D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[overgeeked]

That's not what I got running 5e, but I stopped years ago. If 5e has developed a cult of RaW similar to 3e, well, that's great for 3e fans, I guess...

In my experience it has, doesn't make it so more broadly.

OK, maybe not that different. The player is, and should be, playing a game, the game offers lots of decisions to the player, that model things about the character in the imagined world - typically things that character can do, sometimes things the character 'is' or has happen to him for fate/genre/whatever reasons. The line I'm talking about is crossed when the character stops mattering, and the ability of the player is substituted.

The character will always matter. Hit points, AC, etc. Trouble is, unless you're going to make the player roll their character's mental stats every time they make a choice you think is beyond the character's capabilities, you're already letting the player run their character as if it's the player in SCA garb. It might sound good on paper, but it's too much hassle to bother with. To me, player decisions and descriptions trump rolls all the time. If the player describes their character looking in the right spot for the McGuffin, they find it...no roll required. But the player cannot simply roll and declare the result and ask what they find. To me, that's skipping over the game (re: interacting with the environment) and just throwing dice.

OMG. "Tech" is what kids these days call, well,... [tries and deletes several phrasings because I don't want to be mean]... interpreting a rule to create wild consequences.... supposedly it's short for "technique" not "technicality" if you've heard of 3.5 PunPun? There's a similar trick in 5e, but it's foundation is an interpretation of Nystul's Magic Aura ... I am not making this up....anyway the short hand is "Nystuls tech"

Thing is, that degree of CharOP seems pretty fringe/marginal in the 5e community. Like mainstream 5e apologists will talk it down.

Ah. So lawful stupid rules lawyering. Got it. Yeah, I straight up kick people from my games that try that. CoffeeLock...punt. PunPun...punt.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The character will always matter. Hit points, AC, etc. Trouble is, unless you're going to make the player roll their character's mental stats every time they make a choice you think is beyond the character's capabilities...

Rather the opposite, really - it's not that hard for a player to RP 'down,' to discount player knowledge, play dumb, whatever (tho it can be overdone or used as an excuse).
When the player is not as smart/observant/persuasive/knowledgeable/whatever as the character is meant to be, but the game defaults to using those qualities of the player to resolve a situation the character is in, that's a failure. It contrasts sharply with using physical or supernatural abilities, which the game usually defaults to modeling more robustly.
(I mean, one reason CHA has often been a notorious dump stat, was that players could 'just RP it' to get through most social/interaction challenges.)

But the player cannot simply roll and declare the result and ask what they find. To me, that's skipping over the game

That's an understandable frustration, and not unfamiliar.
D&D is pretty basic, still, at a modeling a lot of things. The game may not offer much beyond a flat pass/fail die roll for many resolutions, that's the game's failing, not the player's.

 

[nevin]

Yeah, I've never had that because I if a DM every throws spite monsters at me, I walk and they don't get to DM for the group anymore.

it's not spite if your stupid enough to park in an indestructable shelter while still in a dangerous area. Those are called Consequences. You know like sleeping in a tent in bear country sometimes they eat you.......

 

[nevin]

Every time I hear something like this, I want to push back that back in the day, everyone played very differently, different DMs, different emphasis, different styles, different variants, and different beliefs about what the 'by the book' rules actually were (often very different). Nevermind that, on top of that, nostalgia makes memory all the less dependable.

But, I realize that is wrong-headed of me. OSR is not how D&D was played once upon a time. It's a modern play style, like anything else popular today, just one that looks backwards for inspiration.

That said, 5e is the latest DM Empowerment edition - and also looks primarily backwards for inspiration, just not at all the same things - and you can make it OSR compliant, just like you can force balance upon it. You don't even have to change the mechanics that much, overtly (like, you don't need extensive written variants), just ignore or radically re-interpret them when they don't work for you. (we certainly did that back in the day! It's what EGG was talking about when he said "the secret is, you don''t really need the rules" [paraphrase, I don't remember the exact quotation]) Not every ruling needs to be a precedent to be written down and adhered to in perpetuity, each situation may be different.


Which is why every other edition of D&D suffers from the 5MWD - or the DM force needed to negate it.... or... well, quite enjoys the 5MWD and the "weird wizard show" EGG warned us about. It's subjective/stylistic at that point.

Of course, aside from being dismissive and maybe even "gatekeeping," the admonition to 'go play another game' is at best unhelpful, when D&D is the only game anyone outside the hobby has ever heard of, so has all the vibrant, new players, and there may be no game that does precisely what you want, and even if there is, it may be so obscure there's no one to play it with, and, even if it's a past edition of D&D, it might not be legally supportable due to a highly restrictive GSL (OK, that last is just 4e, but you brought it up).

well you are being just as dismissive of the guys that like the "Wierd Wizard show" someone has to be unhappy if the game has to be for everyone. No such thing as a one size fits all anything......those that like it the way it is have to be screwed to give you what you want. No small surprise they might be dismissive of that...

 

[Vaalingrade]

it's not spite if your stupid enough to park in an indestructable shelter while still in a dangerous area. Those are called Consequences. You know like sleeping in a tent in bear country sometimes they eat you.......

Hundreds of bears don't materialize to punish someone for sleeping in bear country. That's not consequences, that's operant conditioning of an unwilling subject.

 

[NotAYakk]

Gritty Rest rules forces you to interrupt the adventure when you run out of ressources. While with the normal rest rules, you just have to wait one day to get your ressources back when you are near 0, with the Gritty Rest, you have to leave the dangerous environment, go back to a safe place, huddle up for 7 days and only than can you continue adventuring.

Gritty Rests mean that the players lose the "chapter" if they run out of resources. Some adventures are single chapter (single adventuring day) and a week break ends them. Others are longer, with a week break baked in.

When you build such a one-chapter adventure, your "budget" is an adventuring day for the party. That is how much XP of monsters you have. It is right in the DMG in a neat table! If you go over it, it means the adventure is harder (if parts can be skipped, you'll want to go over budget to reflect that). If your monsters are all clumped together, that also makes it harder.

PCs who choose to "fight everything" they possibly can could easily run out of fuel, or those who burn resources pointlessly (go nova when it isn't needed).

It is a failure state on the adventure that isn't "PCs are dead". And the players could decide "risking death is worth it, we move forward despite having no resources left!"

Note that short-rest classes are really key here. In many cases, a night's rest won't lose the chapter (you should generally make adventures that don't end from a single night's rest). So going back, expending HD and recovering short rest resources is an important "we gotta recover, that sucked" thing.

However, you'll eventually run out of HD and the like.

If you want a harder adventure, consider waiting for the PCs to be higher level.

...

Building Combat Encounters

D&D Beyond - Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition Tools, Rules, Races, Classes, Items, Spells, Monsters, and More

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Party of 5 level 5 PCs? 5 * 3500 = 17500 XP (adjusted for encounter size) budget for the chapter. For a single-chapter adventure that is all the budget you got.

We then start spawning encounters.

Pairs of monsters get a x1.5 multiplier.
Groups of 3-6 get a x2 multiplier.
Groups of 7-10 get x2.5
Groups of 11-14 get x3
Groups of 15+ get x4

I'll put 1/3 of the XP into a final boss - about 5000ish XP. Make it 2 creatures, so 2500/1.5=1666, which is close to CR 5.

So two CR 5 monsters is the "big bad" of this adventure (5400).

Easy encounters are 1250 xp
medium are 2500 xp
hard are 3750 xp
deadly is 5500 xp

so we end with a deadly.

I want some dire wolves. They are 200 XP each; a group of 6 of them is 6*200*2 = 2400 xp, a medium encounter.

I'll have 3 beats to this encounter -- 3 scenes. The last has the big bad, the other two should have a beat to finish up (a mini boss). I'll use hard budget 3750 each - one has a single CR 8 creature (3900) the other 3 creatures (3750/2/3 is 625 per creature, so CR 3?) 3 CR 3 monsters (700 * 3 * 2 = 4200).

Final fight 2 CR 5: 5400
16 CR 1/8 Guards: 1600
Second scene climax 3 CR 3: 4200
Dire Wolves 6 CR 1: 2400
First scene climax CR 8: 3900

Here is our little adventure. 5 encounters with 3 "big" ones. Suppose it is about a necromancer doing something stupid. The CR 8 is a creature that got loose. PCs are hired to track down where it came from. Dire Wolves are a "random" encounter on the road; or maybe very impressive "guard dogs". The 3 CR 3 are maybe allies of the necromancer (medium scale undead?) which gives the players info about where the final bad guy is.

The final bad guy(s) are at another location and are guarded by 16 humanoid guards (mercenaries) - they are rich. These guards can be killed or avoided or bribed to go away or intimidated or otherwise dealt with.

The bad guy is CR 5, and has a bruiser CR 5 ally. They are up to something bad. Naughy necromancer.

If the PCs give them a week off, the bad guy finishes their necromatic ritual. Most of the settlement dies and becomes a necropolis, with everyone else fleeing.

Now, as we need to inform the PCs of bad things happening if they make a choice - a choice without information isn't a meaningful one - so what I'd do is if the PCs take a long rest, more undead start being spewed by the necromatic rituals terrozing the settlement. If the PCs ignore this and continue their rest, they have been informed that the situation is getting rapidly worse, and chose to do nothing.

If this was a multi-chapter adventure, defeating this necromancer would lead to more information. Tracking down that information would permit a long rest (maybe on a boat, or maybe just downtime as you search libraries).

The disaster from not following through on that branch could be a month out instead of a mere week.

If I keep leaning in on the "horrible rituals", I could even use the calendar -- there is correspondance with another practitioner, who is going to do the ritual on the Moon of Great Doom and Doominess and Bad, which is 37 days away. There is limited information on who this other practitioner is. This necromancer was trying to do their ritual early, so as not to be scooped.

That 37 day timer starts ticking, and PCs can investigate the other practitioner, run into dead ends, travel, take more than one long rest, etc.

I might write up 3 chapters, each taking ~10 days (well, ~2-4 days plus time for a long rest), to make a long adventure here. Each one would be tied together by a theme and use the adventuring day budget. Introducing travel as needed - boats are great for this. A low tech boat crossing half of the mediteranian takes about a week if it travels 24 hours a day; if restricted to travel during daytime and ties up at night, half that distance.

If I want a really extended adventure chapter I need to use easy encounters for the player's level. Each easy encounter is 1250 XP; an adventuring day with 14 of those is within budget. I could even have 10 easy encounters and one deadly one.

And let me tell you, after 10 encounters "easy" becomes relative.

Most monsters don't have the resources to really effectively realistically do much in a week.

Adventure problems where nothing happens if the heros have a nap for a week aren't much of an adventure.

Know what happens when the orc calls more orcs. Harder fighter ie more Nova.

That's how 5MWD breeds. Punishing it encourages it

If the orc calls enough orcs, it isn't a nova situation. It is a strategic failure.

PCs who choose to charge the horder of 1000 orcs simply die. DM doesn't have to run the combat, just says "ok, new character time".

There are problems "I charge in and attack" doesn't solve.

Only if the axioim is "Players win" is true does letting the bad guys do whatever for a week lead to no consequences that matter. Because there are no consequences.

The point is that with attrition based gaming, you can have players losing without PCs all being dead. PCs can still die if they don't accept they lost.

And the DM can telegraph this easily without having to say "you have to do X or lose". They can describe the world, and the players can work out "ok, fighting 10 orcs nearly killed us, and there is 100 orcs over there. Maybe we need to run."

 

[Minigiant]

PCs who choose to charge the horder of 1000 orcs simply die. DM doesn't have to run the combat, just says "ok, new character time

If 1000 orcs were a week away and easily called together then victory was never possible as they could have came to the dungeon area at any time.

Because if they had stayed in the dungeon, delved deeper, likely left survivers... there are still 1000 orcs nearby.

The power behind 5MWD is that the PC's resources vastly overpower the monsters'/dungeon's.I mean it's 3-7 dudes delving in a fortified area thinking they can get in and leave in one piece.

People don't 5MWD liches and dragons. They 5MD orcs and bandits and monstrous beasts. Because when WOTC gave PC caster so many slots with all these situational powerful spells, they tipped the scales so hard into the side with the casters. Even with a weak, a side with no to few casters cannot recover and retaliate in any logical way.

Of course the easy answer is to give the orcs and bandits and skeletons casters to their side.... but then the DM has to constantly DM spellcasters, an exhaustion assumption.

All because WOTC gave spellcasters too many spells slots.

 

[Vaalingrade]

PCs who choose to charge the horder of 1000 orcs simply die. DM doesn't have to run the combat, just says "ok, new character time".

Nope. New DM time.

 

[Tony Vargas]

someone has to be unhappy if the game has to be for everyone.

It may be tough to get to an inclusive place of 'for everyone,' but it needn't be at the price of anyone being genuinely unhappy with it, it's a matter of compromise. It's been said that a good compromise makes everyone unhappy, but, really, it leaves everyone happier than they would be in their worst-case scenario, but not as happy as their best-case scenario.
In the specific context of player options in a TTRPG, the compromise position is generally called 'balance.' Everyone gets to do their thing and have their fun, without ruining it for anyone else.

well you are being just as dismissive of the guys that like the "Wierd Wizard show"

The classic "weird wizard show" Gygax warned us about, definitely becomes un-fun for the non-wizards, and, he posited, would quickly get boring for everyone. He may have underestimated how enjoyable it can be to play at being abosulutely corrupted by absolute power, even while ruining the game for your fellow players.

 

[Oofta]

If 1000 orcs were a week away and easily called together then victory was never possible as they could have came to the dungeon area at any time.

Because if they had stayed in the dungeon, delved deeper, likely left survivers... there are still 1000 orcs nearby.

The power behind 5MWD is that the PC's resources vastly overpower the monsters'/dungeon's.I mean it's 3-7 dudes delving in a fortified area thinking they can get in and leave in one piece.

People don't 5MWD liches and dragons. They 5MD orcs and bandits and monstrous beasts. Because when WOTC gave PC caster so many slots with all these situational powerful spells, they tipped the scales so hard into the side with the casters. Even with a weak, a side with no to few casters cannot recover and retaliate in any logical way.

Of course the easy answer is to give the orcs and bandits and skeletons casters to their side.... but then the DM has to constantly DM spellcasters, an exhaustion assumption.

All because WOTC gave spellcasters too many spells slots.

One of the many advantages of D&D is that it's not a video game. Things can happen even when you are not triggering a scene by entering the area. This idea that the PCs can just waltz back where they left off like nothing happened after a week off is plain and simple a failure of DMing, not the rules.