D&D 5E (2014) New Spellcasting Blocks for Monsters --- Why?!

[Faolyn]

The only mechanical exploit I saw in Tucker's Kobolds was the way Fireball worked in 1e (expanding in all available space to full AoE). And frankly I think it should still work that way!

I miss the ol' dungeon-cleaner fireballs.

 

[Vaalingrade]

So how is that a problem with the encounter guidelines? That seems to be entirely a DM issue to me.

Because if you really want to kill a bunch of PCs, you can just play through the ridiculous recommendation of 8 encounters a day, run the players out of resources, and make the players want to off their PCs to escape the tedium.

 

[Voadam]

And honestly, there was no CR or encounter design back in the early AD&D days, and I'd say that those DMs managed to figure it out OK.

There was encounter design from the beginning.

The 1e DMG has a bunch of random encounter tables for lots of terrains, a system of categorizing monsters by monster level to factor into placement in dungeon levels, and suggested random encounter tables for various dungeon levels.

Check out for example page 174

DUNGEON RANDOM MONSTER LEVEL DETERMINATION MATRIX (d20)
Equivalent Level Of The Dungeon
Monster Level Table Which Must Be Consulted
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X
1st 1-16 17-19 20 — — — — — — —
2nd-3rd 1-12 13-16 17-18 19 20 — — — — —
4th 1-5 6-10 11-16 17-18 19 20 — — — —
5th 1-3 4-6 7-12 13-16 17-18 19 20 — — —
6th 1-2 3-4 5-6 7-12 13-16 17-18 19 20 — —
7th 1 2-3 4-5 6-10 11-14 15-16 17-18 19 20 —
8th 1 2 3-4 5-7 8-10 11-14 15-16 17-18 19 20
9th 1 2 3 4-5 6-8 9-12 13-15 16-17 18-19 20
10th-11th 1 2 3 4 5-6 7-9 10-12 13-16 17-19 20
12th-13th 1 2 3 4 5 6-7 8-9 10-12 13-18 19-20
14th-15th 1 2 3 4 5 6 7-8 9-11 12-17 18-20
16th & down 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8-10 11-16 17-20

This gives a range of monster difficulties in an encounter to be expected that adjusts to the level of the dungeon. It gives a huge range of hitting anything from kobolds to spellcasting vampires at the deepest levels.

CR in 3e, monster level in 4e, and CR in 5e were tighter and used more directly and in smaller bands for suggested encounter parameters than in 1e monster levels, but AD&D had the concept as part of its rules.

 

[Voadam]

I thought 5e was easy mode! Well that is what everyone has been saying at least.

Honestly, it is hard for me to imagine what it is like to be a new DM now that I am 30 years in, but it seems really hard to TPK a 5e group unless your trying to. * Exceptions being having to few PCs (playing 3 PCs for an adventure that expects 5 for example).

*EDIT: I wanted to clarify that I am talking about published adventures mainly and secondarily if you are using the DMG encounter guidelines. The DMG encounter guidelines are not very deadly. However, as noted by other's in this thread, there are some monsters that are sneaky tough.

In a one shot I TPK'd a party played by my son, my brother, and two nieces with the vampire in the published 5e White Plume Mountain playing it straight at the suggested levels. I did not go in with the intention of a TPK.

 

[Faolyn]

This gives a range of monster difficulties in an encounter to be expected that adjusts to the level of the dungeon. It gives a huge range of hitting anything from kobolds to spellcasting vampires at the deepest levels.

From what I can tell (using a DMG on archive.org since I don't have one of my own, and it inconvienently doesn't have page 175), those numbers show the range of how many monsters of what types you might find, but not how many encounters per day you're "supposed" to have. And that's what I was talking about.

 

[dave2008]

In a one shot I TPK'd a party played by my son, my brother, and two nieces with the vampire in the published 5e White Plume Mountain playing it straight at the suggested levels. I did not go in with the intention of a TPK.

As this is a conversion from an older module I am curious about the encounter specifics, if you feel like providing them. I had the original adventure, but never ran it, so I am not familiar with encounter. Could you answer a few questions? If so:

1. Was the vampire the only threat in the encounter? (if other monsters or traps what were they)
2. Was the vampire the one from the MM? If not, was the CR the same?
3. What was the level of your 4 person party?

I'm just curious if the person converting the module made adjustments for 5e encounters or not.

 

[Hussar]

I mean like @Crimson Longinus stated, there are a lot of monster with debugs and damage that gets brutal in large numbers or if played smart.

Well, again, fair enough, and, give me a sec, but, I'll address this in a moment.

As an example, a PC in one of my games got bitten by a death dog, failed his save (despite being a tough barbarian) and was poisoned/diseased for a very long time, which made him extremely vulnerable to later encounters. Death dogs are a CR 1 encounter, there were like five PCs at the time who IIRC were level 2, so it was (by Kobold Fight Club standards, at least) a Trivial encounter. But if he hadn't been lucky enough to shake the poison off the next day, he very likely would have died.

Yes, and this also works with what I'm going to say, so, I'm including it here for clarity.

CR is a predictive model. And, as such, it will never, ever be 100% accurate. It cannot be. There's no way for it to be. Heck, I'm rather impressed it's as accurate as it is to be honest. Imagine the HUGE variation between two groups of characters of the same level. It's enormous. I remember back in the 3e days people complaining about CR back then too but not taking into account the assumptions of CR. CR has so many assumptions built in - standard array PC's, no feats, no magic items, based on the classes that existed in 2014 and nothing that has come later, based on the spells that existed in 2014 and nothing later, so on and so forth.

Does anyone seriously think that two groups of 5 PC's, one built only using the SRD and nothing else and the other built using every single 5e WOTC book are going to have the same power levels? Seriously?

Take the Death Dog example. THat barbarian had to fail a DC 12 Con Saving throw multiple times over the course of several long rests. Presumably we're looking at about rolling an 8 or higher to make the saving throw. And that's presuming no one actually tried to help this character. Every time he fails, he loses a d10 HP off his max HP. We're talking a 2nd level Barbarian here, so, we're talking 23 hp (assuming a 14 Con, not an unreasonable assumption I think). It would take at least 3 days and more likely closer to a week for this to kill this character. The CR system cannot possibly predict this. No predictive system could. The number of failed checks, the complete lack of any help from any other characters, and the DM rolling very high would all have to come together for this character to potentially die from this disease.

How in the world would you, as a game designer, possibly predict any of that? Instead, you go with baselines. It's really, REALLY unlikely that this effect is going to kill a PC. So, it probably doesn't factor at all into the CR calculation of this PC. Why would it?

Now shadows? Sure, anything that bypasses the HP system is automatically going to be more difficult to calculate. That was @pemerton's point about Tucker's Kobolds. They are 100% a mechanical exploit because everything they do bypasses the standard combat rules and goes diving off into other resolution rules. Which, of course, CR cannot account for.

I mean, sure, kobolds could rig up collapsing roof traps that instantly kill the party. 4d10 damage? Yup, that'll kill low level PC's and seriously hurt others. And it's not like that's unreasonable for them to do. But, again, that's the point of CR. CR doesn't take that into account. Killing PC's isn't all that hard. There's so many things you could do. Zombies infected with Yellow Mold and released at the party - dead PC's. But, again, this is a bit all self-evident. If you dramatically increase the effectiveness of the monsters somehow, yes, they are more dangerous. That's not exactly news.

I mean, good grief, simply using arrow slits would massively increase the lethality of an encounter. Yeah, all baddies have +5 AC and advantage on area saves. Yeah, that'll dramatically up the lethality of the encounter. But, again, the CR system does not, in any way, account for that. The further you deviate from the baseline assumptions of the creature, the less accurate CR will be as a predictive tool.

 

[Minigiant]

First, I don't agree it is easy modem that is just what I hear others say. However, I'm not following your argument, what does the yoyo have to do with. Now, full disclosure, we play death at 0 so there is no yoyo in our game. So this situation is not something I am familiar with.

Not having death at 0 and cheap heals is the yoyo.

5e is easy mode because if a PC drops to 0, it's easy to heal and bring up the dying PC with all the classes with healing magic, healing feats, and healing items.

So after a while, a DM can get overconfident in the PCs and drop a stronger monster group. And the TPK happens because the stronger monsters drop multiple PCs and the living ones can't hold them off, revive the fallen, and remain alive themselves.

 

[Hussar]

Not having death at 0 and cheap heals is the yoyo.

5e is easy mode because if a PC drops to 0, it's easy to heal and bring up the dying PC with all the classes with healing magic, healing feats, and healing items.

So after a while, a DM can get overconfident in the PCs and drop a stronger monster group. And the TPK happens because the stronger monsters drop multiple PCs and the living ones can't hold them off, revive the fallen, and remain alive themselves.

But, isn't that CR working as advertised? The rules say that if you drop stronger monsters into the mix, you are making the encounter more deadly. 5e's math is far too loose to have a CR system that's anything more than an educated guess. It's just no possible to have a system that is a better predictor of combat output in a system that loose. 4e? Yeah, you had a CR system that was spot on because the math was so tight. 3e? Back to voodoo and chicken entrails because the math varied so wildly from table to table.

You can't have both. You can have tight math and a good predictive system, or loose math and a poor predictive system.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Haha... CR working...