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lowkey13
Guest
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D&D 5E Is my DM being fair?
GameOgre
Adventurer
I do have to say that D&D 5E sucks in that regard. Why the heck would Feats and Multiclassing and Magic items not be accounted for with Monsters?
It does make the game more difficult to DM because you either need to rebalance every single Monster/Encounter for those things or just not let your players use them.
It was a horrible design choice.
That said......once you as a DM decide yes I want to let my players use them, well it's on you to do what's needed to fix things.
Banning some feats or changing them to be less a issue is a option I guess but that's going to take a long while and lead to issues like what happened in this thread with a player that takes a feat and THEN you see it's not going to work for you.
To me it seems much better to just fix the monsters. Hell,give every Boss or elite monster feats. Have those Berserker orcs going -5 to hit and +10 damage while they are protecting the orc chief! or better yet give them Sentinel!
There is more than one way to skin a cat.
It does make the game more difficult to DM because you either need to rebalance every single Monster/Encounter for those things or just not let your players use them.
It was a horrible design choice.
That said......once you as a DM decide yes I want to let my players use them, well it's on you to do what's needed to fix things.
Banning some feats or changing them to be less a issue is a option I guess but that's going to take a long while and lead to issues like what happened in this thread with a player that takes a feat and THEN you see it's not going to work for you.
To me it seems much better to just fix the monsters. Hell,give every Boss or elite monster feats. Have those Berserker orcs going -5 to hit and +10 damage while they are protecting the orc chief! or better yet give them Sentinel!
There is more than one way to skin a cat.
See this article on a different way to balance encounters. It's part of series, but this is the one with the math and chart in it. AngryGM ftw.
Weiley31
Legend
First off: feats should've been decided at the start. Either allow them or not. It's the DM's fault for allowing Variant Human to be a selectable choice. It's on the DM if your feat is causing the DM's issue. To suddenly take a feat away, especially past the beginning is just the DM being whiny.
Basically your DM should just learn to deal with it. Not your fault your Rogue is a badass at not being surprised.
Next time, the DM will know better. And a DM knowing better will make the game better. Plus the DM should be glad that your Rogue is teaching the DM to be better at making encounters and planning for unexpected player shenanigans.
Basically your DM should just learn to deal with it. Not your fault your Rogue is a badass at not being surprised.
Next time, the DM will know better. And a DM knowing better will make the game better. Plus the DM should be glad that your Rogue is teaching the DM to be better at making encounters and planning for unexpected player shenanigans.
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Weiley31
Legend
I actually like to give enemies/monsters certain class feats to emphasize the fact it's a tougher opponent. Want to have a monster where it has "Health Bars?" Give it a Second Wind or two.
Your fighting an elite swordsman? Well then they have either the College of The Sword Bard's Flourish dies OR Battlemaster Maneuvers with a Superiority Die..
Imagine 3.5 Edition style Hexblade enemy with the Luck feat.
Like ya said, many ways to give a Tabaxi a haircut.
CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing
I agree with several others: if the DM chooses to allow variant humans and feats in the game, they have made a conscious choice to allow more-powerful characters into the game. This is neither good nor bad, but it will have an impact.
See also: flanking, multiclassing, inspiration, etc.
See also: flanking, multiclassing, inspiration, etc.
Nebulous
Legend
Yeah, I have been adding monster feats and talents for a while once PCs hit 4th level. But some of the PC feats are still broken I think.
I have been planning for a long time to give two mean elite monsters the Sentinel feat but it hasn't come up in campaign. I can just imagine a player's face when they try to Disengage and get shut down and hammered.
That poster betrays a lot of 4e-style encounter building experience.
And the thing is, 4e style encounter building is solid and reliable and pretty damn easy for a DM. But it does lead to a certain kind of encounters and monsters.
In a sense, 4e is encounter first design. You start with "I need an encounter for 5 level X PCs". From that you derive how strong the monsters should be. You could adjust the encounter afterwards, but monsters are built to serve encounters.
5e is monster-first design. You build a monster based on what you think the monster should do. Then you work out how that monster could fit in an encounter.
Now part of the problem is that 5e's "monster -> encounter" math is needlessly complex. I tore it apart (see spoilers), and you can actually assign each 5e monster a point value, add up said points, and compare it to the PCs encounter budget. No multipliers based on monster count needed, at all.
First, monster XP based on DMG chart is basically DPR * HP * (1 + AC adjustment + ATK adjustment) * 5.
Second, encounter building is linear in sum (monster XP)^(2/3).
This means if you double both the HP and Damage of a monster, it is worth 2^2 = 4x the XP and 2^1.5 the encounter budget. If you take two monsters, it is worth 2x the encounter budget.
That power factor -- 1.5 -- is (a) a decent approximation to triangular numbers, (b) apparently comes from military power-scale theory, (c) reflects that two monsters with half the HP and Damage are actually weaker than one beefy one, because AOE spells are a thing, and if you deal half the HP to the smaller monsters (well focused) you also half the DPR, but doing the same to the big monster doesn't work.
The third important insight is that, as 5e D&D is HP/damage balanced, and HP/damage grows reasonably linearly, that the change in player power per level as a ration compared to the previous level flattens out. Level 1 to 3 is rough a doubling of power, then level 3 to 5 is another, then 5 to 9, then 9 to 17; that is rough (but based on the DMG XP budgets after linearizing them).
At low levels, the exact mix of monsters you face is highly important. Throw a CR 5 monster at a level 1 party and they have a decent chance of going splat. Throw a CR 15 monster at a level 11 party and they might not notice it is tough.
This all means that one reason why low level D&D is deadly is because it is highly sensitive to encounter building, and 5e encounter building tools are very rough and hard to use.
Meanwhile, at higher levels, building encounters is easy! You can just guesstimate it. Off by a few CR? Who cares! Throw a CR 17 demilich against a level 10 party? Quite doable! Throw a CR 8 monster against a level 1 party? Doomed.
Second, encounter building is linear in sum (monster XP)^(2/3).
This means if you double both the HP and Damage of a monster, it is worth 2^2 = 4x the XP and 2^1.5 the encounter budget. If you take two monsters, it is worth 2x the encounter budget.
That power factor -- 1.5 -- is (a) a decent approximation to triangular numbers, (b) apparently comes from military power-scale theory, (c) reflects that two monsters with half the HP and Damage are actually weaker than one beefy one, because AOE spells are a thing, and if you deal half the HP to the smaller monsters (well focused) you also half the DPR, but doing the same to the big monster doesn't work.
The third important insight is that, as 5e D&D is HP/damage balanced, and HP/damage grows reasonably linearly, that the change in player power per level as a ration compared to the previous level flattens out. Level 1 to 3 is rough a doubling of power, then level 3 to 5 is another, then 5 to 9, then 9 to 17; that is rough (but based on the DMG XP budgets after linearizing them).
At low levels, the exact mix of monsters you face is highly important. Throw a CR 5 monster at a level 1 party and they have a decent chance of going splat. Throw a CR 15 monster at a level 11 party and they might not notice it is tough.
This all means that one reason why low level D&D is deadly is because it is highly sensitive to encounter building, and 5e encounter building tools are very rough and hard to use.
Meanwhile, at higher levels, building encounters is easy! You can just guesstimate it. Off by a few CR? Who cares! Throw a CR 17 demilich against a level 10 party? Quite doable! Throw a CR 8 monster against a level 1 party? Doomed.
His approach also presumed a 4e style power curve. His "level windows" for a tier are way too small at high levels.
These ranges offer a roughly x2 power range:
1-3: Apprentice
3-5: Veteran
5-9: Hero
9-17: Champion
17+: Legend
You'll notice that I overlapped each region by 1 level. Maybe a bad idea. Let's change it so there is no overlap, and maintain the roughly 2x power ratio from the first level to the last in each range:
1-2: Apprentice
3-5: Veteran
6-11: Hero
12-17: Champion
18+: Legend
Then we'll build for a party of 4 PCs at the mid point of each.
Apprentice: 8-12 EBP, average 10 (note: lack of double from min to max, small tier)
Veteran: 16-32 EBP, average 24 (note: doubles from min to max)
Hero: 40-80 EBP, average 60 (note: doubles from min to max)
Champion: 88-140, average 104 (note: lack of double), would be 150 if we follow pattern
Legend: 152++, "average" 224 (or way more; would be 375 if we follow pattern)
I'll follow the pattern of 2.5x EBP per tier.
The linear encounter building then looks like:
CR 1/8: 1 EBP (1/6 of a CR 1)
CR 1/4: 2 EBP (1/3 of a CR 1)
CR 1/2: 4 EBP (2/3 of a CR 1)
CR 1: 6 EBP
CR 2: 9 EBP
CR 3: 12 EBP (twice CR 1)
CR 4: 18 EBP (6 per CR up to CR 16)
CR 5: 24 EBP
CR 6: 30 EBP (5 x CR 1)
CR 7: 36 EBP
CR 8: 42 EBP
CR 9: 48 EBP
CR 10: 54 EBP
CR 11: 60 EBP (10 x CR 1)
CR 12: 66 EBP
CR 13: 72 EBP
CR 14: 78 EBP
CR 15: 84 EBP
CR 16: 90 EBP (15 x CR 1)
CR 17: 100 EBP
CR 18: 110 EBP
CR 19: 120 EBP (20 x CR 1)
CR 20: 140 EBP
CR 21+: +30 EBP/CR
CR 30: 450 EBP (75 x CR 1)
Note that 1 EBP is 1 guard, or 1 trained soldier. A CR 30 monster is roughly equivalent in power to an army of 450 troops.
40% of PC budget is easy, 60% is typical, 80% is hard, 100% is deadly.
Easy/Medium/Hard/Deadly/OMG encounters:
Apprentice: 4/6/8/10/12
Veteran: 10/15/20/25/30
Hero: 24/36/48/60/72
Champion: 60/90/120/150/180
Legend: 150/225/300/375/450
Notice that Deadly in one tier lines up with Easy in the next.
Simply add up the EBP of each monster based off its CR, and compare the sum to the tier's budget. There is no need for "XP multipliers" here.
We can also reverse engineer "on the fly" monster stats from the above XP/EBP math.
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