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Message: <blockquote data-quote="discosoc" data-source="post: 6719606" data-attributes="member: 6801554">- Monster AC is pretty good, and I feel like the idea is that their high HP pool is supposed to be the primary "defense."- Player AC is broken once it reaches about 20, for many of the same reasons you mentioned.  In fact, my group kind of jokes about how the Paladin only gets critted, because 90% of the time he's only hit on a 20, due to most on-CR encounters having +hit stats in the 4-6 range.- Your observation about combat being "swingy" (as I call it) is in line with mine as well.  There is a *very* fine line between an encounter that's no threat to the party, and one that can easily kill them.  AC is, once again, a big contributor to this in that bringing creatures that are capable of doing any kind of harm to the group requires picking creatures that are too-high CR, so when they start hitting, players start losing huge chunks of health in bursts, rather than the steady chunks I think 5e intends.  Or, you just cheese out and throw a bunch of breath weapon style attacks at them, bypassing AC and then the CR is back in line.- Polymorph shouldn't be an issue, unless your game is running some gritty ultra-realistic mode in dealing with spells.  It's a magical effect, so the transformation back to normal should also be considered magical in the most fantastic sense.  Something like having the person who just swallowed the polymorphed ogre suddenly lurch over and puke the ogre back up when it ends.  No damage done, but maybe the person how ate him is stunned or something.  If you want to make it gory, where the guy explodes or something, just make sure everything else about magic is in line with it so it doesn't stand out as a selectively realistic depiction of magic.- Lastly, magic items are capable of being very unbalancing, if handed out like previous editions.  Remember that each person is only allowed to be attuned to 3 magic items at a time, which leaves the core +x weapons and armor as the most likely to cause problems.  In fact, of those it's really just the magic armor that I'd avoid sense it only makes the previous AC issues mentioned that much worse.  5e is designed to handle magic items a bit more like 1 and 2e, in that each person may only be likely to come across 2 or 3 permanent magic items over the course of the campaign.  It's not like 3e or 4e or Pathfinder, where they assume every character will have a magic item in each "slot" like an MMO.</blockquote>

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