D&D (2024) Wrapping up first 2-20 2024 campaign this week, some of my thoughts

[Zardnaar]

Oh God, that's exactly this player I mentioned (mischievous Rogue).

Annoying rogue, Wizard who likes party with fireball and Anti social loan wolf are examples I use in session 0. Don't be a jerk or roleplay a jerk.

 

[ECMO3]

I did that back in a AD&D 2nd campaign. My character was so dead, but I took out a legendary adversary of the elves with me.

Entirely epic, hats off to you.

Following are some details. A bit long, but it is a cool story for anyone with the time. It does feel truly epic.

So when I did this there was a bit of a roleplay conflict going on between me and other party members, something that rarely happens. The rest of the party were supporting a deposed queen and she was trying to retake her throne from the big bad. She was pretty crappy herself and I did not support her and did not think she should have the throne. I was behind a peasant guy, but I was the only one in the group because we had cut a deal with her.

We raided the treasury and grabbed the crown jewels earlier in the campaign as well as the funds to reestablish the monarchy. The deposed queen needed that stuff to ceremonially claim she was the queen and fund the rebuild. We stole it from the equivalent of the modern day tower of London. To smuggle that stuff out and keep it safe we hid the loot in a Lemunds Secret Chest that I cast.

Fast forward and the battle with the big bad - it is not going our way, we are getting our butt kicked, the deposed queen is fighting with us. So I misty step right next to the big bad, break the staff, kill myself and severely damage the big bad. It did not kill him but it "won the fight" and made him low enough the rest of the party was able to finish him off.

As the campaign comes to the end, in the aftermath the Queen asks the other party members for the crown jewels and then everyone (myself included) realizes that the chest with them is lost since I was the one who cast it. It was a bit of poetic justice to end a campaign and she did not get her monarchy back.

 

[FrogReaver]

I went through the 5.5 PHB and did the following:

• I built out a base level 1 fighter and wizard
• For each, I plotted their at-will damage and stats by level
• I layered on their class features, using the battle master for the fighter
• I used the list of free spells for the wizard, and determined the damage that the best offensive options dealt for each level
• I then built two scenarios, you're seeing the boss scenario, where characters use their best options over the course of three rounds
• That damage is in the right most column. It represents how much damage a party of four kicks out over three rounds assuming 60% accuracy
• CR is the target CR for a hard fight against 4 PCs of the listed level
• CR HP is HP based on Blog of Holding's analysis of the 5.5 MM
• Actual HP is my initial analysis using my 5e tools (which are a rough estimate)

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Looks like solos are even more pathetic in 2024. If you look at fighting 3-4 monsters for a hard xp budget the total hp number looks a lot better in comparison.

 

[Mort]

Looks like solos are even more pathetic in 2024. If you look at fighting 3-4 monsters for a hard xp budget the total hp number looks a lot better in comparison.

One big change for monsters, especially high CR monsters, their + to initiative is MUCH higher - with 2xproficiency +Dex being a thing. With the nerfing of surprise, this SHOULD mean more monsters get to at least go down swinging.

@ECMO3 were you able to track at all how often your group went first? Will be interesting to see if it was a much higher % than is likely going forward.

 

[ECMO3]

One big change for monsters, especially high CR monsters, their + to initiative is MUCH higher - with 2xproficiency +Dex being a thing. With the nerfing of surprise, this SHOULD mean more monsters get to at least go down swinging.

@ECMO3 were you able to track at all how often your group went first? Will be interesting to see if it was a much higher % than is likely going forward.

We went first most of the time although I don't know that we tracked it. One PC (Warlock/Bard) had alert.

We did use a few 2024 monsters at the end of the campaign, but we still rolled initiative for them. If we used the new fixed initiative option in the 2024 monster manual I am sure we would have went first less often than we did.