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

[Zardnaar]

To be fair, I'm concentrating on long rest abuse, because I haven't seen short rest abuse at my games, yet.

Its harder to pull off. Prayer of healing or prayer of healing+divine intervention might be closest options.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Not OP, but I've often considered limiting them, or rather saying "You get 2/3 short rests per long." By placing a limit on SRs, you make them more valuable, and something to manage. On average, it's probably 3-4 per long rest.. but I make LRs typically take 2 uninterrupted days.

The 2 per day rule makes sense and follows the rests required by flying beasts such as the griffon which needs 1 hour rest between 3 hour flights.

Fly 8am-11am
Short Rest 11am-12am
Fly 12am-3pm
Short Rest 3pm-4pm
Fly 4pm-7pm
Settle in for Long Rest

Some Enworld fixed their Short Rest abuse by increasing the time necessary for each Short Rest to activate their recovery so:
First Short Rest - 30 minutes
Second Short Rest - 1 hour
Third Short Rest - 2 hours

The progression could also be 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour etc...

 

[BenjaminPey]

So at first, I would start with moderate encounters in 5.5e, then go from there and see how well the party performs.

Which is exaclty what seems sensible to do if you want to play a little attrition.

But damn, high encounters seem really to hit harder, even for rested parties.

They do. Now the three difficulty threshold read like:

— Low : no ressources needed. Will not tax the PCs, or nothing a short rest wouldn't offset.
— Moderate: some ressources needed. Will tax the PCs, but a short rest should offset most of it.
— High: all ressources needed. Will tax the PCs, a short rest may not offset it.

 

[M_Natas]

Which is exaclty what seems sensible to do if you want to play a little attrition.



They do. Now the three difficulty threshold read like:

— Low : no ressources needed. Will not tax the PCs, or nothing a short rest wouldn't offset.
— Moderate: some ressources needed. Will tax the PCs, but a short rest should offset most of it.
— High: all ressources needed. Will tax the PCs, a short rest may not offset it.

Yes, I also checked my calculations from the 'Wizard vs Fighter - The Math' thread, which still uses 2014 characters. According to my calculations, the 2024 Earth Elemental is an extreme (1.5x deadly) challenge for a 2014 Level 4 party of four characters (if no vulnerabilities are exploited) - it is a little weaker than extreme in the damage department, but still does more damage than a deadly encounter should. Due to the 2014 Earth Elemental's lower HP, it would just be a deadly challenge.
An extreme Challenge would take away roughly 50% of party HP.

Now, I didn't have the time to do the math for the 2024 classes, I don't know how much stronger those would be.

So, now lets see for a 4 Character strong Level 1 Party - that would be 8 Goblin Warriors for a high difficulty in 2024 (400xp). Those 8 Goblin Warriors would be a moderate challenge - if one takes into account nimble escape (granting advantage on attack roles through hiding and improving AC/HP virutally through hiding) it could go up somewhere between deadly and extreme.

Now - 4 2014 Goblins would have been that deadly encounter for 400xp according to the 2014 rules. Even accounting for nimble escape, that would just end up as a medium encounter in my calculations (in my calculations a medium encounter takes away 16% of total party HP). Without nimble escape, 8 2014 Goblins would be a medium to hard encounter, with nimble escape it turns deadly/extreme.

So, in my estimate a high difficulty encounter in 2024 takes away roughly between 1/3 to 1/2 of the total party HP - not accounting for superior party strategies. A moderate encounter would take away around 1/4 to 1/5 of total Party HP and a low difficulty encounter would take away on average 1/6 of total party HP.

Hit Dice - except for Level 1, give back on average 100% of HP. So lets say, the HP Pool is 190% of total party HP - that is our HP Budget for the new adventuring day. So including short rests, with 2024 a party can endure roughly 3 high difficulty encounters. 6 to 7 moderate encounters or 9 to 10 low encounters.

To make it simple:
High Difficulty Encounter: 50% HP Party drain.
Moderate: 33%
Low: 16%

Level 1 Budget: 160%
Level 2 Budget: 165%
Level 3 Budget: 170%
...
Up to 195%

Meaning, if you use the budget up, it will be a total party kill. So, depending on the difficulty one is aming for, you can deduct 30 to 50% from the total budget as your goal budget.

The shortest adventuring day could look something like this:
High encounter - short rest - High encounter - using up 100% of total party HP. - Not a big problem, Spellcaster would just be doing more heavy lifting than the martial classes ... so the usual problem.

A normal 2024 adventuring day for a Level 5 party could look like this:

• 3 Moderate (1 moderate = 2 low)
• 1 High
• 2 Short Rests

 

[BenjaminPey]

That's completly in line with my current games, yes.

 

[Parmandur]

That would mean on average a game of D&D would end in a TPK after 3 fights (2/3 win ratio with full refresh)

Yes, exactly, but to be a satisfactory Encounter based tactical challenge, like say the Fire Emblem series of video games, that would be the eay to go. I don't want that from D&D, personally.

Yes, the adventuring day model is actually preventing a TPK, because it stretches out the fail state over several encounters and allows the party to react to it over several encounters.

Exactly.

 

[mamba]

Rather just say a Fireball has a casting time of x rounds. Better rule IMO.

but it doesn’t, you are not spending your first round casting it already, you do something else, and in, say your third encounter, you have enough points to cast it in round one

Yes, it is a gamist element in that it was designed to achieve a specific result in the game mechanics, that does not mean you cannot come up with an in-game rationale or just handwave it, see below

For a magic system designed for this purpose, this is certainly something that can be answered. Perhaps combat magic is powered by the emotions generated by deadly conflict and there is no way of replicating this outside of fights to the death. Perhaps combat magic is provided by entertaining extraplanar entities that are attracted to bloodshed. With a bit of care, you can create fiction that supports your rules well enough for a large portion of players, at least as well as the very thin description given for spell slots in 5e. That said, I strongly expect this post to attract nit picking to "prove" these options "can't" work that I'm not really interested in.

Perhaps magic is just not amenable to naturalistic understanding at all and relies on principles that don't have easy real world analogues - that's what makes it magic and not physics.

Also, there are tons of things in D&D that have no explanation either, they just are. The only difference is that you are familiar with the D&D ones and do not question them.

To just stay with spell casting and what comes to my mind immediately:

Why can a Wizard cast an infinite amount of cantrips but does no longer have enough ‘energy’ to cast even a level one spell?

Why does a 5th level Wizard have 4/3/2 spell slots and cannot cast 3 third level spells in a row by sacrificing some of the lower level slots.

 

[M_Natas]

but it doesn’t, you are not spending your first round casting it already, you do something else, and in, say your third encounter, you have enough points to cast it in round one

Yes, it is a gamist element in that it was designed to achieve a specific result in the game mechanics, that does not mean you cannot come up with an in-game rationale or just handwave it, see below

I'm playing with the Idea, for within one encounter, to make it like this: Some high impact spells have casting time of 1,5 rounds - what does that mean? If you want to cast that spell in your next, you have to declare that you start casting this spell now - you don't have a reaction and if you take damage, you have to make a concentration check to see if you don't loose concentration and the spell is lost and you can't cast a spell in your next turn.
So, I want to use that mechanic either for high impact spells like Fireball or for a "free" upcasting of existing spells.

Also giving that to NPC/Monster Spellcasters allows you, to telegraph the spells in advance, so the party can react to it.
"Oh no, evil wizard guy is preparing a fireball! Scatter!"

 

[AnotherGuy]

but it doesn’t, you are not spending your first round casting it already, you do something else, and in, say your third encounter, you have enough points to cast it in round one

Yes, it is a gamist element in that it was designed to achieve a specific result in the game mechanics, that does not mean you cannot come up with an in-game rationale or just handwave it, see below

I have replied to the email you quoted and provided my own rationale.

Also, there are tons of things in D&D that have no explanation either, they just are. The only difference is that you are familiar with the D&D ones and do not question them.

We attempt to fix those too at our table

To just stay with spell casting and what comes to my mind immediately:
Why can a Wizard cast an infinite amount of cantrips but does no longer have enough ‘energy’ to cast even a level one spell?

Cantrips do not require energy or a tapping into the Weave, the wizard can use the invisible residual magic which exists all around. Level 1 slots and higher require that extra effort to link with the Weave.

Why does a 5th level Wizard have 4/3/2 spell slots and cannot cast 3 third level spells in a row by sacrificing some of the lower level slots.

That I grant you is not something we have not homebrewed as yet as the why.
We may have to change that at some point in the future.

But to note in my game character may exert themselves beyond the standard limitations by expending hit dice (and even suffering levels of exhaustion) should they want to.

 

[Maxperson]

The game as designed doesn't support this.
Its why at our table we immediately addressed Intelligence and all ability scores early on including benefits for odd numbered ability scores.
We went back to earlier editions where you need 10+x number in your spellcasting ability to cast spells of x spell level.

It does support it by telling players that an 8 intelligence is a low ability to reason, remember, etc. There's no mechanical force behind it, but if you are roleplaying what the game describes an 8 intelligence as, you aren't going to be coming up with a lot of good ideas if you are roleplaying your 8 int PC.