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Basically, this is how the final encounter went...
The party got to the encounter with the Ice Witch. One of the barbarians in the party felt that some of the people from the towns should be made to suffer and didn't particularly feel the Witch's plan should be stopped. He cut a deal to join her side.
I don't know exact numbers of his character, but I can say he was a mix of Barbarian and Fighter, and focused on two-weapon fighting. His style was basically to throw out as many attacks as he could and then add the rage bonus to all of them.
On the 'good' side; trying to stop the Witch, was my character (halfing rogue/monk mentioned in other threads,) a barbarian, a wizard, a fighter, and a cleric. The wizard -not surprisingly- went down very quickly. What was more surprising was that the regular barbarian also went down rather easily when engaged in a toe-to-toe fight with the traitor. While the regular barbarian was dealing far more damage when he hit, he was getting less attacks. The traitor, between having advantage via rage and a multitude of attacks from TWF had multiple rolls with which to fish for criticals; he also easily made up for his single attacks doing less damage by being able to stack his rage damage bonus on all of the attacks. After dropping both the wizard and the barbarian, the traitor then moved onto my character. The only thing which saved me was that I had a much higher AC (17) than some of the other party members in spite of the fact that I was not wearing armor due to having a high dex and a respectable wis. Really though, even with that, it was just poor rolling on the part of the traitor. I could, to some extend, match the amount of attacks he was putting out, but his damage was higher, and he was still raging and such got advantage on his attacks. In the end, I won out, but just barely, and I contribute it more to his poor rolling toward the end of the session more than anything else.
Had his rolling been marginally better, he would have very likely dropped my character. Then, at that was left was a cleric who was ill suited for melee, and the fighter who had already been badly wounded earlier in the fight. One PC would have very likely killed the rest of the party. While I understand that PvP is not a design consideration for D&D, something about that scenario still seems wrong to me. A lot of things about that scenario still seem wrong to me, and I don't believe it all boils down to "well, that guy wasn't playing D&D right."
A couple things are at play here.
First, this wasn't the first fight and some party members were injured. Which makes a pretty huge difference.
Second, TWF is currently a really good option. It has high damage output
and allows more attacks
and allows more crits
and boosts your AC & initiative. It's a strong power right now.
Third, the barbarian makes for a really good level dip. A fighter McBarbarian or rogue McBarbarian can be very effective.
The latter two are issues that will hopefully be fixed by some revisions to the playtest.
But, really, this kind of slaughter could happen in any game regardless, tabletop or digital. A good player who knows the system and can design a well made character will be able to slaughter a less skilled player. System mastery is very hard to beat.
Even so, I suppose I'm baffled at how -even in a game where PvP is not a focus- one PC so easily being able to kill the rest is somehow not seen as an issue. I'm likewise baffled at how many of the issues raised in other threads are seen as none issues. Do I expect D&D to be a completely different game? Certainly, I do not. There are different rpgs for a reason. I'm just having a really hard time with the idea that 5th Edition seemingly cannot be criticized without the fault somehow being the person; never the game. I'd like to believe it is not strange for me to find a problem with some the things I find problems with.
I can't think of many RPGs that would handle PvP any better.
I can think of many that would be worse, where there is an even greater disparity between combat abilities and characters can die even faster. Or games where there's even greater imbalance and a munchkin can build a character that could kill everyone else in the party... all at once.
At the end of the day, I'm starting to feel as though D&D is starting to have some similarities with the Call of Duty video game brand, and I don't mean that in a good way. What I mean by that is that the company can shell out just about anything which bears the brand name, and it will likely be purchased; any complaints about quality will be marked as something being wrong with the user.
I'd disagree pretty strongly with that. Right now, WotC has a hard time convincing anyone that they're doing good things. People don't have a lot of faith with the company.
For what it's worth, I want neither an "adventuring game" nor a "PvP" game. I want a rpg.
I used the PvP scenario because, as already said, it highlight a problem I see with the current version of the game. I don't expect disparity to be completely eliminated. I'm just having a really hard time believing that the amount which currently exists should be accepted as normal or as good design for the game. I used the 4E example a few posts ago to try to illustrate what I'm trying to say. I don't feel that the way D&D PCs and the math they are based upon interacts with the game world "physics engine" (for a lack of better words) math in a very consistent way. In the case of 4E, I saw a disparity between how the monsters and the PCs interacted with the world they lived in. I was fine with the different rules for PC and non-PC; it bothered me that neither side of the equation seemed to interact with the game world in anything resembling a consistent manner. Now, in 5th Edition, it seems I still have the same problem, but then I also add to that a second level of disparity between PCs with each other. I see that as making a problem I had with the previous edition worse; not better.
I think you're referring to a lack of simulation in the rules. That's certainly an issue some people have. Problems with verisimilitude and the like.
So, apparently, I'm doing it wrong, but I find that strange because a design goal was (I thought) to further support multiple pillars of play. However, if there are more assumptions being made about the activities my PC is doing, then I'm having trouble seeing how giving me a more narrow definition of what is correct play supports the goal of more pillars being supported. I'd prefer to see the game give me a wider variety of actions and character choices which are viewed as valid; not make design choices and create disparity, but then say those choices and disparities are intention... that I should be playing a specific way so as to not notice them. So, if there are more things I am supposed to avoid so as to be playing the game right, it seems, logically, that I'm being asked to play the game more narrowly; not being given more freedom to explore other 'pillars of play.'
That's a little unfair as the game has not been released and is pretty unfinished. We've seen practically no modularity at this point and have few solid ideas what they have planned.
Right now we're seeing the very basics of the game. Which is built around some vary basic assumptions, because they have to base the numbers on something. We'll be able to change the baseline eventually, be able to see the different play styles a little more clearly. But right now that's still in the future.
It's like faulting a game in a beta playtest for not including content that was planned for the first expansion.
Am I somehow completely misinterpreting every buzzword used to promote the game? It seems that I am. So, with that in mind, I feel like I've spent several months playtesting and exploring the 5E rule set only to come to the conclusion that I have very little idea about what kind of game WoTC is publishing. Whatever it is, as of the time I type this, it seems that I'm apparently not the target audience.
Maybe. It's very easy to read what you want to read and not what's been said. I've done it a few times myself and there's been numerous other noteworthy misinterpretations of what has been said.
I want "bounded accuracy" to actually mean flatter math. I very much liked that 4E flattened out the power curve between levels in comparison to 3rd. I had expected 5th to flatten it out more. I learned a while back that that desire is not at all what "bounded accuracy" is meant to mean. My question now when consider it is whether the people designing the game know what they mean by it because sometimes I'm not entirely sure.
You're not wrong, the math is much flatter. A level 20 character has a +11 to attacks opposed to the +20 of a similarly levelled character in 4e, or the +30 of a 3e character. A character's change in accuracy is a whopping +4 to +11, which isn't much. Damage goes up, but then so do hit points. But most of the other numbers don't change much at all.
But it isn't E6 where characters advance for a very brief time and then don't change at all. But E6 was a set of house rules and it should be pretty easy to do something similar for 5e (if they don't release an official version).
I want different pillars of play to be further supported. That doesn't just mean tacking on an overland travel mini-game. While I applauded the idea of skill challenges in theory, their implementation with the rest of the previous edition never really felt smooth to me. I could always still see the cracks between what I can only call 'combat mode' and 'skill challenge mode.' The transition from one to the other never really felt as smooth as it should have. There have been some really good DMs I've played with who found ways to integrate the different parts of the game together, but, by default, some of 4E's parts just never quite seemed like they were part of the same game. I don't want 5th to feel like that. Instead of tacking things on, it would be nice if the base; the core foundation of the rules, was able to support those other pillars.
Agreed.
I do hope we just haven't see more of that because they decided it didn't really need to be publicly playtested. But it does feel that a lot of elements of the game are missing and being ignored to focus on continually revising the classes.
So, how do either of those things relate to my OP? I believe that actually having a more flat math basis, and also trying to create a rules set which doesn't specifically call out such a specific manner of play and problem resolution would be one in which different classes could be built differently, but still not seem so far apart when a group decided to play the game a little differently. Especially when that decision to play differently than the status quo is prompted by the adventure design of the same company which is designing the game.
So, I'm supposed to play the part of my character, but not making decisions I feel the character would make if it goes against the officially sanctioned way of playing the game, but then I'm going to be given adventures which are designed to put me in situations where it's completely reasonable that I would make decisions that would go against the assumed way of playing the game?
I see a problem there. I'd vastly prefer to play a game in which -most of the time- I can choose what I think my character should do rather than be pushed into choosing what the game thinks I should do. I understand making sacrifices so as to play a group game; I'm not the only person at the table. What I don't understand are the mixed messages I feel I'm getting from the game about what style of game it wants to be and how I'm supposed to interact with it. The language being used to describe the game doesn't seem to mean what I'd take most of the words to mean, and I perceive a conflict between what the mechanics of the game say I should be doing and what the fluff & adventure design thus far seems to encourage.
WotC is still finding their footing when it comes to adventures. They haven't really made adventures a focus for... well, ever really. They've always been an afterthought. They've released a few okay adventures and a couple really good ones (
Red Hand of Doom and
Madness at Gadmore Abby) but most adventures seem to have existed because they felt obligated to release adventures and not because they had a story they were burning to tell. They've hired a bunch of staff that is really good at making assorted types of games, people who know how to design and build card and board and role-playing games. Which are not necessarily the same type of people who are going to write a cracking good adventure.
