D&D 5E (2014) Is the Default Playstyle of 5E "Monty Haul?"

[dave2008]

@Retreater: Thank you for the in depth response! Here are my thoughts.

They lock the doors - and hope they don't have blasters.
But basically there aren't enough monsters in the dungeon to suitably press an attack. Or the characters block the doorway into the room and the creatures get stuck trying to fight a tank one-on-one who they rarely hit and can scarcely damage. It's boring for the players in the back rank and not especially dynamic or fun for the front rank.

If it is boring, don't do it. There are definitely more interesting ways to tackle the situation. On the other hand, if disturbing the rest was the only goal, which it seemed it was from your previous post, then mission accomplished from that perspective.

Remember when you complained that in PF2e you couldn't have monsters come and reinforce an encounter or it would be a TPK. Well 5e is just the opposite, all the noise of breaking down those doors attracts a lot of attention!

To be clear, I am not saying do this all the time. Just enough to remind them that resting in a dungeon can be dangerous!

I do. I throw encounters that can be ridiculous by nearly any metric at this party.
Just for the fun of it, I ran a sample combat using their characters and typical strategies. At 6th level, I was able to defeat a marilith. Granted, I used nearly every resource and did (barely) have a single PC death. But we're talking about a marilith against a 6th level party.

But that is not a ridiculous combat by 5e standards with the numbers in the DMG. A CR16 monster is a reasonable challenge for a group of (4) 6th level PCs. Again I will point you to How to Create Epic Encounters by DMDave.

If you feel this is a ridiculous encounter than it suggests to me you have not tuned your expectations to what 5e provides and need to increase your encounter difficulty in general.

I've tried it twice as a player - once as a wizard and again as a druid. It was punishing in a way that didn't make the game more fun or exciting. It limited my options to cantrips. Having one or two Magic Missile spells a week isn't fun for me.

OK I misunderstood what you were talking about. we don't use the long rest options for spells and class features. We don't see the need to. Since I misunderstood, what was your issue with rests and magic?

Do you also limit a rogue's Sneak Attack to once per combat? Her bonus Cunning Action to once a week?

No, see above. I misunderstood.

It's that they rarely miss attacks, are rarely hit by enemies,

I haven't run the numbers with our group, but I think we average about 50% both ways. On typical encounters the PCs hit 60-70% of he time, but on difficult encounters the PCs hit 30-40% of the time. You can just about flip that for the monsters.

Take your Marilith example:
The demon as an 18 AC with a +5 parry for an effective AC of 23 (note I give my Mariliths parry on melee and ranged attacks). Of course this only effective for one per turn.
A 6th level PC has about a +8 to hit with a max ability score and needs a 15 to hit (30%) on the first attack and a 10 to hit (55%) if they have a 2nd attack, for an average 42.5% chance to hit.

On the opposite side a 6th PC might have a AC of 18+/- and 50+/- HP vs the Marilith's +9 to hit (55%) which gets about a 50 adjusted DPR (from a 93 calculated DPR). About a PC down per turn.

and the enemies do too little damage to threaten their massive pools of hit points.

I do think this is a problem, mostly at higher levels. The damage is there, but it is spread over to many attacks for my liking. Is to adjust, but it is a bother to some.

Obviously if you are using an encounter budget scaled to actually threaten your PCs (like the Marilith) they can do a lot of damage.

The solution I'd have is to completely recalibrate the attack bonuses of all monsters and the damage output. Also changing resistances and immunities to have weight in the game. And adjusting saving throw bonuses and AC for the creatures. And to make spells like Hold Person worth taking (like it would average to be more than one round being held, or at least to give some sort of Slowed Condition after the first successful save).

Those could work, but it seems it would be better to recalibrate what you think is a reasonable vs ridiculous encounter/combat first and see how that goes. You seem to think the Marilith is a ridiculous encounter for 6th lvl PCs when, by the numbers in the DMG, is a reasonable encounter. Tougher monsters also takes care of most of the defense, attack, saving throw, and damage issues you are describing. Maybe not completely (or maybe it does), but it definitely helps!

As it is, I'm not sure how playable 5e is after Tier 1.

I don't know what to tell. It works for my group (we are level 15) and a lot of other people on these forums have had success too.

 

[niklinna]

They are having fun only because I'm putting in considerable (and often exhausting) levels of effort fighting against the system.
And no, nobody wants to play another system.

Nobody, including you?

It sounds to me like you are being taken advantage of, or that you are giving too much for too little reward. You should be having fun, too. I know it's hard to build a gaming group, and maybe these are close friends, but if you aren't having fun doing this....

 

[Jahydin]

They are having fun only because I'm putting in considerable (and often exhausting) levels of effort fighting against the system.
And no, nobody wants to play another system.

You sure all that work is necessary?

Either they have just as much fun and you no longer have to be exhausted or they get bored enough you might be able to convince them to play a better system.

Sounds like a win/win situation to me!

 

[DarkCrisis]

They lock the doors - and hope they don't have blasters.
But basically there aren't enough monsters in the dungeon to suitably press an attack. Or the characters block the doorway into the room and the creatures get stuck trying to fight a tank one-on-one who they rarely hit and can scarcely damage. It's boring for the players in the back rank and not especially dynamic or fun for the front rank.

I do. I throw encounters that can be ridiculous by nearly any metric at this party.
Just for the fun of it, I ran a sample combat using their characters and typical strategies. At 6th level, I was able to defeat a marilith. Granted, I used nearly every resource and did (barely) have a single PC death. But we're talking about a marilith against a 6th level party.

I've tried it twice as a player - once as a wizard and again as a druid. It was punishing in a way that didn't make the game more fun or exciting. It limited my options to cantrips. Having one or two Magic Missile spells a week isn't fun for me.
Do you also limit a rogue's Sneak Attack to once per combat? Her bonus Cunning Action to once a week?
My issue isn't that the group gets too many spells or powers. It's that they rarely miss attacks, are rarely hit by enemies, and the enemies do too little damage to threaten their massive pools of hit points.

The solution I'd have is to completely recalibrate the attack bonuses of all monsters and the damage output. Also changing resistances and immunities to have weight in the game. And adjusting saving throw bonuses and AC for the creatures. And to make spells like Hold Person worth taking (like it would average to be more than one round being held, or at least to give some sort of Slowed Condition after the first successful save).

As it is, I'm not sure how playable 5e is after Tier 1.

Casters couldn’t recover spells as quickly back in AD&D and had less over all. The way you were supposed to compensate was wands and scrolls. Maybe give that a try if you want to try limited rest again while keeping the casters going.

 

[Retreater]

But that is not a ridiculous combat by 5e standards with the numbers in the DMG. A CR16 monster is a reasonable challenge for a group of (4) 6th level PCs. Again I will point you to How to Create Epic Encounters by DMDave.

If you feel this is a ridiculous encounter than it suggests to me you have not tuned your expectations to what 5e provides and need to increase your encounter difficulty in general.

I guess I have too many older edition assumptions rattling inside my brain. When I think of a marilith I think of it as a high level baddie, something like an end game boss - not just a mid game standard challenge. I think to the one I faced as a 7th level character in 2nd edition that caused our entire party to flee in one of the most desperate (and memorable) retreats I've seen.
5e doesn't seem to have those kind of experiences built into the game. It's assumed your party is going to win every fight without retreating. It's unnecessary to study a monster before facing it to develop tactics or to acquire special weapons or scrolls to win.
Unless the DM makes significant alterations to the game, that style of play isn't supported. I guess one can pit a marilith at a 2nd level party, but they'd die before they could retreat. It's like there's no middle ground in the fights. It's "this is a minor bump in the road" or "everybody dies."

 

[prabe]

I guess I have too many older edition assumptions rattling inside my brain. When I think of a marilith I think of it as a high level baddie, something like an end game boss - not just a mid game standard challenge. I think to the one I faced as a 7th level character in 2nd edition that caused our entire party to flee in one of the most desperate (and memorable) retreats I've seen.
5e doesn't seem to have those kind of experiences built into the game. It's assumed your party is going to win every fight without retreating. It's unnecessary to study a monster before facing it to develop tactics or to acquire special weapons or scrolls to win.
Unless the DM makes significant alterations to the game, that style of play isn't supported. I guess one can pit a marilith at a 2nd level party, but they'd die before they could retreat. It's like there's no middle ground in the fights. It's "this is a minor bump in the road" or "everybody dies."

In 5e, I have recently had a 13th-level party plane shift out of a situation they couldn't handle; they're now happily dungeoncrawling an abandoned (and cursed) Giant fortress. I have also recently come close to grinding an 18th-level party to dust, in a dungeoncrawl-shaped gantlet--but they failed to wipe because they made some smart use of their abilities and (gasp) items. That same party within the last level or three has had numerous fights where party members dropped, where the party felt taxed, where the rewards felt earned.

Obviously, my experiences with the game are not universal; my point is, neither are yours, so such general statements as above, or that 5e isn't playable past tier 1, may not reflect the broader universe of play.

 

[tetrasodium]

I guess I have too many older edition assumptions rattling inside my brain. When I think of a marilith I think of it as a high level baddie, something like an end game boss - not just a mid game standard challenge. I think to the one I faced as a 7th level character in 2nd edition that caused our entire party to flee in one of the most desperate (and memorable) retreats I've seen.
5e doesn't seem to have those kind of experiences built into the game. It's assumed your party is going to win every fight without retreating. It's unnecessary to study a monster before facing it to develop tactics or to acquire special weapons or scrolls to win.
Unless the DM makes significant alterations to the game, that style of play isn't supported. I guess one can pit a marilith at a 2nd level party, but they'd die before they could retreat. It's like there's no middle ground in the fights. It's "this is a minor bump in the road" or "everybody dies."

There's also the fact that people are saying CR sixteen monsters are good for a level six party. That makes for big problems when the party is eight twelve or thirteen with dramatically more HP dramatically better capabilities & almost certainly at least some better gear that all compounds together.

CR sixteen is not good for a level six party because you hit epic monsters long before CR sixty or eighty. In my game last night I had eight monsters to track (most with multiple attacks) in a single encounter & it was annoying as hell to track it all. Worse I needed to come up with a reason why they didn't all just go paste the cleric & warlock while the 3 martials ignored everything but the bbeg they burned down in 3 rounds. The remaining monsters were of no meaningful threat or capable of instantly killing a caster & making the party gasp & cry foul. It's terrible design

 

[DEFCON 1]

Unless the DM makes significant alterations to the game, that style of play isn't supported. I guess one can pit a marilith at a 2nd level party, but they'd die before they could retreat. It's like there's no middle ground in the fights. It's "this is a minor bump in the road" or "everybody dies."

See, I'd actually put forth the idea that it's not the game that doesn't have this middle ground... it's player assumption that doesn't.

In the older eras, PCs were so fragile that it was expected that any normal encounter was going to kill you, and it was only through clever play, extreme luck, or retreating all the time that kept you alive. Retreating was an expected result a lot of the time, and thus players planned around it and made the choice to do it once they quickly discovered they were in over their heads. And it was no big deal to do so.

But in 5E... the player expectation is that they will survive almost all encounters because "winning fights" is not the focus of 5E D&D-- participating in the "story" of the campaign usually is. So the idea of retreat is foreign to them because all the PCs have multiple ways through healing and nova abilities and so forth to think they can overcome almost any challenge. Why retreat when you have five, six, seven PCs all working in concert spending the large piles of abilities and features they each have to keep everyone alive-- even raising individuals from the dead within 1 minute via 3rd level spell if one unfortunately bit it. So it's only at the very end of what turns out to be that rare TPK that they finally realize if some encounter was actually too powerful for them all and that they should have retreated... but by that point it is too late.

Players can easily retreat whenever they want in 5E... they just never think they need to until it's too late. But that's not necessarily the game's fault, it's their expectations of the game experience. Not that they are wrong to think retreating is never really a necessary option... they act in the default manner of the game experience. But that means if a DM wants to change that default manner... they can do so-- they just have to condition their players in that way. And the easiest way to get players over that expectation is to just throw deadly after deadly after deadly encounters at them-- set them up for very fight to be a TPK... so after they die so many times they finally come to the conclusion that retreat actually is an option. The DM just has to force them to get used to the idea of retreat.

Does this run counter to the "guidelines" of 5E encounter design? Sure. Absolutely. And would it require a lot of work if a person does nothing but use standard 5E Adventure books (which are not written to be that deadly)? Oh yeah. But if that's what is necessary to teach players to retreat early in a fight if things go bad... then you do what you gotta do.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Worse I needed to come up with a reason why they didn't all just go paste the cleric & warlock while the 3 martials ignored everything but the bbeg they burned down in 3 rounds. The remaining monsters were of no meaningful threat or capable of instantly killing a caster & making the party gasp & cry foul. It's terrible design

So you made the purposeful choice NOT to send most of the monsters after the cleric and warlock to wipe them off the battlefield? Am I understanding you properly? (I may be misunderstanding how you ran your encounter based on what you wrote, so if I did, my apologies and you can ignore the rest of this post as it's about faulty assumptions on my part.)

Why would you find reasons not to attack the cleric and warlock? What's the point in ignoring them? Because they are squishy? To me that's all the reason TO attack people in the back... so that the other Martial players are forced to make hard decisions and not just all gang up on the BBEG. And if you were worried that if you attacked the cleric and killed them that this would only result in the 3 Martials up front spiraling towards death because they now had no healing to back them up... that's the entire point of the exercise, isn't it? To teach the Martial characters they can't just ignore all the enemies to focus on just one?

If I understood how you ran this particular encounter based upon how you wrote it above (and again, it's quite possible that I did not, and that's on me)... to me, this does not appear to be a game design issue-- this to me is a "DM style" issue. You are making choices as a DM that to me emphasize to your players what they should do and focus on, and that you are teaching them that you will ignore squishy characters and just surround the Martial PCs with bags of HP for them to whittle away until they win. That's not 5E's fault in design per se... that is all down to how you chose to run this fight. If it was 8 enemies versus 5 PCs and three of the PCs could just tank all the enemies... and the two in back were never at risk, it's no wonder that it doesn't feel like a challenge.

 

[tetrasodium]

So you made the purposeful choice NOT to send most of the monsters after the cleric and warlock to wipe them off the battlefield? Am I understanding you properly? (I may be misunderstanding how you ran your encounter based on what you wrote, so if I did, my apologies and you can ignore the rest of this post as it's about faulty assumptions on my part.)

Why would you find reasons not to attack the cleric and warlock? What's the point in ignoring them? Because they are squishy? To me that's all the reason TO attack people in the back... so that the other Martial players are forced to make hard decisions and not just all gang up on the BBEG. And if you were worried that if you attacked the cleric and killed them that this would only result in the 3 Martials up front spiraling towards death because they now had no healing to back them up... that's the entire point of the exercise, isn't it? To teach the Martial characters they can't just ignore all the enemies to focus on just one?

If I understood how you ran this particular encounter based upon how you wrote it above (and again, it's quite possible that I did not, and that's on me)... to me, this does not appear to be a game design issue-- this to me is a "DM style" issue. You are making choices as a DM that to me emphasize to your players what they should do and focus on, and that you are teaching them that you will ignore squishy characters and just surround the Martial PCs with bags of HP for them to whittle away until they win. That's not 5E's fault in design per se... that is all down to how you chose to run this fight. If it was 8 enemies versus 5 PCs and three of the PCs could just tank all the enemies... and the two in back were never at risk, it's no wonder that it doesn't feel like a challenge.

5e got rid of the mechanical reasons for not going after them when it went chasing simplicity & got rid of AoO if moving more than 5 foot step/shift. Now it's "simple" & the martials ignore all the mooks I need to cram in encounters tuned to the system's poorly scaled encounter expectations without needing to engage the mooks. The mooks however are still restrained by the social contract.