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

[AnotherGuy]

Taking out the boss is a valid strategy.
Intelligent Boss monsters also know this and prepare for it.

So,

• they are in another room while their Minions fight the Party.

The 5 enslaved wizards all cast warding bond on the BBEG giving him +5 to AC and Saving Throws and resistance to everything.

• The BBEG is protected by a force field that is powered by Crystals protected by Quantum Orges, that need to be destroyed first.
• Use a Goblin Boss with redirect attack.

Or just double the HP of the Boss and give him higher AC.

• Separate the party...

Last session the PCs took on Iymrith in her lair, she separated the party by collapsing one of the corridors. I did though have to decrease her Legendary Actions as she was fighting only 1 PC.

 

[tetrasodium]

It was fairly logical that between a Short Rest and Long Rest there should have been a Travel Rest...

Anyways it doesn't matter we've had 10+ years to homebrew and fix their mistakes and we have plenty of 5e derivatives, not mention DMsGuild content.

The cane toad problem prevents fixing it with house rules. Cane toads were first brought to Florida in the 1930s and 1940s to control sugar cane-eating beetles. This initial attempt at biological pest control was unsuccessful because they liked it better to spread outside the sugar cane fields and without their predators they cause lots of problems.

Too many parts of 5e are designed to enshrine the unholy abomination of the long or short rest for anything shy of a major overhaul of the ruleset to fix the structural problems absent top down GM support from wotc. Everything from not particularly threatening debuffs from "dangerous" monsters vanishing "after a long or short rest" to individual class resources being tied to one or the other makes a mess for any minor rest level house rule fix .... And that's before factoring in the poisonous malicious compliance level shift away from 4e ADEU design back to d&d style adventuring day attrition based design that short rest classes like monk and warlock bring.

"We" haven't been able to homebrew a fix in the last 10+ years because wotc has spent that time actively undermining any efforts at doing so like with all of the times Crawford denied the 6-8 encounter expectation being something designed for. Too many parts of 5e (both core and splat based additions) are designed to ensure that any singythe god awful munchkin level rest mechanics can be forced to return after house rule just by making build choices that make any change as difficult and catch 22 quani edge case prone as possible as often as needed to declare the change an unplayable failure.

 

[Charlaquin]

The problem again is, that you have to use the "crutch" of random encounters to deny a long rest or just handwave a NO to long rests, because long rests are just too good by giving 100% of all ressources back.

Why are random encounters a crutch? They’re a tool the DM is fully intended to have at their disposal. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using that tool.

 

[Zardnaar]

The cane toad problem prevents fixing it with house rules. Cane toads were first brought to Florida in the 1930s and 1940s to control sugar cane-eating beetles. This initial attempt at biological pest control was unsuccessful because they liked it better to spread outside the sugar cane fields and without their predators they cause lots of problems.

Too many parts of 5e are designed to enshrine the unholy abomination of the long or short rest for anything shy of a major overhaul of the ruleset to fix the structural problems absent top down GM support from wotc. Everything from not particularly threatening debuffs from "dangerous" monsters vanishing "after a long or short rest" to individual class resources being tied to one or the other makes a mess for any minor rest level house rule fix .... And that's before factoring in the poisonous malicious compliance level shift away from 4e ADEU design back to d&d style adventuring day attrition based design that short rest classes like monk and warlock bring.

"We" haven't been able to homebrew a fix in the last 10+ years because wotc has spent that time actively undermining any efforts at doing so like with all of the times Crawford denied the 6-8 encounter expectation being something designed for. Too many parts of 5e (both core and splat based additions) are designed to ensure that any singythe god awful munchkin level rest mechanics can be forced to return after house rule just by making build choices that make any change as difficult and catch 22 quani edge case prone as possible as often as needed to declare the change an unplayable failure.

4E would be having same problem. It has dailies.

 

[GobHag]

As someone who think about game designs, the current 'meta' of 1-2 fight novas is atrocious.

As a player, I'd take this meta over resource attrition any day of the week. It's better designed I agree, but I don't want a better design like that.

 

[M_Natas]

Why are random encounters a crutch? They’re a tool the DM is fully intended to have at their disposal. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using that tool.

They are a crutch if it is basically your only way to deny a long rest, e.g. you are forced to do random encounters in order to stop long resting when it would hinder the pace of the game.

 

[BenjaminPey]

And all the while, people I play with like stories that make sense, where a good night sleep in a haunted house (or worse) is not even a possibility. They also like being challenged from time to time, so they're not constantly moving back and forth between the dungeon and the town, and when they don't want to be challenged, well, it's their game as much as mine. Why should I enforce challenges when it's not welcomed?

 

[Seramus]

I don't think that is the catch-all weasel wording you are making it out to be because the return is still full total and complete restoration of combat nova power.

That's true, complete restoration of combat nova power is certainly an issue. It's one of the biggest reasons why I prefer the Per Encounter style approach more prevalent in 4E or Daggerheart.

All it does is set up an adversarial arms race between how much table time the gm is willing to let the players unhappily waste on poisonous behavior attempting to force calm and relative safety with barricading or whatever.

You can say that about any planning the party attempts. And at least in my case, you can't force calm and relative safety through short term actions. Short term options are pre-determined (ala the restored shrine example), or macro actions such as clearing a whole region out so monsters just won't wander back in for several days.

 

[Seramus]

I admit, I always thought the idea of walking for an hour during a long rest was hilarious.
Like... Start your Long Rest. Continue walking for 50 minutes.

 

[Hriston]

The rule for interrupting long rests quite clearly defines "a period of strenuous activity" as "at least one hour of" certain types of activity. The examples given are "walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity". The fact that it's unreasonable to expect anyone to engage in an hour of nothing but fighting or an hour of nothing but casting spells is irrelevant. Both fighting and casting spells can be part of a one hour or longer period of strenuous activity along with walking and similar adventuring activity. The intent is, again clearly, that if an interruption to a character's rest results in them going "adventuring" for an hour or more, then they need to start the rest over again to get any benefit. This means an interruption can result in a "victory" for the party in which they deal with whatever it was that caused the interruption in less than an hour and reclaim their rest, or it can result in a "loss" in which they get pulled into a series of events that requires them to abandon their rest. Taking the example of a random combat encounter which causes the interruption, say the party is attacked in their camp while resting, if the party can deal with the threat by achieving a swift victory, nothing is lost. The rest continues. But say one of the monsters succeeds in stealing an important mcguffin, and the party chooses to pursue the thief, leading to an hour or more of "adventuring", then the rest is lost. To me, at least, this is the most reasonable and well supported interpretation and doesn't require anyone to imagine the designers positing that a straight hour of fighting or a straight hour of spellcasting is anything that would actually happen in anyone's game.