D&D 5E My New Players Have Quit 5th Edition

[billd91]

Why should the DM be cutting you a lot of slack?

Because newbs aren't likely to know much about managing their PCs' hit points, when another single blow is likely to kill them, how to estimate the odds of succeeding at an action compared to another. If a brand new chess player makes his king vulnerable in the first couple of moves, you don't "foolsmate" him do you? And if you did, would you expect him to keep learning to play from you?

When I first was learning Magic, the person teaching me (who had been participating since the days of the black lotuses and mox gems) stomped me into the ground and then acted like him not taking my lord of the pit (which at come up as ante) was doing me a favor. I didn't really appreciate it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I had noticed this until you pointed it out - that in a system with no negative hit points, the sequence in which damage is inflicted matters
Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=6343103#ixzz38UsJWGJg

It's always been true anytime you faced enemies not intent on finishing you off right away. Getting knocked to 1 meant you'd get attacked again and likely killed (but you maybe got one last action if you won initiative) if you gut pushed all the way to -10. Getting knocked to 0 meant possibly being ignored and having a number of rounds of 'bleeding' between you and death.

I'm going to keep the hit points at 1st level to the maximum hit dice+constitution modifier and ask my players to roll up 3 NPCs each for our next game.
This is what I used to do for 1st edition. It had been so long ago that I forgot.

5e does present an opportunity to dust off your mad AD&D DMing skillz.

 

[Blackwarder]

If you mean it sounds more like a simple mathematical analysis given the rules as they actually exist than an unsupported, unverifiable anecdote, you're right, that's exactly what it is.

No it isn't, your "mathematical analysis" fail to take into account a huge number of variables, such as spell options, terrain variables, players attentions, DM decisions, not to mention the dice rolls. In weapon development we used to call it "pie in the sky analysis", it's when some one just ignore anything that don't help him in advancing his argument.

Can 1st level characters die in 5e? Yes.
Can it happen to new players? Yes.
Can an inexperienced DM "accidently" kill low level characters? Yes again!
Is it the norm? Unless you have polling information from hundreds of groups saying otherwise, than going by what people are saying plus my personal experience than I have to say No.

Yesterday we had a small gathering at one of the few LFGS in Israel where we had several groups of newbies playing the starter set with two experience DMs and two totally new DMs (my brother being one of them). Me and my DM where there mainly as rules advisors so I had a lot of time to observe (and play Smallworld in between, I lost 2-3) out of four tables we had nearly a dozen characters drop to zero and only one near death and that was a fighter who got mobbed by the bugbear and than it's wolf companion and than rolled a 1 on his death saving throw (was realy exciting, it was a new DM table and he was cackling with glee).

I don't have a problem with folks who think that 1st level is too harsh, I have problem with folks who use cocked up analysis to claim that 'Fantasy Vietnam' is the norm instead of actually playing the game.

I hold more credability in people who say "IN my experience X happen more than Y", but some half baked mathematical analysis doesn't realy hold any water here.

Warder

 

[Tony Vargas]

No it isn't, your "mathematical analysis" fail to take into account a huge number of variables, such as spell options, terrain variables, players attentions, DM decisions, not to mention the dice rolls.

Obfuscate all you want. An unremarkable 1st level monster can gank a low-hp 1at-level PC with a lucky shot or a pair of fairly ordinary attacks.

Do you really think your 'huge number of variables' will result in no low-hp PC ever getting critically hit, or hit twice without being healed in-between?

Can 1st level characters die in 5e? Yes.
Can it happen to new players? Yes.
Can an inexperienced DM "accidentally" kill low level characters? Yes again!

Can 1st level characters die instantly in 5e in a normal encounter-guidelines combat, in the surprise round? Yes. In a single round or to a single crit? Yes.

And, since you like annecdotes, yes, I've seen those things happen in the playtest. A 1st level character killed in the first round of the combat of the first session of an event; characters killed because they were up and fighting at a few hps, and a high damage roll was enough for instant death. Always at 1st or 2nd level.

Does all that hold at 'higher' levels, even as low as 3rd? Not really.

If you're running for 3rd level PCs, you can pretty easily design an 'easy' combat to introduce the players to the game with no real risk that someone'll get instantly killed unless there's just an atrocious string of bad rolls and bad decisions.

Again, since you prefer anecdotes to verifiable fact, I never saw a 3rd+ level playtest game result in similar sorts of character deaths. Indeed, in the Encounters season I ran at 6th level using the playtest rules, even though there were some battles meant to be difficult, there was not a single character killed, nor even dropped.

For 1st level, not so much. An encounter weak enough to minimize the chance of a sudden, pointless character death, is unlikely to provide much challenge or interest - or much chance of a less sudden character death that the player might at least draw some lesson from.

That's not a fatal flaw of the game or anything, but it is worth considering - especially when tossing together introductory or casual-play adventures.

 

[Blackwarder]

Obfuscate all you want. An unremarkable 1st level monster can gank a low-hp 1at-level PC with a lucky shot or a pair of fairly ordinary attacks.

Do you really think your 'huge number of variables' will result in no low-hp PC ever getting critically hit, or hit twice without being healed in-between?

Can 1st level characters die instantly in 5e in a normal encounter-guidelines combat, in the surprise round? Yes. In a single round or to a single crit? Yes.

And, since you like annecdotes, yes, I've seen those things happen in the playtest. A 1st level character killed in the first round of the combat of the first session of an event; characters killed because they were up and fighting at a few hps, and a high damage roll was enough for instant death. Always at 1st or 2nd level.

Does all that hold at 'higher' levels, even as low as 3rd? Not really.

If you're running for 3rd level PCs, you can pretty easily design an 'easy' combat to introduce the players to the game with no real risk that someone'll get instantly killed unless there's just an atrocious string of bad rolls and bad decisions.

Again, since you prefer anecdotes to verifiable fact, I never saw a 3rd+ level playtest game result in similar sorts of character deaths. Indeed, in the Encounters season I ran at 6th level using the playtest rules, even though there were some battles meant to be difficult, there was not a single character killed, nor even dropped.

For 1st level, not so much. An encounter weak enough to minimize the chance of a sudden, pointless character death, is unlikely to provide much challenge or interest - or much chance of a less sudden character death that the player might at least draw some lesson from.

That's not a fatal flaw of the game or anything, but it is worth considering - especially when tossing together introductory or casual-play adventures.

Tony, I think that I owe an apology, I've been going through this thread again and I realized that I contributed some comments to you that other posters wrote and that was the basis for my own last couple of comments...

Mainly, I was under the impression that you claim that instadeath at 1st level is the norm while what you did say was that it can happen. I totally agree that t can happen, I think it's a feature, especially for new players, but that can be debated.

I wouldn't use the play test as a good barometer for the current game, there has been some very subtle yet meaningful changes both on the characters side and the monsters side that had big impact on how the game goes. I also had several characters deaths on some packets and on others we felt that the characters were invincible, thats the nature of play-testing.

Since BD&D free PDF came out and the starter set reached stores, I've been practically living 5e, playing, helping new DMs get their feet wet, swapping stories with other groups and DMs and taking part of the community translating team for BD&D, trying to judge the game by the play test does it a big disservice.

Warder

 

[keterys]

Without going into specifics of playtesting, I can anecdotally confirm that it's really quite possible to just outright kill people up through 3rd level without great difficulty. It is much more likely if you roll damage instead of taking the average.

At 1st it's downright trivial, to the extent that in a normal game I'd feel like I had to avoid attacking low hp PCs with certain creatures, for no apparent reason.
At 3rd it's much more rare, but I can confirm several anecdotal deaths, including one from full via a high damage crit, and a few from low hp. I'm not as convinced these are problems, though, so 3rd does feel like a reasonable place to start the game and avoid the problem.

I don't remember any deaths due to failed death saves that weren't also TPKs, and I'm personally quite happy that spare the dying was fixed so that it's no longer quite so ridiculously game shifting.

At least in my case, it's not wholly a case of armchair game design. That said, the math really is brutally simple:

As long as a PC can be outright killed in 12-16 damage and monsters at 1st level can do 12-16 damage, there statistically (remember, hundreds of thousands of newbies) will be groups where new players were killed outright before they got a chance to do anything meaningful. There are a variety of ways around this, but none of them were taken.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Tony, I think that I owe an apology, I've been going through this thread again and I realized that I contributed some comments to you that other posters wrote and that was the basis for my own last couple of comments...

NP, nature of the medium.

Mainly, I was under the impression that you claim that instadeath at 1st level is the norm while what you did say was that it can happen. I totally agree that t can happen, I think it's a feature, especially for new players, but that can be debated.

I suppose if the goal is to indoctrinate new players into a specific playstyle, or if the idea is to enhance the illusion of risk at later levels (when characters are much tougher), that could be argued. I see some serious potential for bad first play experiences, though, and, of course, is you /don't/ want to train players to treat even their own characters as disposeable (let alone treat 'important' NPCs that way), it's an issue.

I wouldn't use the play test as a good barometer for the current game, there has been some very subtle yet meaningful changes both on the characters side and the monsters side that had big impact on how the game goes.

Nod. I'm only using it as the barometer I have - until the next season of Encounters starts and I get a new batch of guinea pigs to test the current ruleset on. And, honestly, I'm only citing the experience because you were so insistent on wanting anecdotes.

 

[ren1999]

Combat is just fast which what I asked for. But it is also more deadly. I recommend having scrolls of Revivify available to the party. Have NPCs help with the fighting.

 

[Uller]

Combat is just fast which what I asked for. But it is also more deadly. I recommend having scrolls of Revivify available to the party. Have NPCs help with the fighting.

I finally got to play the first part of this adventure. Since I knew a lot about it I played my character (the noble) somewhat aggressively...trying to push the limits. The first encounter was easy. My character used his second wind. We didn't stopto rest because our employers were in danger. We killed the guards with no trouble. Things went downhill when the wolves knocked out our cleric. We stashed him in the bushes and pressed on. My character climbed the passage into the bugbears lair (since he was better at climbing than the rogue...which is an issue for another thread). When I saw what was there I dove back down to the kennel. The bugbear and his minions followed and we fought it out. The goblins took me out. The wizard took them out with sleep then both sides rolled poorly for 4 rounds...including me on my death saves so I died.

It could have been a tpk...I think if I were running this for a group of newbs and was worried how they might react to a tpk I would start them of with CON plus max of one hit die in hp OR two healing potions in the cart. I'd probably prefer the latter. Also...rather than instant death from massive damage, require one death save per 10 hp left over after being reduced to 0 (round down). So if you are at 1 hp and take 5 damage you are dying. If you take 15 you are dying and must make one death save immediately. 25...make two...etc. successes don't count toward stabilizing however....that way the game is not so deadly for an unlucky new pc but remains deadly at higher levels. Another alternative is to make death save DCs adjustable the same way concentration checks are...the DC for all your checks is 10 or half the leftover damage, whichever is higher. That way massive damage doesn't kill you instantly...it just makes death saves harder.

 

[jodyjohnson]

Instead of adding Con I think for long term balance it is easier to just get your Level 2 or 3 hit points at Level 1 then not get HP for those levels.

2nd: d10=16+2xCon, d8=13+2xCon, d6=10+2xCon.
3rd: d10=22+3xCon, d8=18+3xCon, d6=14+3xCon.

If they multiclass early then adjust.

I'd also adjust gear so not every low level goblin with no treasure at all, isn't running around optimised with well crafted gear (70gp).
Clubs (d6), shanks (finesse, d3), primitive bows (d4), sharp sticks (d4), rocks (1), crude machetes (d6).

I'd mix up the Redbrand gear as well (65gp).

But that's more of a world-building thing.