Aaron L
Hero
Huh, that's weird; our group has always had the feeling that it is far too difficult for a PC to actually die in 5th Edition. Compared to our old 1E campaigns, our 5E PCs feel practically immortal.
D&D 5E What Single Thing Would You Eliminate
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
TwoSix
Everyone's literal second-favorite poster
Get rid of cleric too and I’m onboard.
Musing Mage
Pondering D&D stuff
Yeah, but see that's the game. In absolutely ANY case where dice are rolled a single stupid roll can change the course of events. Whether it be a player's hit points, attributes or an attack roll, or damage roll, failed or successful skill check. Once you start removing those elements (especially for player 'comfort'), you might as well just be sitting around the table shooting the breeze, because you're not playing a game anymore.
All or nothing, baby!
Mind of tempest
(he/him)advocate for 5e psionics
can I get rid of all classes and not replace them with anything?
Blue
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
There are two parts to the encounter quota. First is attrition, and yes by making encounters more deadly you can deal with it.
The second is inter-class balance between the at-will classes like rogue (or EB-only Warlock) and the long rest recovery classes (like casters) and to some extents hybrids (like paladin or barbarian). I don't think anyone will say that a single average martial round will do as much as a single average round of high level spell casting. High level limited resources > at-will ability. True and good. If there is a single round of combat in a day, we can see how the casters will be able to accomplish more than the at-will characters. By the flip side of the same coin, if long rest only happened once per level the asters would be predominantly cantrips for the level, and at-will class action > cantrips.
So the real balance point is somewhere between - where the efficiency of high level slots and the lows of cantrips and balance out to the same average per action as what the at-will classes dish out. Having fewer, tougher combats that wipe the casters out of high level slots isn't enough - they still have a higher efficiency per action. You need to have them take a good number of cantrips or other actions that as less than at-will primary classes to get their effectiveness per action to reduce and equalize.
And it's even more complex than that because a lot of long-rest-recovery resources will last for longer than an average combat, so they are actually more effective when you run fewer combats. A buff that costs a single action and single slot that lasts for 3 rounds is and the same cost but lasting for 8 because it's a longer combat isn't reducing the effectiveness per action, it's increasing it. An easy way to think is a low level barbarian - what's more powerful, a barbarian that is raging every combat or one that's raging half the combats.
And this doesn't even consider short rest primary classes like monks, because short rests can be handled in different ways by DMs as well.
To sum up: outside of deadliness, the encounter quota helps balance out the difference recovery model classes with each other.
Addendum: This isn't me pushing the encounter quota system. I dislike that it's needed and I can't just do whatever pacing the narrative delivers, and where it's calibrated is the single biggest weakness in 5e for me because it's at a place that no one goes regularly except possibly during a dungeon crawl. Definitely it isn't exceeded as frequently as it's short. I wish the design was quite different and it wasn't part of the game at all.
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Blue
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
Agreed. 5e puts a huge buffer between characters dropping and actual character death, and with revivify makes death close to the same as just getting knocked out until the end of the encounter.
dave2008
Legend
I don't find that you do. Heck, I can challenge my players without any combat at all!
Yes, I said we do that as well, as I noted in my initial reply. My real point is that different player groups and play styles have quite an impact on how easily or possible it is to make interesting and engaging encounters, regardless of the number of them in a "day." At least that is my experience. I personally don't feel like 5e has a requirement of a number of encounters per day. I can challenge my players with anything from 0-8+ encounters in an adventuring day.
However, I do accept that is not possible for everyone and your experience is different than mine. We all game differently.
I have come to realize over the last few years on visiting these boards that 5e fits my main group's style of play really well. Other than our house rules we use for every edition (and those aren't need, they just feel right to us), we don't really need to change anything to have a great time.
fearsomepirate
Hero
"Everything gets better after a nap and perhaps slap in the face by the Paladin."
It's not too hard to kill 5e characters if you put your back into it. Harder than 1e, sure, but in my Temple of Elemental Evil campaign, I killed about 15. What's really hard is imposing any kind of debilitating condition. Disease and injury should be, I don't know...things?
It's not too hard to kill 5e characters if you put your back into it. Harder than 1e, sure, but in my Temple of Elemental Evil campaign, I killed about 15. What's really hard is imposing any kind of debilitating condition. Disease and injury should be, I don't know...things?
So make any feature, spell or the like worth an action.
