D&D 5E My biggest gripe with 5e design

[Hussar]

There's another issue when comparing editions as well - not only presumptions of party size, but, also presumptions of hirelings, henchmen and pets. IME, it was not unheard of to have multiple of each in a group, making the adventuring group's total numbers much, much higher than what you typically see in a 5e group. Now, if the baddies roast three of my hirelings in an encounter, does that mean that the encounter is more deadly? Well, the whole point of those hirelings wast to be meat shields, so, I'm not sure if it is or not.

But it can make comparisons extremely difficult. Same as I mentioned earlier about magic items. Paladins were hard limited to ten items for a reason. If no one is getting more than that, then, well, that's a limitation that doesn't really matter. So, IME, you see groups with ten or more items per PC.

 

[Umbran]

Mimic Gazebo: Fanciful weather we're havin eh guv'ner?
Party Face: Sorry?

Keeps the number of requests to use the courtyard as a wedding site down. Doesn't outright eliminate them, though...

 

[Tony Vargas]

There's another issue when comparing editions as well - not only presumptions of party size, but, also presumptions of hirelings, henchmen and pets.

Its funny, there were extensive rules for henchmen & hiring in 1e, but I rarely saw them used.
Just another thing that varied wildly back in the day, I guess.

 

[FrogReaver]

Its funny, there were extensive rules for henchmen & hiring in 1e, but I rarely saw them used.
Just another thing that varied wildly back in the day, I guess.

I mean - could you imagine how varied 5e play would be without the internet?

 

[Ashrym]

Another example is the Stone to Flesh spell, there's really no reason for this to be a concentration spell, it already has the fail x saves before passing x mechanic. But if the evil Sorcerer casts it on the PC, they want to give them every last opertunity to undo the effect by breaking his concentration.

This was lost in the shuffle, but stone to flesh isn't a spell in 5e. Flesh to stone is, however; but it does not exist on the poor sorcerer spell list. Flesh to stone is a warlock or wizard spell.

Concentration is appropriate to the spell. The first save creates the restrained condition and subsequent saves against becoming petrified do not change that until the 3 save requirement is met. Not being able to break restrained for pretty much the rest of the encounter is decent enough that it should not be spam-capable or stacked with effects in the battlefield, hence concentration.

And yes, 25 hp was average. If that, since you also stopped getting CON Bonuses after 9th level and stopped rolling hit dice. You got 1 hp per level after 9th for MUs.

OMG you were right!!! We were playing different games. The MU's in my 1e hit name level at 11th, not 9th, since that varied in the classes in 1e.

So I did some comparisons. Earlier I said that AC values in 1e were overall higher than their counterparts in 5e, and Hussar laughed it off. So I pulled some of the most common monsters and sample size (did not cherry pick). Every time there is a blue highlight, that means the 1e monster has a higher AC than it's 5e counterpart (naturally converting the descending AC in 1e to ascending).

View attachment 115831

Also, I ran comparisons for the core classes re: hit points, bonuses to hit, and total available hit points in a 24 hour period (1 day). I've often heard the "well, but 5e increased monster damage a lot". Looking at the above, if you compare monster damage and to hit bonuses by monster hit dice (you can't really compare monster vs same monster name, because some monsters like orcs were bumped up. I.e., in 1e, an orc was a pretty close to a 1st level character, while in 5e, it's equivalent to a 2nd level character). So monster hit dice is a better comparison. When you compare by hit dice, there isn't any real difference in 5e monsters being able to have a higher to hit bonus. And damage is only slightly higher.

But higher damage doesn't equal more danger more lethality because 5e PCs have a LOT more hit points available to them in any given adventuring day (not just with higher hit dice, but with having hit dice to heal up every short rest, and getting all base hp back after a long rest).

Note: For simplicity, I did not count any ability bonuses to hit or for extra HP. If I did, 5e would have an additional benefit because you increase your core abilities in 5e and you do not in 1e, and every class can benefit from high CON when in 1e, non fighters were capped at a +2 bonus.

So what does that look like?

To hit bonuses: 5e PCs gain a better bonus to hit at lower levels (everyone starts with a +2 prof bonus, and 1e doesn't have this). At mid levels, the fighter begins to outpace the 5e bonus to hit counterpart. Clerics also being to outpace at mid to higher levels. Magic users are always way behind in their basic bonus to hit. High level fighters way outpace their 5e counterparts in core bonus to hit (doubling up even). When you add ability modifiers, this evens out considerably (as without magic items, most 1e fighters with a 16 STR will only have a +1 to hit with melee weapons, while a high level 5e fighter will have a 20 STR with a +5 bonus.

Hit points are significantly different. again, not counting ability modifiers (which make 5e version even better, not just for higher ability scores that can grow, but because you stopped getting CON bonus for HP after level 9 in 1e), the 5e fighter has about 20% more base hp than the 1e fighter. The 5e wizard has double the hit points of a 1e MU. For comparison, at 10th level:

1e fighter: 53. 5e fighter: 64
1e thief: 33, 5e thief: 53
1e MU: 24, 5e MU: 42
1e Cleric: 46, 5e cleric: 53

At 20th level, the 1e fighter will have 83 hp and the 5e version will have 124. The MU has 34 hp and the 5e one has 82.

But wait, there's more!

When you factor hit dice healing (1 HD per level), and gaining full hp after a long rest, while a 20th level fighter in 1e has 84 total hit points available in an adventuring day (83 plus the one for resting overnight), the 5e fighter has 348 total hit points available. Core 124, plus 20d10 hit dice, plus the core again that can get healed completely after a long rest (a heck of a lot more if you factor in CON bonuses)

So, even though 5e monsters can do a bit more damage per hit dice, the actual net affect is less because non-magical healing and total available hit point resources are so much higher. Eg. monster A in 1e might average 10 points of damage a round, and the 5e hit dice equivilante might do 15. That 10 points is more devastating to the 25 hp MU than 15 points is to the 42 hp MU.

Once again, I am not arguing that 1e is better in any way, shape or form. And I'm not arguing that a DM just can't boost 5e monsters. (I hope this means people will stop making those arguments) But it's clear that looking at how each edition was designed, even if you totally ignore save or die, or level drain, or long term conditions, and only look at the core damage, 1e is still significantly more lethal/dangerous to PCs. To argue otherwise just seems like a silly position. All of the evidence points otherwise.

This is not a valid comparison. It's taking the claim like "orcs are more challenging" and responding with "orcs were buffed so instead of looking at orcs look at this other isolated mechanic instead and draw conclusions from that".

5e uses CR. That's why XP, encounter building, wildshape, summoning spells etc use mechanic. A bugbear is supposed to be a medium challenge for four 1st level characters. Bugbears have 16 AC, 27 hp, +4 attack, 2d8+4 (11 damage) per attack, +2d6 damage on a surprise attack, and +6 stealth to go with it. Average damage drops most 1st level characters (average surprise damage drops any first level character) so a lucky high roll vs low roll system exists if a person telegraphs hype on the bugbear.

A 1e bugbear has 5 AC (translates to 15 to compare), 15 hp, does 5 damage, 50% chance to surprise (1-3 on d6), and is expected to be encountered around 3rd level based on HD / XP. In comparison, the 1e bugbear is less likely to drop a first level 1e character than a 3e bugbear.

This is what the cockatrice looks like comparing with a fighter in both editions.

The first 4 levels of the 1e fighter are highlighted because a cockatrice is not expected until 5th level or higher in 1e guidelines but in 5e it's a 1/2 CR monster. I'll touch on that more in a bit but for now I'll point out that a 1/2 CR monster not auto-killing the fighter is not a bad thing.

Changing to cleric is more representative of what would happen the majority of the time. A cleric can increase AC but not all domains, and not everyone can fit in some CON. It could just as easily be another ability score to save against as well. There will characters who fail a CR 1/2 monster's attack alot in the epic tier without other adjustments.

Specters are also 1/2 CR monsters in 5e instead of 7+HD monsters from 1e, and that's also a big jump in the level character would first encounter them.

Let's skip ahead to a CR 13 monster with petrification attacks like a beholder.

There are a lot of scary things in the MM. A medusa can instantly petrify. A gorgon petrifies in a cone. Ghosts possess. A demilich can just scream and drop half the party to 0 hp. High level PC's in 1e gain in every saving throw, as I mentioned. High level PC's in 5e already have enough to contend with as is because the initial saves often include secondary effects like restrained. Changing that to instant killing will wipe out more players faster than 1e at high levels because of weak saving throws.

The system needs a lot more changes and consideration than deciding low CR monsters should fairly easily wipe out epic tier characters when that was not happening before. What happened before was know those monsters were there usually turned into dictating what spells the party memorized.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I would like to recommend Darkest Dungeon to anyone looking for a more intense dungeon crawling experience.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, I know I've been too snarky here. I really need to learn to relax.

But, the point I am making still holds, I think. If you want to say that you find 1e more lethal than 5e, for you, then, well, fair enough. I can certainly see why someone might say that - no hirelings/henchmen, very restrictive chargen rolling, restrictive magic item distribution, and a whole host of other reasons.

So, sure, I can see folks making the claim for their game. But, the problem I have is when people try to claim that their game is "how the game is played". No, it really isn't. 1e and 2e tables are famous for having shopping lists of house rules, interpretations, and frankly, the way the rules are written, it can be very easy to interpret things fifteen different ways.

People talk about 1e being all about avoiding the encounter. I get that that's how some people played. We certainly didn't. About 5th level plus, AD&D characters were BIG DAMN HEROES at our table. Were we right and you wrong? Absolutely not. We just interpreted the rules very, very differently.

It's something to keep in mind when trying to compare editions. 1e and 2e were just so wildly varied depending on the table. I mean, we tended to use the 1e psionics rules. Which meant that at least 1 PC in nearly every group had psionics. 8 (ish) players most of the time, and around a 10% chance of being psionic? Yeah, nearly every 1e group I played in had at least one psionic character. Which, right there, is going to wildly skew my view of the game.

 

[ad_hoc]

I sometimes forget how much I limit long rests, they are not easy to come by in my campaign.

But in a campaign where people can pretty much rest when they feel it's necessary I agree.

I think this is what it comes down to.

If the party is long resting after every encounter then yes, 5e is easy.

But then, what kind of adventure are you having and why are you wasting time at the table playing it out?

 

[DND_Reborn]

Pacing is a huge issue in 5E towards balance. The rest frequency is a major factor. If you go into most encounters after a long rest, or even a short one, it is going to be easier of course.

I think, like I would imagine many tables play, for overland travel (i.e. random encounters) we often fight them following a long rest (8-hours), and know we are likely to have only one more maybe that day. This means we can use our most powerful features very freely and dominate many encounters. It is a very rare occurrence for us to have 3 random encounters between long rests, and if a battle is hard, we can nearly always at least get in a short rest before the next encounter.

This is very different from the dungeon crawl/ infiltration session, where we know we are likely to have many encounters before we get any rest at all. We've played entire sessions (ours are long, 10-12 hours) and had several battles without even a short rest!

As such, our DM gears encounters to be easy, moderate, hard, or deadly in such a way as to make the game challenging at times, easy at times, etc. just as life is. At level 11, we fight creatures we easily defeat in a few rounds, and then later on we might encounter a solo creature powerful enough we know we still have to run away!

Like others, I do miss save or die effects, and at lower levels since hp are exhausted quickly, the danger of low-level survival. However, even at higher levels I find it interesting how a character with 100 hp and is down to 25 or so, starts to panic. The player knows the threat is sufficient they another hit or two and they might go down. The other characters know they might have to act quickly to help their friend, who is now dodging more and on the defensive.

The only thing that makes 5E easier, IMO, is Revivify. Very rarely can a lower level game not get to a character before the 10 rounds is up. We houseruled it so that the dead character gets one additional death save to attempt to save themselves. If they fail the roll, the spell fails. If they make the roll, they stabilize. It is our version of the old resurrection survival check. Of course, we also modify death saves by CON bonus.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I think this is what it comes down to.

If the party is long resting after every encounter then yes, 5e is easy.

But then, what kind of adventure are you having and why are you wasting time at the table playing it out?

We have played many adventures were a lot of travel is required and so "battles" are only once in a while. The game more centered around role-playing, intrigue, etc. I would never consider any kind of game a waste of time if the players are having fun with it.