D&D 5E Standard CR Assessment: Standard abilities a high level party is always expected to have?

[Stalker0]

Spawned from a different thread.

When high level CRs are discussed, a common discussion is around what a high level party (10th level or higher) can do. A party can be highly variable after all, in terms of classes, feats, magic items...etc.

All of that said, I believe there are certain abilities the vast majority of high level parties are going to have...by hook or by crook. Again, we are noting a large majority. Of course there will be those odd ball groups that just don't fit the mold (my group is 5 20th level fighters with no magic items! that sort of thing).

So lets get some community consensus. In general, what abilities would you assume a high level party to have....regardless of how they acquired such an ability.


Here are a few to get the ball rolling

10th level
1) Ability to negate magical resistance (some sort of magical attack).
2) +1 to attack rolls (magic items or spells).
3) Fire Resistance (or another really common resistance for that game).
4) Various ways to bring a player up from unconsciousness.
5) Almost no single attack in the game can kill them.

15th level
1) Ability to rest comfortably in any environment (tiny hut, magnificent mansion, etc etc).
2) Immunity to Fear
3) Ability to leave a combat when the party is in trouble.
4) Resistance to several energy types.

20th level
1) Ability to negate any negative monster ability with prep time.
2) Ability to stop any monster for at least 1 round.

 

[5ekyu]

Movement assumptions are key... Reliable port and fly are major game changers.



Sent from my VS995 using EN World mobile app

 

[Croesus]

10th level
2) +1 to attack rolls (magic items or spells).

Maybe it's just my table, but I would change this to "primary stat is maxed at 20".

I don't give out plus weapons/armor, both because they are boring and because they can too easily mess up bounded accuracy. I suspect there are other GMs who fell the same.

 

[MarkB]

10th level
1) Ability to negate magical resistance (some sort of magical attack).

Just for clarity, by 'magical resistance' do you mean 'resistance/immunity to non-magical weapon attacks'?

2) +1 to attack rolls (magic items or spells).
3) Fire Resistance (or another really common resistance for that game).
4) Various ways to bring a player up from unconsciousness.
5) Almost no single attack in the game can kill them.

How about also "Have a sufficient stock of limited resources (i.e. spell slots, ki points, etc.) that no single encounter can completely exhaust them"?

 

[Eltab]

L10:
- Can fly, at-will (ex: magic carpet) or under certain circumstances (Fly spell)
- Can land without catastrophic accident (falling damage) being involved
- Variety of typed damage; maybe all types of damage. (fire, psychic, radiant, &c)

 

[Nevvur]

One or more spellcasters with Counterspell. I might be overestimating how frequently other groups take it, but every party I've DMd for does.

 

[the Jester]

Interesting. I think this was far more true in the last couple of editions than in 5e. Here's how my game stacks up to your points; I have multiple parties running around at different levels, so am speaking from a fair amount of experience now:

10th level
1) Ability to negate magical resistance (some sort of magical attack).

I'm reading this as "having the ability to overcome resistance to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing"? Generally, yes.

2) +1 to attack rolls (magic items or spells).

Generally, yes, but not always (this and 1 above).

3) Fire Resistance (or another really common resistance for that game).

Haven't seen this at all, except for racial resistances and one ring of energy resistance.

4) Various ways to bring a player up from unconsciousness.
5) Almost no single attack in the game can kill them.

15th level
1) Ability to rest comfortably in any environment (tiny hut, magnificent mansion, etc etc).

All of these hold true in my game except the last one. Seems like about 50% of parties can safely rest starting at fairly low levels, while the others never really develop a method.

2) Immunity to Fear

Huh. Haven't really seen this one.

3) Ability to leave a combat when the party is in trouble.

Depends on the group. True is about 1/2 of the cases I've seen.

4) Resistance to several energy types.

Nope, haven't seen this even once.

20th level
1) Ability to negate any negative monster ability with prep time.
2) Ability to stop any monster for at least 1 round.

I'm not sure about this. There aren't any pcs that are quite 20th level yet in my game. But even mid-level monks are good at creating stunlocks.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I think a lot of these assumptions are flawed. I’m not just talking about composition issues (like assuming every party will have a wizard or sorcerer who always has all of these spells available all the time), but by looking at officially published material. Look at something like Rise of Tiamat. Look at the magic items in the official higher level campaigns. They aren’t as common as in previous editions, and magic Christmas trees like in 3e don’t exist.

So I think many of the assumptions are based on people’s personal play style and experience in a previous edition when they do not apply as a general rule in 5e. For example, in RoT when we reached 15th level, none of those 15th level assumptions applied. Most of the 10th level ones didn’t as well. And we certainly didn’t have fly at will, and only half the party had magic weapons at all.

 

[CapnZapp]

Interesting. I think this was far more true in the last couple of editions than in 5e.

That is true.

In my opinion the list is much too specific. For instance, even though my group consists mostly of veterans of d20 (some even back to AD&D), they have yet to use Fly even a single time.

The main points I feel are ubiquitous (at least for performance-focused games where this matters*) are:


1) overcoming magic weaponry issues (yes, I'm fairly sure he means resistance/immunity to non-magical weapons). Unless you actively remove weapons from published supplements and/or choose to play a low-magic game where DMG treasure tables aren't used, there will be at least one magic weapon already at level 5 or so. And remember, spells and cantrips already count as magical (and/or elemental).

The monster trait (to be resistant to non-magical attacks) is exceedingly soft in this edition, and I dearly wish there was at least one more level of this type of resistance. In short, once you have found a decent magic weapon, you really don't need anything else for the rest of your career. Going from a +1 sword to a +2 sword means exactly plus one, which is incredibly minor.

This also means that a wererat is probably a MUCH more dangerous foe at, say, level 3, than a werebear at level 6. The first is outright likely to ignore physical attacks (which is huge) while the other is definitely not getting much utility of his non-weapon immunity in most parties/adventure supplements.

2) Ability to cause specific damage and shut down regeneration. Having Firebolt as a cantrip, or Chill Touch, can completely trivialize the trait of a Troll.

3) "Ability to rest comfortably in any environment" or, more generally, ability to ignore weather conditions, wandering monsters and pretty much every other old-school rest inhibitor. Yeah, most parties get so many goodies from the PHB that this becomes a non-issue, and much earlier than 10th level. (Cue Sacrosanct and his sacred "have the story hurry the heroes along" which simply gets old fast). The reality is that in most cases, there's nothing you the DM can do when the players decide they want to face the next encounter fully rested. And the very generous game rules are to blame, not you the DM.

That's the big three, as I see it.

Then (unfortunately) there's one more:

4) ability to transverse the field of battle / ability to stop enemy from doing the same.

Having a good movement rate is HUGE. Having good ranged attacks is HUGE.

[SBLOCK]Unfortunately 5th edition doesn't put nearly as high a price on these abilities as they are worth. In English: it doesn't cost you (much) to create a Dex-based mobile character. It doesn't cost you to create a ranged fighter. You gain very little (too little) by choosing a slow, encumbered character (such as the archetypal axe dwarf in plate mail).

Sure that dwarf is impressive in melee combat. But the secret is that most monsters are only impressive in melee combat. Fight them in other ways and they are wimps.

Unfortunately, while the PHB hands out mobility and range like free candy to heroes, it is exceedingly stingy with giving monsters tricks up their sleeves. Monsters simply aren't given the tools they need to ensure they reach the heroes in melee, and they are often only given impressive melee attacks.

Taken together, this means you can break 5th edition by not playing it the way its designers naively just assumed you would: the way you've always played D&D. But if you focus on battlefield control and range, you will find that monsters are much less likely to counter that to deliver any real challenge, than in any previous edition.[/SBLOCK]

In comparison, something like "+1 to attacks and damage" is of little consequence in this edition. It simply doesn't change anything in significant ways, so I wouldn't consider it worth tracking.

About the only one that appears significantly later would be "Ability to leave a combat when the party is in trouble." Yep, that's true, and it's significant. Thank god it happens only at highish levels.



*) I mean, if you (not Jester personally, "you" reading this) are hosting a light friendly game where combats aren't difficult or even the main focus of your game, you might not recognize any of these points. And that's fine. But that also means the whole subject is kind of irrelevant to you.

 

[Stalker0]

I appreciate the great responses so far, and then checks on my assumptions. Let’s keep it up!!