesting & adjust the difficulty but I have many more options to functionally do so than MMA reenactments like disintegrate or accidentally/intentionally tripping him to drop hp to 0 then just stomp the body a few times (knock out, first first two death saves with a repeated attack, do it again). People are not ragging on 5e because it's hard to kill a PC, that's happening because you need to use save or die monsters or homebrew & houserule in the ability to ever scare or give pause to a player unless you run a murderhobo zerghunt. Things are not helped by the fact that an overly streamlined system means lateral advancements that don't change a PC's power level are mostly off the table

I have no problem getting between 5-10 encounters between long rests, and no the group are not murder hobos. For my style of game I use the alternate long rest rules*, but the last couple of sessions I've had to go out of my way to even give them a short rest (overnight).

I also have adventure days regularly span a couple of sessions. As far as putting the fear of god into them, I don't think it's always necessary to have the players on the brink of a TPK. Having it happen every once in a while is a lot more fun.

In my last session (random encounter during a short rest) a wraith popped in, critted and nearly turned the PC into a fellow wraith with one hit. She spent the rest of the session with single digit HP since there was a deadline and they had to press on. It was actually a pretty brutal session, I had multiple encounters with PCs on the ropes no custom monsters or house rules in sight for this one.

So if 5E isn't challenging enough, maybe it's not the fault of the rules. At least it isn't for my group.

*I could easily tweak the timelines to follow standard rest rules, but I run a very investigation/RP heavy game so longer rests work better from a story POV.

 

[tetrasodium]

I have given three possible approaches in this thread to dealing with the 6-8 encounters per day recommendation:

1. Chain together encounters so that players use more resources in a single extended combat. A mini-dungeon with four rooms is potentially four encounters, for example.
2. Make the encounters harder or less predictable so that players remain interested.
3. Stop worrying about the 6-8 number and just do what makes sense for the story. This, frankly, is my preferred solution, but I get that it won't work for every table.

... But you don't seem to like any of these ideas, and I'm not sure what it is you want. You say that save-or-die is the only thing that scares your players, but you don't want to use save-or-die.

Help me out, here: what would an ideal adventuring day look like, to you? Two or three combats where the players are scared of losing characters in each one, but not because of save-or-die effects?


First, why is "poking the fear button" so important? Do you have the sort of players who get bored unless they think their characters might die?

Second, why is save-or-die the only thing that scares them? What about monsters that dish out large amounts of damage? Would they work?

Third, my main point was that fights aren't always predictable. There are other things besides disintegration that can affect the flow of a fight; I just picked that because it was an easy and concrete example. I remember a long thread about whether a banshee's wail was OP, for example. Or take dragon breath. If the dragon goes first, that's a very different fight from one where the dragon goes last.


Okay, so if you feel like you have lots of options to make things interesting and adjust the difficulty, then what's the problem? Are we back to "it's no fun if the players aren't scared"?

I feel like you are being deliberately obtuse and ignoring everything that's been said already in the thread by myself & others, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Save or die is the only scary thing in 5e because short of gross negligence or the gm deliberately taking steps to kill someone by attacking them while bleeding out there is zero risk. Something bad happen?... take a long rest, not only is t gone but your hp & spell slots too are all back. Get critted by a neutronium golem? Dragon breath?... even dragons with 16d10 breath attacks only recharge it on a 5 or six & only have one action> "and I'm down">'"tis but a scratch" Healing word & shrug off another next round... can't Healing word?.. >"no problem I've got 2 hp, I'll use my action to give him a potion enema or something. taking care of cultists/gang members/etc?...well there are going to be dozens in each cell/gang & they are going to all have notable combat capabilities so officials will look the other way when you murder half the town because anything other than murderhobo trek is badwrongfun.. Either every town is fallujah with the bad guys blatantly in control or somehow nobody notices that there are gangs in compton. It makes pulpy or gritty difficult things to achieve & does bad things to the story un;ess campy murderhobo or beyond mythic level struggles are your goal.

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

Having played every edition from Black Box/Rules Cyclopedia and 2nd Edition AD&D through 5E:

Yes, 5e RAW is the least challenging edition.

But it is like D&D with training wheels - unlike previous editions, which were generally written to be run in a given way, 5E was intended to be moddable and put power back in the hands of the DM to start, and I gather that it's intended that those training wheels can be removed as easily as they can be pulled off a bicycle.

I don't think this was a bad thing at all. I remember edition warring with a friend in person after I rapidly came to dislike 4e - he told me the problem with previous editions was "1st level characters could die falling off a horse! Who wants to play such weak characters and die all the time? I want to be a hero right out of the gate..."

He had a point. Now, I didn't dislike that element of 4e - in fact it was one of the few things I liked about it (and my complaints regarding the games "powers" was a general feeling of saminess about them, gaminess/disconnection of mechanics from narrative, weaker emergent gameplay... it just didn't work for me as a tabletop RPG. Cool tactical squad combat system, though.)

So what I really like about 5e is that it almost feels like "difficulty mode" settings are built into it. Maybe they should be made a bit more explicit than the DMG currently does, but I like the way that I can crank it up and down as a DM. So far I've been running just RAW (+ feats + MC), the party is mostly 3rd-4th level, and we've had 2 character deaths and 2 near TPKs in the past 12 sessions. That's just about the level of danger that I like. As we get deeper into mid to high levels, I'm probably going to crank things up a bit more - I'm going to add all the combat options in the DMG, plus the Kobold Press "Beyond Damage Dice" system, and it's also likely we'll switch to week-long long rests as well. But to date none of this has been necessary to keep my players on their toes.

 

[Stoutstien]

An other solution for the 6-8 encounter threshold per long rest is to slow time progression down in a session so they LR once every other one instead of trying to shove them in.
2-3 encounters per short rest is a lot more manageable.

 

[Oofta]

I feel like you are being deliberately obtuse and ignoring everything that's been said already in the thread by myself & others, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Save or die is the only scary thing in 5e ...

Well, you're ignoring responses that say that other DMs have no issue challenging players. But you're stating an absolute - that it can only be done this way 100% of the time. Since others don't have the same issue, your absolutism is not correct.

The default calculations are geared towards the low end of the power curve, which I think is correct. If you ignore the other guidelines on how to challenge players, the game is not at fault.

 

[TwoSix]

Save or die is the only scary thing in 5e because short of gross negligence or the gm deliberately taking steps to kill someone by attacking them while bleeding out there is zero risk. Something bad happen?... take a long rest, not only is t gone but your hp & spell slots too are all back. Get critted by a neutronium golem? Dragon breath?... even dragons with 16d10 breath attacks only recharge it on a 5 or six & only have one action> "and I'm down">'"tis but a scratch" Healing word & shrug off another next round... can't Healing word?.. >"no problem I've got 2 hp, I'll use my action to give him a potion enema or something. taking care of cultists/gang members/etc?...well there are going to be dozens in each cell/gang & they are going to all have notable combat capabilities so officials will look the other way when you murder half the town because anything other than murderhobo trek is badwrongfun.. Either every town is fallujah with the bad guys blatantly in control or somehow nobody notices that there are gangs in compton. It makes pulpy or gritty difficult things to achieve & does bad things to the story un;ess campy murderhobo or beyond mythic level struggles are your goal.

Obviously the only thing scarier than a neutronium golem is the paragraph fairy.

 

[jayoungr]

Save or die is the only scary thing in 5e because short of gross negligence or the gm deliberately taking steps to kill someone by attacking them while bleeding out there is zero risk.

I disagree with this, and I have given several examples of reasons for my disagreement. I have experienced risky combats, both as a player and as a DM, that did not use save-or-die effects. I've seen PCs instakilled by dragon breath. I've had the bad guy charm half the PCs and complete her ritual. I've been in a party that actually retreated from a fight because the monsters were dishing out so much damage. I'm making an honest effort to figure out why none of that works for you and your players. Please take my posts in good faith, because they're meant that way.

Something bad happen?... take a long rest, not only is t gone but your hp & spell slots too are all back.

This seems like a separate issue, and I don't really understand why it's a problem. How does knowing that you can heal up afterward make a combat less interesting? And can't you regain HP and spell slots in every other version of D&D too, even if it might take longer? Is it the length of the rest that bothers you?

Also, not everything is cured by a long rest. Some things have to be cured by specific spells or other conditions.

Get critted by a neutronium golem? Dragon breath?... even dragons with 16d10 breath attacks only recharge it on a 5 or six & only have one action

So maybe you're throwing them at parties that are too high-level? I can assure you that 16d10 is pretty scary to a PC who could be reduced to negative total HP (= instakill) in one blast.

"and I'm down">'"tis but a scratch" Healing word & shrug off another next round... can't Healing word?.. >"no problem I've got 2 hp, I'll use my action to give him a potion enema or something.

All I am taking away from this is that you think in-combat healing is a problem, or that there's too much of it, or something?

taking care of cultists/gang members/etc?...well there are going to be dozens in each cell/gang & they are going to all have notable combat capabilities so officials will look the other way when you murder half the town because anything other than murderhobo trek is badwrongfun.. Either every town is fallujah with the bad guys blatantly in control or somehow nobody notices that there are gangs in compton.

Okay, this bit is actually interesting. Do I gather correctly that you're running a mostly-urban campaign? Because yeah, I can see how 6-8 fights to the death might be difficult to justify in a setting like that, with all the dead bodies it creates. Again, I'm currently playing in a somewhat similar game, and we've had problems--not with the number of combats exactly, but with the GM trying to impress on the players that there are consequences for killing people in town (even gangsters) and some of the players trying to go nonlethal and others just wanting to murder everyone in sight.

Anyway, it seems like the easiest fix for that is not to make every fight last to the death--or to make large parts of the adventure about things other than combat. Who are the PCs in this situation, and what's their relationship to the enemies? Are the PCs involved in law enforcement, in which case they probably want to capture the "bad guys"?

It makes pulpy or gritty difficult things to achieve

Another interesting statement, as it implies that "pulpy and gritty" is what you would like to be doing. Have you thought about using the variant resting and healing rules from the DMG?

 

[tetrasodium]

I disagree with this, and I have given several examples of reasons for my disagreement. I have experienced risky combats, both as a player and as a DM, that did not use save-or-die effects. I've seen PCs instakilled by dragon breath. I've had the bad guy charm half the PCs and complete her ritual. I've been in a party that actually retreated from a fight because the monsters were dishing out so much damage. I'm making an honest effort to figure out why none of that works for you and your players. Please take my posts in good faith, because they're meant that way.


This seems like a separate issue, and I don't really understand why it's a problem. How does knowing that you can heal up afterward make a combat less interesting? And can't you regain HP and spell slots in every other version of D&D too, even if it might take longer? Is it the length of the rest that bothers you?

Also, not everything is cured by a long rest. Some things have to be cured by specific spells or other conditions.


So maybe you're throwing them at parties that are too high-level? I can assure you that 16d10 is pretty scary to a PC who could be reduced to negative total HP (= instakill) in one blast.


All I am taking away from this is that you think in-combat healing is a problem, or that there's too much of it, or something?


Okay, this bit is actually interesting. Do I gather correctly that you're running a mostly-urban campaign? Because yeah, I can see how 6-8 fights to the death might be difficult to justify in a setting like that, with all the dead bodies it creates. Again, I'm currently playing in a somewhat similar game, and we've had problems--not with the number of combats exactly, but with the GM trying to impress on the players that there are consequences for killing people in town (even gangsters) and some of the players trying to go nonlethal and others just wanting to murder everyone in sight.

Anyway, it seems like the easiest fix for that is not to make every fight last to the death--or to make large parts of the adventure about things other than combat. Who are the PCs in this situation, and what's their relationship to the enemies? Are the PCs involved in law enforcement, in which case they probably want to capture the "bad guys"?


Another interesting statement, as it implies that "pulpy and gritty" is what you would like to be doing. Have you thought about using the variant resting and healing rules from the DMG?

No no no... The dragon breath was your example... You threw it out like it was a solution to the fact that everything between damage of current hp+1 & death by massive damage of current hp+max HP as described on phb197. You seem to accept that it's trivial for a GM to be a jerk & choose to make attacks on a downed player. so when you brought it up after quoting me saying "Pointing out how someone died in your game to a save or die effect underscores rather than contradicts my point though since I've been saying those effects are the only thing that poke the fear buttons on the player's lizardbrains." just you bloviating or was there a relevant point that you'd like to make now?


I'm not sure how you take away the fact that most of the damage in that black night neutronium golem analogy being a complaint about in combat healing given that nearly all of the damage in it was simply nullified entirely... were talking about 16d10 & & higher damage values vrs healing word (1d4+ability) & a healing potion (2d4+2). The healing is utterly irrelevant to the fact that the downed pc is restored to fighting action with his or her null all damage beyond zero buff restored.

"Healing up" after combat is not the problem, erasing the losses & attrition so quickly & easily causes them to be effortless& results in those losses being trivial.

An urban adventure is one example of the kinds of problems encountered... or how about just a lightning rail, airship, or explaining why there are so many monsters just standing around in these ruins. What about explaining why the bbeg doesn't send the rest of his army to slaughter the fools that just murdered their way through such a large outpost of well trained soldiers again. so on & so forth. It works great for murderhobo vacation & is a mess for other styles. Yes you can do things trying to work around the fact that murderhobo vactation is not your goal, but those things quickly become as transparent as the emperor's new clothes.

You asked if I tried the "gritty realism" from dmg 267... I already posted about that much earlier in the thread, unfortunately while possibly well meaning it's anything but & all of those rules fall far short of the mark while causing severe problems of their own or accomplishing nothing towards the goal.

 

[CleverNickName]

I'm not saying that 5E combat is toothless and rigged so that death is unlikely (if not impossible), but that certainly seems to be the assumption at my table.

The party was fighting a gang of harpies in the last gaming session. As the monsters were approaching, right before rolling initiative, I asked someone for a History check. I ignored the result and informed them: "You've heard stories of these creatures, and how they delight in pain and suffering. They've been known to 'sing along' to the screams of their victims as if it were music." I paused for effect, then broke the fourth wall: "They are the sort of monster that will keep attacking you even after you drop to zero hit points, so be careful."

Everyone immediately put their phones down and sat up in their chairs. The assumption, up until that point anyway, was that combat wasn't anything to worry about. But now, things just got real...and it was just a random encounter.

In previous editions of the game, especially the Expert Rules of the 1980s, characters actively avoided combat. It was a last resort, something that happened after stealth and negotiation failed. It was far more risky, and resources were far more limited, compared to any other edition of the game that I've played.

 

[Oofta]

...
In previous editions of the game, especially the Expert Rules of the 1980s, characters actively avoided combat. It was a last resort, something that happened after stealth and negotiation failed. It was far more risky, and resources were far more limited, compared to any other edition of the game that I've played.

I think this simply points out how different people morph the game to suit their play style. Back in ye olden days the game didn't really play much different than it does now for me.

Combat may have been a last resort in your games, it certainly was not in mine.

But then again we have people arguing that only a jerk DM targets downed characters but (if I understand correctly) using save or die is perfectly kosher and not a jerk DM move.

The game is what you make out of it. I don't want every save to be potentially deadly, I don't want every fight or session to be life-or-death. Much like ice cream for breakfast every morning would become just, well, breakfast, I like that some fights are deadlier than others.