D&D 5E It's so hard to die!

[NotAYakk]

Heh. I'd call that a special case for sure. I'm sure I could contrive a way to make the Fireball spell into an actual threat, but usually it translates to about 12-15 points of damage for a 3rd level spell slot. Not bad, but there are better options.

Fireball excels when there are large numbers of low-CR foes. 8d6 is 28 damage. Low CR foes have a low chance of saving, and 28 damage kills most low CR foes.

20 CR 1/4 guards in checkerboard formation and a fireball drops like 10 of them, which is a solid turn.

Ordinary intelligence should lead one to conclude a party with spellcasters will bring their fallen ally back immediately unless you take that fallen ally down.

So, in my D&D, a "party" isn't an in-world thing.

You would no more expect a party of adventurers in-world than you would expect a oceans 11 team in your casino.

If your world is "what the players are doing is typical", yes you get strange things going on.

I had my 6 player 10th level party (with 1 12th level npc cleric) go against:

100 githyanki archers (I even had an excel to track the rolls, I didn't bs it, it was legit.)

What stats? In such a fight, the CR of those archers is going to dominate. If used effectively, they'll break the PCs; if useless, the rest of the encounter is rounding error.

If the players are forewarned and prepped and can block nonmagical arrow fire, this is going to be doable. Without it, at 12 damage per crit, that is 60 damage per round just from crits if the PC has infinite AC relative to the archer ATK.

If the archer has 16 dex and +2 prof, that is +5 to hit; so any PC with less than 25 AC is going to be shredded by focus fire if they are exposed to this. I guess you'd make them target randomly or uniformly, which wouldn't be that bad.

At 20 AC (decent for a level 10 PC who isn't a tank), that is .25 hits and 0.05 crits per attack, for 2.1 expected damage per attacker. At 20 arrows that is 42 average damage if you are exposed to the archers. The fewer PCs that are exposed, the more shots, and if nobody is exposed all of the archers ready an action to shred the first or second one who shows themselves.

10 githyanki warriors
1 githyanki battlemaster
1 githyanki battle commander (can't remember its from volos I think)
3 githyanki war vessels (effectively shooting fireballs every round).

A fireball with save is 14 damage. If the exposed PC has resistance, that is 21 damage they can't practically avoid (short of evasion).

Players are crazy, people talk about tactics, but it goes the same for players too. My group routinely smashes anything close to their CR. If I'm not at least 5 CR higher than the party its treated as a warmup.

So yeah from my perspective its pretty darn hard to kill players, not impossible, but it takes some effort.

Sure.

Someone has noted that every tier-appropriate attunement item is probably worth +1 character level of power, give or take. And the effective party level is the sum of PC levels, divided by 4. (This doesn't work in T1 as well, as the power curve is a bit janky there).

So a party of 4 level 10 PCs with 3 items each and a level 12 cleric has an effective party level of about 17.

Monsters whose CR doesn't sum to over 17 are easy encounters here. (Summing up CR, with adjustment for lower level monsters, is often a better and easier way to measure encounter difficulty than the DMG/XGTE systems are)

That's correct. People doesn't seem to understand that all Gritty Realism does is slowing down the pacing of the game. Instead of having adventuring days, you have adventuring weeks. It's perfect for campaigns with a lot of wilderness travel, but otherwise it doesn't change the balance or anything.

Exactly.

Well, spell durations that are long change balance. And if you don't alter magic item refresh times.

It is a plotting change. And if you find it difficult to ensure your plots are almost always 5+ encounters in a in-world day, gritty rests let you change the timing of resource recovery.

People who have adapted to the 5 minute adventuring day, where almost every fight is "use every resource you have", bad guys are full of abilities that make most spells useless (legendary resists, saving throws in the teens, spell resistance, immunity to a half dozen conditions and damage types), etc may find that the fights they may want to use are different.

When the dragon is just one of 8 encounters that day, they don't have to have a CR double the average party level to be a threat.

 

[Mistwell]

So, in my D&D, a "party" isn't an in-world thing.

You would no more expect a party of adventurers in-world than you would expect a oceans 11 team in your casino.

If your world is "what the players are doing is typical", yes you get strange things going on.

The rules, to me, imply groups of adventurers who travel together and which are highly dangerous and, among other things, cast spells. Whether the setting is a city, outdoors, a dungeon, or otherwise, many many rules for dealing with the game imply this to be a known thing to that world. So known that there are a host of spells to counter other spells, natural resistance to magic, magic items against it, etc.. And so engrained is the group of adventurers that most foes also travel in groups so as to deal with said adventurers.

If your setting doesn't involve those implications, that's fine but I'd suggest that might make it atypical.

 

[NotAYakk]

The rules, to me, imply groups of adventurers who travel together and which are highly dangerous and, among other things, cast spells. Whether the setting is a city, outdoors, a dungeon, or otherwise, many many rules for dealing with the game imply this to be a known thing to that world. So known that there are a host of spells to counter other spells, natural resistance to magic, magic items against it, etc.. And so engrained is the group of adventurers that most foes also travel in groups so as to deal with said adventurers.

If your setting doesn't involve those implications, that's fine but I'd suggest that might make it atypical.

Counterspells do not imply groups of adventures. It just means there are spells.

Resistance to magic does not imply groups of adventurers. It just means there is magic.

I am not sure what part of D&D rules implies that groups of adventurers are common. The game having rules for groups of PCs just assumes that your players will form a group, and says nothing whatsoever about what the NPCs do in the world.

I get that FR is a MMORPG-esque world that assumes that, and WoW and other pop culture makes many people assume it.

 

[Stalker0]

What stats? In such a fight, the CR of those archers is going to dominate. If used effectively, they'll break the PCs; if useless, the rest of the encounter is rounding error.

If the players are forewarned and prepped and can block nonmagical arrow fire, this is going to be doable. Without it, at 12 damage per crit, that is 60 damage per round just from crits if the PC has infinite AC relative to the archer ATK.

If the archer has 16 dex and +2 prof, that is +5 to hit; so any PC with less than 25 AC is going to be shredded by focus fire if they are exposed to this. I guess you'd make them target randomly or uniformly, which wouldn't be that bad.

At 20 AC (decent for a level 10 PC who isn't a tank), that is .25 hits and 0.05 crits per attack, for 2.1 expected damage per attacker. At 20 arrows that is 42 average damage if you are exposed to the archers. The fewer PCs that are exposed, the more shots, and if nobody is exposed all of the archers ready an action to shred the first or second one who shows themselves.

Someone has noted that every tier-appropriate attunement item is probably worth +1 character level of power, give or take. And the effective party level is the sum of PC levels, divided by 4. (This doesn't work in T1 as well, as the power curve is a bit janky there).

So a party of 4 level 10 PCs with 3 items each and a level 12 cleric has an effective party level of about 17.

Monsters whose CR doesn't sum to over 17 are easy encounters here. (Summing up CR, with adjustment for lower level monsters, is often a better and easier way to measure encounter difficulty than the DMG/XGTE systems are)


Exactly.

Well, spell durations that are long change balance. And if you don't alter magic item refresh times.

It is a plotting change. And if you find it difficult to ensure your plots are almost always 5+ encounters in a in-world day, gritty rests let you change the timing of resource recovery.

People who have adapted to the 5 minute adventuring day, where almost every fight is "use every resource you have", bad guys are full of abilities that make most spells useless (legendary resists, saving throws in the teens, spell resistance, immunity to a half dozen conditions and damage types), etc may find that the fights they may want to use are different.

When the dragon is just one of 8 encounters that day, they don't have to have a CR double the average party level to be a threat.

The archers plan was to focus on a single character and kill them. The party had no foreknowledge, they literally had teleported into a trap. I’d say they had two items each so effective 15-16 level by your stats.

for those curious it went like this (not exact timings just the highlights).

1) party wizard cast wall of force to create a dome and save the party from annihilation.

2) some GitHyanki warriors misty step in and engage the fighters.

3) sorc casts fog cloud in the dome, prevents further misty step and hides the PCs actions.

4) wizard familiar was out of the area at the time. It makes a dash toward one of the ships. It gets annihilated but gets close enough to see the location of one of the gun ports, revealing a way in.

5) wizard gives coordinates to sorc, he uses a subtle dimension door to take himself and a Paladin into the ship with none the wiser.

6) strike team sneaks on the ship and takes hold of the control room.

7) they use the ship to start blasting at the archers. The battle master engages them, but the Paladin makes a DC 30 persuasion to try and convince the battle master to stand down (and note the party thought he was insane to try that instead of attacking...they thought otherwise when the saw the roll). I had actually written into the characters backstory his loathing of the battle commander and this entire war campaign...and so he left the ship.

8) meanwhile the cleric has buffed his ac, and has magic armor and a cursed shield of missile attraction. The wizard d doors himself and the party ranger to the ship, dropping the force wall.

9) the remaining archers release their full hail, but the shield draws in all the fire and gives the cleric resistance. The cleric also is using the dodge action so they have disadvantage. He tanks the damage like the boss and uses heal.

10) while the archers focus on the cleric, the ground forces rush into the building where the battle commander is at and engage.

11) a three fold battle commences. The wizard puts a resilient sphere around himself and the control wheel, so he is now out of the fight but has complete control of the ship.

the ship continues to decimate the archers, players on the ship engage warriors, and ground forces take on the battle commander.


after a long bloodied battle, the players emerge triumphant! Still remembered as the greatest fight of the campaign

 

[Mistwell]

Counterspells do not imply groups of adventures. It just means there are spells.

Resistance to magic does not imply groups of adventurers. It just means there is magic.

I am not sure what part of D&D rules implies that groups of adventurers are common. The game having rules for groups of PCs just assumes that your players will form a group, and says nothing whatsoever about what the NPCs do in the world.

I get that FR is a MMORPG-esque world that assumes that, and WoW and other pop culture makes many people assume it.

Name one single 5e official adventure where NPCs in that world would find a group of adventurers a novel concept. I can't think of a single one.

FR is not a MMORPG-esque world or a WoW and WELL predates both of those. It's just a generic D&D fantasy world. But other D&D settings often assume it even more. Dark Sun and Planescape both absolutely expect groups of adventurers, for example. Eberron includes adventurers guilds as an assumed part of the setting. In fact, what setting doesn't assume parties of adventurers?

 

[fearsomepirate]

People are acting like a 10th-level AD&D party was in constant danger of a TPK, and it just wasn't. You can easily put together encounters of a difficulty level that a 10th-level AD&D party should have no trouble doing 6-8 of them per day, biggest difference being they need an extra day or two to heal up.

I just finished Temple of Elemental Evil in 5e. Lots of characters died, because what made things harder in that era is there's often little to no attempt to "balance" anything, and going Leroy Jenkins through the adventure is supposed to be a terrible idea. In 5e adventure design, drawing your weapons and blindly charging forward into everything is typically assumed to be SOP.

If you use AD&D random encounter tables and design philosophy in your 5e games, guarantee you St Cuthbert's chapel is gonna have regular funeral services.

 

[Dausuul]

1) party wizard cast wall of force to create a dome and save the party from annihilation.

2) some Githyanki warriors misty step in and engage the fighters.

3) sorc casts fog cloud in the dome, prevents further misty step and hides the PCs actions.

4) wizard familiar was out of the area at the time. It makes a dash toward one of the ships. It gets annihilated but gets close enough to see the location of one of the gun ports, revealing a way in.

5) wizard gives coordinates to sorc, he uses a subtle dimension door to take himself and a Paladin into the ship with none the wiser.

6) strike team sneaks on the ship and takes hold of the control room.

7) they use the ship to start blasting at the archers. The battle master engages them, but the Paladin makes a DC 30 persuasion to try and convince the battle master to stand down (and note the party thought he was insane to try that instead of attacking...they thought otherwise when the saw the roll). I had actually written into the characters backstory his loathing of the battle commander and this entire war campaign...and so he left the ship.

8) meanwhile the cleric has buffed his ac, and has magic armor and a cursed shield of missile attraction. The wizard d doors himself and the party ranger to the ship, dropping the force wall.

9) the remaining archers release their full hail, but the shield draws in all the fire and gives the cleric resistance. He tanks the damage like the boss and uses heal.

10) while the archers focus on the cleric, the ground forces rush into the building where the battle commander is at and engage.

11) a three fold battle commences. The wizard puts a resilient sphere around himself and the control wheel, so he is now out of the fight but has complete control of the ship.

the ship continues to decimate the archers, players on the ship engage warriors, and ground forces take on the battle commander.

I must salute your players. Those are some sharp tactics right there, particularly the use of fog cloud to simultaneously block the enemy's line-of-sight teleport and conceal the party's own teleportation. Way to get extra mileage out of a 1st-level spell!

This also illustrates the gulf between white-room theory and real play. From a white-room perspective, hijacking the ship and convincing the battlemaster to abandon the fight are "cheat moves." In a real adventure, such tactics are the ingredients of epic triumphs remembered for years.

 

[MNblockhead]

In my experience, most people who either complain or crow about how hard it is to kill pcs in 5e simply haven't been in a combat where the dm took the gloves off and gave it a good try. Ruthless play, no giving the pcs a chance to heal the downed guy, good tactics, no fudging the dice to save the party.

To be fair, it requires a very good DM to do it well when playing with experience, tactical players. I have to spend a lot of time to really think through the abilities and tactics for set-point encounters. My players have been playing for years/decades, are tactical, and know their characters' abilities and spells inside and out.

Sure, I control the world and know the area better than then and I have the element of surprise and knowing both their characters' abilities and the monsters. But I'll never know the NPCs/monsters as well as the players know their characters unless it is a reoccurring villain.

 

[MNblockhead]

But only two types of creatures would do this...really smart enemies and animalistic enemies that would stop to eat. Everyone in between will move to the next enemy once someone goes down.

In a world where healing magic was common enough that most people would have at least heard about it if not witnessed it, I don't think you would have to be "really smart" to want to finish off a downed enemy.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

In a world where healing magic was common enough that most people would have at least heard about it if not witnessed it, I don't think you would have to be "really smart" to want to finish off a downed enemy.

I like this point but and I can’t get movie-trailer-voice-guy out of my head when I read it. Two thumbs up.