I don't think official D&D can fix it. Too many factors pushing for more PC power and more flash. You'll have to look to other publishers for your design innovations.I like this discussion and I'm happy to be a part of it!
Getting tripped up over the exact wording of Suggestion isn't important: it's clear from the description that one legitimate usage is removing an enemy from a combat. Targeting that concentration check, counterspell, and LRs are really your only counters.
Like many others mentioned, I still remember a combat against mind flayers from 15 yrs ago where the PCs were stunlocked repeatedly and how boring it was. "Never again." Turn denial just isn't fun.
Doom points / LRs are a great bandaid, but it does just feel like another gamey layer. "Gotta burn through those 5 LRs then we nuke it" becomes the plan, which isn't really narratively satisfying, as others have mentioned. I've also noticed how many 2024 monsters have "advantage on saves vs spells" which seems like another bandaid. Casters end up becoming auto-win or useless, neither of which are fun.
Along those lines, 2014 monks are the most powerful class I've seen in play. Even my never-min-max player quickly figured out his job was to stunlock the most dangerous opponents (multiple) each battle. The lack of stun immunity made many "deadly" encounters trivial. Even LRs aren't enough: monks can attack like 5 times in a row, boom there's your LRs gone in round 1.
Something else to underline: 2024 PCs are far more powerful than 2014s. This is pretty well established, but it still caught me off guard by how MUCH. Using 2024 PCs to finish the Tiamat campaign nearly nuked a god in 3 rounds. They just do so much martial damage now - it's nuts. And save or win effects were harder to land in the olden (3.5) days - that's just not true any more. Save or win used to be like a 1/3 chance, now it's 2/3 or better. And you can target multiple enemies at time. Hold Monster used to be so unreliable you'd never take it: now you always would.
Finally: save or suck spells do suck. They are too much of a risk/reward: if you miss, your turn was completely wasted. If you hit, you win. I like the PF2 suggestion of "levels of effect" but also dear god that's so much bookkeeping. 4e actually did a good job like others mentioned - and was roundly rejected.
We already have the super gamey HP whittling metagame, maybe save or suck should do damage on a fail, and make monster saves higher? I don't know. There's probably not a simple fix: someone would have thought of it. Reworking magic is AN answer but it's also the hardest and we tried that already and people rejected it. I'm thinking the 2024 MM should have raised monster saves by like +2 across the board, in addition to the big HP bump.
That's not exactly any more "narrative friendly" than the existing system. By which I mean that it still makes the fiction pretty stilted.That is interesting: what if the Gm gets "Doom Points" based on encounter numbers disparity? That is, the ratio of PCs to monsters (as the encounter is designed) equals the number of Doom points/LRs the GM starts the encounter with. So if it is 4 PCs against a boss monster and its lieutenant, then the GM gets 2 Doom Points.
There should be a caveat here, I think. Bad guys have to survive contact with the PC's in order to react to their efforts. Now maybe other campaigns are different, but in the ones I play in, there aren't often survivors to tell the tale...bad guys continuing the story based on events and actions that the players caused or created is not spot nerfing or revenge fudging. Now if you meant to limit the statement to DM's just punishing players for winning fine, but saying the baddies and other NPC's shouldn't come back and react appropriately due to past events that's silly. I'm not sure which you meant with that post.
one thing a DM has, is more monsters, you always have more.I do have to admit that I'm getting a bit annoyed at those Bard spells that essentially take out NPCs and Monsters out of action for most of the encounter. Especially when the effects are anti-climactic or comical when things were kind of serious.
Phantasmal Force, Tasha's Laughter and Dissonant Whispers are the biggest culprits so far. I wish some monsters had resistance to this kind of thing but eh, I'll follow my own advice and prepare to have things go slapstick all of a sudden.
I really dislike the "you can just throw more monsters at them!" reply to issues with PC power.one thing a DM has, is more monsters, you always have more.
one good thing that I have is potions of "Summon X" if battle is going too bad for NPCs too fast.
point is that PCs win the encounter, but not too easy.
having 2/4 or 3/5 PCs knocked out during every encounter is a good difficulty setting.
and Dissonant Whispers is not hard CC spell, it just wastes reaction and movement, if not used in combination of 2 or more AoOs, damage and effect are not really good.
Again not sure if this has been answered but Dissonant Whispers take the creature to use one of its own actions (in this case a reaction) to move. That is different to an eldritch blast moving a creature back 10ft or a gust of wind. So dissonant whispers doesn’t count as forced movement in the context of AOThe question was whether the forced movement in this case (2024) triggered OA? The OP says it does, but I thought forced movement never triggered OA.
We've never had the forced movement in 2014 trigger OA, as that would contitute obviously dangerous movement.
solo monsters are always bad idea for encounter, action economy will be the end of them.I really dislike the "you can just throw more monsters at them!" reply to issues with PC power.
1. If your answer to "they took a big enemy out of the fight" is "so I added another big enemy to the fight!" that could seem cheap and fiat-ey to the players if it's happening frequently... and it's going to happen frequently, because the core PC power problem hasn't been addressed.
2. Throwing more monsters at them means turning combats into even longer potential slogs. I like combat, but just adding more monsters to challenge PC resources is going to feel grindy to me. To make it more NOT grindy is going to take more work on my part- because we haven't addressed the core PC power problem.
Blah, I could go on but I just have issues with 5e PC power relative to monsters.
I'm not sure what you mean. It isn't intended to be narrative friendly. It is intended to help balance one shot spells with a couple floating LRs.That's not exactly any more "narrative friendly" than the existing system. By which I mean that it still makes the fiction pretty stilted.