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

[tetrasodium]

For example, if you are playing a fighter, and you get strength drained until you can't wear your armor and wield your sword, and the party can't afford to pay a cleric the exorbitant fees needed to cast a 7th level spell to restore you, what do you do?

Surprisingly, a new fighter with very similar abilities rolls into town looking for a group to join.

Quit being disingenuous, you know better than to spout this silliness without knowing the answer... This was covered earlier, but you ignored it, presumably because it did not fit your argument. the strength requirement is new to 5e but in 3.5 you handled it like so...

In addition to hoping that your party cleric, druid, ad/or paladin had enough first & second level spell slots dedicated to lesser restoration to erase it from everyone in the party who acquired ability damage 1d4 points at a time balanced against hoping that they do not have their effectiveness in the group held back by wasting too many slots for lesser restoration instead of some other useful spell that the party might need cast. If the ability damage Alice got was not too crippling or risky you continued on because Bob might get worse later & you could always cast it later if it looked like a big fight was coming.

Yes seventh level greater restoration could erase all ability damage with one spell from one player, but 7th level slots didn't grow on trees with a thirteenth level cleric casting it once. in 5e you don't need to reroll because of ability damage, it's not even a thing anymore & creatures like wraith max hp drain that do similar have effects that go away when you avoid risking forced march penalties by sleeping for the night to recover all your spell slots, class abilities & health.

 

[Lanefan]

My argument for Goblins being the most threatening in 5e is because of their special ability. The ability to Hide or Disengage as a bonus action. It is surprisingly powerful with their +6 to stealth. Fight a squad of goblins in a warehouse or a forest, and the majority of them will be attacking with advantage, because they are hidden from the PCs, then attack, then hide again. The PCs can ready actions to hit them, but lose out on Extra attacks, many useful abilities, and are likely standing in the open waiting for most of their turns. Charge and get next to a pile of goblins? They can all stab you and then disengage and scatter, meaning the heavy who charged is only going to be able to chase down a few of them while the rest circle and begin hiding and shooting again.

Alter their classic characterization to match that of their folktale origins, don't play them as stupid, sniveling cowards and instead as sneaky hunters of the shadows, and you can bring terror to a group of players.

OK, I'll concede 5e has made one monster more challenging, and in interesting ways. Good stuff.

But - is this the exception that proves the rule?

Sure, but as we've discussed there is a lot more going on here in the design philosophy.

For example, if you are playing a fighter, and you get strength drained until you can't wear your armor and wield your sword, and the party can't afford to pay a cleric the exorbitant fees needed to cast a 7th level spell to restore you, what do you do?

Wait for enough time, and (depending on source/cause of strength loss) the strength slowly returns on its own.

Not all the time, but it happened for sure. And I think there were players and DMs who got frustrated with that set-up. The monsters wouldn't kill a character, they'd just get them to the point where they wished their character was dead instead. Which, for a lot of groups, I imagine was just not fun.

In the ebb and flow of any RPG there's going to be times - sometimes lengthy times - where what's happening to one's character isn't fun. So?

And, as we have also discussed, there isn't exactly a lot of "challenge" in dealing with permanent, debilitating effects. You say Ghoul touch is weakened, but I'd argue it really isn't. Looking at 3.5 Ghoul touch was a save vs paralysis that lasted for 2-5 rounds. In 5e, it is a save vs paralysis that lasts between 1 and 10 rounds.

And in 1e it lasts for half an hour or so, if memory serves.

Not all the nerfing happened in 5e. Each edition has contributed its share, with 5e merely being the (thus far) culmination of the process.

The bigger difference is that in 3.5, if you were paralyzed... that was it. Go grab pizza or something, you are unable to do anything for X rounds, we know exactly how long it will be. Any decisions are rendered moot. Unless someone heals you with magic of course. In 5e, every round you roll to break the effect. And, if you are a person who built to be good at Con Saves, that decision pays off, you will break out sooner. While someone who built differently might not. And sure, it is a low save, so you will likely pass, but the uncertainty actually adds more complex thinking. Since you don't know how long the effect will last, do you risk letting them break out on their own, or heal them. You can give them bonuses they can use on the save, so maybe the Cleric blesses the paralyzed individual, making it more likely they break free. In 3.5 buffing someone who will be paralyzed for 4 rounds would be a complete waste of time. They'd never get a chance to use the buff, so why waste it?

And, I think this ends up being a point glossed over by people when they look at all of these "save at end of turn" effects. Yes, it makes it more likely to end early, but it also makes it uncertain. And uncertainty makes it harder to plan tactics.

My point is that, in the case of Ghouls -and Ghasts - they've gone from deadly to nowhere-near-as-deadly. In 0-1-2e if you got paralysed and your party couldn't save you (usually by defeating the Ghouls), you were done, period. You did not want to fight them unless you absolutely had to, or unless your party was mostly or all Elves.

Above, you paint them as being much more sporting.

Let's look at Dominate Person. I'm not fully versed in 3.5, but here is how it reads from the SRD to me. A 5th level wizard casts the spell. If they succeed the target is dominated for 5 days. The target gets a new save if they are given an order "against their nature" or if the wizard does not concentrate on it for six seconds a day.

So, if you are adventuring and this is cast on a party member, forcing them to fight against the party, they get 2 saves. One to establish, and one to resist the order. Once they fail they will attempt to kill the party for the next 5 days. At minimum, it could be as long as 20 days. You can either heal the effect, or drop the party member and tie them up for the next few weeks.

In 5e, the spell only lasts a minute at base, and takes a much higher level wizard to cast it. If they cast at even higher levels they could max out at 8 hours. So yes, it is far shorter, but that combined with concentration and the save every time they are damaged gives choices. Do we fight our companion and hope we can snap them out of it? Do we focus on the wizard and try and break the spell? And once the fight is over, they don't have to have a party member tied up and murderous for days.

Doesn't the death of the caster in any edition break the spell? (I can't remember if this is RAW or just how I've houseruled it forever)

I don't know if giving players more tactical options, more routes to success or failure, really makes it "less challenging". It keeps them more engaged, lets them be more clever, and encourages more thinking beyond "this one roll decides if I'm playing tonight or not".

Except it's not that simple. There's more routes to success and fewer routes to failure that lasts anything longer than a few rounds...which also reduces the challenge.

Look at it from the Ghouls' side. In the past they only had to paralyze each PC once and >voila< they had a good meal. Now, with PCs so much more easily able to shrug off the paralysis, the Ghouls are playing their own version of whack-a-mole.

 

[slobster]

It's also not as if 5E completely gave up on scary early level monsters with debilitating effects. Ghosts are CR4 and add years to your age with one of their attacks. Mummy rot comes from a CR 3 monster and is just brutal.

I may or may not be planning out a tomb adventure for level 2 PCs right now, and am shocked at the number of actually really scary low CR monster powers just in the vanilla MM!

 

[Chaosmancer]

Quit being disingenuous, you know better than to spout this silliness without knowing the answer... This was covered earlier, but you ignored it, presumably because it did not fit your argument.

the strength requirement is new to 5e but in 3.5 you handled it like so...
View attachment 119038
In addition to hoping that your party cleric, druid, ad/or paladin had enough first & second level spell slots dedicated to lesser restoration to erase it from everyone in the party who acquired ability damage 1d4 points at a time balanced against hoping that they do not have their effectiveness in the group held back by wasting too many slots for lesser restoration instead of some other useful spell that the party might need cast.

If the ability damage Alice got was not too crippling or risky you continued on because Bob might get worse later & you could always cast it later if it looked like a big fight was coming.

Yes seventh level greater restoration could erase all ability damage with one spell from one player, but 7th level slots didn't grow on trees with a thirteenth level cleric casting it once.

in 5e you don't need to reroll because of ability damage, it's not even a thing anymore & creatures like wraith max hp drain that do similar have effects that go away when you avoid risking forced march penalties by sleeping for the night to recover all your spell slots, class abilities & health.

Okay, so, Fighter loses 15 points of strength. The party has the following options.

Wait 15 days.

Cast lesser Resoration until 1d4 = 15. Average of 1d4 is 2.5, so about 7 spell slots. I doubt that one character has that many until high levels. So, still a few days or draining the entire party of 1st and 2nd level spells from the healers.

Cast an expensive and high level spell the party probably doesn't have access to.

So, the general point still stands. The party will either wait, use a ton of resources, or a new character will show up.

Except, 3.5 had another little quirk of the system. They could instead buy dozens of wands of Lesser Restoration, so if they stocked up enough gold sink in healing items, they could restore the fighter within a few minutes.

This still doesn't make me like maiming a party member. Either I have to give enough resources out as a Dungeon Master that they can afford to ignore the effect, or the party is pretty much on downtime until the effect goes away. Neither solution is interesting or challenging. And, if your counter is, "well the party will have to adventure anyways, they can't wait a week" that is the same argument that can be used for the effect lasting only a day too. They can't just stop and will have to continue on despite the effect. Making it equally impactful.


Also, 5e does have a very few number of ability drain attacks, such as the Shadow's strength drain or the Intellect Devourer (which actually never naturally recovers and must be healed with magic). And, many people like that, because having to recalculate your scores and bonuses constantly because your ability scores keep yo-yoing is a pain in the neck. Also, considering Constitution only effects health and saves, the Wraith dropping Max Hp and dealing damage is not only mostly equivalent to 3.5 where it drained constitution. In fact, considering how much higher ability scores went, and the fact the wraith only dealt 1d4 damage with each attack, it might be more devastating in the initial fight, since it will drop characters faster.

 

[Chaosmancer]

OK, I'll concede 5e has made one monster more challenging, and in interesting ways. Good stuff.

But - is this the exception that proves the rule?

No idea, but if it is an exception, then it should show that the issue is far more complex than "5e is the least challenging edition ever"

In the ebb and flow of any RPG there's going to be times - sometimes lengthy times - where what's happening to one's character isn't fun. So?

Fun and unfun needs to be balanced. If there are enough parts of a fight or a situation that are not fun, then the players will simply ask the DM to avoid those aspects. Or the DM will avoid them naturally.

The Astral Dreadnaught in 5e has an attack that auto-kills a PC if they crit. I'm never going to use that, because straight up saying "you are dead now" because of a lucky roll isn't fun for me. It also doesn't challenge the player. What challenge is there in watching me roll a natural 20 on the dice?

I'm not saying everything has to be easy cakewalks, and I don't believe 5e provides that at all, but we can look towards what is an interesting challenge, and what is just aggravating and try and lean in the direction of the most fun for the players.

And in 1e it lasts for half an hour or so, if memory serves.

Not all the nerfing happened in 5e. Each edition has contributed its share, with 5e merely being the (thus far) culmination of the process.

My point is that, in the case of Ghouls -and Ghasts - they've gone from deadly to nowhere-near-as-deadly. In 0-1-2e if you got paralysed and your party couldn't save you (usually by defeating the Ghouls), you were done, period. You did not want to fight them unless you absolutely had to, or unless your party was mostly or all Elves.

Above, you paint them as being much more sporting.

I don't get the value in a monster the players will always want to run from. If they are hired to clear out a crypt and the DM lets them no Ghouls are inside it, do the players just return to the person who hired them and say "Nope, we don't want to fight them."

Maybe in some games, but I don't like that. And, I don't think the ghouls are that much less deadly that the party isn't going to try and come up with a clever plan to tip the fight in their favor.

But, I think the idea of sporting is important here. It is no fun to be told to leave the table. If your character is paralyzed with no hope of recovery, whether for a half hour in game or a minute in game, then you are done playing. Get out your phone, make a food run, whatever. Your contributions to the game are finished until the game tells you otherwise.

I don't see any value there. The player didn't get to decide, they made their character and tried to avoid getting hit as much as possible. And now they are simply a spectator at the table until told otherwise.

Doesn't the death of the caster in any edition break the spell? (I can't remember if this is RAW or just how I've houseruled it forever)

No idea

Except it's not that simple. There's more routes to success and fewer routes to failure that lasts anything longer than a few rounds...which also reduces the challenge.

Look at it from the Ghouls' side. In the past they only had to paralyze each PC once and >voila< they had a good meal. Now, with PCs so much more easily able to shrug off the paralysis, the Ghouls are playing their own version of whack-a-mole.

Who cares about the Ghoul's side? I'm the ghouls and TPKing a party isn't exactly good for me. It throws the entire campaign off the rails and I might even need to just start a new campaign because the story involved those people who are now Ghoul poop.

And frankly, they still can take a player down in moments with paralysis. Remember, each strike on a paralyzed creature is a crit. That means that a pack of ghouls goes from dealing 7 damage on average per attack, to 18. 4d6+2 per bite on a paralyzed target. They are still a massive threat, and since it is likely the person best suited to avoiding the paralysis that got frozen, then the party is going to scramble to find alternates and save their tank.

Again, maybe challenge is subjective. Anything where I have no choice in the outcome isn't a challenge. The Lottery isn't challenging to play, even though you fail most times you try it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

It's also not as if 5E completely gave up on scary early level monsters with debilitating effects. Ghosts are CR4 and add years to your age with one of their attacks. Mummy rot comes from a CR 3 monster and is just brutal.

I may or may not be planning out a tomb adventure for level 2 PCs right now, and am shocked at the number of actually really scary low CR monster powers just in the vanilla MM!

A personal annoyance with the Ghost aging effect. There is no RAW consequence to aging. I had a character who failed and aged into his 90's... and then I realized that had no effect on the game.

I reduced the age and did some other effects instead to keep things going, but the sheer number of abilities that reference age with zero actual effects of aging in the game irritates me.

 

[slobster]

A personal annoyance with the Ghost aging effect. There is no RAW consequence to aging. I had a character who failed and aged into his 90's... and then I realized that had no effect on the game.

I reduced the age and did some other effects instead to keep things going, but the sheer number of abilities that reference age with zero actual effects of aging in the game irritates me.

I had a character aged into senescence once. I basically made her exhausted all the time and threw in disadvantage on most attack rolls made when she wasn't at full hp. It lasted for about half a session until we conveniently did the necessary deeds for an NPC cleric to heal her back to youth, during which time plenty of jokes were made about her only being able to eat applesauce, using her sword as a cane, yelling at giants to "get off my lawn!", etc.

I can see how not having any rules for it are annoying though!

 

[Chaosmancer]

I had a character aged into senescence once. I basically made her exhausted all the time and threw in disadvantage on most attack rolls made when she wasn't at full hp. It lasted for about half a session until we conveniently did the necessary deeds for an NPC cleric to heal her back to youth, during which time plenty of jokes were made about her only being able to eat applesauce, using her sword as a cane, yelling at giants to "get off my lawn!", etc.

I can see how not having any rules for it are annoying though!

That's great

 

[Lanefan]

No idea, but if it is an exception, then it should show that the issue is far more complex than "5e is the least challenging edition ever"

It is more complex, but the overtall average would still suggest it is the least challenging.

Fun and unfun needs to be balanced. If there are enough parts of a fight or a situation that are not fun, then the players will simply ask the DM to avoid those aspects. Or the DM will avoid them naturally.

The Astral Dreadnaught in 5e has an attack that auto-kills a PC if they crit. I'm never going to use that, because straight up saying "you are dead now" because of a lucky roll isn't fun for me. It also doesn't challenge the player. What challenge is there in watching me roll a natural 20 on the dice?

And this brings up another aspect of adventuring as a profession: sometimes you're going to get lucky and kill the monster, other times it's going to get lucky and kill you. Luck is a huge factor.

And here you've taken one of the few truly threatening things left in 5e and decided not to use it. This doesn't help your case.

I don't get the value in a monster the players will always want to run from. If they are hired to clear out a crypt and the DM lets them no Ghouls are inside it, do the players just return to the person who hired them and say "Nope, we don't want to fight them."

Why not?

Or, return to the patron and say "You'd better equip us better"; or return to the patron after doing some research and say "We can't fight Ghouls as we are; give us some Elves and we'll get right on it". I have no problem at all with this sort of thing, as not every mission should be a guaranteed success.

But, I think the idea of sporting is important here. It is no fun to be told to leave the table. If your character is paralyzed with no hope of recovery, whether for a half hour in game or a minute in game, then you are done playing. Get out your phone, make a food run, whatever. Your contributions to the game are finished until the game tells you otherwise.

I don't see any value there. The player didn't get to decide, they made their character and tried to avoid getting hit as much as possible. And now they are simply a spectator at the table until told otherwise.

Unless they have a second PC in the party (which I always allow, in large part for just this reason); or unless there's a party NPC they can take over; or - in some situations - unless that player can somehow become a co-DM for a while - there's always options.

Who cares about the Ghoul's side? I'm the ghouls and TPKing a party isn't exactly good for me. It throws the entire campaign off the rails and I might even need to just start a new campaign because the story involved those people who are now Ghoul poop.

Parties, I've found, are shockingly hard to TPK; even when everything on paper says they don't have a chance, someone survives (even if only by running away) and can rebuild.

And frankly, they still can take a player down in moments with paralysis. Remember, each strike on a paralyzed creature is a crit. That means that a pack of ghouls goes from dealing 7 damage on average per attack, to 18. 4d6+2 per bite on a paralyzed target. They are still a massive threat, and since it is likely the person best suited to avoiding the paralysis that got frozen, then the party is going to scramble to find alternates and save their tank.

Again, maybe challenge is subjective. Anything where I have no choice in the outcome isn't a challenge. The Lottery isn't challenging to play, even though you fail most times you try it.

Different perspective, I suppose.

I see playing a character as somewhat similar to playing a Rogue-like computer game: you go as far as you can but sooner or later you're gonna die. Sometimes you can save-restart with the same character (raise dead etc.); other times you start with a new character at the save point (bring in a new PC).

The fun comes from seeing how far you can get.

 

[prabe]

Different perspective, I suppose.

I see playing a character as somewhat similar to playing a Rogue-like computer game: you go as far as you can but sooner or later you're gonna die. Sometimes you can save-restart with the same character (raise dead etc.); other times you start with a new character at the save point (bring in a new PC).

The fun comes from seeing how far you can get.

I think I agree with you more than I disagree with you, as we cross paths, but this is pretty much not how I see bringing a character into a campaign, either as a player or as a DM. I think the changes in 5E are parallel to my own perspective on this, but I'm not sure if there's a causality arrow or which way it points.

That said, I think 5E can be plenty challenging, but tastes and experiences differ.