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

[Stalker0]

Yeah, I'm not convinced. "Let's remove attrition but then if we want the fights not to be meaningless we can add it back case-by-case basis," does not to me seem like particularly functional or desirable design.

It depends on what the meaning needs to be.

If your goal is for each combat to have "meaning" in terms of challenging the party....well that's not happening now. The attrition model isn't working because people aren't using it (as the OP stated). So most fights are "meaningless" already in that context.

What seems to be happening at most tables is, people have like one maybe two "warmup fight" where the players kick in some skulls and enjoy just kicking butt, and then they have the hard or "boss fight" where there is a true challenge. The encounter model handles that much better than the attrition model does. Or your group could literally handwave all of the "warmups" if you truly want every actual run fight to have meaning. The party cinematics breaks down the door and slaughters the goblins, and the party just describes how that happens. Then you have the actual combat, which is a hard challenging fight with real danger". That also works great in the encounter model.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

didn't (most methods of) healing in 4e burn your healing surges to function? so while most encounters are self contained ultimately they ARE grinding down your resources, as well as any dailies you burn.

Yes, and that's why 4e was not pure encounter based design. It had daily attrition as well, and suffered from similar issues regarding the number of daily encounters than 5e does, albeit to a lesser degree. But pure encounter based design would suffer from the issues I mentioned, and that to me is definitely a cure being worse than the disease situation.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

I have seen more than one group try to do this; as has been said,, the game mechanics incentivise it, so by that metric it is understandable. People want to win. It's hardly being a "weirdo".

This is weird and would get people labelled as "That Player" at many tables. Find better players or talk with them about it bothering you.

And still, a lot can chamge in 32 hours, villains in dungeon won't sit idly while pcs twiddle their thumbs waiting to rest.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It depends on what the meaning needs to be.

If your goal is for each combat to have "meaning" in terms of challenging the party....well that's not happening now. The attrition model isn't working because people aren't using it (as the OP stated). So most fights are "meaningless" already in that context.

What seems to be happening at most tables is, people have like one maybe two "warmup fight" where the players kick in some skulls and enjoy just kicking butt, and then they have the hard or "boss fight" where there is a true challenge. The encounter model handles that much better than the attrition model does.

No it does not, it handles it way worse. Because in attrition model how well you do in the "warmup fights" actually matters. Yes, you are almost certain to win, but you might need to burn more resources than you wanted to do so. Then you no longer have those in the "boss fight," so it matters. But in encounter model the easy fights that you are almost certain to win are literally pointless. You might as well just skip them saying that you encountered some goons and a guard monsters and then you fought them an won and go directly to the boss fight.

Unless you mean that the point is just to hear the sound of the dice and spent time describing how awesomely the characters beat the foes. But you don't need any mechanics to do that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is weird and would get people labelled as "That Player" at many tables. Find better players or talk with them about it bothering you.

And still, a lot can chamge in 32 hours, villains in dungeon won't sit idly while pcs twiddle their thumbs waiting to rest.

Seems very judgmental to me, but you do you. I agree about the situation changing in the dungeon, but your solution reads as too aggressive to me.

 

[Charlaquin]

And to your previous point, most 5e players have never really heard of 4e or have negative opinions of it; or if they have it’s probably rose tinted stuff via the Colvilles of the world. I think the changes in 5.24 from the original encounter guidelines are an acknowledgment of that along with the way that a preponderance of tables the company has seen actually play their game.

Notably, 5.24’s encounter building guidelines aren’t all that different from 5.14’s. The biggest change is the removal of the XP multiplier based on number of monsters encountered. I believe there’s been some backend work done to enable the removal of this multiplier, tweaking the relationship between monsters’ CR and their effective HP and effective DPR, to recenter the baseline assumption to one monster per PC instead of one monster per 4.5 PCs. basically building the 1.5x multiplier for one monster per PC into the monsters themselves instead of asking DMs to make that adjustment in the encounter building process, and buffing legendary monsters under the assumption that fights against a single monster will usually use a legendary monster. But the XP budgets are still mostly the same - slightly higher for High difficulty, to account for the switch from those thresholds being floors in 5.14 to being ceilings in 5.24. But, that generally means the adventuring day XP budgets shouldn’t have changed. Which makes sense, since 5.24 is supposed to be comparable with all 5.14 adventure material.

 

[CreamCloud0]

And to your previous point, most 5e players have never really heard of 4e or have negative opinions of it; or if they have it’s probably rose tinted stuff via the Colvilles of the world. I think the changes in 5.24 from the original encounter guidelines are an acknowledgment of that along with the way that a preponderance of tables the company has seen actually play their game.

my only real exposure to 4e is here on Enworld, and honestly it sounds pretty great all around apart from a personal bugbear against tactical combat/abilities that i just struggle with.

 

[Micah Sweet]

my only real exposure to 4e is here on Enworld, and honestly it sounds pretty great all around apart from a personal bugbear against tactical combat/abilities that i just struggle with.

I played it for about 18 months, struggled with it, and then abandoned it as an RPG, keeping it as a rules vehicle for occasional arena fights. We went back to 1e and stuck with that until 5e came out.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Notably, 5.24’s encounter building guidelines aren’t all that different from 5.14’s. The biggest change is the removal of the XP multiplier based on number of monsters encountered. I believe there’s been some backend work done to enable the removal of this multiplier, tweaking the relationship between monsters’ CR and their effective HP and effective DPR, to recenter the baseline assumption to one monster per PC instead of one monster per 4.5 PCs. basically building the 1.5x multiplier for one monster per PC into the monsters themselves instead of asking DMs to do so, and buffing legendary monsters under the assumption that fights against a single monster will usually use a legendary monster. But the XP budgets are still mostly the same - slightly higher for High difficulty, to account for the switch from those thresholds being floors in 5.14 to being ceilings in 5.24. But, that generally means the adventuring day XP budgets shouldn’t have changed. Which makes sense, since 5.24 is supposed to be comparable with all 5.14 adventure material.

But removal of the multiplier is a huge deal. In horde encounters you can have four times the amount of same monsters for the same budget. And especially on higher levels the budgets have gone up a lot too; level 20 medium on 5.5 has more than twice the budget of level 20 moderate in 5.0, so about nine times as many monsters than previously. Oh, and then many monsters have boosted too so probably at least ten times as tough encounter than before, probably more. These are utterly colossal changes. They also reflect my observations that 5.0 suggested encounters were a total joke.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But removal of the multiplier is a huge deal. In horde encounters you can have four times the amount of same monsters for the same budget. And especially on higher levels the budgets have gone up a lot too; level 20 medium on 5.5 has more than twice the budget of level 20 moderate in 5.0, so about nine times as many monsters than previously. Oh, and then many monsters have boosted too so probably at least ten times as tough encounter than before, probably more. These are utterly colossal changes. They also reflect my observations that 5.0 suggested encounters were a total joke.

Interesting. Exactly how compatible can 5.0 encounters be with that big a difference?