D&D 5E Party size and level variance in 5e

[keterys]

Out of curiosity, what was it about a system before 3e that assisted in either of those two things?

My understanding is that it was just as much of a problem. It was just considered far more acceptable and usual than it is today.

For clarity, the same could be said of encounter, adventure, monster design, etc. Whether it's enlightenment or entitlement, people seem a lot more focused on such minutia nowadays.

 

[the Jester]

I can't really speak to modules (since I've never used them), but considering how simple 4E encounter design is, it has to be trivial to adapt the printed encounters on the fly.

Because we always have scheduling issues with someone, my group- approx. 7 players- plays as long as we have a quorum of 3 pcs + dm.

Since I never know how many people are going to be in for a given session until it happens, I do a lot of on-the-fly adjusting in my 4e game, and it's usually pretty easy to make the basic "drop 1 monster per pc <5/add 1 monster per pc >5" thing.

However, sometimes that can really change the suggested tactics of the monsters or the feel of an encounter; if the tactics in a module suggest that monster A tries to use power X on a pc to daze them so that monster B's trait Y that nails dazed creatures extra hard comes into play- well, if you don't have both A & B in the encounter, maybe you need to discard the suggested tactics and go back to square one.

When adding monsters, it's often better to bump one up to elite rather than adding another monster; it's a great way to keep the combat balance about right without adding MOAR TURNS to each round.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Out of curiosity, what was it about a system before 3e that assisted in either of those two things?

My understanding is that it was just as much of a problem. It was just considered far more acceptable and usual than it is today.

For clarity, the same could be said of encounter, adventure, monster design, etc. Whether it's enlightenment or entitlement, people seem a lot more focused on such minutia nowadays.

Broadly speaking, tighter action economy, side by side initiative, less options, and the surprising one--increased mortality.

It's easy to run for 12 1st level PCs when you know that two or three of them are going to buy it in the first hour, and start playing monsters. It's almost like classic dodge ball with multiple balls, where everyone that gets hit goes to the outer circle and becomes a threat to the survivors.

If one were to run a "Killer DM" version of low-level 3E PCs with pregens (including spares), you could get most of that same effect, though the other aspects (cyclic initiative, more actions) would delay the tipping point. You'd need to be particularly mean to make it work as well as AD&D did in this respect.

 

[the Jester]

Out of curiosity, what was it about a system before 3e that assisted in either of those two things?

The single biggest factor was the fact most monsters, even high-level ones, had ACs that were hittable for even 1st-level pcs. Also, many of the higher-level monsters had damage that was not instant death for low-level pcs.

Three good examples, plucking my 1e Monster Manual off the shelf:

The lamia, with 9 Hit Dice and permanent wisdom drain as its attack, has an AC of 3 and deals 1d4 damage.

The erinyes devil has 6+6 HD, AC 2 and damage 2d4.

The shedu, albeit a good monster, is HD 9+9, AC 4, damage 1d6/1d6.

It is easy to find counterexamples, of course: The green dragon is HD 7 to 9 and while its AC is not too bad- it's 2- it does plenty of damage with a claw/claw/bite routine- 1d6/1d6/2d10. Still, it isn't unreasonable for a 2nd or 3rd level pc to survive a round or two of melee with it, since it isn't likely to hit with every attack.

The rakshasa earned its infamous monster status; with only 7 HD, its AC is a whopping -4 and it's immune to spells under 8th level.

Then there are the high-damage monsters, like iron golems (4d10 damage!). But generally, flatter defenses and damage really helped with this.

 

[keterys]

Umm. Dragons dealt their hit points in damage. Half on a successful save.

They were instant death for lower level companions Also, potentially at-level or even higher level wizards, rogues, or non-rangers depending how well they rolled for hit points and who won initiative. (Ahh, the memories)

And your AC 2 - 4 creatures you'd need a... 15-18 or so to hit with a 1st level PC? Is that so different from needing a 15-18 for a 1st level character to hit a L10 monster in 4e? 3e's ACs and attacks have a bit more disparity, but there are plenty of usable examples there too (especially if you look at more bestial enemies)

I think simplicity of play and speed around the table are more compelling arguments than them being well designed to handle level disparity.

I remember doing adventures with 2... and 8... people in 1st and 2nd ed, and boy were there some differences as a result. Not in the adventure itself, though - nobody really scaled adventures that I remember - but in how bloody hard and swingy things were? Absolutely. That's why I'm suspicious that things were pretty much like they were in the later editions, just with the expectation that the DM would change things to balance the encounter / adventure / whatever.

 

[Lanefan]

Umm. Dragons dealt their hit points in damage. Half on a successful save.

True; it was always a good idea to make sure the Dragon inflicted its halitosis on someone else. But if you could last long enough to get it into melee, dragons became beatable.

And your AC 2 - 4 creatures you'd need a... 15-18 or so to hit with a 1st level PC? Is that so different from needing a 15-18 for a 1st level character to hit a L10 monster in 4e? 3e's ACs and attacks have a bit more disparity, but there are plenty of usable examples there too (especially if you look at more bestial enemies)

From running some 4e modules it seems the listed AC values have a pretty wide range but not as bad as 3e.

I think simplicity of play and speed around the table are more compelling arguments than them being well designed to handle level disparity.

These are critical for handling larger groups but I'm not sure they affect in-party level disparity at all. Two different issues.

I remember doing adventures with 2... and 8... people in 1st and 2nd ed, and boy were there some differences as a result. Not in the adventure itself, though - nobody really scaled adventures that I remember - but in how bloody hard and swingy things were? Absolutely. That's why I'm suspicious that things were pretty much like they were in the later editions, just with the expectation that the DM would change things to balance the encounter / adventure / whatever.

In later editions I think you notice it much more if the DM doesn't change things, is the difference; because of the more finely-tuned math.

Lanefan

 

[keterys]

In later editions I think you notice it much more if the DM doesn't change things, is the difference; because of the more finely-tuned math.

Perhaps... but now that I'm able to see it (something I'll admit I couldn't back then), I don't see why I wouldn't equally see it playing an older edition.

That is to say, when I ran Caves of Chaos for the playtest I very much noticed the disparities between when we tested with 3 PCs vs when we tested with 6 PCs, and I noticed when they stumbled into 2 orcs and when they stumbled into 30.

The problem is still there, no matter the system - the expectation of coping is what's different. I'm not sure whether that's a good or bad thing.

Fwiw, I also noticed that one D&D Next PC was half as effective as another due to choices made, in the same way that I notice when playing 4e and we have some folks who are 3 levels lower than another, or have drastically worse treasure. It's not really something I noticed in my younger years when I played 1e and 2e, but I rather suspect I'd notice now.

I will say one thing that I think is a lot different. Much more so than in the past, people expect every encounter to be challenging. It's not enough that every encounter might cost some hit points, or spell slots, or have an extremely small chance to kill someone, but they want each combat to be meaningful and risky and require full attention.

And that's a _huge_ difference. In working on some recent adventures I positively confused people because I had a couple places where there were total pushover fights - mind you, it made more sense when they realized those fights were there to see if they sprung an alarm and were largely decided by initiative.

Hmm... maybe that's another thing. Initiative was _such_ a huge deal when dealing with spellcasters and dragons, but less so for goblins, ogres, etc. It feels like it's a pretty darn big deal for everyone now though. The easier it is to wrap up a combat in a round (sleep, dragon breath, fireball, very effective attacks of any sort), the more swingy it gets.

 

[Herschel]

Level ranges, generally, stayed within 2 of each other...maybe occasionally 3 as the thieves jumped ahead of most spellcasters for a limited period of time.

There was never "Hey no fair! They're 5th level and I'm still 4th!" or "How come they get to be 4th but I haven't made 2nd yet! This isn't 'Balanced'!" It was just the way it was...and we had fun doing it.

There's a couple of issues with your point here that really make no sense in your thinly-veiled swipes at players of later editions, the biggest being that there was not unified advancement in earlier editions. You even mention thieves, who had faster advancement rates than anyone except maybe the Druid, who basically leveled for taking a dump in the woods. Characters with (even approximately) even levels of XP would often be different levels, not far apart, but still different.

The other is that we've been shown a different way of doing things that's mathematically tighter. Heck I had a lot of fun doing things that are now() frowned upon by the legal authorities, but that doesn't mean I still would have fun doing them (or that certain things would be frowned upon any more at my age). I can still do a lot of those things, but the repercussions aren't as fun anymore. The old "That's just the way it was and we had fun" isn't a good excuse because new ways of thinking and learning change what we knew. In game terms, liking randomness, etc. is fine. I love 4E but have added a number of random elements to it when I DM a home game just to defy expectations a bit because any game I run's rules work for me, not the other way around.

 

[Herschel]

Out of curiosity, what was it about a system before 3e that assisted in either of those two things?

My understanding is that it was just as much of a problem. It was just considered far more acceptable and usual than it is today.

For clarity, the same could be said of encounter, adventure, monster design, etc. Whether it's enlightenment or entitlement, people seem a lot more focused on such minutia nowadays.

I think that's just where we've evolved as a society. We have a lot more ready access to information these days. When I started gaming I never dreamt of owning a home computer, let alone sitting at one and electronically chatting about a game. How many people can say they even played early editions "by the book"? Not many, I'd guess.

Now that our shared experience is much broader than when it was just our neighbors I also think a more common foundation is a good thing. Good or bad there was no real character depth/differentiation/even optimization in early editions outside of which spells you took or which weapon/armor you pick.

 

[Herschel]

In later editions I think you notice it much more if the DM doesn't change things, is the difference; because of the more finely-tuned math.

Lanefan

I think partially, but it also is based on party composition and fluidity. In college we had a 1E group that was 6-14 people, depending on the week, and DMs rotated. There were weeks where I was the only melee character at the table and there were 8 of us there and I sure noticed it, usually in the form of resurrection.

Quick character creation was a boon because some times you could lose a few. Heck, in one session I had a player have to roll up and introduce four new characters. Nowadays sessions are shorter and I only whack a PC once in a session, though my group's first foray in to Epic resulted in a TPK last week.