D&D 5E (2024) Mike Mearls explains why your boss monsters die too easily

[mamba]

Yet they keep publishing books that accomplish both things...6-8 fights of 2-3 Rounds is, yet again, like 2 to 3 minutes of fighting in a whole day.

I would have to check how often there actually are that many encounters in a day, my gut says it is frequently less. Even if they always put 8 encounters in a location, they have no idea whether a party will tackle them all during one rest or not however.

Yes, that helps keep the players alive.

eh, not very tight does not help keep them alive, you can just as easily undershoot as overshoot. The DM actually having a good idea about the difficulty of a fight is certainly a more reliable path to survival than a DM just guessing and hoping for the best

 

[Micah Sweet]

Which are exactly the games played by forum theorycrafters, not the general public.

A lot of the "general public" is still playing 5.0.

 

[Parmandur]

And several hours at the game table. That's the issue.

6-8 fights plus roleplaying and shenanigans can be a full 4 hours altogether, yes?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Either that or real people, playing real games who deserve to be treated with the same respect as anyone else regardless of if meeting their needs is something Wizards deems worthwhile from an economic standpoint. There is certainly nothing theoretical about my gaming preferences - they born out of years of experience running and playing games.

Pathfinder Second Edition, Draw Steel and Fabula Ultima certainly have proven to have enough of a market for the publishers of those games.

Agreed. If these games didn't make enough money to keep going, they wouldn't keep going. You don't have to go the WotC "all gamers are belong to us" business philosophy to make a financially successful game. Every other company producing RPGs that isn't actually dying is proof of that.

 

[Parmandur]

I would have to check how often there actually are that many encounters in a day, my gut says it is frequently less. Even if they always put 8 encounters in a location, they have no idea whether a party will tackle them all during one rest or not however.

Your gut is perhaps misguiding you here, I checked as recently as Dragon Delves they are still fully stocking Dungeons and, this is key, providing reasons for timely clearing them out.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't find this notion very productive in these discussions. You could say that in response to any complaint.

Your car runs bad, well just go learn everything there is about cars and fix it. Its easy!



That is a perfectly valid path for some people to walk, but that does not change the core issue. When people buy a product, they generally don't expect to have to fix it. Having issues with a product and then wanting to complain about it, is a pretty normal reaction. Telling them to "just fix it yourself"....not that helpful.

What about ideas for fixing it? Is that helpful? Does it have to be the company?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don’t think that guidance is 1) all that realistic with its 6-8 fights and assumptions of no long rests between any of them, and 2) still not very tight, even if you were to follow it

If your guidance requires player buy in and players not using easily available abilities (rope trick / tiny hut) in order to deliver the intended experience, then your approach is very brittle and will most likely be ‘undermined’ at most tables. Good design would avoid this

Fixing and/or banning problematic abilities is a way to go as well. Obviously I generally prefer the former.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

6-8 fights plus roleplaying and shenanigans can be a full 4 hours altogether, yes?

No way in hell. You cannot fit 6-8 fights in four hours even though that's all you'd do. And I want majority of the game time to spent to other things regardless. Two fights per four hour session is pretty much the max, maybe three if they are really simple ones, but I wouldn't make a habit of it. And zero to one fights is pretty normal.

 

[Parmandur]

Even if they always put 8 encounters in a location

Just as a for-example, this could be easily multiplied book after book, Dragon Delves (spoilers, I guess?) gives us Cobblehook Cove:

To take out the villain here and save the day, the Level 10 party has 7 combat Encounters, not including traps or the 3 Parrits using the Raven stat block (if they fight the parrots, it is 8 combat encoutners):

Spoiler: Fully Stocked Dungeon Details

• 6 Pirates and 1 Giant Crocodile
• 1 Tough and 2 Gricks (the Tough is open to negotiation if the Gricks are beaten first)
• 4 Pirates, 2 Mages, and 1 Assasin
• 3 Darkmantles
• 1 Roper, 6 Piercers, and 1 Cloaker
• 2 Violet Fungus Necrohulks
• 1 Adult Black Dragon (and a Partridge in q Pear Tree, IIRC)

Sure, I guess players could try cheesing that...but then they fail the town.

 

[M_Natas]

I don't find this notion very productive in these discussions. You could say that in response to any complaint.

Your car runs bad, well just go learn everything there is about cars and fix it. Its easy!



That is a perfectly valid path for some people to walk, but that does not change the core issue. When people buy a product, they generally don't expect to have to fix it. Having issues with a product and then wanting to complain about it, is a pretty normal reaction. Telling them to "just fix it yourself"....not that helpful.

II didn't say fix it yourself, I say the modularity is there. It is super easy for any third party, to create modules for 5e to adjust ot to a new style of play, because the structure of 5e is very modular. It is very easy to switch out rules and subsystem and replace them or add new ones.

I also find it a pity, that WotC didn't do anything wortwhile with the modularity of the system.
But I don't believe WotC will do that now, so I do it myself or get third party products.

5e is in the creative commons now. We can do with it whatever we want.