D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[EzekielRaiden]

Does it? Must I also seek council when picking the system, when introducing NPCs or when designing a new random table?

Do players even want to concern themselves with design decisions, or do they want to just play the game?

That is the very thing in contention though. If you are chronically rewriting the rules under the players' feet, and merely informing them after the fact "oh yeah by the way, today I've decided that initiative is done with a deck of cards, I know it was popcorn last week but popcorn is too chaotic for my taste", they aren't playing a game. They cannot play, they cannot make informed decisions and learn from the consequences of those decisions, when the rules that decide what decisions are good and useful and what decisions are bad and harmful chronically change.

 

[Scott Christian]

In my experience, the encounter-building rules for 5e are...well. I could voice my full opinion, but it wouldn't be nice. At all. So I'll just say that my experience thereof has been "GMs frequently don't know the difference between encounters that are near-guaranteed TPKs and those that are cakewalks", because every time, the resultant TPK has been followed with (brief) profound confusion about how that ever could have happened.

I think we all know how you feel about 5e's encounter and CR system.

But you have had some god-awful luck with DMs. I have had many DMs that can scale those encounters (the day prior once they know how many players are joining, which players are joining, etc.) without difficulty. When I was DMing 5e, I never used CR, just my gut. But I also tended to go on the easier side, and I roll in the open. Never had a TPK while DMing 5e, but there were times I came close.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think we all know how you feel about 5e's encounter and CR system.

But you have had some god-awful luck with DMs. I have had many DMs that can scale those encounters (the day prior once they know how many players are joining, which players are joining, etc.) without difficulty. When I was DMing 5e, I never used CR, just my gut. But I also tended to go on the easier side, and I roll in the open. Never had a TPK while DMing 5e, but there were times I came close.

The number of times I've been told by actual GMs on this very forum that 5e encounter-building rules are inferior to outright guessing, tells me my experience is at least slightly more universal than yours on this subject.

 

[Scott Christian]

It worked extremely well in 4e--not perfect

4e's system was the bomb. It worked great! I had a much easier time building close encounters, either with the system or by gut. It was awesome!

 

[Scott Christian]

The number of times I've been told by actual GMs on this very forum that 5e encounter-building rules are inferior to outright guessing, tells me my experience is at least slightly more universal than yours on this subject.

I will say this, when I say by gut, I am not guessing. I have years of experience, my number sense has always been a solid skill, and I am also a player, so I knew my group's abilities well. I believe once a DM has those three things, they can "predict" the combat pretty well.

 

[Emerikol]

I will say this, when I say by gut, I am not guessing. I have years of experience, my number sense has always been a solid skill, and I am also a player, so I knew my group's abilities well. I believe once a DM has those three things, they can "predict" the combat pretty well.

I never used the budgets even in 4e. With variable numbers of players, characters, skill, etc... it's all a crapshoot. And yes 4e isn't going to result in a TPK because honestly I went way beyond what was recommended with my group and never even sniffed a TPK. I did love the way monster stat blocks were done though and I created an excel tab for each room and pasted pictures of the stat blocks from the digital tools. I'm torn because I also liked 3e's ability to add class levels to humanoids. I didn't care much for that approach for monsters except maybe dragons.

But back to the point. Yes I've been eyeballing rather successfully for years. Even with a good tool it's kind of necessary. A point budget is great but you need to know what your groups point threshold is. It's not what the book says necessarily for a group of your level.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

4e's system was the bomb. It worked great! I had a much easier time building close encounters, either with the system or by gut. It was awesome!

Well I was trying to cut off at the pass the everpresent refrain of "WELL IT WASN'T PERFECT REMEMBER NEEDLEFANG DRAKES? REMEMBER LEVEL 1 DRACOLICHES?!"

Because yes, I have had to fend off those sorts of """responses""" for literal years, and thus have learned to bake in the things which forestall them. 4e's system wasn't perfect. It had a couple of pain points, primarily in the fact that higher level creatures tended to have more, nastier, and more-easily-applied conditions, which wasn't strictly part of the basic math of the game. This meant that there were edge cases where some things punched above or below their weight, especially if the GM was using the dynamic levelling functions of the monster builder, or was inventing creatures via MM3-on-a-business-card and failed to consider conditions inflicted.

More or less, it was an extremely precise science for the science part, but it was also about 15% art, and that part could trip people up if they weren't prepared for addressing it.

I will say this, when I say by gut, I am not guessing. I have years of experience, my number sense has always been a solid skill, and I am also a player, so I knew my group's abilities well. I believe once a DM has those three things, they can "predict" the combat pretty well.

Okay.

I don't think a system should be written to depend on having years of experience in order to work properly. I think that's a really really bad design choice, given that when you first release the system, that means everyone is going to fail at using it for several years.

 

[Scott Christian]

Well I was trying to cut off at the pass the everpresent refrain of "WELL IT WASN'T PERFECT REMEMBER NEEDLEFANG DRAKES? REMEMBER LEVEL 1 DRACOLICHES?!"

Because yes, I have had to fend off those sorts of """responses""" for literal years, and thus have learned to bake in the things which forestall them. 4e's system wasn't perfect. It had a couple of pain points, primarily in the fact that higher level creatures tended to have more, nastier, and more-easily-applied conditions, which wasn't strictly part of the basic math of the game. This meant that there were edge cases where some things punched above or below their weight, especially if the GM was using the dynamic levelling functions of the monster builder, or was inventing creatures via MM3-on-a-business-card and failed to consider conditions inflicted.

More or less, it was an extremely precise science for the science part, but it was also about 15% art, and that part could trip people up if they weren't prepared for addressing it.

Yes, exceptions, when limited, are not always a fair counterargument. And you are right, it is part art. In my opinion, almost 50%. There are so many variables, as the D20 can be a bit swingy. This is especially true when you start adding in saving throws and conditions and higher-level damage for characters that have a broad range of hit points. (Think of that fighter that has 150 hp and a 20 AC and the wizard that has 60 hp and a 15 AC.)
But I found 4e to be intuitive when encounter building. Perhaps, that is because the stat blocks were written a bit more readable, perhaps the powers used were more straightforward, or maybe it was even more a focus of the game itself. (Which, to me, it very much seemed to be, especially the way they laid out each "Encounter.")

 

[Scott Christian]

I don't think a system should be written to depend on having years of experience in order to work properly. I think that's a really really bad design choice, given that when you first release the system, that means everyone is going to fail at using it for several years.

I don't either. That is why they write adventures, and often, older gamers encourage inexperienced DMs who are having difficulties, to run a "module" or adventure path. Those do wonders as far as honing skills and learning how to build encounters.

 

[Emerikol]

I don't either. That is why they write adventures, and often, older gamers encourage inexperienced DMs who are having difficulties, to run a "module" or adventure path. Those do wonders as far as honing skills and learning how to build encounters.

I agree. There is also the notion that with a group of new players the DM should go easy anyway until everyone gets a feel for their characters. The DM can then gradually turn the dial up as play progresses.