Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 7940573" data-attributes="member: 6801228">It should be almost guarenteed that you escape, playing three months of "slave labor with beatings" isn't exactly going to be anyone's idea of a good time. And sure, combat play a big role in DnD, but surviving combat and being challenged by combat are two different things. 3.5 high level characters could just stand in the middle of a room and let enemies attack them til the enemy died of exhaustion. The character survived combat, but that wasn't a challenge for them. In 5e, every combat has the potential for the character to be harmed, and therefore every combat has the change for the characters to die.  Could be a small chance, but it does exist.And, maybe 1e or 2e was more deadly or more challenging, but that does not follow the OP that 5e is "The Least Challenging Edition of DnD" which includes all the previous editions.Do all the example of Save or dies that aren't challenges strengthen my argument? You can look to my previous posts for them. Save or Die effects are literally "did I roll how enough to live", that is not a challenge. And, if you say the challenge is in killing the monster before it can use that ability, then you are taking a very different approach to challenge. And, frankly, you can have that same challenge of "gank the monster before it acts" in 5e. After all, characters don't want to get hurt. Whether it is 8d6 damage that they will likely survive or instant death shouldn't matter, because getting injured is something people avoid. So if the real challenge here is "kill the monster before it acts" then we need to be discussing that, and I think we would find that 5e is far more challenging, because that is something that is very hard to accomplish in 5e.You said "And the Vancian System has been watered down". I assumed you were talking about how everyone is a spontaneous caster? And so, my opinions on the Vancian system are relevant. It was terrible in my opinion. I am not a fortune-teller who should be able to peer into the future and guess what we will be fighting today. Even 3.5 acknowledged pure Vancian had problems, since it allowed clerics to turn any slot into a cure wounds spell instead. And frankly, cantrips and "Neo-Vancian" have done nothing to make wizards more survivable. They still have crap AC and low hp. Actually, since they can now be effective in combat all the time, it has actually made things harder for them. Even non-intelligent enemies might go after a cantrip spamming wizard when they wouldn't have gone after the guy missing them with a crossbow.Prior to when? As far as I've ever known (3.X and up) you gain hp whenever you level and the game goes til at least level 20. In fact, 5e is the first version of DnD I have played, where the game did not explicitly go beyond level 20. Again, I think maybe in the shuffle, people have lost sight of the thread and my position. The title is "5e is the Least Challenging edition of DnD", I've never claimed it is the most challenging. And so, sure, if B/X or OD&D stopped increasing hp half way through the game, that might be a thing, but since more than half of the editions of the game did increase HP, I'm not seeing it as a strike against 5e specifically.You can still provide the question of "do we face the beast or not" and "can we afford to die here" in 5e. I've done it. I've had players retreat from a challenge (not even one that was a monster above their CR, it was a bunch of low CR mooks acting as guards) to recover and fight another day. This is the point I just don't get. How is it that I am able to challenge my players, have done so for nearly 6 years, with 5e run very close to the book overall, but all these DMs with decades of expeirence just can't seem to figure it out. And, frankly, you dismiss that healing decision and miss that it is actually a pretty decent decision point. Do I use a consumable resource that might be hard to come by, a daily ability, or a short rest ability. Could that spell slot be used for something more important now, or later?Do I cast Cure Wounds at 2nd level, give my ally some breathing room, or can he hold out until the end of the fight when I can do more by casting Prayer of Healing? You can mock these decisions, but I've seen players get paralyzed over them. These are important decisions for the skilled play we have. I've also seen them get paralyzed over whether they should risk opening a book, or a kicking down a door, or even jumping into a fight with an enemy. The only difference seems to be, that death is not immediately on the line when they make these decisions. And that seems to be okay, because death was never the actually challenging part of the game.</blockquote>

Verification