D&D General The Monsters Know What They're Doing ... Are Unsure on 5e24

[Xenolith234]

5e2024 feels tired only in the way something designed by committee and focus tested to death can be. In my opinion, it isn’t a good game. I’m not going to be buying anymore of their books.

Players will always outnumber DMs, so their feedback will always weigh heavier in surveys. They’ll not usually vote against PC empowerment.

 

[Parmandur]

CR10 is barely a speedbump for an adult dragon, much less an ancient wyrm. Whether that's fitting or not depends on how you imagine a dwarven king, I guess. When I hear "King of the Dwarves", I think of a legendary figure like "The Dwarf King" of 13th Age who is a literal icon. I very much assume that dragons would flee from him, not the other way around. Obviously another person's imagination may vary on this topic, which is fine, but to me "warrior commander" feels more like a captain of the guard, not legendary monarch-champion. If the guard is a superhero, how high do the stats have to be for my vision of the Dwarf King? Does he need a STR of 30? If he does, is this game still on the rails, or are we playing Calvinball?

I mean, the stories I can think of that involve legendary Dwarf kings and dragons don't end well for the monarch.

 

[Sorinth]

Of course 20 vs. 21 wouldn't make it "perfectly fine" for me. But I admit that the 21 does annoy me, meaningless though it might be. Maybe because it's meaningless -- they can't have made this NPC superhuman for gameplay purposes, because it barely affects gameplay. So then why is this dude theoretically the strongest humanoid on the planet? Isn't that a least a smidgen weird?

Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill anyway, because I've always believed gameplay beats realism every day of the week, so maybe this barely matters. But that doesn't mean realism means literally nothing and should be completely ignored. Some people in this thread are acting like Keith has no valid point at all, that's he's just a "hater", but I think he undeniably is onto something. Maybe it's a major objection or maybe it's a minor one, but either way it's a valid enough point that it shouldn't just be ignored.

NPCs don't use PC rules, so whose to say that 20 is actually a limit in terms of the worldbuilding. Like PCs have no access to the Brute feature, does that also make them superhuman in some way?

And let's face it, a person's stats stopped really being a perfect representation a long time ago. When was the last time Halflings had a maximum strength score to represent the fact that they physically couldn't be as strong as the strongest Humans? To me it's in the same idea of wanting to play a naive Cleric with a high wisdom, that high wisdom doesn't mean you can't be very naive even though it's what it should typically mean.

 

[kigmatzomat]

You don't run into this situation in pre-WotC D&D, for instance. TSR didn't give us level 20 commoners, for instance.

Odd. My memory of TSR modules is they were full of Fighter2/thief1 barmaids (Tika in 1e Dragonlance iirc), fighter4 bartenders, and fighter7 blacksmiths. Its been a while since I looked through the (letter)-series adventures but I recall the vast majority of named NPCs had PC class levels rather than be 0-commoners.

Again, the ways he wishes the game was different suggest, to me, that he'd be happier with a lower powered OSR game.

As a 3e fan I can say 5e is a lower powered game than the pre-Hasbro Wotc. And in many ways 5e is lower powered than 1e. Hp inflation over 4ish editions eroded all PCs, full stop. A single 1e dagger or a magic missile used to be highly likely to kill a kobold, but its patently impossible now. Forget dropping a troll with a basic fireball.
Casters got (needfully) nerfed, trading automatic spell scaling, volume of spells (was it four or five 9th level spells at MU20?) and volume of active spells (aka no concentration limits) in return for for on-demand flexibility and the ability to cast spells while being hit.

But scaling is different from internal risk. 1e didn't even believe a risk formula existed so GMs just had to wing it. 3e introduced the concept of the CR but it was unbounded so it would absolutely kill a PC who was the wrong kind of asymmetrical with an NPC.

This complaint seems to be that PCs are given more power than their "by the RAW" opponents. Maybe its design for "pure newbs" vs "players with a decade of experience", but the CRs feel....weak. I thought that in 2014. The GM had to double and triple threats. That's a lot of "thumb on the scale". 2024 seems to push it even more towards PCs.

Which, at a certain point is boring. The next-gen Star Trek movie with Kirk had the bit about him always being afraid jumping the creek on his horse, but he didn't get that in the Rift....so it was boring. Then he left the Rift of "whatever you want". Seems like some people are finding 5e24 lacks that sense of fear...and are leaving.

 

[Charlaquin]

Of course 20 vs. 21 wouldn't make it "perfectly fine" for me. But I admit that the 21 does annoy me, meaningless though it might be. Maybe because it's meaningless -- they can't have made this NPC superhuman for gameplay purposes, because it barely affects gameplay. So then why is this dude theoretically the strongest humanoid on the planet? Isn't that a least a smidgen weird?

Point of order: 21 strength does not make him the strongest human alive in 2024, because Epic Boon feats increase your maximum in the appropriate score to 30. So, 21 is now well within human bounds. It does, however, imply that this NPC is among the ranks of folks like 20th level PCs. Which, I mean, if he’s a challenge for a whole 10th level party by himself does check out IMO.

You might be right. That kind of thing never sat well with me in 4e, and I really liked 4e. I was always a little uncomfortable that some 4e orcs were suitable foes for a 1st level party while other orcs -- again, not legendary figures, just typical nameless grunts and guards -- could easily slaughter that entire party by themselves. However, at least there were obvious benefits to that lack of realism and scale. For example, combats against a solo monster worked much, much better in 4e than in any flavor of 5e, and balancing in general was solid and easy. That being so, I accepted the peculiarity with levels and stats as the price we pay and let it slide. I can still let that kind of thing slide in 5.24 if I must, but I'm not clear what benefit we're getting from the superhuman Warrior Commander that justifies throwing the 3-18 stat scale out the window.

I get that. This is, however, not a 2024 specific problem in my opinion. This is a problem with D&D’s power scaling. If you want high-level play to be a thing, and you want humanoids to be a potential threat in high-level play, you need NPCs like this. 2014 didn’t have NPCs like this, but there were constant complaints that there weren’t enough monsters to use at high levels. This is what enabling high level play looks like.

I’ll admit, I don’t really like it aesthetically either. But, I don’t like high level D&D play. I think level 11 or so is a good place for the climax of a campaign. And you don’t need generic warrior captains for a climactic final fight. You need dragons and liches and stuff. If you want to go all the way to 20th level though, you need canon fodder enemies that are CR 10+. So, here we are; people asked for more high-level monsters, and WotC gave them to us. Maybe this is a Be Careful What You Wish For moment for some 5e fans.

 

[Clint_L]

Point of order: 21 strength does not make him the strongest human alive in 2024, because Epic Boon feats increase your maximum in the appropriate score to 30. So, 21 is now well within human bounds. It does, however, imply that this NPC is among the ranks of folks like 20th level PCs.

Not to mention barbarians and monks. And that’s before getting into magical upgrades.