D&D 5E Running D&D 5e for Levels 10+

[pemerton]

it would be terrible if you did make the monsters stronger to compensate for the competence of the party, because it would render player choice meaningless. If the high-Charisma barbarian with low Strength only has to fight one kobold, but the high-Strength barbarian with low Charisma has to fight four kobolds, then there's no point in playing a competent character.

I don't agree with this. After all, most players like to level their PCs and the effect of levelling a PC is that you have to fight 4 kobolds rather than 1 (or a bugbear instead of a kobold, or whatever).

The benefit of being more competent, or higher level, or whatever is (i) you get the game play satisfaction of having worked the system well, and (ii) you get the story-type satisfaction of, in the fiction, being someone who beat four kobolds. Some players enjoy (i) more than others; I suspect many D&D players enjoy it at least a bit given that D&D is a fairly mechanics-heavy system. I assume that most RPGers enjoy (ii) at least a bit, because it is one of the main reasons to play a RPG rather than a board game or wargame.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think that depends heavily on the intricacies of mechanical design: action economy, effects inflicted, etc.

Well, we’re talking about 5E, so the only variables in that regard are if the dragon has Legendary Actions or not, and if it’s in its Lair or not.

If it’s at least an Adult, then it has some Legendary Action options and can likely stand up to the direct assault of a party of 4 or 5 PCs for a bit. But not too long. Lair Actions will increase the time it can go against the party. But even with both Legendary and Lair Actions, the dragon will likely not win of it just stands there and let’s the party hit it.

If it doesn’t have Legendary/Lair Actions, then having it try to go toe to toe with a party of PCs is just bad tactics. It’s a bad tactic fictionally for the dragon in the game world, and it’s a bad tactic for the DM at the table.

You either need to play the dragon according to its actual mechanical strengths, or you have to modify its mechanics to be strong in the way you want it to be. Either is a viable approach.

 

[pemerton]

Well, we’re talking about 5E, so the only variables in that regard are if the dragon has Legendary Actions or not, and if it’s in its Lair or not.

That doesn't seem right. There's no reason why a 5e dragon can't have effects on its attacks (eg knockback on a hit, grab on a hit, etc), bonus actions or off-turn reactions, or even more esoteric stuff like rolling initiative twice and acting on both counts.

Nor is there any reason why a 5e dragon can't have abilities that unlock under certain conditions (like the 4e dragon's bloodied breath).

There's no reason why a 5e non-spellcasting combatant has to just be a sack of hit points that does nothing but roll attacks once per round in the attempt to inflict hit point attrition.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I don't agree with this. After all, most players like to level their PCs and the effect of levelling a PC is that you have to fight 4 kobolds rather than 1 (or a bugbear instead of a kobold, or whatever).

I can't say how things work at your table, but I've never seen a random encounter chart where one of the entries was "a level-appropriate number of kobolds."

What you are describing is an instance of the infamous treadmill, by which advancement is rendered meaningless. It's only meaningless in the face of meta-gaming by the DM, whereby enemies change relative to the power of the PCs, though. If the DM is roleplaying their NPCs appropriately, without taking into account information that those NPCs don't possess, then most groups of enemies should remain consistent in power regardless of how competent the PCs are. If you're stronger or more experienced, then you will have an easier time at killing that kobold (or whatever other monster is in that room), which is exactly as it should be in order to make sense within the world. (Some enemies may change, depending on their foreknowledge of the PCs and their abilities, but it would require an informed enemy who knows that this party in particular will be their opposition.)

The benefit of being more competent, or higher level, or whatever is (i) you get the game play satisfaction of having worked the system well, and (ii) you get the story-type satisfaction of, in the fiction, being someone who beat four kobolds. Some players enjoy (i) more than others; I suspect many D&D players enjoy it at least a bit given that D&D is a fairly mechanics-heavy system. I assume that most RPGers enjoy (ii) at least a bit, because it is one of the main reasons to play a RPG rather than a board game or wargame.

You could not be more incorrect if you were trying. Which you might be, for all I know. It's hard to discern tone over the internet.

As for (i), the goal of optimization - if you're into that sort of thing - is to increase the likelihood of success. If players wanted to optimize, by showing off their system mastery, then they would have to take into consideration that their opposition would scale relative to their own abilities. If that's how the game works, then they would have to account for it if they wanted to "win" that game. It would be like playing an older edition (pre-4E), where the DM promises to not include traps if you don't have a thief/rogue, and to increase the natural healing rate if nobody in the party is a cleric; suddenly, a party full of fighters becomes the optimal solution, since they will have fewer obstacles to overcome. If gaining levels causally means you face harder challenges, then you should stop gaining levels at 6, because anything further puts you into sudden death territory (speaking in 3E terms); or to use a video game example, Final Fantasy VIII is significantly easier if you stay at level 1 the whole time, because enemies scale to your level and they get more out of each level than you do.

More importantly for an RPG, though, if you did that then you would be putting the player into conflict with their own character. Optimization is how you roleplay a competent character who wants to survive. If my fighter character chooses to bring a cleric along, and invest time in learning advanced techniques with the greatsword, then it's because they expect that will increase their odds of successfully doing what they need to do; if the player knows that those choices are meaningless - or even counter-productive - due to DM shenanigans, then the best choice for the character is no longer the best choice for the player.

As for (ii), it is simply not true that a story about overcoming greater opposition is necessarily more satisfying than a story about overcoming something more down-to-earth. It might be more satisfying if you didn't know that the enemy was specifically tailored to oppose you, but that will never be the case as long as the DM is contriving encounters based on your own ability. I could write a story right now, about how the Magnificent pemerton single-handedly fought off three dragons and then went on to raise Atlantis, and it wouldn't mean anything. Stories are inherently meaningless, unless there's something which gives them that meaning. In an RPG, that meaning comes from the fact that the GM isn't contriving things for you, such that the outcome of your actions really are your own.

 

[pemerton]

I can't say how things work at your table, but I've never seen a random encounter chart where one of the entries was "a level-appropriate number of kobolds."

I've seen many modules which advise tailiring the number of creatures encountered to the strength of the party,

Dragon Magazine published a system (authored by Frank Mentzer) for doing the same. And an early White Dwarf also had a similar system, written by Don Turnbull as part of his Monstermark articles.

Moreover, many modules are specified as being for PCs of a certain level. The ones for higher level PCs contain more kobolds, or bugbears rather than kobolds, etc.

In all these ways, and probably others I haven't mentioned, the effect of levelling is to fight more kobolds. If buidling a stronger PC of a given level has the same consequence, it doesn't strike me as very different.

If the DM is roleplaying their NPCs appropriately, without taking into account information that those NPCs don't possess, then most groups of enemies should remain consistent in power regardless of how competent the PCs are.

Very few D&D campaigns are run this way. If higher level PCs don't face more powerful opposition, they can't earn the XP they need to level.

the goal of optimization - if you're into that sort of thing - is to increase the likelihood of success.

It can also be to increase the scope of the PC's capabilities.

RPGing is a game. And part of the game, especially in a mechnically complex system like D&D, is testing yourself against the system - in that respect it resembles something like solitaire. As you get better, the GM is expected to step things up, so you have to get even better. There's no prize for just steamrolling the game. It's not like (say) professional gameplay or sports, where winning is instrumental to something else (eg money) and so you want to win as easily as possible.

 

[Coroc]

No single monster has ever been able to go toe to toe with a D&D party. Not unless it massively out leveled the party. It just doesn't work and it never has. This was a problem in every single edition of the game and it's because the PC's simply overwhelm any single monster too easily.

Why anyone would expect 5e to be suddenly different than any other edition is beyond me. If you want to challenge the party, single monsters are NEVER the way to do it.

Sorry I have to agree with [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] on this one. In 2nd Edition it was totally easy to run a single mob of any category vs a party even without making them insane powerful.

It does not matter wether a mob, a fighter / cleric / rogue wizard type you had methods of making this challenging but not overpowered. It sometimes had to do with save or suck mechanics, contingency spells, stacking buffs etc. but it was doable.

 

[hawkeyefan]

That doesn't seem right.

Well, it depends on what you mean. The dragon has already been designed, and that’s how it works. If you mean that you don’t agree with that design approach, then that’s why I went on to say that a DM can change or add abilities to get the desired result.

There's no reason why a 5e dragon can't have effects on its attacks (eg knockback on a hit, grab on a hit, etc), bonus actions or off-turn reactions, or even more esoteric stuff like rolling initiative twice and acting on both counts.

Well Legendary and Lair Actions do add some of those effects. And there’s no reason the DM can’t add any of those ifhe wants.

Nor is there any reason why a 5e dragon can't have abilities that unlock under certain conditions (like the 4e dragon's bloodied breath).

If that’s what a DM wants, sure.

There's no reason why a 5e non-spellcasting combatant has to just be a sack of hit points that does nothing but roll attacks once per round in the attempt to inflict hit point attrition.

Yes, this was my point. To make it not just a sack of HP, it’s on the DM to play it as more than that. As designed, the dragon has abilities that will prove perfectly effective....if it is played properly. If a DM wants to ignore its actual abilities in favor of another approach, then it makes sense to alter its abilities to fit that approach.

Otherwise, the DM is trying to make a peg fit into a square hole, and then complaining about it.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Sorry I have to agree with [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] on this one. In 2nd Edition it was totally easy to run a single mob of any category vs a party even without making them insane powerful.

It does not matter wether a mob, a fighter / cleric / rogue wizard type you had methods of making this challenging but not overpowered. It sometimes had to do with save or suck mechanics, contingency spells, stacking buffs etc. but it was doable.

Especially in 1e was it easy to have a single creature be a threat to a party, so yeah, I disagree with Hussar. PCs in 1e had much fewer HP, so a 10HD dragon would outright kill almost every PC who failed their save, and would still kill half of those who did make it (a dragons breath weapon did as much damage as it had HP). Then you’ve got monsters with magic resistance that could flat out ignore spells, and save or die instant poison or petrifaction, etc etc. the list goes on.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Especially in 1e was it easy to have a single creature be a threat to a party, so yeah, I disagree with Hussar. PCs in 1e had much fewer HP, so a 10HD dragon would outright kill almost every PC who failed their save, and would still kill half of those who did make it (a dragons breath weapon did as much damage as it had HP). Then you’ve got monsters with magic resistance that could flat out ignore spells, and save or die instant poison or petrifaction, etc etc. the list goes on.

I think this is a pretty accurate assessment. I think it had more to do with how PCs have become far, far more durable over the editions than it does with any reduction in the monsters’ power. A 5E dragon seems far more tough than a 1E or even 2E dragon. But the 5E PCs are nowhere near as delicate ad their 1E and 2E counterparts.

This was mentioned earlier in the thread. But since it seems like less fun to nerf PCs than to buff monsters, it doesn’t seem like an approach many want to use.

 

[pemerton]

I think this is a pretty accurate assessment. I think it had more to do with how PCs have become far, far more durable over the editions than it does with any reduction in the monsters’ power. A 5E dragon seems far more tough than a 1E or even 2E dragon.

I don't follow. Toughness, surely, is relative (eg the power of a red dragon can be measured, at least roughly, in terms of "paladins defeated per day") - the numbers in the statblock (to hit, damage, saves, etc) don't measure anything in absolute terms. So if the 5e dragons' "paladins per day" ratio is weaker than that of their AD&D counterparts, then they've got weaker, not tougher, even if their numbers are bigger.