D&D 5E State of D&D

[Mistwell]

First, you haven't actually provided any evidence. No quotes about the design or how it was "discussed."

Second, if your only point is that your "Boss Fight" is nothing more than the occasional single monster, regardless of difficulty or when the encounter is, who cares? I mean, really. Why not just say, "single monster."

I did.

Here, this is the series of events that happened:

My greatest need is mid and high level NPCs challenges, and mid and high level monster challenges, particularly for solos that work at those levels.

Solo means single monster.

You then mistook "solos that work at those levels" for "solo adventurers". I then clarified:

Not solo adventuring, solo MONSTERS. As in a single Dragon vs a party of adventurers. It's a standard concept for D&D.

So at that point it was darn clear I meant a single creature. I then repeated it, and the first time the phrase Boss Fight was used was clearly in parenthesis, and listed as a RELATED topic but not the topic:

The concept of the solo monster challenge (related to the Boss Fight concept) is a pretty well established concept for D&D.

I then even used your example of an old adventure module and called out a bunch of encounters which were single monsters to make the examples even more clear:

Yes, DO look at those dungeon crawls. They have lots of rooms with ONE creature in them. Here, flipping to a random page of White Plume Mountain, I find a room with "Here lives the guardian of the treasure, just about the biggest giant crab anyone's ever seen." And the party fights one giant crab that's a tough solo creature. This is a NORMAL encounter for 1e. Another example, let's take Barrier Peaks as you suggest. A room with a single creature, an Aurumvorax. Next room, one creature, Twilight Bloom. Another room, with just a single Umber Hulk. Barrier Peaks is FULL of solo creature encounters!

You're the guy talking about boss fights, not me. You previously already replied to the posts I just listed above so somehow in the past three hours you forgot that's what I was talking about?

Sure. People sometimes fight a single monster. Sometimes two. Sometimes a horde. It's not big deal- guys in my high school used to do it all the time.

Here is the issue: in 5e, a single monster dies disproportionately quickly relative to multiple monsters, when compared to prior editions. They die super fast due to how the action economy works. They're not really a challenge . This is one reason why Crawford and Mearls added Legendary creature rules and Lairs to the game - it deals with this issue of a single creature dying faster than expected, relative to prior editions. However, there are not that many examples of Legendary creatures or lairs in the MM so far, nor are there that many mid or higher level creatures in the MM either. This makes it more difficult to convert old adventures or creature new encounters at those levels - not impossible, just more difficult. That's it - that's the entire concept that I was referring to.

 

[Mistwell]

Were you not the one in this thread claiming to speak to the needs and preferences of 5e players as well as to the tendencies and practices of players across the various editions throughout D&D's history?...

Nope. Not me. You must have me confused with someone else.

 

[GreenTengu]

Early D&D was modeled after wargaming (Arneson) and expanded on by Gygax, and had a rotating cast of players in an underground dungeon with little-to-no plot overriding plot, often involving items such as a fountain that would generate monsters. If you look at the early modules, whether they are BECMI (Chateau D'Amberville) or not (Barrier Peaks, Tsojcanth), the one thing you will note is the conspicuous absence of a "Boss Fight." If your concept of a "Boss Fight" is just "one creature" without any other connotation, then, um, sure. Sometimes you fought a single creature. But that's not a "Boss Fight," that's fighting a single monster. The concept of the "Boss Fight" that I see with pathfinder and 3.5e players (and 4e players), which is to say, a single, very difficult creature you face after numerous other encounters is one that is foreign to me as a grognard. But maybe I wasn't in the right grognard circles?

Are you really quibbling about the term "early" to dismiss 1E D&D as not being "early" enough because there was some alpha test version that was never properly officially published and basically no one ever played, but because you read about it once somewhere you are trying to use that as a means of dismissing the argument rather than... actually thinking about it a bit?

1E was early D&D. In fact, by this point? 2nd edition with "Basic" and "Advanced" could be considered early D&D. I don't care if you don't like it and it makes you feel old, the truth is the truth.

And... really... are you telling me that in all the D&D games you have ever played, that the Orcs or Goblins never had a chieftain? That the Fire Giants never had a King? That the last thing you had to fight in the course of the adventure was likely an Ogre or Red Dragon or something else that was bigger than what you had fought through on your way to get there? That never, not even once in all the adventures you played, that not a single one of them ever involved a name villain or target who had done or was planning to do something and needed to be killed before that time came to a close?

That no adventure that you played EVER had anything remotely like this with an encounter with a creature that was likely a bit higher level than anything previously and once you defeated it, the adventure could wrap up pretty neatly because often there would be no more challengers?

Frankly, I don't believe you. I am pretty certain you are either misremembering things, decided to classify some clear cut examples in your mind as something different or that you... just never actually played the game. The moment the game started telling stories is the moment you can be certain there were climaxes with a boss fight.

This concept doesn't come from video game, it doesn't come from D&D... it has been a literary device used in stories since some of the earliest stories ever told. The biggest challenge for the hero is always the last challenge, that is the big climax, that is where the threat that make all previous threats pale in comparison... You thought fighting the cyclops and medusa were hard? Well, now the Kraken is finally going to rise out of the sea with the power to destroy the whole city!

Yeah, that's right! The idea of a boss fight at the end of an adventure is at least as old as ancient greek myth. But I am sure you are going to complain about my suggesting that isn't early enough for you, because True Fans(tm) like you can recite Egyptian, Babylonian, and Ethiopian myth that is even older and somehow that disproves that this is an ancient literary device.... somehow... because... well, I bet I am writing to someone who is incapable of admitting when he is wrong.

Now, if you are just quibbling about the mechanics-- yes, boss fights were really crappily designed in 1st to 3rd edition. Whether you admit it or not, they did exist as a concept and the result was... bad. One of a couple things were liable to happen.

1) The PCs have enough super-damaging or auto-death techniques available that the fight ends on the first turn in a rather anti-climatic manner.
or
2) Any creature with the ability to survive in the room with the Magic-User (or Thief's backstab) would tend to have offensive abilities that were super strong and were written in a way that DMs naturally used them all against a single target and killed that character on the first or second round.

Those were still boss fights, but they were boss fights with really crappy mechanical design which utterly ruined the fun.

It wasn't until 4E that this concept was really taken to task and broken down in an intelligent manner. They realized that those two negative outcomes demonstrated the need for two things.

A) The creature to have considerably higher HP than most things at its tier.
B) For the creature to primarily rely on multi-target and area attacks that meant all the players would be threatened by and engaging with the thing rather than utterly stomping the PCs into the ground one at a time leaving players at the table unable to do anything well before the outcome is determined because they happened to be randomly targeted or the DM disliked them or... what have you.

Thus creating something that would be as challenging and engaging as fighting 4 other things you were expected to face at its tier while still being faceable on its tier rather than merely sticking in something that is a much higher level and hoping that it kind of works even though it wasn't mechanically designed for that purpose.

 

[darjr]

[MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION] to be fair I thought you were focused on the boss monster idea vs the solo monster idea.

I do agree that a single level appropriate monster in 5e is easier than a group of level appropriate monsters. But it's easy to adjust for if one were apt too.

Also I think OD&D and 1AD&D didn't really do "level appropriate". It sorta did but not like 5e.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[KahlessNestor]

I haven't done it yet, but it seems to me if you're looking for a solo monster and there's nothing you like at level, couldn't you just use the CR generators to up the HP and damage to where you like it and use a different lev3l monster? And there are plenty of Legendary and Lair monsters to add in some of thise features. It doesn't seem like it should be too hard, from my limited understanding of the rules

 

[Kite474]

You know after reading this thread it makes me realize Wizards should really get to making a Unearthed Arcana. With a utter f^89-ton of optional rules for things like upgrading monsters to solo, good guides on creating subclasses, class, alternate systems, etc. Basically a big book that basically says how 5th is supposed to work from a micro level and how to change that. I mean if all Wizards want to do is FR adventures and super small splats I'm fine with that. I just want the tools to really make what I actually want. Also PDF's because I mean for f(*$% sake Wizards please make your way to the 21st century.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Lack of PDFs has nothing to do with being behind the times and everything to do with making sure they're profitable. As I said before, most game systems don't have pdfs.

 

[seebs]

Everyone but Wizards thinks PDFs are a good deal? I'm trying to think of a game I own besides Paizo that has PDFs of its books available (either in addition or instead of). I think Shadowrun is the only one. 13th Age doesn't. Numenara/Cypher doesnt. Fantasy Flight's Star Wars certainly doesn't. Very few games I own seem to think PDFs are worth screwing over all the money they put into developing the dead tree versions.

Well, GURPS did. And Paizo's been making serious bank on their books. Back in the day, when Steve Jackson Games was originally not doing PDFs for GURPS 4e, it wasn't because they didn't think they'd make more money selling PDFs too; it was because game stores threatened not to carry their products if they also sold PDFs.

Also, I have no idea what you mean by "screwing over all the money they put into developing the dead tree versions". The overwhelming majority of the development costs of the dead tree versions are going into producing a digital document that can be sent to a printer. That same document is what becomes the PDF. The only ways PDFs differ from dead tree documents are (1) cheaper production costs per-unit, (2) don't have to aim for multiples of 16 or 32 pages. The marginal cost of a digital version is pretty tiny, unless you do a fancy one with bookmarks and a table of contents... which it turns out is usually handled entirely automatically by the software anyway, if you want it.

I've seen no evidence that ebooks are bad for book sales; most of the people who buy a PDF but not a physical book appear to be people who wouldn't have bought a physical book anyway, so they're additional sales, not taking away from sales. Furthermore, a lot of people who aren't willing to spend $50-150 on hardcovers to try out a game might be willing to spend $30-50 on PDFs... But if they like the game, they may spend more on hardcovers later.