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

[Crimson Longinus]

How is your barbarians wisdom save?

Mediocre.

And what happens if they get paralyzed?

Not a lot. Though dispels and restorations are available.

Asking for a friend.

Yeah, there obviously are ways to counter the characters. Various ways to disable or posses them are effective. They also are not fun for players if used frequently. This is not really a that kind of a problem, it is just an observation about the pace of the combats and what leads to that. In current setup combats cannot be fast, fun and threatening all at the same time past the low levels (I tend to choose the last two.) But there really is no reason the game could not be designed so that they were.

 

[Charlaquin]

Ah, I totally had missed that in 5.0 the budget is minimum and in 5.5. it is maximum! That certainly changes the things a bit. Though 5.5 encounter is still about twice as hard if both were to feature multiple monsters due the lack of the multiplier.

Yeah, that’s what I meant about them changing the XP thresholds from a floor to a ceiling. It makes it look like they shifted the difficulty benchmarks over a category, making Medium the new Easy, Hard the new Moderate, and Deadly the new Hard. But in reality, they just changed the way they were presenting the thresholds to match how most people were actually using the DMG guidelines, because the text of the 2014 DMG wasn’t clear enough about those thresholds being minimums.

Perhaps, I was only looking at the DMG rules, and if you mentioned Xanathar's previously I must have missed it.

Yeah, the Xanathar’s Guide alternate encounter building rules were their first attempt to fix the encounter balance issues in 5e without overhauling the CR system. They rebalanced the assumptions around a default of one monster per PC instead of one monster per 4.5 PCs, which yes, does make encounters with high numbers of weak enemies harder than intended, but it’s within pretty acceptable tolerances, except in the specific case of solo monsters, which would be overvalued in such a model. So, they recommended using Legendary monsters for solo fights, and picking a monster with CR a few levels above the party’s average.

The 2024 DMG encounter building guidelines, if you crunch the numbers, are basically giving the same recommendations the Xanathar’s Guide encounter building guidelines did. They’re just presenting it as an XP budget again instead of a table showing character levels on one axis and number of monsters per PC on the other, with the cross-reference telling you what CR to use. Understandably so, cause I think people found that table pretty confusing. And, instead of having a separate set of rules for using higher CR legendary monsters for solo fights, they just buffed Legendary monsters by about 40% in both damage per round and effective HP across the board.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

How is it TFG behaviour? If there is no particular time pressure, and the characters know that waiting one more day heals all their wounds, replenishes all their magic and powers, why would they not do that before wading into a dangerous situation? Are they suicidal?

It's not understanding the rules, ot's exploiting it. At my table you can do an exploit once, maybe twice, then I will ask you to stop because it gets boring. Find a new trick.

And a lot of tables would qualify it as That Guy behavior because it is very much like that time Critical Role's infamous That Guy said "I'm not taking one more stpep before we take a long rest" and tried to held whole party hostage in time senstive scenario just because HE wanted to always perform optimally.

I don't know about you, but I'd likely at least give a player who pulls that stunt a side-eye.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Yeah, I kick my friends and family out of my games all the time, because their ability to read the rules and interpret the most efficient way to accomplish a task is apparently their fault, and not an issue with design.

If your family and friends look for exploits to one up you all the time, it's not a healthy table at all.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's not understanding the rules, ot's exploiting it. At my table you can do an exploit once, maybe twice, then I will ask you to stop because it gets boring. Find a new trick.

And a lot of tables would qualify it as That Guy behavior because it is very much like that time Critical Role's infamous That Guy said "I'm not taking one more stpep before we take a long rest" and tried to held whole party hostage in time senstive scenario just because HE wanted to always perform optimally.

I don't know about you, but I'd likely at least give a player who pulls that stunt a side-eye.

But it is not a time sensitive scenario and all the players agree to it. So what's the issue? And you did not answer my question: why would the character in the setting not do this? Do the characters need to behave suicidally for the players not to be TFGs?

It makes sense from in-character perspective to do it. It makes sense for skilled play perspective to do it. And this is not some bizarre an unforeseen rule interaction, it is th result of basic functionality of the rule combined with the fictional situation the GM has presented so it is bizarre to call it an exploit. Yet it is somehow the players' fault if they do this? Not the rules writer's who created the rule so that it obviously incentivises this? Not the GM's who presented the fictional situation so that there is no in-universe reason to not to do this?

Yeah, I don't agree. I don't blame the players for bad rules and bad GMing.

 

[Hriston]

Sorry, but no. This is one of those clear examples of dumb rules that should not be blindly followed. Like surviving swimming in lava without magic and a person filling a 5-foot square.

Interesting perspective. What makes you think it's dumb, and who said anything about blindly following anything?

 

[Stalker0]

A joke is 4E was designed for people who like pushing minis around a battlemat. If thst sounds appealing and you don't mind 45 minute combats extending to two hours at higher level it may appeal to you.

I will say this. 4e combat's could be long its true, and the grind in the early days was a real thing (that was thankfully fixed in later products).

But as a DM I can say this about 4e, it was a lot easier to make encoutners engaging and interesting. There was something there about how they presented monster abilities and terrains that I could just put stuff together and it was exciting, cool memorable effects and moments just baked in. In comparison I feel like I have to WORK to make 5e combats interesting. Monsters and effects are just very bland in comparison. Now of course I can do it, but it just takes work. I found 4e just made that easy in comparison.

I often say that 4e is the DM's edition. It made a lot of things just easy as a DM, including high levels. But it lack some key things on the player side that spelled its doom.

 

[Charlaquin]

I will say this. 4e combat's could be long its true, and the grind in the early days was a real thing (that was thankfully fixed in later products).

But as a DM I can say this about 4e, it was a lot easier to make encoutners engaging and interesting. There was something there about how they presented monster abilities and terrains that I could just put stuff together and it was exciting, cool memorable effects and moments just baked in. In comparison I feel like I have to WORK to make 5e combats interesting. Monsters and effects are just very bland in comparison. Now of course I can do it, but it just takes work. I found 4e just made that easy in comparison.

The difference between designing combat to be engaging vs. designing it to be over quickly.

 

[Maxperson]

That's fair, and I loved 3E while playing it: it ia the second to last edition I would choose to play today, though.

It absolutely had its issues. However, if you play it with people who aren't out to break the game with super uber combos and just have fun with it, the sheer number of races, classes, feats, prestige classes, etc. allowed you to very accurately create just about any character concept. 5e doesn't have nearly as many, so quite often you have to settle with kinda sorta getting close to the concept.

 

[Maxperson]

Ah, I totally had missed that in 5.0 the budget is minimum and in 5.5. it is maximum! That certainly changes the things a bit. Though 5.5 encounter is still about twice as hard if both were to feature multiple monsters due the lack of the multiplier.



Perhaps, I was only looking at the DMG rules, and if you mentioned Xanathar's previously I must have missed it.

Someone mentioned Xanathar's. I saw it go past me earlier today in a post!