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

[Bae'zel]

Sometimes being a good gamemaster means being a little antagonistic.

While I agree, I feel that the general sentiment on the internet nowadays (the D&D community?) is that this is an unambiguously negative thing. Cue the wave of RPGs limiting GM abilities through metacurrency or GM-less RPGs.

 

[Parmandur]

I’m not going to respond to the whole thread, but my takeaway is this admission: “We were probably off by a factor of 5.”

I.e it’s not the player’s fault for ignoring the encounter guidance DMG, it was the designers’ fault for supposing such a large number of encounters was reasonable.

Even back in 1st edition days, whenever resources ran low the party would leave the dungeon and return to town to recover - possibly for weeks, which would pass in the blink of an eye. Resource management was never a big deal in D&D, and it was silly to try and balance the game around it. Encounters should be designed around the idea that the party is always at or near full strength.

“Game time is of utmost importance. Failure to keep careful track of time expenditure by player characters will result in many anomalies in the game. The stricture of time is what makes recovery of hit points meaningful. Likewise, the time spent adventuring in wilderness areas removes concerned characters from their bases of operations – be they rented chambers or battlemented strongholds. Certainly the most important time strictures pertains to the manufacturing of magic items, for during the period of such activity no adventuring can be done. Time is also considered in gaining levels and learning new languages and more. All of these demands upon game time force choices upon player characters and likewise number their days of game life…YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT.”

- Gary Gygax, Dungeon Masters Guide page 37

I love the absurdity of Gygaxes quote here, but I think contrasting his random maximalism there with your very real 1E experience shows how 5E is capturing that same spread presenf in D&D from the beginning: there is an attrition game that works very well if it is engaged with, but it is totally possible to handwave away and have a good time.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

mean, I am not sure what people are talking about when they say the official Adventures don't follow the DMG model, though...they are full of Dungeona that push a full Adventure Day

Err, no? I can’t think of any that fit that. Not even ToA, which has a lot of 1 encounter per day hexcrawling. Most don’t have 20 rounds of combat in the whole adventure/chapter. The last one I ran had about 10, and that was only because I added extra, and there was nothing to prevent the PCs resting, or taking a week’s holiday, between each one.

 

[DarkCrisis]

That’s why I love OSE/OSR/Shadowdark etc old school styles. The team can’t really “Supernova” like they can in modern D&D.

 

[Parmandur]

Err, no? I can’t think of any that fit that. Not even ToA, which has a lot of 1 encounter per day hexcrawling. Most don’t have 20 rounds of combat in the whole adventure/chapter. The last one I ran had about 10, and that was only because I added extra, and there was nothing to prevent the PCs resting, or taking a week’s holiday, between each one.

Not during the Hexcrawl, no, it would be weird to have a maximum adventure day in a Hexcrawl. But if you look to page 113 of ToA, the Temple Roster for the Fane of the Night Serpant is a solid example of precisely what I mean...and that is never the only example on ToA?

The Adventure Day is a maximum threshold, not a prescription for every day. When the narrative provides a reason that a party has to tackle something like the Fane od the Night Serpent in one go...they can, and it will be balanced.

 

[overgeeked]

That’s why I love OSE/OSR/Shadowdark etc old school styles. The team can’t really “Supernova” like they can in modern D&D.

And the players expect to be challenged.

 

[overgeeked]

Rest Update: You cannot take a long rest until you've had ~20 rounds of combat.

You could also make rests a recharging resource based on combat. This is effectively what Draw Steel has done.

Gain a spendable short-rest resource after six rounds of combat. Max two per long rest.

Gain a spendable long-rest resource after 18 rounds of combat.

You could even divorce these from the notion of sleep entirely. Something like resting takes 5 minutes regardless of "length." I think it might be that connection, long rest equals a night's sleep that causes the most trouble. Resting is a game mechanic, so let it be a game mechanic.

 

[Laurefindel]

Err, no? I can’t think of any that fit that. Not even ToA, which has a lot of 1 encounter per day hexcrawling. Most don’t have 20 rounds of combat in the whole adventure/chapter. The last one I ran had about 10, and that was only because I added extra, and there was nothing to prevent the PCs resting, or taking a week’s holiday, between each one.

I haven’t played that many prewritten adventures, but in the ones we played, we probably had a dozen encounters total. It probably was a bit more, but no single adventuring day had more than 3 encounters at most.

 

[M_Natas]

You could also make rests a recharging resource based on combat. This is effectively what Draw Steel has done.

Gain a spendable short-rest resource after six rounds of combat. Max two per long rest.

Gain a spendable long-rest resource after 18 rounds of combat.

You could even divorce these from the notion of sleep entirely. Something like resting takes 5 minutes regardless of "length." I think it might be that connection, long rest equals a night's sleep that causes the most trouble. Resting is a game mechanic, so let it be a game mechanic.

The problem is, that long rests give back 100% of spend ressources no matter what. So all challenge attrition gets reserted after a night's sleep.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Right. Instead, this is how warning labels on something like steak knives get slapped on informing people that they contain no steak, and trying to eat them is dangerous.

Although it really does depend on how you marinade the steak knife. If you let the steak knife sit in a teriyaki sauce long enough, it does get to a point where the steak knife becomes quite tender.