D&D 5E Some thoughts after more time with the game...

[Li Shenron]

Is AC intentionally that low? If so, does giving a creature better armor significantly change the assumptions of the game or the challenge of an encounter?

This is an interesting point. I guess that the designers wanted the PC to be hit more rarely than monsters, but I understand your concerns. I can't say much myself because I've never played at high levels.

Does giving a lot of magic items to the party unbalance the game?

Obviously it makes them more powerful and resourceful, but IMHO it doesn't disrupt the game unless (1) those magic items include weapons with high attack bonuses, and/or (2) multiple items grant bonuses to the same thing and the DM lets them stack.

In general, magic items in 5e stack, but the attunement rule is supposed to be used to prevent excess.

If you play in a monty haul campaign, use attunement as a mitigating factor, and use higher-CR monsters or just bigger encounters.

Are there particular items which you've noticed are problematic?

Not yet, but once again I've only played at low levels.

Does Polymorph Salad work as a tactic? What are you're thoughts on that situation, and how might you handle it differently?

No, it's clearly not the RAI of the spell. If someone attempted at eating a polymorphed creature, when the spell ends I would just say that the two creatures occupy the same space and are suddenly shunted separate from each other, perhaps with a pyschological shock but no damage to either.

As for the Cleric known spells, it's already been clarified that absolutely the RAI (and possibly also the RAW) is for a multiclass character to have the same access/knowledge of spells of each class as if it only had the levels of such class. So Cleric 1/Wizard 19 can only cast Cleric spells of level 1.

 

[S'mon]

I have an 8th level group in my 5e game currently. I agree with many posters above re AC:

1. PCs being able to easily hit monsters is expected by the system and not a problem.
2. PC AC has not been a problem IMC, which has a swords & sorcery tone and not much heavy armour around, but I expect that very high ACs in Tier 2 will cause difficulty when stacked with magic bonuses. An AC 24+ would cause major problems for the system; monsters need to be hitting on rolls of under 20 for the system to work.

My PC group:
Hakeem, Barbarian-8 AC 19 Attack +8 MI: +1 longsword
Rey, Rogue-8 AC 18 Attack +7/+8 MI: +1 dagger, mage armour spell cast on him
Bjornalf, Warlock-8 AC 16 Attack +7

At these numbers the game works great. If ACs got up around 22 or so I think it would work much less well, and at AC 24 it would start breaking down.

 

[Prism]

I'll just add a couple of examples of how this plays out for us at level 20. My character has a legendary set of plate mail made from the scales of an enormous dragon turtle that we slew, crafted into armour by the best priests of Gond and enchanted by named devil (actually our party member but that's another story). Amongst other powers like weather breathing and fire resistance it is also +3. My character being a fighter also has defensive style for +1 AC. So all said and done he has AC 22 but this is a very high level campaign so it seems to be fine in play. Oh and he cast shield too if needed.

In a recent fight we took on an advanced pit fiend (Bel actually) who was basically a pit fiend with more hit points and a magic vorpal blade (yikes). He could hit me on a roll of 5 and hit a lot. He had a bunch of horned devils with him. These are only CR 11 but could still hit me on a roll of 12. They hit a lot and there were several of them. Its also worth noting that if the mainline fighter has too high an AC the monsters probably should target the softer targets at the back.

The system seems to cope pretty well with high AC's at high level but I would say it would struggle if the players were lets say mid level. From this experience as a player I am going to hold off on magic plussed armour (especially, plate and half plate) until high level as a DM.

 

[Staffan]

Reread the multiclass spellcaster rules. It doesn't work like this. You can still only prepare the highest level spell you can cast for the class level. If you're a 3rd level cleric, the highest level cleric spell you can prepare is 2nd. If you're a 9th level wizard, the highest level wizard spell you can prepare is 5th. So a 3rd level cleric/9th level wizard could prepare up to 2nd level cleric spells and 5th level wizard spells.

The wording for this is a little weird however. Multi-class rules say: "You determine what spells you know and can prepare for each class individually, as if you were a single-classed member of that class." The prepared-casting classes all limit prepared spells by saying: "The spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots." A cleric 5/wizard 5 has 5th level spell slots, so you could make the argument that they should be able to prepare 5th level cleric spells (not wizard spells however, since they can't put 5th level spells in their spell book). Wizards has clarified that this is not how the multi-class rules are supposed to work, but in the absence of that clarification you could easily interpret the rules that way.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

The wording for this is a little weird however. Multi-class rules say: "You determine what spells you know and can prepare for each class individually, as if you were a single-classed member of that class." The prepared-casting classes all limit prepared spells by saying: "The spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots." A cleric 5/wizard 5 has 5th level spell slots, so you could make the argument that they should be able to prepare 5th level cleric spells (not wizard spells however, since they can't put 5th level spells in their spell book). Wizards has clarified that this is not how the multi-class rules are supposed to work, but in the absence of that clarification you could easily interpret the rules that way.

In the absence of that clarification, there is still the example in the rule-book that specifically shows a ranger/wizard and their spells being known and prepared not as if a ranger of character level and a wizard of character level, but specifically matching what would be knowable and preparable as if a ranger of ranger level only, and a wizard of wizard level only.

But yeah, it is easy for people to, for whatever reason, not read the provided clarifying example.

 

[Staffan]

In the absence of that clarification, there is still the example in the rule-book that specifically shows a ranger/wizard and their spells being known and prepared not as if a ranger of character level and a wizard of character level, but specifically matching what would be knowable and preparable as if a ranger of ranger level only, and a wizard of wizard level only.

But yeah, it is easy for people to, for whatever reason, not read the provided clarifying example.

At first I thought "Well, but rangers are a spells-known class and wizards have their limitation in the form of the spellbook instead", but then I re-read the relevant sections and realized they both use the "must be of a level for which you have spell slots" phrasing, just in different places. So yeah, that moves the high-level spells castable interpretation from "rules-bending" to "ignoring the example."

 

[Xeviat]

I, too, find the AC values to largely be low. Monster ACs are typically lower than non-caster ACs, and their HP are bloated by comparison. Similarly, their attack bonuses are often lower than PCs, yet their damage is inflated. This makes monsters swingy while players are more consistent. If that's not the way you would like to play things, you can use the DMG monster creation guidelines to adjust those stats; reduce HP by 15 and increase AC by 2, and reduce average damage by 6 and increase attack by 2 are ways to adjust stats without affecting CR.

I felt the damage was high and the attack bonuses were low personally, so in my games I added Con score to player HP and increased monster attack bonuses by 1. It felt better for us.

If you compare the DMG monster guidelines to the player growth, you'll find that player attack and monster AC scale perfectly, but monster attack scales much faster than player AC. I personally believe this is because monster attack is geared low at first, so that players can survive with their low HP, and it scales up to be more near the baseline later when players have more HP and recovery. Personally, I would rather have PCs have more HP early on, as combats can be swingy and end after a single hit, but that seems to be how they calibrated the system.

 

[Rhenny]

I, too, find the AC values to largely be low. Monster ACs are typically lower than non-caster ACs, and their HP are bloated by comparison. Similarly, their attack bonuses are often lower than PCs, yet their damage is inflated. This makes monsters swingy while players are more consistent. If that's not the way you would like to play things, you can use the DMG monster creation guidelines to adjust those stats; reduce HP by 15 and increase AC by 2, and reduce average damage by 6 and increase attack by 2 are ways to adjust stats without affecting CR.

I felt the damage was high and the attack bonuses were low personally, so in my games I added Con score to player HP and increased monster attack bonuses by 1. It felt better for us.

Easy to change/modify is what I like most about 5e. It is very easy to change the way the game feels by tweaking monsters (or adding HP to PCs). And...the math is pretty transparent so it is easy to change across the board. Like you said, examining and comparing creatures in the DMG guidelines is helpful to an extent. Also, since monsters are not built like PCs, DMs can kind of do anything with them. I like giving them class abilities to make them unique. Like a raging barbarian orc who gains advantage on attacks grants advantage but also takes 1/2 damage from bludgeon, piercing and slashing. Or an goblin witchdoctor who has 2 or 3 first level spells...etc. Endless fun with combinations.

 

[Xeviat]

Easy to change/modify is what I like most about 5e. It is very easy to change the way the game feels by tweaking monsters (or adding HP to PCs). And...the math is pretty transparent so it is easy to change across the board. Like you said, examining and comparing creatures in the DMG guidelines is helpful to an extent. Also, since monsters are not built like PCs, DMs can kind of do anything with them. I like giving them class abilities to make them unique. Like a raging barbarian orc who gains advantage on attacks grants advantage but also takes 1/2 damage from bludgeon, piercing and slashing. Or an goblin witchdoctor who has 2 or 3 first level spells...etc. Endless fun with combinations.

As long as you're willing to adjust on the fly, you can do a lot with the system, yes. It's not unique to this system; 4E had the same level of customization. I've run several sessions where I never even used a fully stated monster; I simply used the baseline and gave it abilities. Especially if you're willing to fudge some things if they don't go the way you planned (like pulling punches or dropping some HP off your monster if the players are about to lose something they shouldn't have a chance of losing), the last systems have been very flexible.

 

[MostlyDm]

It has been my experience that bounded accuracy can be a real problem in the game. It's something I didn't ask for, but it's there as a critical part of 5E, so I have to live with it. What you've experienced is something that's a real issue. If it's "working as intended" it's not something you notice, but as you've seen with the EK character, it's very easy to go off the rails.

Because bounded accuracy is baked into the system, small shifts in accuracy or AC have a big effect on the game, much more than you might think. A few boosts in accuracy make targets trivial to hit, and exacerbate issues with the -5/+10 damage feats. A high AC, which is very easy for some types of characters to get, has a similar effect in the other direction: you're just missed most of the time, and stronger monsters don't necessarily make up for this.

So high AC becomes a really good thing, too good a thing if you're not facing opponents with powers that target saves. If you're facing "humanoid" opponents, it's the only thing you need. 5E removed attacks against Reflexes/Fortitude and Willpower and replaced them with saves. This removed a lot of options for the DM to deal with high AC characters since there's no "touch AC" component or other attacks any more.

I've seen a character with a high AC change the tone of a campaign where everyone else is racing to keep pace. Characters with lower ACs that can't wear heavy armor struggle to stay effective in a hand to hand fight, which moves them to ranged roles. That may not be something they want to do, but if your rogue is brutalized in hand to hand while the paladin is largely unfazed by it, you go to ranged combat to stay alive. Or switch characters.

The typical response to a high AC by the GM is to bring in monsters that have saving throw attacks, and that typically means magical creatures. That's not something everyone wants in their games but you're stuck doing it.

What to do about it?

I haven't run very much 5E, but I have helped a DM with it. What I did was to have them take a look at monsters and adjust them for what their true attack bonus should be. If you look at big, strong monsters, their attacks don't always reflect what their raw proficiency bonus + stat bonus should be. That has helped a little bit. I have also worked with my groups and the DM to restrict stacking a bit to keep ACs toned down a bit. We also introduced a "touch AC" mechanic back into the game for some attacks.

We've considered changing the base AC mechanic to reflect a proficiency bonus for characters who aren't wearing heavy armor, but that's a work in progress.

To be honest, this is one of the things that's kept my group from adopting 5E since there doesn't seem to be an easy fix for it.

Example of monsters that have incorrect attack bonuses for their CR?

I suspect you are confused about how monster proficiency bonus is determined. It's based on CR, not HD.

If your DM introduced too many magical sources of AC, I can see that restricting stacking might be useful. This is basically a fix for a problem your DM created, but whatever works.