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General Tabletop Discussion
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Is the Default Playstyle of 5E "Monty Haul?"
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<blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 8822906" data-attributes="member: 7006"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Players can easily retreat whenever they want in 5E... they just never think they <em>need</em> 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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="DEFCON 1, post: 8822906, member: 7006"] 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 [I]need[/I] 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. [/QUOTE]
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