D&D 5E Monster Manual and Players Hand Book Power Levels

[Jester David]

Sure. It's possible.

Still utterly unacceptable, though.

Right?

*shrug*

It sucks when the players cake walk over your big bad. But having played through two Paizo APs I know that's not just a 5e problem. And unlike the Pathfinder ones, the 5e ones are playtested.
And that I'm not bound to the words on the pages. I totally changed the boss fight mechanics. And pumped up a few other key battles. Not just tactics: I'm not above boosting enemy hp, adding legendary actions/ mythic tiers, and adding a few nooks.

The range of power levels between groups is high. The difference optimizing, good tactics, party synergy, and favorable magic items makes is huge. Combining any of the two is very potent. Throw in poor DM tactics and good PC rolls and things go well.
Published adventures generally have to aim low in power level. Because they might be run for newbies who don't optimize or work together. And you don't want them slaughtered by an "unfair" encounter. The baseline bar is set low.

 

[Charles Rampant]

Interesting discussion, this last few pages. I should be working. BUT LET ME POST INSTEAD!

TL;DR: the game is designed for levels 6-10, so levelling past that in the APs means that the difficulty decreases.

I had a TPK around level 7 in Princes. I discovered at this stage that the party were severely underlevelled, since I hadn't kept an eye on whether they were getting enough exp. Whoops! Anyway, we re-created with level 10 characters, skipped a couple dungeons, and I gave the party a carefully-curated selection of magic items (according to the 'starting at higher levels' chart in the DMG, though I went for level 11 not ten according to that). So I had an opportunity to see how a level 7 party compared to a level 10 party, albeit the latter having rather more magic items. They destroyed everything, pretty much. The final fight was good and tough, but none of the other fights (other than, oddly, a Roper - it scared them pretty badly) really posed much challenge to them, so they could romp through several in a row without breaking a sweat. My analysis: the dungeons were tough, even challenging, for a mid-level party, but the moment that the players were level 10 then it went far in the other direction.

I will also agree directly with @CapnZapp about the end levels in OotA. Not run that one, but read through it (fun read) and I saw nothing towards the last half that really made me feel that a tough fight was on the cards. I mean, the Demon Lords may be CR23-26, but I have no doubt at all that my homebrew campaign PCs (levels 15, with DMG-rolled items) could take on any one of them without too much trouble. Yet the campaign acts as though the (level 11-15) characters will run away from everything, that they need Demogorgon's help to hunt down and kill the Demon Lords, and that things like 2 Vrocks will be more than a speedbump.

I have come to the conclusion that WotC are doing this on purpose. Part of a levelling system is the feeling of increased power. I believe that they are deliberately making the APs easier towards the end, in order to facilitate that feeling. In addition, the game as a whole seems calibrated for level 6-10 characters to be able to handle everything. I think that if you just stopped levelling the players at level 10 during OotA, they'd still be able to finish the campaign in good order. They might run more risk of TPK in boss fights, but otherwise the adventures just don't get any harder in the general fights. Probably that is because the MM doesn't really provide any 'goons' to fight after about level 7, so every non-boss encounter thereafter stagnates in difficulty.

 

[CapnZapp]

The range of power levels between groups is high. The difference optimizing, good tactics, party synergy, and favorable magic items makes is huge.

Published adventures generally have to aim low in power level. Because they might be run for newbies who don't optimize or work together. And you don't want them slaughtered by an "unfair" encounter. The baseline bar is set low.

All of this is true.

All of this is also completely ignoring that we should and can expect reasonably calibrated encounters, or even encounters that are weak but within reason.

The drow ambush in OotA is an example of what you describe. And I give it a pass.

Too many encounters in the later chapters are instead examples of completely unacceptable encounters; weak to the point of seemingly being made for half the party's level.

This is not merely an issue of things like hp and AC. Low level monsters simply do not have the means to challenge a high-level party. Low-level encounters are often simple in layout and composition, while high-level parties need complexity in layout and composition to be properly challenged.

So it's not just a matter of switching out Goblins for Ogres. Or Cloakers, for that matter.

A properly made high-level encounter features monsters that can fly past difficult terrain; ranged combatants that does not need to close to melee; spellcasters to harass the party and dispel their battlefield-sculpting efforts. And so on and so very much on.

That drow encounter gets a pass since it is at least in the right tier, regardless of whether the party is a weak level 8 or a strong level 6. I do not need to redo the encounter from scratch. I can keep the general idea and composition, and just vary the number and intensity of drows and allies.

But too many supposedly tier III end-game OotA encounters read and run like a weak tier II encounter, with just a demon or three plonked down with no real thought to what makes the encounter high level. Such an encounter is useless, and needs to be completely scratched, and a new encounter built from the ground up.

Those encounters get a big sweaty fail.

 

[MonkeyWrench]

I just wrapped up my OotA campaign, and I've got to say that my group's experience closely matches CapnZapp's critique. Despite some fun ideas, the second half of that book is pretty bad from an encounter perspective. By the time my group had cleared Gracklestugh, they were stomping all over the book encounters and I was having to make significant modifications in order for combat to be little more than a cakewalk. Given that I by these adventures because I no longer have time to do the prep work of running a homebrew, I was very disappointed.

I'll echo the statement that the game works great for levels 3-8, but after that I find myself bored as both a player and a DM. I'm also dismayed by what the writers/designers of these adventures think is challenging for a tier 3+ party, and am very curious about what sort of playtesting goes on where weak encounters seem to be the norm at higher levels of play.

 

[Mistwell]

Sure. It's possible.

Still utterly unacceptable, though.

Right?

No, not right. I mean, not only was it acceptable, but even you accepted it, right? You kept playing. Here you are, posting still, a year later after those adventures came out, talking about the game. Obviously, it's acceptable. There is room for improvement, and everyone acknowledges they have improved since then. So yeah, totally in the realm of acceptable to be OK but not great when it starts, and to get better as they go, like pretty much every other game out there. Or product line. Or most things in life.

It's why I kept asking you if this is something you've seen is a common complaint (not your complaint - but a common general complaint from many others) in reviews of the more recent adventures.

And from what I can tell, it's not.

If it is, I'd like to see where you're getting that impression from, because you said you have not even played the two most recent, and looking at reviews I am not seeing that complaint to be particularly common.

And if that is the case...then are we arguing about what they should have done a year and a half ago with adventures that are, at this point, already kinda dated?

 

[Jester David]

All of this is true.

All of this is also completely ignoring that we should and can expect reasonably calibrated encounters, or even encounters that are weak but within reason.

The drow ambush in OotA is an example of what you describe. And I give it a pass.

Too many encounters in the later chapters are instead examples of completely unacceptable encounters; weak to the point of seemingly being made for half the party's level.

This is not merely an issue of things like hp and AC. Low level monsters simply do not have the means to challenge a high-level party. Low-level encounters are often simple in layout and composition, while high-level parties need complexity in layout and composition to be properly challenged.

So it's not just a matter of switching out Goblins for Ogres. Or Cloakers, for that matter.

A properly made high-level encounter features monsters that can fly past difficult terrain; ranged combatants that does not need to close to melee; spellcasters to harass the party and dispel their battlefield-sculpting efforts. And so on and so very much on.

That drow encounter gets a pass since it is at least in the right tier, regardless of whether the party is a weak level 8 or a strong level 6. I do not need to redo the encounter from scratch. I can keep the general idea and composition, and just vary the number and intensity of drows and allies.

But too many supposedly tier III end-game OotA encounters read and run like a weak tier II encounter, with just a demon or three plonked down with no real thought to what makes the encounter high level. Such an encounter is useless, and needs to be completely scratched, and a new encounter built from the ground up.

Those encounters get a big sweaty fail.

For the sake of discussion, we'll assume this all is true. It might be, it might not. I'd have to look at where the encounters fall during an adventuring day, the terrain of the encounters, and the like.
But I'll just assume you're right.

I'm still not going to get too upset about OotA missing the mark with high level play.

Again, it was written when the rules had just finished coming out and well before anyone had any experience writing high level 5e encounters. It's not like Green Ronin could just write the adventures like they would for 3e or 4e and assumed that would work. The assumptions of high level play are radically different. For 3e you design high level encounters assuming teleportation and flight are just known, required to even survive. Even Paizo, adventure masters, who have been writing 3.x adventures for far, far longer than WotC, barely ever touch high level play. Because it's hard. And those 3e assumptions don't transfer well as not every PC will have access to flight, buff spells are reduced, high level spells are capped, and the like.

Green Ronin (and the like) was also stuck with the monsters in the Monster Manual, which skew super low. Both in terms of presented CR and in terms of actual CR. There's a lot of lowballed monsters. Again, not going to fault WotC for that, as they were adapting monsters as best they could they determining an appropriate CR while the DMG was still in flux.

I'm super critical of the effectiveness of the final stretch of the playtest. Because what we saw wasn't really a playtest. We had a 18-month-long public concept test. They barely sat down and actually hammered away at the fine balance, especially for monsters. Because 75% of the attention of the playtest was on the classes (and mostly the big four, with a few stragglers like the bard and sorcerer barely getting any attention at all). And this shows, with the ranger issue and all…
This meant monsters never really got playtested per se. And it was hard to test them when the classes were always in flux. You never knew if it was a class balance issue or a monster balance issue.

So… with that in mind, I forgiving/ accepting of the lack of high level opponents. They really need to get a feel for how powerful high level PCs are and can be, and then design the high level threats and opponents. After all, the tarrasque was a joke in both 3e, 4e, and Pathfinder upon launch. Because high level threats are always lowballed on launch. The E1-3 series were laughably easy at the time, and it even had to remake the boss (originally presented in the MM) as it was too easy, and the revised version was still easy. (Which I'm using as an example because Mike Shea wrote a blog detailing how much extra oomf had to go into making Orcus a reasonable threat: [url]http://slyflourish.com/pimp_my_orcus.html[/URL] And he literally wrote the book on 4e epic level play.)

I don't see why 5e would be any different. Because even playtests fall short in this respect, compared with actual games where you and the party have spent a year working together, you know every trick your character can pull, you have great items and boons, and have been saving tricks for a couple sessions. The only way high level play will ever be flawless at launch is when they delay an edition by six months to a year to laboriously play the game.
Better high level play comes with time, as people learn how the edition works at the table and not just on the page.

 

[Prism]

I'll echo the statement that the game works great for levels 3-8, but after that I find myself bored as both a player and a DM. I'm also dismayed by what the writers/designers of these adventures think is challenging for a tier 3+ party, and am very curious about what sort of playtesting goes on where weak encounters seem to be the norm at higher levels of play.

I wanted to add that I would say the game works just fine after level 10 - we have a couple of high level games running. However it seems that the written adventure modules have not tackled that fact that at higher levels you need to consider ignoring the recommended encounter guidance to build a challenging encounter. Also many groups don't go for optimal decisions in combat but just run in and see where the rolls take them. For those groups the standard encounter levels are probably about right.

 

[MonkeyWrench]

I wanted to add that I would say the game works just fine after level 10 - we have a couple of high level games running. However it seems that the written adventure modules have not tackled that fact that at higher levels you need to consider ignoring the recommended encounter guidance to build a challenging encounter. Also many groups don't go for optimal decisions in combat but just run in and see where the rolls take them. For those groups the standard encounter levels are probably about right.

For the record, I never said the game ran poorly at tiers 3 & 4, but that I found myself bored, specifically by the mechanics. Ignoring the encounter building guidelines helps, and may even be necessary for some games, but it'd be nice to not have to ignore them. Just like it'd be nice to not have to significantly alter published adventures for the levels they're advertised for.

I think there is merit for building a system around the way most people seem to play and publishing adventures for groups that don't run optimized games. But with such a slow release schedule, it's frustrating to see the published material be so out of sync with my group's experience of 5e.

 

[S'mon]

Ignoring the encounter building guidelines helps, and may even be necessary for some games, but it'd be nice to not have to ignore them. Just like it'd be nice to not have to significantly alter published adventures for the levels they're advertised for.

I find the encounter building mechanics are a pain at any level, and their output is only at all reliable in the 5-10 tier anyway (maybe 3-8). Sly Flourish produced some quicker & thus for me more useful guidelines - http://slyflourish.com/5e_encounter_building.html -

Choose the number of monsters by comparing the monster's challenge rating to the character's level. Note, these ratios assume a "hard" encounter.
For monsters with a challenge rating of 1/4 the character's level, use two monsters per character.
For monsters with a challenge rating of 1/3 the character's level, use one monster per character.
For monsters with a challenge rating of 3/4 the character's level, use one monster per two characters.
For monsters with a challenge rating equal to or above the character's level, use one monster per four characters.

I don't really 'build' encounters at all, I tend towards status-quo simulation (which works well in 5e, more like pre-3e) but this gets things in the right ballpark quickly, remembering that 'hard' in 5e does not really mean the PCs will have a hard time winning; that's more "Deadly+".

 

[CapnZapp]

No, not right. I mean, not only was it acceptable, but even you accepted it, right? You kept playing. Here you are, posting still, a year later after those adventures came out, talking about the game. Obviously, it's acceptable. There is room for improvement, and everyone acknowledges they have improved since then. So yeah, totally in the realm of acceptable to be OK but not great when it starts, and to get better as they go, like pretty much every other game out there. Or product line. Or most things in life.

It's why I kept asking you if this is something you've seen is a common complaint (not your complaint - but a common general complaint from many others) in reviews of the more recent adventures.

And from what I can tell, it's not.

If it is, I'd like to see where you're getting that impression from, because you said you have not even played the two most recent, and looking at reviews I am not seeing that complaint to be particularly common.

And if that is the case...then are we arguing about what they should have done a year and a half ago with adventures that are, at this point, already kinda dated?

A few disappointingly bad arguments there, Mistwell.

First off you seem to assume I was talking about the entirity of 5th edition. I wasn't. What I find unacceptable is ending an official adventure module with such weak and fuzzy encounters as in OotA.

Then you seem to disallow anyone from critiquing the game unless they have stopped playing it. That's preposterous.

Then you seem to think that just because not ALL adventures are equally bad, that gives WotC a pass. As if we are only allowed to judge the company based on their best products?!

I happen to think WotC needs to be called out more publicly for their failings. I need not laud them for their triumps, Lord knows there are too many fanboys here already.

But more importantly, when you have a negative message, you don't want to be met by "but what about the good things?" Why? Because that dilutes the message.

There are a lot of great things about 5th edition. The main one is: the game exists. The number of improvements over 3E mixed with 2E and 4E are innumerable.

But we have all that already. Let us now speak of the few remaining deficiencies.

First order of the day:

Out of the Abyss has gotten rave reviews, but I state as no mere speculation the good grades are almost universally based on first impressions and "I've only read through half the book" (literally the first Amazon review starts with these words).

I suspect less than 5% of all the ratings are made by people that have actually run the latter half of the adventure. That doesn't mean their ratings are fraudulent or even useless. It does, however, mean you should not use them to argue people like how the module's end is constructed.

Why haven't Steve Kenson, Lead Designer, even once been called to account for how the module ends? Why is there no discussion of possibly barring Mr Kenson from writing high-level encounters when he so clearly isn't up to the task? Or, at the very least, why haven't we heard from their PR dept apologizing for how some rushed schedule meant the team could not do their very best?

Is it because I'm the outlier and everybody else loves the second half of the book? I don't think so.

I think it is because a vanishingly small slice of the customer base has realized its flaws, and how most people tend to favor posting about their positive experiences rather than their negative ones.

So Mistwell, do me a favor and stop trying to whitewash this issue.

If you have run the module, and truly think you can defend it, feel very welcome. If you share my complaints, you would be even more warmly to share your experiences.

Otherwise, I would like to ask you to stop posting statements like "Obviously, it's acceptable". You're putting words in my mouth. Or worse, you try to speak for everyone. Either way, you come across as a WotC shill, mindlessly defending their every move.

Furthermore, please stop relativizing the faults of the module. Sorry but I need to call you out on pure BS like:

"to get better as they go, like pretty much every other game out there. Or product line. Or most things in life."

You do realize this means all criticism is meaningless, right, Mistwell?



Have a nice day,
Zapp