D&D 5E (2024) Martials and Magic. Two Years of Testing.

[Milli Rabbit]

That's a good expectation for a dungeon unless it's a megadungeon. To add more credibility to the game it should have reasons behind it. The dungeon shouldn't go to sleep just because they do. One of the necessities of being a DM these days is adding in time pressure so the party can't just kill 15 hours every day with no detriment. In old school games, even just spending a few minutes meant monsters might walk into you.

Yea its why I rarely run megadungeons. When I do, I am more lenient on safe Long Rests because megadungeons as a concept are goofy. The idea that any NPC would ever design a series of sometimes 20 floors of random hallways with random monsters and random traps is ludicrous. If we are doing goofy stuff with dungeon design, then its not a stretch to also do goofy stuff with Long Rests.

Most of my campaigns are more "realistic" in the sense that scenes, rooms and battlefields are more naturally designed. This means that you really shouldn't find yourself needing to Long Rest in the middle of a dungeon but maybe in the woods along the way there.

 

[Milli Rabbit]

For my part, no, it really doesn't work. My D&D groups have very intentionally avoided over-reliance on spellcasters because the GM requested it, as in we've had mostly Rogues, Rangers, Fighters, and Monks, with only one Warlock in one party and a Warlock and Sorcerer in our current party.

So like, the only reason we aren't exploiting this is because the GM kindly asked us to and we obliged. I consider it critically flawed game design when the core engine of the experience only works if the players willingly ignore the fundamental incentives of the system.

Playing in the way that creates the most fun should be playing effectively. Playing effectively should be quite fun for most people at the table. It is a serious flaw of game design to knowingly create a game where playing it intelligently means playing it in a more boring way.

I mean you really can't expect any creative and flexible TTRPG to not have exploits that ruin the fun. Part of the concept of "play" is having a fair implementation of rules and intentionally making challenges.

In theory, a party can hire a ton of mercs and steam roll a bunch of encounters to collect more gold to pay more mercs. The solution? The DM creates armies to resist them. But why? Because that is the next logical step to having fun. No one wants to actually steamroll constantly. The thing is, you really can't have a game that allows truly creative solutions while also having no ways to exploit it. Creative solutions are almost by definition exploiting situations to your advantage. Its honestly what makes the game fun, not the mechanics.

As a DM, I know I could squash any level 20 spellcaster without any effort. That isn't the point of DMing, though. The point is creating fun along with the players. For DnD 5.5e, that means we all agree to run roughly 3-4 resource intensive encounters per Long Rest. Its not hard, either. Most adventures kind of naturally do this.

 

[tetrasodium]

1 encounter a day in 4E is pretty much auto win. Its just going to take an hour or two to get there. Ultimately pointless and boring you've already won and takes ages to get there.

Fundamental problem is the same. Nova abilities and hp vs damage.

Older D&D was technically attrition as well but its a lot easier to do and challenge PCs with.

Pre 3E it was really the only editions where 1 enconter a day could actually grind you down. Wasn't much of a grind either.

You only got 1-3 hp a day and didnt get all your spells back. We played C&C ancient Greek type game PCs got exhausted just with walking around in the wilderness and had to RTB hoping they didnt get a random encounters (I was getting them to roll publicly for them). One random encounters was some seagulls iirc.

Interesting way to build tension entirely lacking in 3E, 4E, 5E.

Deathtrap dungeons coukd easily kill you in 1 encounter. Wouldn't recommend for a campaign but interesting in one shots and tournaments.

3.5 could still do it because the expected target was like 2-4 quick encounters, there's actually section in the DMG breaking it down (pg48-50?) . Despite @Zardnaar's claims to the contrary, 5.5 still has a bunch of short rest nova abilities and the same short rest nova classes

 

[Zardnaar]

3.5 could still do it because the expected target was like 2-4 quick encounters, there's actually section in the DMG breaking it down (pg48-50?) . Despite @Zardnaar's claims to the contrary, 5.5 still has a bunch of short rest nova abilities and the same short rest nova classes

Never claimed 5 5 didnt have nova abilities. Theyre an issue imho even if fun. Well potential issue if youre having fun doing it.....

. 3.5 could do it but it was a very fine line between good fight, tpk or the player's steamroll.

AKA rocket tag.

 

[Tigris]

1 encounter a day in 4E is pretty much auto win. Its just going to take an hour or two to get there. Ultimately pointless and boring you've already won and takes ages to get there.

It only takes 2 hours if you have really bad players who take forever for their turns, thats normally if you have people who are bad at tactical games and not used to needing to do decisions. Even a big long fight does not take more than 6 rounds. And good players can do this easily in 40 minutes or less.


And nova is mostly a GM problem because 4E has, unlike 5e many anti nova mechanics. I get it takes a bit of gamedesign knowledge to understand, so many GMs who were not used for needing tactics and gamedesign knowledge had problems with 4e.


Of course if you are a bad GM and always have 1 encounter days and players know this and you take no anti burst mechanics then it will be not too much fun.


But its not that hard to challenge a party in 4e, because there is limited healing in combat, something which lacks in 5e, in 5E you can just play yoyo with people as long as you have spell slots etc.

Fundamental problem is the same. Nova abilities and hp vs damage.

Older D&D was technically attrition as well but its a lot easier to do and challenge PCs with.

Well it was just way way way worse gamedesign and the players were way way worse at that time than later. Its a lot easier to challenge bad players in a completely unbalanced game, but fortunately gamedesign and average player knowledge improved.

Pre 3E it was really the only editions where 1 enconter a day could actually grind you down. Wasn't much of a grind either.

You only got 1-3 hp a day and didnt get all your spells back. We played C&C ancient Greek type game PCs got exhausted just with walking around in the wilderness and had to RTB hoping they didnt get a random encounters (I was getting them to roll publicly for them). One random encounters was some seagulls iirc.

Yeah typical old outdated bad gamedesign. The long rest was just a short rest. And an actual long rests were several of these rests. Exactly the same problem, just more complicated with tracking, typical old gamedesign.

You can do the exact same thing in 4e and 5e just by having long rest take not one night but several ones.

It was not much of a "grind" because there was no tactics. Just silly hitting enemy with no choice. "Grind" as how you use it is "oh no combat takes several turns and people take time to think about decisions", thats not a bug its a feature.

Deathtrap dungeons coukd easily kill you in 1 encounter. Wouldn't recommend for a campaign but interesting in one shots and tournaments.

Again just bad outdated design, not interesting for people who know better games, at that time without better games it may have looked good, but the dark ages of gamedesign are fortunately over.

 

[Zardnaar]

It only takes 2 hours if you have really bad players who take forever for their turns, thats normally if you have people who are bad at tactical games and not used to needing to do decisions. Even a big long fight does not take more than 6 rounds. And good players can do this easily in 40 minutes or less.


And nova is mostly a GM problem because 4E has, unlike 5e many anti nova mechanics. I get it takes a bit of gamedesign knowledge to understand, so many GMs who were not used for needing tactics and gamedesign knowledge had problems with 4e.


Of course if you are a bad GM and always have 1 encounter days and players know this and you take no anti burst mechanics then it will be not too much fun.


But its not that hard to challenge a party in 4e, because there is limited healing in combat, something which lacks in 5e, in 5E you can just play yoyo with people as long as you have spell slots etc.


Well it was just way way way worse gamedesign and the players were way way worse at that time than later. Its a lot easier to challenge bad players in a completely unbalanced game, but fortunately gamedesign and average player knowledge improved.




Yeah typical old outdated bad gamedesign. The long rest was just a short rest. And an actual long rests were several of these rests. Exactly the same problem, just more complicated with tracking, typical old gamedesign.

You can do the exact same thing in 4e and 5e just by having long rest take not one night but several ones.

It was not much of a "grind" because there was no tactics. Just silly hitting enemy with no choice. "Grind" as how you use it is "oh no combat takes several turns and people take time to think about decisions", thats not a bug its a feature.



Again just bad outdated design, not interesting for people who know better games, at that time without better games it may have looked good, but the dark ages of gamedesign are fortunately over.

It's funny you just automatically dismiss everything outside your own view point.

Some fans of 4E actually wanted to play it. Default defense has always been to poo poo every other edition.

Yet for some strange reason one cant actually play 4E due to lack of players and/orDMs.

Must be bad game design. Few people play Draw Steel. Must be bad ane design.

If you need a bit if experience and game mastery to make the game work thats not good design. Most players will be casual who lack the knowledge.

Most players barely read the rules. They're not that into tactics or in depth theory crafting and character building.

I can at least comprehend why someone does like tactical gameplay. Its a poor option if youre not playing a CRPG where the machine does mist of the work.

It was easier to design a combat than 3.5, worse to run the damn thing. You need experienced players who are into it to make it sing. Good luck finding that.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That's a very white room analysis. Non-combat encounters exist and resources can be spent there too. 23 rounds sounds like the high end when level 20 PCs have 22 spell slots.

Even without presupposing things like every caster being a Wizard, Land Druid, or Sorcerer-that-only-uses-SP-for-slots, that would mean a spell nearly every round for the whole day. Even at 8th level, it's still an actual slotted spell every other round at that point.

Further, remember that both per what the designers tell us and what we can just see with our eyes, the game is specifically built on the idea that you need enough rounds for non-daily-usage characters to keep up with daily-usage characters. For the Champion Fighter to even just keep up, they need their bonus-crit damage to add up to enough to stay in parity with their fellow Fighters, to say nothing of a Wizard or Sorcerer.

Assume 23 rounds of combat, two short rests. At level 7, the Battle Master gets 6d8 such dice per short rest, so, they're getting ~18d8 bonus damage over the course of the day, so about 63 collectively. Presume the Champion is using a Greatsword for 2d6 damage, aka 7 damage. Meaning, we need to get about 9 (63/7=9) bonus crits, not just the expected ones. 23 rounds + 3 uses of Action Surge gives us 26 Attack actions, each of which generates two attacks, for a total of 52 attacks. Of those, 5% (2.6) are expected to be crits normally, and another 2.6 are expected to be crits from the Champion passive bonus. So...we're getting 2.6 bonus crits, when we need 9 just to keep up with a Battle Master. Even if we assume a third of all Fighter maneuvers aren't used to add damage, an extremely generous assumption, then it's still only half the amount of bonus you'd need in order to keep up.

Sooo....yeah. You say this is "the high end" when actually it's extremely low. That's a huge issue right there. People just do not understand how much combat you need in order to help non-casters keep up with casters, or short-rest-based classes keep up with long-rest-based ones.

Yes it's true challenge rating was calibrated with a bad baseline (medium difficulty). The question is whether monsters can be redesigned to salvage 5E. I've seen Matt Colville and others design them with more abilities to balance the action economy more, like having bonus actions, reactions, bloodied triggers. Legendary actions are basically mandatory for solo monsters.

It feels cheesy to just pump saving throws and HP and tack on condition immunities etc. Changes are probably needed at fundamental levels so interactions feel more dynamic and fair. Most monsters don't have nearly as many resource types as a PC near their level, which makes no sense if it's supposed to be a threat to multiple PCs.

Of course it feels cheesy, it's the equivalent of "balance everything by making it all the same". But yes, fully agreed, fundamental changes are nearly guaranteed to be required to address this. Patches can help individual issues for individual tables, but as so often happens, they prioritized the short-term bump at the cost of long-term stability.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's funny you just automatically dismiss everything outside your own view point.

Coming from you, that's rich as hell, Zardnaar. You dismiss anything that isn't your own viewpoint constantly. Like easily dozens of times just in THIS thread.

 

[tetrasodium]

Never claimed 5 5 didnt have nova abilities. Theyre an issue imho even if fun. Well potential issue if youre having fun doing it.....

. 3.5 could do it but it was a very fine line between good fight, tpk or the player's steamroll.

AKA rocket tag.

Oh.. I see... You don't understand why 5e expects the PCs to thinly spread their short rest resources over 23 rounds and what happens when they don't.

Hes describing 5.0. In that video. 5.5 has ditched the 6-8 round expectation. They explicitly changed the encounter building and theres no expectation of 23 rounds.

Note 3E and 4E also had expected number of encounters. Its a silly concept.

From memory the 6-8 rounds came from a survey in the playtest.

5.5 did almost nothing to address the problem with bad design surrounding the 23 round target assumptions because it placed too high of a priority on maintaining some bizarre binary level compatibility over correcting literally anything at all like the rest mechanics or class design after one video with more up votes at the time Crawford was bragging about survey responses in the relevant recap video days later managed to brigade the surveys. Even if 5.5 managed to get change it from 23 rounds to something else, the target is dtitwell outside anything resembling normal play.

Take the flex-vancian prep we saw in onednd play test that never even got supported with so much as a character sheet as an example of 5.5 not actually addressing anything.. While there may have been examples of sheets supporting it like the one in my signature made by others in the community, wotc was not among them and doesn't seem to have been.
.

 

[Johngernaut]

No, one of the designers involved in setting those design assumptions telling us what they are & ewhy they don't workas expected at the time in a detailed breakdown explaining the variables is not whiteroom analysis.

Is your argument that because it's the original designer saying it, it's not white room? Because that's not true at all. In fact the original designers probably did everything in the whitest of white rooms before any play testing was done.

Sooo....yeah. You say this is "the high end" when actually it's extremely low. That's a huge issue right there. People just do not understand how much combat you need in order to help non-casters keep up with casters, or short-rest-based classes keep up with long-rest-based ones.

I don't understand why you're comparing Battlemaster to Champion in a martial/caster thread. In any case, no one really denies the imbalance exists, we're just arguing over the degree of imbalance. More interesting to me is what to do about it. My inclination is to nerf spells to be more in line with the power of free or low cost abilities, seeing as these supposedly costly resources are so plentiful that in many games they never run out of them. I suppose another option would be to actually make spell slots scarce.

In either case, it's hard for a DM to do this with house rules. This level of change is getting to be like brain surgery on the game and I think player buyin would be an issue. It's at the point where you start looking for different systems.