# 5e combat system too simple / boring?



## Dom de Dom (Dec 15, 2015)

Some of the guys in my regular 5e group are becoming a bit bored with the simplicity of 5th edition combat. Not having played through 4th (oldschool returning 2e guy) I don't really have much of a point of reference.Do any other people in here share this problem, and have you any examples of house rules or other methods you use to spice up combats which might otherwise me a bit ploddy?


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## ProphetSword (Dec 15, 2015)

What level are they?

After how many moving parts both 4th Edition and Pathfinder had, 5th is a breath of fresh air.  A person from 2nd Edition should be right at home.


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## Celtavian (Dec 15, 2015)

It is more boring in terms of tactical play than _Pathfinder_/3E. You have fewer options that are usually very simple and intuitive. I know a few of my players miss the character customization from _Pathfinder_/3E. 5E focuses on simple, fast combat that leaves more time for interesting role-playing and story focus. So far the ease of running it is the best part. I do sometimes find the combat boring and the customization options lacking, but not enough to switch back to a different system that isn't as easy to run.


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## Tony Vargas (Dec 15, 2015)

Dom de Dom said:


> Some of the guys in my regular 5e group are becoming a bit bored with the simplicity of 5th edition combat. Not having played through 4th (oldschool returning 2e guy) I don't really have much of a point of reference.Do any other people in here share this problem,



It's not a problem, but a difference in focus.  A complaint about 4e combats was that they took too long, in part, because of addressing complaints about 3.5 (rocket tag! 5mwd! LFQW! CoDzilla!).  5e responded in turn by removing some in-combat options from most classes, most in-combat options from some classes, increasing chances to hit/save DCs, boosting damage, reducing hps, consolidating bonuses and advocating for TotM (which makes it harder to run complex combats, so just run simpler ones).  Now combats are faster.  Are they boring?  No, because they're over so fast - boredom, takes time to set in.  If you use the time saved to run more combats, sure, in aggregate they'll maybe get boring, but if you use it for exploration & interaction, that's less likely to happen.



> and have you any examples of house rules or other methods you use to spice up combats which might otherwise me a bit ploddy?



Simply putting your combats back on the grid, using modules, or re-cycling earlier edition rules (like C&T, since you're most familiar with 2e) to add in-combat options won't make a huge difference.  Standard-issue combats will still be over relatively quickly because of high%, high damage offense vs finite hps, and a larger, more challenging 'tactical' or 'set piece' combat will likely become problematic due to the way being outnumbered plays out under bounded accuracy.  

5e is just different from 3e & 4e (and similar to 2e, pre-C&T) that way.  The system focus isn't 'interesting' tactical combat, so, instead, make the focus an interesting story, and the combats only little packages of action that break it up and keep it lively.  You can add more interest in exploration challenges - traps, puzzles, and the like - and interaction with NPCs.  

Now, your players could also choose more interesting characters.  A Champion Fighter will get boring faster than a Warlock, who'll pall before a Druid.  And, classes that have to work a little at generating DPR (or more cleverly overcoming foes), are also going to be more interesting, and make for more interesting combats, than those that just spew DPR or blow up whole batches of enemies wholesale.  The 5e gaming experience is mostly on the DM, but player choices do matter.  Flexible characters with more choices to make in play will be less boring than one-trick-ponies, for instance.


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## NotActuallyTim (Dec 15, 2015)

The basic rules for combat are pretty darned simple, and it's true that some people with experience in playing more complex combat systems may get bored quickly.

There's a lot of ways to solve this. You could refocus on things other than combat to get people engaged, by introducing more social opportunities. You can wildcard combat by introducing alternate win conditions (Get out of the room before the floor crumbles away!). You could spend a lot of time inventing new combat rules (I'm actually doing this, but I'm nowhere near finished).

However, if they're super bored because they don't have enough actions and numbers to memorize, I'd suggest you just start improvising actions with your monsters. Then point out that if the players want to start tossing sand into people's eyes all they have to do say "My character throws sand into the Orc's face!"


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## Dom de Dom (Dec 15, 2015)

Yeah I like it personally, although the game I am running they are 4th so still slightly limited, we also have a couple of games each around 11th.

Interesting that you think the simplicity is a winner over the previous complex systems.

Some options for houserules that my friends have suggested include - 



Increase effectiveness of dual wielding by granting an extra off hand attack with dual weapon feat.

Drop concentration just to see what happens. Or how about you can concentrate on a number of spells at a time depending on your level

Possible increase of spellslots for all casters.

Give more spells on level up to wizards and anyone with a spellbook, measured by Int score

Armour that's good against certain weapons, bad against others, same for weapons.

Weapon speeds.

House rule on flanking +1 to hit
Charge attack available to all, Action, move half move do one attack  but grant advantage or +2 to hit until next turn.

Grant grapple bonuses based on size.

Skill specialisations, one per Int bonus, +1 or 2 to a sub skill eg. Athletics (shove), Arcana (necromancy), Stealth (Moving silently). For each specialisation you have a negative modifier on a different skill.

Hamstring - attack with weapon, hit and slowed, no damage. 
Also something called 5 foot steps…  which I don’t understand!


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## Warmaster Horus (Dec 15, 2015)

I find there are plenty of options if you have the right players and DM.  It's easy to distill combats down to simple DPR but there are lots of ways to make conflict more challenging.


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## iserith (Dec 15, 2015)

I find that it's never_ the system_ that's boring - it's the design of the challenges. That's a DM thing rather than a game thing.

As long as the system is elegant enough to resolve uncertainty and otherwise gets the hell out of the way, it is fine in my view.


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## R P Davis (Dec 15, 2015)

5e isn't going to give a player who's used to the crunch of other editions/games what she wants. That's one of the joys of 5e - it's SIMPLE. That doesn't mean it has to be boring, though. You can evoke the crunch through words. Roleplay it. The point is to get away from numbers and math and into describing what happens by appealing to the senses. 

*Boring Way:
*
Player: I attack the orc. 2 attacks, plus Smite. [rolls] 10 and 23. 

DM: 10 misses, 23 hits.

Player: 8, plus 12 from the smite.

DM: It's dead.

*Not Boring Way:
*
Player: I bring my shield on guard, swinging my sword and singing a hymn to the glory of Torm, praying he sees fit to grant me the strength to Smite the foul orc. [rolls die] First attack, ah, crap, that's only a 10. Second attack is 23. I'll put the Smite on that one.

DM: Your first blow strikes the orc's shield. He appears shaken, his defenses slow and clumsy. Your second stroke strikes true, skimming around the edge of his shield to bite into his body. And behold, Torm has heard your prayer and your hymn, finding them pleasing. You feel the power of holy vengeance well up within you. Roll damage.

Player: Um, 8, plus 12 from the Smite.

DM: [having determined that was enough to kill the orc] Your sword bites into the orc's chest, driving deep. Your god's power crackles leaps from your arm, along the blade, and into its body, exploding from the hapless fool's eye sockets as its evil is consumed from within. Black blood streams from its mouth as it collapses, smoking and hissing, at your feet.

See what I mean?

You can do it for spells, too:

*Boring way:
*
Player: I cast _Fire Bolt_. [rolls] 19.

DM: Hit. Roll damage.

Player: 6.

DM: Okay. Not quite dead. Your turn, Brian.

*Not Boring Way:
*
Player: A spark leaps from my fingertip and streaks toward the goblin as I utter the arcane incantation _Fire Bolt_. [rolls] 19 to hit.

DM: Your spark explodes into a wreath of fire to envelop the goblin. Roll damage.

Player: 6.

DM: The goblin shrieks in anger and pain. The stench of burned goblin hair and brimstone assaults the Fighter's nostrils as the mystical flames disperse. This is just the opening he needs to move in and attack.

Anyway, you get the drift. It's all flavor text, but it's INTERESTING flavor text. It can be helpful to use the critical tables from Rolemaster to get an idea, especially for describing killing blows. Another method is to write some descriptive phrases on index cards and keep them handy.


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## Blackwarder (Dec 15, 2015)

As a DM, the more streamlined combat rules help me run more elaborate encounters quickly and in an exciting way, be it aerial combat, ambushes or combats with tons of participants.

Maybe the complexity level of each individual isn't that high, but the synergy levels are huge.

Warder


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## Dom de Dom (Dec 15, 2015)

I'm liking that you are recommending in part to change the emphasis away from combat.. perhaps this is something I should look at! I've only just returned to DMing after nearly 20 years so its kind of in at the deep end for me at the moment!


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## Dom de Dom (Dec 15, 2015)

STX Bob - about the flavour text that's fine, but if you're doing the same thing every round it quickly runs out of steam...


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## alfarobl (Dec 15, 2015)

It is boring if you keep it tactical only with grid. I started playing similar to 3.5 but moved now to gridless more narrative combats it works ten times better, faster and more fun. Try to avoid square grid rules and play it making it fun without focus on rules but rulings during combat.


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## UngeheuerLich (Dec 15, 2015)

there are very interesting combats in 5e. Today a simple encounter became very intense because of the thread that the PCs loot might fall into the river and the boos they saved are destroyed. A sleet storm freezing the water made everything really really complex wven though the monsters only hit twice or so.


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## MechaPilot (Dec 15, 2015)

I find that the simplicity of 5e's combat system can lead to a situation where people just do the same thing all the time.  To alleviate that, and because it makes the game more fun for me, I try to encourage in-combat improvisation as much as possible.

This encouragement takes two forms:
1) Do not punish the player for trying to do something out of the ordinary.
2) Monsters improvise too.

The theory behind #1 is that a player is less likely to try to do something interesting if it's likely to blow up in her face or be totally ineffective.  Here's an example to clarify what I mean.  Say that a player says her character wants to try to knock an enemy to the ground with her attack.  Knocking someone prone is significant, so I can't just tack that on to a normal attack with no changes.  What I usually do in situations like that is allow the additional effect if the attack beats the target's AC by 5 or more.  However, so as not to punish the player for trying something fun, I allow the attack to do damage (but not knock the target prone) if the attack roll beats the target's AC by less than 5.

#2 is both a threat and a display.  It's a display because it gives players an idea of what I allow (I usually explain the rule I'm using when a monster improvises, so the players know my standard for such things).  It's a threat because the monsters will improvise, and if you're not going to do likewise you had best at least be ready for it when it happens.


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## werecorpse (Dec 15, 2015)

Dom de Dom said:


> STX Bob - about the flavour text that's fine, but if you're doing the same thing every round it quickly runs out of steam...




Correct, but IMO flavour text is a way to focus on story not mechanics. Watch a combat run on Critical Role on Geek & Sundry for fun examples.

IMO 3&4e moved towards the idea of really making the combats more fun by focussing on the tactical element of combats above other features of the game (4 more than 3). They both became complex and combats bogged down for hours. 5e does this less than both and is trying to shift focus more to exploration, roleplaying, interaction etc. so they made combats simpler.

One issue in 5e with unlimited decent cantrips is that spellcasters (especially at low level with hardly any spells) can feel a bit boring. This can be the same with other classes but I suspect this lessens at higher levels. I have found players can handle some supposedly tough enemies at quite low levels so my suggestions are:
1. really mix it up. Put in a horde of kobolds (my players fear pack attack), then an invisible stalker
2. give players in combat ability options  - scroll of slow, arrow of shatter, potion of fire breath 
3. Make combats short & with a purpose beyond combat 
4. Focus on the other "limbs" of 5e exploration & roleplaying

Oh and throw in flavour text especially on the big moments.

(Btw I use a system with one use items like potions and scroll to say that each time you use it roll a d4 on a 2-4 the magic remains or there is still some liquid left etc. This encourages freer use of the items and keeps those player combat options available longer)


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## Jester David (Dec 16, 2015)

It's a comparison problem. 
5e battles are boring compared to 4e, in which battles could be a lot of fun independent of anything else. You could just play the game as a delve where you moved from battle to battle and have a blast, DM optional. 
5e battles are exciting compared to, oh, say FATE, or dozens of other RPGs where there's far less character advancement or combat powers and everything is more story focused.


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## BoldItalic (Dec 16, 2015)

The game is more fun if you treat it as collaborative story telling and adapt the combat mechanics to the narrative, rather than hoping to infer the narrative from the mechanics.

Here's a paragraph of narrative. It's a slice from an encounter between a party of PCs and two giant hawks, and it comes from the Tap Tap Tap thread.



> In the blink of an eye, a hawk had snatched Clotbert tightly in its talons and begun to soar aloft. It all happened so fast that, by the time Rylnethaz could shout a warning, it was already too late. But the hawk was quickly aware that not all was as it should be; it was accustomed to prey that was soft and furry, not hard and covered in chainmail. It supposed that its toes must be doing something wrong and glanced down to see what was amiss. That glance was its undoing, for it was momentarily blinded by a flash of holy light from Clotbert's hand. It instinctively loosed its grip and Clotbert fell to earth, his arms windmilling frantically. He fell in a heap with a sickening thud and was still. It would be a long time before he stood on his feet again.




Now translate that into 5e combat mechanics.


The hawk moves flying and makes a grapple attack on Clotbert. *DM rolls dice* It succeeds. It then moves the remainder of its fly speed upwards.
On his turn, Clotbert casts a spell *rolls dice* and saves versus the grapple *rolls dice*. He takes falling damage and *rolls dice* is unconscious.
All legal 5e stuff, but ... a lot less dramatic. That's because although you can infer the underlying mechanics from the narrative by stripping away all the technicolor stuff, you can't go the other way and infer the narrative from the mechanics because the interesting bits aren't there inside it. There is more to the story than just the mechanics. If all you do is play through the mechanics, of course it will be dull.


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## Reinhart (Dec 16, 2015)

Alright. Let's just be honest here: If you use 5e's combat system as written, it often is a simple rinse and repeat set of actions against monsters that are just bags of hitpoints. If you are specifically relying on the game mechanics to offer your players interesting tactical choices, look elsewhere. But then again, most RPG combat systems aren't the brilliant strategy games they pretend to be, and they're each built with different goals in mind.

That said, you defaulted to D&D for a reason. If you don't expect the system to create most of the interesting tactical choices for you, then you'll probably do alright with D&D 5e. It's not hard to fill in the gap, you just need to make sure that you're not just repeating the same scenarios but with different monster names. The GM skill I suggest that you practice is managing the stakes of each encounter. The game is more interesting if the players have more ways to fail than dying and more ways to measure success than how many corpses are on the ground. Once the consequences of combat become more varied than just death or XP, you'll have players a lot more interested in what is happening. Plus, managing stakes is a skill that carries over into running pretty much all RPG's.


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## devincutler (Dec 16, 2015)

If you look through the various variants and options in the DMG you can find a bunch of ways to add tactics to combat. The flanking rule, the various injury rules, the weapon speed rule, and variant initiative rules. Heap enough of those onto the base system and you will probably have a more complex system.

Additionally, character choice is an issue. Compare a Champion Fighter versus a Battle Master Fighter. One gets a bunch of maneuvers to fiddle with. The other guy just rolls for critical hits.

I personally think there are enough opportunities for bonus actions and reactions and use of per rest powers on almost every class to make the choices interesting, while still keeping combat times down enough to focus on the story telling and exploration aspects of the game.


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## Uchawi (Dec 16, 2015)

I find 5e is boring with certain aspects of the game. For me it is the gap between certain classes in regards to the choices they have. The only system that tried to address that across the board was 4E but it went to far, and 5E took the traditional choice that casters are more flexible. Add simple combat and martial classes like the fighter are lef behind. Casters have the same effect in regards to 2e or 3E in regards to complexity but they are better with more meaningful choices that start at 1st level versus 3rd level.


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## empireofchaos (Dec 16, 2015)

I've heard it said (in certain quarters) that when combat gets boring in this system is when the characters get to 5th level. Because of the multiple attacks per round, combat becomes a slog, kind of like the two previous editions. 

My group is on the cusp of 4th, so combat tends to be fairly short, and I haven't seen much of a problem - yet. I wonder what people's experience is with combat at higher levels relative to low.


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## pming (Dec 16, 2015)

Hiya!



Dom de Dom said:


> Some of the guys in my regular 5e group are becoming a bit bored with the simplicity of 5th edition combat. Not having played through 4th (oldschool returning 2e guy) I don't really have much of a point of reference.Do any other people in here share this problem, and have you any examples of house rules or other methods you use to spice up combats which might otherwise me a bit ploddy?




If by "bored with the simplicity" you mean that there are limited game-mechanics to min/max, crunch and exploit by combining them with a myriad of spells, feats, abilities, etc...then, yeah, I guess 5e is "boring".

If by "bored with the simplicity" you mean because your players look at the combat section of the PHB and say _All I can do is attack, basically, unless I want to do something useless that doesn't grant me any specific numerical advantage I can exploit for something else...attack, damage, attack, damage, attack, damage, etc_... then all I can say is that _the boredom isn't coming from the rules..._

Using the rules from 5e gives you _*ALL*_ the choices you've ever had in any other version of D&D...if you DM is doing his job and your players have any sort of imagination and capability to extrapolate. Want to push someone back so that your allies can get some kind of bonus to hit? Tell your DM your characters intention and let him figure out how to handle it. Want to have your archer hit two opponents in line with each other, using a single arrow? Tell your DM you characters intention and let him figure out how to handle it. Want to have your Wizard use _Freezing Ray_ and a waterskin to make some kind of cooling-device to keep some fresh fish cold for the day's travel so you can eat it later that night? Tell your DM your characters intention and let him figure out how to handle it.

In short, and I've said this many-a-time before... _stop thinking in 3.x/4e/PF terms_. If your players are really having difficulty, hand them the 3.5e PHB and tell them they can 'use anything in that book' and that you will figure out how to implement it in the game as needed. If they get all huffy about it "not working the way it _should_ in 5e" (e.g., your ruling on how to implement it isn't letting them create a never-ending "I Win!" button, like they were expecting), well, again... the 5e rules are _not_ the problem.

^_^

Paul L. Ming


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## ccs (Dec 16, 2015)

STXBob said:


> 5e isn't going to give a player who's used to the crunch of other editions/games what she wants.




Just because I'm used to it doesn't mean I LIKE it.  Or want it.

Seriously, I love the PF game im playing in.  I'm playing interesting character(s), we're doing interesting things, & I'm playing with good friends.
But we've got soon much going on mechanics wise on any given turn.....


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## dmnqwk (Dec 16, 2015)

I fully agree that combat can become boring if you have limited options.

I am a 4th level Bard with Vicious Mockery as my only spell with damage (Disguise Self, Detect Magic, Longstrider, Cure Wounds at 1st, Invisibility, Calm Emotions and Silence at 2nd) and, unfortunately, I am very unsuccessful with attack rolls (In my first session I used 3 attacks, 1 rapier and 2 crossbow attacks, and missed all 3. So, in essence, I'm kind of useless in combat... except I have Inspiration and Cutting Words.

Combat is only as interesting as you choose to make it - players who are only excited by their own turn will always suffer. Having reaction abilities to use with other people, being able to take an interest in what they do is definitely an important part of making 5th edition combat more interesting (aside from narrating it properly). My last session I spend 1 combat making a single attack, then invisibility to run away and make medicine checks to stabilise 3 wounded victims. Did it feel less exciting? Not really, because I enjoyed the Ranger chasing down a fleeing gnoll in the thick scrub.  I also get to enjoy when my Bardic Inspiration makes a monumental difference (I gave it to the Fighter and Ranger, who both rolled a 6 on it to turn misses into 20 point strikes) and I love it when Vicious Mockery turns high damage hits into nothing.

So to get the most out of 5th edition combat, you either need your reaction to matter... or you need to learn to appreciate what other people do in combat to keep yourself interested in the outcome.


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## Huntsman57 (Dec 16, 2015)

I find 5E combat rather fun given its faster pacing over prior systems, focus on flavorful abilities over the stat ladder, and bonus actions and reactions that make a combat round feel a bit more organic.

The boring parts of 5E to me are more in regards to the significantly reduced risk compared to 2E or 3E. It's rare in 5E that I fear for my character's life unless the group has been put up against a threat so great that it could result in a TPK. The amount of damage a character would have to take to be killed outright is ludicrously improbable in most cases, particularly at higher levels, and the death rolls mechanic is incredibly carebear compared to the -10 mechanic. With the -10 mechanic you can't recover without teamwork, and if you dropped at -9 your team has a very short window to patch you up. With death rolls the average time it takes for you to die is tough to calculate because the fact is that you will more likely than not simply stabilize on your own even if the rest of the group ignored you entirely...because that's what folks suffering from massive hemorrhaging do. Of course, no matter that your arm is hanging off..just give it a good night's sleep and in 8 hours of long resting, you'll be right as rain!

Many encounters can feel like you're just going through the motions because there's little to no actual risk. As much as I overall like 5E's combat system, I consider this to be it's most grievous flaw, and one that has led me to more than one sad/bored little internalized yawn at the beginning of a fight, or when venturing into the unknown. These are situations in which I would have felt tension in 2E or 3.5...but not in 5E.


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## Sunseeker (Dec 16, 2015)

There's almost none of the tactical gameplay from previous editions. Combats are often very immoble.  If you want mobile combats and tactics you _really_ have to make an effort to include them, the system does not lend or push you towards them at all and the feats and abilities that emulate some of the more tactical gameplay of previous editions are highly limited and substantially less powerful than competing options.

Generally, I find 5E combat quick, which I like...but not very interesting, which I don't like.


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## werecorpse (Dec 16, 2015)

Huntsman57 said:


> I find 5E combat rather fun given its faster pacing over prior systems, focus on flavorful abilities over the stat ladder, and bonus actions and reactions that make a combat round feel a bit more organic.
> 
> The boring parts of 5E to me are more in regards to the significantly reduced risk compared to 2E or 3E. It's rare in 5E that I fear for my character's life unless the group has been put up against a threat so great that it could result in a TPK. The amount of damage a character would have to take to be killed outright is ludicrously improbable in most cases, particularly at higher levels, and the death rolls mechanic is incredibly carebear compared to the -10 mechanic. With the -10 mechanic you can't recover without teamwork, and if you dropped at -9 your team has a very short window to patch you up. With death rolls the average time it takes for you to die is tough to calculate because the fact is that you will more likely than not simply stabilize on your own even if the rest of the group ignored you entirely...because that's what folks suffering from massive hemorrhaging do. Of course, no matter that your arm is hanging off..just give it a good night's sleep and in 8 hours of long resting, you'll be right as rain!
> 
> Many encounters can feel like you're just going through the motions because there's little to no actual risk. As much as I overall like 5E's combat system, I consider this to be it's most grievous flaw, and one that has led me to more than one sad/bored little internalized yawn at the beginning of a fight, or when venturing into the unknown. These are situations in which I would have felt tension in 2E or 3.5...but not in 5E.




I have a rule that if you fail a death save you have a chance of getting a lingering wound. (Not as horrific as some of those in the DMG just stuff like "broken ribs: vulnerable to bludgeoning damage until fixed). That means there is consequence to falling to 0 so people care. Risk doesn't have to be risk of death. 

Edit: but in any event in my experience the risk of death is real. I do tend to run games with the gloves on but you can take them off. If you are struck in melee while unconscious (advantage to hit) you fail two death saves - meaning on your next turn you have a 45% chance of dying. Plus because it's an autocrit if the crit damage equals your hit points you die - very real chance at low level.

edit2: I didn't respond to the heal everything overnight. I agree this suggests that there is a lack of consequence to injury. Just play gritty. Or some other carry over damage system. (Ie each failed death save and crit suffered reduces your maximum hit points by 1 until you have had a weeks rest)


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## iserith (Dec 16, 2015)

Huntsman57 said:


> I find 5E combat rather fun given its faster pacing over prior systems, focus on flavorful abilities over the stat ladder, and bonus actions and reactions that make a combat round feel a bit more organic.
> 
> The boring parts of 5E to me are more in regards to the significantly reduced risk compared to 2E or 3E. It's rare in 5E that I fear for my character's life unless the group has been put up against a threat so great that it could result in a TPK.




Risk of death in D&D 5e comes from attrition. The more challenges you face do in an adventuring day, the more the difficulty increases as resources dwindle.



Huntsman57 said:


> Of course, no matter that your arm is hanging off..just give it a good night's sleep and in 8 hours of long resting, you'll be right as rain!




This is less a failure of the rules and more a failure to adequately describe the effects of damage as it is discussed in the Basic Rules. As well, a long rest only restores half a character's hit dice which is not quite as right as rain in my view.



Huntsman57 said:


> Many encounters can feel like you're just going through the motions because there's little to no actual risk. As much as I overall like 5E's combat system, I consider this to be it's most grievous flaw, and one that has led me to more than one sad/bored little internalized yawn at the beginning of a fight, or when venturing into the unknown. These are situations in which I would have felt tension in 2E or 3.5...but not in 5E.




I see this as either a challenge design issue (which is a DM issue) or a failure to adhere to the guidelines with regard to the adventuring day.


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## Celtavian (Dec 16, 2015)

iserith said:


> Risk of death in D&D 5e comes from attrition. The more challenges you face do in an adventuring day, the more the difficulty increases as resources dwindle.




And it's not threatening enough, especially as you gain levels. Getting the proper level of attrition is extremely difficult in 5E.




> This is less a failure of the rules and more a failure to adequately describe the effects of damage as it is discussed in the Basic Rules. As well, a long rest only restores half a character's hit dice which is not quite as right as rain in my view.




It is failure of the rules. It's a failure that has existed in every version of D&D unless you incorporate optional rules. You can describe a broken arm in an amazing fashion, but if it has no game effect it is meaningless. The player won't notice or care. That's hardly a 5E problem unless you count the short time you can survive at negative hit points in 3E as a great way to show your character is hammered. D&D has usually be you're either at full strength or your down, very little in between.



> I see this as either a challenge design issue (which is a DM issue) or a failure to adhere to the guidelines with regard to the adventuring day.




Always has been. Always will be. Each group is different. The DM has to figure out how to challenge his particular group and premade monsters in the MM and adventures are usually made for a relatively inexperienced group of suboptimal characters.


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## Condiments (Dec 16, 2015)

shidaku said:


> There's almost none of the tactical gameplay from previous editions. Combats are often very immoble.  If you want mobile combats and tactics you _really_ have to make an effort to include them, the system does not lend or push you towards them at all and the feats and abilities that emulate some of the more tactical gameplay of previous editions are highly limited and substantially less powerful than competing options.
> 
> Generally, I find 5E combat quick, which I like...but not very interesting, which I don't like.




Yeah I tend to agree with this. 5th edition was my first PnP, and my first time DMing so I had little experience as to how to structure adventures or make interesting fights. Unfortunately, throwing a group of monsters together at the appropriate difficulty level and throwing them at the players...generally doesn't lend itself to interesting encounters unless DM really goes out of this way to push the system. Monsters are generally bags of hit points with few unique abilities, and limited tactical options compared to the players. I remember almost being bored to literal tears during some fights during the first few sessions of my campaign, and wondering what I was doing wrong. Everything else flowed so nicely outside of combat, but as soon as initiative rolled....bleh.

Which was a pretty big disappointment from my end. Being mostly a videogame player before playing 5th edition, I wanted to give those pulse pounding climatic battles that I remembered from the old cRPGs that I had played years before to my players. I tried my hardest with various experiments and playing with encounter design, and it feels like there is always something missing.

I've gotten significantly better at designing battles since then and straining party resources over various fights in an adventuring day. The "adventuring day" is a pretty whimsical notion though, given the open ended nature of this game and player ingenuity. My wily players usually find a way to circumvent fights or come up with an insane plan.

So yeah OP, 5e from my observations is a pretty laid back game that concentrates on multiple fights draining party resources with little risk to PCs. Pushing it outside those boundaries requires more DM work and sleight of hand to make things more tactically interesting like using terrain, LOS, mages, environment hazards/boons. If you're not careful, however, the system beings to strain under pressure. The system is very swingy, and relies on things being decisive within 2-3 rounds(which means less strategic/tactically interesting fights), and if you push outside of that you're in a danger zone. Though most of my most interesting fights according to my players involve these types of situations.

I've never tried 4e but the talk of how interesting the combats were makes me want to try it out, maybe with something like 13th age's escalation die mixed in to speed up combats.


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## Li Shenron (Dec 16, 2015)

Dom de Dom said:


> Some of the guys in my regular 5e group are becoming a bit bored with the simplicity of 5th edition combat. Not having played through 4th (oldschool returning 2e guy) I don't really have much of a point of reference.Do any other people in here share this problem, and have you any examples of house rules or other methods you use to spice up combats which might otherwise me a bit ploddy?




My opinion is that in 5e it is more up to the _players_ to make combat interesting.

And I do not mean through descriptions... replacing "I attack with my sword" with a long flamboyant description of your swinging and praising your deity, followed by the DM's Pulitzer-level description of the orc's facial expression of pain and blood pattern on the floor is entertaining _once_ and already tedious the second time.

I really mean that the _player_ has to do some work to make combat more interesting from a functional/tactical point of view. 

It certainly depends on character build choices, clearly if you chose a Fighter/Champion instead of a Fighter/Battlemaster, or if you go with ability score increases instead of feats, it will be more difficult to try novelty tactics. And unfortunately the novelty tactics are often not the most efficient, to which point I am afraid we must admit that most times _efficiency_ is boredom! If players keep only thinking in terms of "damage output", combat will keep being a boring task of maximization.

The options are there, you don't need a flood of supplements for tactical variety, but you need to start using them. There's tons of spells for each class with not so obvious effects, but if you always focus on damage-dealers and buffs, it's your fault. Look for class abilities that aren't strictly related to boosting offense and defense, for example the Rogue's Cunning Action and the Fighter's Action Surge have a lot of potential for very interesting choices.

As for the DM, the obvious thing to look for is to vary the encounters. It's true that the MM has a large bulk of samey monsters, but most monsters have at least _one_ special ability. Focus on using that one! It doesn't matter if it would be once again more efficient to just let the monster do a regular attack, choose to use that monster's unique feature as much as you can so that the battle will feel different from the others. 

Besides that, scourge youtube for memorable movies fight scenes and steal ideas related to external/environmental conditions that can significantly alter a battle's dynamics.


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## Celtavian (Dec 16, 2015)

I do agree that combat narration can make combats more interesting. You are very much encouraged to use narration to enhance the feeling of exciting combat in 5E. Since you're not spending your time looking up rules or spell text, it's much easier to focus on compelling narration in than 3E/_Pathfinder_. A DM that wants to make combats less boring and more interesting to the players may want to brush up on their descriptive narration to make the players feel like they're in an exciting fight.

Telling the player when he crits, "Your axe blade cleaves the chain links of the orcs armor splitting his flesh and collarbone. Blood splatters your axe haft and armor as the orc falls twitching to the ground." That kind of narration goes a long way to enhance 5E combats and paint a picture of the battlefield.


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## Azurewraith (Dec 16, 2015)

I do find 5e combats can be a bit boring due to simplicity but then the speed they fly by at seems to off set this some what. Flowery descriptions are great until you find combat is taking 3hours because people have a small novel sat next to them titled "cool ways to describe murderhoboing".

Can combat be made interesting yes it can add in some choke points and flanking routes. Don't just have combat start by you see some goblins on the horizon they stand there staring at you until you approach and murder them brutally. The goblins on the horizon spotted you as well and they scatter into the nearby forest it looked as if they had a bound captive with them. Now the pcs are walking into an ambush in the forest now you can have the pcs start the combat surrounded and you have a extra an extra concern in the captive. Add in traps to the terrain maybe a pitfall to shove people off.

Another major factor in 5e combats being stale to me anyway is there is 0risk of death outside blatant stupid actions add in some permanent injury rules this works 2ways it helps pcs want to pick fights so combat happens less often so seems just that lil bit fresher.


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## AtomicPope (Dec 16, 2015)

If DMs understand the monsters and players they can make combat dynamic.  Fifth Edition is a simplistic game, in every sense.  It's complicated when it needs to be but moves smoothly most of the time.  Unlike 3e, the current edition of D&D doesn't reward you with more attacks when you're not moving.  Everyone in 5e can move and fight with full effect.  There is no need for Otto's 5ft Shuffle every round in the current edition.

To put it simply, if there's no incentive to get out of the pocket and move then you just stay up there and bang it out.  It's easy to give players reasons to move - damage auras, terrain, swarms, pack tactics, et al.  Many classes benefit from repositioning - Rogues can Hide, Monks can push, Rangers can Whirlwind, et al.  Many melee classes do not - Paladins, Champion Fighters, Berserker Barbarians, et al.  If a Barbarian has no reason to move then why should he?  Just run up and keep chopping.  If the DM makes every monster an Awakened Tree then the only prescription is Moar Axe!

I don't think I'm "lucky" that my DMs (plural) used terrain, multiple monsters, and events to make the combats dynamic.  Even the LMoP has many encounters that lend themselves to moving around, taking cover, and using the terrain to make it easier or harder, depending on your point of view.  There's Goblins firing arrows from a ledge (reminiscent of The Fellowship of the Ring), Ghouls ambushing characters in a poisonous mushroom field, and Flaming Skulls ducking behind the Spell Forge after shooting fire bolts from his eyes.  I barely scratched the surface of the dynamic battles in the Starter Set.  If D&D noobs can experience dynamic combats, you grognards can too!


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## TheLoneRanger1979 (Dec 16, 2015)

Dom de Dom said:


> Interesting that you think the simplicity is a winner over the previous complex systems.



Trust me, my group had a year or so lasting campaign in 4E. By the time we reached lvl 12-16 each combat encounter lasted an eternity, unless it involved minions. If i could show you my damage books, and char statistics they are 2-3 times longer then they are for comparative levels in 5E. Yeah, simplicity can be a blessing.

Complex mechanics don't transfer well into pen and paper. CPU backed games are a different thing though. All the calculations are in the background, so you don't lose much time. 

What you do win with the lose of time lost in battles is the time won in actual role playing. Unlike in 4E, where the actual time spent was about 4:1 to 9:1 in favor of combat mechanics, in 5E we spend around equal time for both. Even fighting gets to be more interesting if you role play through it. Use aid and grapple and improvise actions that you can assign DC for. Much more fun then listing though 10 pages of daily powers....... at least for me.


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## strider13x (Dec 16, 2015)

Only boring people get bored...


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## Sage Genesis (Dec 16, 2015)

Whether or not something is "interesting" or "boring" depends on many different facets. Let's look at some of them, starting with the basics of taking a turn.

In general terms you can imagine that as a flow cart. First you must decide what action(s) to take, then dice must be rolled, and then finally it comes to resolution and description. 

Let's compare 5e for a moment to a few other games: D&D 4e, Legend of the Five Rings, and 13th Age.

4e tried to make the first step more exciting. Just saying "I attack" is too simple for its tastes so it provides you with some class features, at-will attacks, encounter and daily powers, magic item activations, interactions with monster/environment/trap elements, and so forth. So the first step is really exciting if you're into that kind of thing. (There are some drawbacks to this approach as well but that's not the issue we're debating right now so let's leave it at that.)

 L5R tries to make the second step more exciting. Combat relies on raises - for those who don't know the game, accuracy tends to be pretty high but you can accept penalties prior to rolling to get increased effects on a hit. Not just disarms and knockdowns, but also extra damage dice and "class features" can rely on this mechanic. The first step is still simple: you just say "I attack" on a lot of turns but then it comes to dice and that part is more exciting because there's gambles and odds to weigh. Which is cool if you like playing with risk-reward.

13th Age's Fighters are kind of clever in this regard. Their main mechanic is that they roll attacks and then can add on one special effect, but which effect they can use depends on the d20 roll. Some of them can only be used on an even roll, some only on a 16+, some need to both odd and miss the target, etc. So they try to give the same kind of excitement you get from the first step, but they shunt it into the second step with a semi-automated system by attaching it to the die roll itself. Nearly all the little effects of 4e and nearly all the speed of 5e. Not everybody's cup of tea, but it's a cute idea. 

Some of the advice given here in this thread can be summarized as, "describe things better". That is an excellent way to make the third step more exciting... but it won't improve the first and second steps. In 5e non-casters have relatively few action types available to them, or at least few that can be used often and are efficient. So if you want the first step (choosing an action) to be more exciting, you really kind of need to be a Wizard or something.


There are also other sources of excitement of course, ones that fall outside of the scope basic turn-taking and action resolution mechanics. There are objectives (save the hostages!), story-related tensions ("one of us dies today... brother") and the risk of death/consequences ("there are _how many_ ogres?!"). For those who enjoy strategy over tactics, there is daily resource management for some classes. 


But at the end of the day, different groups have different play styles. And different styles focus on different aspects of games to get the excitement they want. If your group gets bored by the first step of the flowchart, then you need to either do some big houseruling or accept that 5e was just not built for your tastes. That's ok. Not every game can be everything to everyone. The idea that the cause lies either with the system or the players is a false dichotomy, because the actual cause lies in the interaction between the two. Sometimes there's just no chemistry, you know? Spice it up, move along, or accept that some of your gaming experiences may be a little on the dull side.


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## dmnqwk (Dec 16, 2015)

You could always replace critical hits with a table based on the D20 roll that affects combat.

For example if you rolled a 15 and hit, no additional effect, but if you rolled a 7 and managed to hit, you would've raked your weapon across their face, causing them to be blinded for 1 round. Or maybe if you rolled advantage, chose to use the weaker number and it was a 7, which still hit, then you barrelled into your foe, knocked them down and get a free improvised attack for 1d4+ability modifier as you "kicked them while they're down".

5e still allows for more interesting combats, but it doesn't include them in the basic design, it's up to the DM and the player to decide "why are they bored" and to do something about it, because they realised the majority of players are not bored by what they provided (or at least they believe that, after viewing how successful/unsuccessful previous editions were).

If the combat seems boring, create an additional table yourself that can be inserted to allow players more control over combat.


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## iserith (Dec 16, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> And it's not threatening enough, especially as you gain levels. Getting the proper level of attrition is extremely difficult in 5E.




This hasn't been my experience. Time sensitive quests and incentivizing pushing onward, plus solid design of challenges, is both easy and fun.



Celtavian said:


> It is failure of the rules. It's a failure that has existed in every version of D&D unless you incorporate optional rules. You can describe a broken arm in an amazing fashion, but if it has no game effect it is meaningless. The player won't notice or care. That's hardly a 5E problem unless you count the short time you can survive at negative hit points in 3E as a great way to show your character is hammered. D&D has usually be you're either at full strength or your down, very little in between.




My point being that the rules say being dropped to 0, for example, isn't anything necessarily gruesome. People are describing things in gruesome ways and then getting a disconnect when the PC is back up and at it fairly quickly after a rest. The issue is describing things in that fashion, which is easily corrected.

And even if the DM wants to implement broken limbs or the like, this is also handled by the basic rules (or the optional rules in the DMG). If a character with a broken arm tries to do something that would normally be successful, it enters the realm of the uncertain or the impossible. For the former, we have ability checks, perhaps with disadvantage, or higher DCs.


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## Celtavian (Dec 16, 2015)

iserith said:


> This hasn't been my experience. Time sensitive quests and incentivizing pushing onward, plus solid design of challenges, is both easy and fun.




The person you responded to was wanting the players to feel the risk of death. It's not easy to get that feel in 5E, at least past the early levels in my experience. Then again we've had this back and forth many times, the players in my group optimize in nearly every way more often than yours because you have stated you feel that level of optimization harms the play experience for your group. That is likely why our experiences differ greatly.




> My point being that the rules say being dropped to 0, for example, isn't anything necessarily gruesome. People are describing things in gruesome ways and then getting a disconnect when the PC is back up and at it fairly quickly after a rest. The issue is describing things in that fashion, which is easily corrected.
> 
> And even if the DM wants to implement broken limbs or the like, this is also handled by the basic rules (or the optional rules in the DMG). If a character with a broken arm tries to do something that would normally be successful, it enters the realm of the uncertain or the impossible. For the former, we have ability checks, perhaps with disadvantage, or higher DCs.




The poster you responded to wants that feel. D&D has never had it without optional rules. Changing descriptions to make them less graphic does not solve his problem.


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## iserith (Dec 16, 2015)

While I think that describing and narrating well is a good skill to have, I think the design of the challenge is far more important. In my view, you can't expect to grab a handful of creatures out of the Monster Manual and have it turn into a compelling, engaging scene on its own. Though sometimes that can be enough, the environment, the stakes, opportunities, trade-offs, and the ties between the characters and the scene all need to be considered and designed well to make the challenging interesting. The system just helps you resolve uncertainty as the players engage with that challenge.


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## iserith (Dec 16, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> The person you responded to was wanting the players to feel the risk of death. It's not easy to get that feel in 5E, at least past the early levels in my experience. Then again we've had this back and forth many times, the players in my group optimize in nearly every way more often than yours because you have stated you feel that level of optimization harms the play experience for your group. That is likely why our experiences differ greatly.




I have groups that optimize. I have groups that don't. I've had no issue with either. The DM controls the difficulty of the challenge. Increase the difficulty to increase the risk of death.



Celtavian said:


> The poster you responded to wants that feel. D&D has never had it without optional rules. Changing descriptions to make them less graphic does not solve his problem.




I disagree. I think all of this is easily handled under the basic rules. The DM narrates the results of the adventurers actions, sometimes calling for checks when the result is uncertain. It's trivial to do so while keeping in mind that a character has a broken leg or whatever.


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## Reinhart (Dec 16, 2015)

Just to chime in again. 4e gets a lot of flack for grinding to a halt in later levels. And while that is very much my experience too, looking into the underlying system math revealed that the reason for this isn't purely about complex game mechanics. No, there were just a number of math errors that gradually made every PC and monster require more and more attacks just to get the job done. 

The way 4e was set up, Monster and PC HP scaled proportionate to each other. Monster and PC damage scaled somewhat proportionate to each other too. While this meant that the on level fights stayed at about the same difficulty, it creates some bad system design implications down the road. Instead, expected Monster HP should have scaled proportionately to PC damage, and Monster damage should have scaled proportionately with expected PC hp. That didn't happen. HP for both sides grew at a rate that gradually dwarfed damage. As a result, you could survive more rounds of damage before being endangered, but you needed more and more rounds to deal with any given monster. Unfortunately, the main way players chose to counter this deficit was to exploit the off-turn attacks and complex power interactions that slowed down turns.

The point being that game mechanics do have an influence in the pacing of combat, but complexity can sometimes be a bit of a red-herring.  Anyway, 5e isn't immune to proportional scaling problems either, but since it erred on simplicity and higher damage you can expect that regardless of how combat resolves, it'll probably be over pretty quickly.


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## Celtavian (Dec 16, 2015)

iserith said:


> I have groups that optimize. I have groups that don't. I've had no issue with either. The DM controls the difficulty of the challenge. Increase the difficulty to increase the risk of death.




It's more difficult in 5E than past editions that had more potent killing spells and critical hits. If you're coming from 4E, maybe you don't see it. I have no idea what edition you just came from. Coming from 3E/_Pathfinder_, it was a lot easier to die and lot more risky than 5E has proven to be at any point. This is by design.




> I disagree. I think all of this is easily handled under the basic rules. The DM narrates the results of the adventurers actions, sometimes calling for checks when the result is uncertain. It's trivial to do so while keeping in mind that a character has a broken leg or whatever.




If I were doing a broken leg in 5E, especially a compound fracture, it would be something that affected them all the time. Movement slowed to a crawl. Disadvantage on attack rolls and advantage on attack rolls against. It wouldn't be pretty. D&D has never been built for this type of gritty play in a group environment. It slows down the group and the game. That's why rules covering this type of material have been optional in every edition.


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## iserith (Dec 16, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> It's more difficult in 5E than past editions that had more potent killing spells and critical hits. If you're coming from 4E, maybe you don't see it. I have no idea what edition you just came from. Coming from 3E/_Pathfinder_, it was a lot easier to die and lot more risky than 5E has proven to be at any point. This is by design.




I played D&D 3.Xe for 8 years, followed by 7 years of D&D 4e. (I still play the latter on occasion.) Now I chiefly play D&D 5e. I've killed my fair share of 5e characters, including higher-level ones. My 11th-level campaign ended with the death of two PCs. (It ended because it was done, not because they died.) I'd say my body count is consistent across editions.



Celtavian said:


> If I were doing a broken leg in 5E, especially a compound fracture, it would be something that affected them all the time. Movement slowed to a crawl. Disadvantage on attack rolls and advantage on attack rolls against. It wouldn't be pretty. D&D has never been built for this type of gritty play in a group environment. It slows down the group and the game. That's why rules covering this type of material have been optional in every edition.




I don't deny that a broken leg would hamper the party. I'm just saying this can be handled by the basic rules. No optional rules or subsystems are required in my view. The DM need only take it into account when narrating the result of the adventurer's actions.


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## Azurewraith (Dec 16, 2015)

iserith said:


> I have groups that optimize. I have groups that don't. I've had no issue with either. The DM controls the difficulty of the challenge. Increase the difficulty to increase the risk of death.




This isn't strictly true unless you go crazy over the top and throw say cr 10 at lvl 1 chars. The issue i find with death not being an issue is one lack of negative HP leading to the "wack-a-mole" style game play this can be fixed with adding injury's or some such. That and the fact you have to fail 3 death saves out of 6 with each roll being 50/50 unless of course your the kind of Dm that hits downed PCs (if i did that i would be DMing for myself very quickly) and in all that time no one throws you a single HP well then those are some cold  pcs.


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## iserith (Dec 16, 2015)

Azurewraith said:


> This isn't strictly true unless you go crazy over the top and throw say cr 10 at lvl 1 chars. The issue i find with death not being an issue is one lack of negative HP leading to the "wack-a-mole" style game play this can be fixed with adding injury's or some such. That and the fact you have to fail 3 death saves out of 6 with each roll being 50/50 unless of course your the kind of Dm that hits downed PCs (if i did that i would be DMing for myself very quickly) and in all that time no one throws you a single HP well then those are some cold  pcs.




It is always strictly true that the DM controls the difficulty of the challenge. I see nothing "over the top" about a CR 10 monster versus 1st-level characters. In fact, I've just written a Planescapesque (that's a word) adventure where the primary antagonist is a Yochlol (CR 10) and the PCs are 1st level. The risk of death is serious and it can still be defeated. It just requires the players to go about it in clever ways of their own devising.

I also have no issue attacking unconscious PCs. I encourage my players to create backup characters so we're prepared for this sort of thing.


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## Remathilis (Dec 16, 2015)

The DMG lists a few options:

Grid Combat with Flanking and Facing: adds tactical depth and requires better knowledge of the terrain. I also recommend using the 1-2-1-2 method of square counting diagonals to stop diagonal movement from outpacing straightline. 

Roll Initiative Each Round (w/Speed Factor): Adds randomness and uncertainty to combat, and demands greater choices of action (since high-weapon damage and higher-level spells now trade of effect for speed).

Attack Options: The DMG gives rules for Marking (great with Sentinel feat, but good alone), Disarming, Climbing on Large Creatures, Tumbling, and other Actions the PCs can try. 

Hitting Cover: Want to give Ranged weapons more penalty? Allow them to occasionally hit allies on a miss. Gives them incentive to move around more. 

Injuries and/or Massive Damage: Combat gets sloggy when all you're doing is trading HP. Instituting a rule that can disable or even kill a foe on a massive attack or crit will force PCs to chose their combats more wisely and use more tactics to gain advantage. 

Now, all of these things will slow down combat, add additional checks, and possibly derail story-based games (especially when a random encounter spirals out of control thanks to good initiative rolls and some lucky crit-injuries) but if you want more complex combat, there are some options you can use.


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## Magil (Dec 16, 2015)

Relating back to the topic, I think the first step is addressing your player's concerns. There have been a lot of posts suggesting to focus more on roleplaying, or rather, that 5E is at its best when not focused wholly on combat, but I suspect that that advice will be of little use to you if your players want interesting tactical challenges. Not everyone is at the table to tell the story of Tom the righteous knight and his struggle with a dark past, some are there to play Tom the warlord who conquers the battlefield with tactical brilliance (interesting how 4E edition has a Warlord class and 5E does not. Not trying to revive any old debates here, but I think it's perhaps amusingly meaningful). 

My advice to you? Keep running the system and try to get a feel for it. Once you feel you understand it well enough, start pushing its boundaries. If it seems like it's going to break, put some patches on it. Every table plays their own version of DnD. Maybe DnD 5E isn't the right system for you, maybe it is, but if you want to stick with it, chances are you can make something out of it that you and your players like. After playing 4th edition for about a year, I steadily became more and more confident in my ability to create custom monsters and challenges within the context of the rules in order to challenge the party. There were successes, failures, and varying degrees of both. 

I'm not there yet in 5th edition (been playing a while, DMing a much shorter period), but I see enough hints of 4th edition design philosophy to be confident that there exists the possibility for some tactical depth to exist within the rules. It may take some doing, but I think the ability to provide a tactical challenge to your players is there. It will take small, simple steps, like ditching Theater of the Mind (which impedes your ability to provide any interesting tactical challenge, but is decent for running more narrative-focused combat) in favor of a proper grid, and larger, more ambitious steps, like home-brewing vicious boss monsters. 

A short while ago I was in a party comprised of four characters of varying levels between 3 and 5, that fought a monstrosity homebrewed by the DM--a gigantic shambling mass of blood that dissolved into imps, literally throwing imps at us each turn. As it split into imps, its HP went down, disseminating into the imps. By the time it fully dissolved, it had made somewhere between 18 and 22ish imps. Going purely by EXP guidelines, that's a ridiculously deadly encounter for characters of that level, but because they came in waves and we wore down the creature with attacks along the way, and had good use of spells like Spirit Guardians, Hypnotic Pattern, Sleep, and Spiritual Weapon, along with battle-oriented characters capable of holding a melee line and slicing through things, we were able to overcome it, though not without difficulty--one player died, and another was briefly unconscious. Thankfully Revivify got the player back on their feet afterward, but it almost went very badly (if the cleric had been the one that died instead, that wouldn't have been an option, and it was about 1 round from that point when things were resolved). 

Where I'm going with this is I have a lot of hope for 5E, and I think you can make some interesting combats with it, while thankfully avoiding some key issues that put me off of 4E and 3E (lots of small bonuses stacking making bookkeeping a hassle, buff-stacking, hilarious levels of class imbalance in 3rd).


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## Azurewraith (Dec 16, 2015)

iserith said:


> It is always strictly true that the DM controls the difficulty of the challenge. I see nothing "over the top" about a CR 10 monster versus 1st-level characters. In fact, I've just written a Planescapesque (that's a word) adventure where the primary antagonist is a Yochlol (CR 10) and the PCs are 1st level. The risk of death is serious and it can still be defeated. It just requires the players to go about it in clever ways of their own devising.
> 
> I also have no issue attacking unconscious PCs. I encourage my players to create backup characters so we're prepared for this sort of thing.



 Thats certainly interesting id be intrested to know how the scenario panned out as i see any first lvl char bumping into a yochlol would be eaten alive given it would be hitting on 10 in some cases and doing around 26points of on average and from 10ft away.

Some of my pcs hate char gen they would rather eat their own arms lol.


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## TheLastRogue (Dec 16, 2015)

I've been following this post, but I still might have overlooked someone saying this. Anyways, here it goes:

When Combat is simply you 4 'heroes' try and kill these 4 skeletons (or whatever) it can become boring...especially if it is the dominant structure of most of your combats. Combatants should have goals, environments should come into play, etc.

Just killing a bunch of kobolds in a cave warren ... encounter after encounter... quickly becomes tedious. But, if they react, use traps, or, most importantly, have some motivations (like trip an alarm, call reinforcements, and so on) combat becomes more alive.

Even better is to ask yourself why is this a fight in the first place? Did the PC's corner a thief in his gang hideout? Chances are they not only have to fight his henchmen but also get to him before he escapes with the goods.

Sure, you've encountered the evil sorcerer, but he is less interested in fighting you guys as he is making sure his hostages die so as to initiate his evil ritual.

The fight with the goblin shaman and her warriors isn't just a battle to the death, the PCs (and goblins) have to be wary of the fact they're fighting in a cave bear den and that the beast is likely to return any moment.

In short, if combat is littered with additional concerns, goals, and motivations besides just inflict as much damage as possible, combat maintains novelty, excitement, and player interest. Against motivated opponents and in dynamic encounters, there is always more to do than simply swing your sword.

Now, of course, sometimes its nice to just have some 'vanilla' combat... but, if all you ever eat is 'vanilla,' it gets boring.


Hope the above is clear.


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## hejtmane (Dec 16, 2015)

STXBob said:


> 5e isn't going to give a player who's used to the crunch of other editions/games what she wants. That's one of the joys of 5e - it's SIMPLE. That doesn't mean it has to be boring, though. You can evoke the crunch through words. Roleplay it. The point is to get away from numbers and math and into describing what happens by appealing to the senses.
> 
> *Boring Way:
> *
> ...




You read my mine on how to describe combat that is how my combat goes with flavor and flare.

I also do not use traditional initiative I dropped it for the popcorn method I found this makes combat less boring and has kept my players more engaged because it is not always the same order for attacks for the players talk about boring and over rewarding one stat (imo). 

I also add one other feature just like a natural 20 is a critical hit a 1 is a critical fail something bad is going to happen sometimes injuring your own teammate roll for falling etc. This adds to the action and I get no complaints from my players they actually like it even though it hurts them sometimes.


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## iserith (Dec 16, 2015)

Azurewraith said:


> Thats certainly interesting id be intrested to know how the scenario panned out as i see any first lvl char bumping into a yochlol would be eaten alive given it would be hitting on 10 in some cases and doing around 26points of on average and from 10ft away.




The way to survive the yochlol is _not _to bump into it unless you have the means to defeat it. If it turns up in the room you are in, run or hide or both. Therein lay the challenge which encompasses all three pillars of the game. You may never have to fight the thing if you can achieve your primary goal (activating one of many portals out of its lair) without it. Or you may try to engineer a way to defeat it for that sweet, sweet XP. (Immediate bump to 3rd or 4th level? Yes please!)

I was inspired to write it by watching folks playing Alien: Isolation.


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## Azurewraith (Dec 16, 2015)

iserith said:


> The way to survive the yochlol is _not _to bump into it unless you have the means to defeat it. If it turns up in the room you are in, run or hide or both. Therein lay the challenge which encompasses all three pillars of the game. You may never have to fight the thing if you can achieve your primary goal (activating one of many portals out of its lair) without it. Or you may try to engineer a way to defeat it for that sweet, sweet XP. (Immediate bump to 3rd or 4th level? Yes please!)
> 
> I was inspired to write it by watching folks playing Alien: Isolation.



Oh alien isolation great game. Must be nice to play with people who's immediate reaction is if we attack now that's a suprise round right?


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## Tony Vargas (Dec 16, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> And it's not threatening enough, especially as you gain levels. Getting the proper level of attrition is extremely difficult in 5E.



Given the latitude the DM has, not /that/ difficult.  Maybe difficult to do without feeling like a jerk or stretching credulity, but you can always throw another/tougher encounter at the party until you've attritted them to your satisfaction.



> It is failure of the rules. It's a failure that has existed in every version of D&D unless you incorporate optional rules. You can describe a broken arm in an amazing fashion, but if it has no game effect it is meaningless.



That's a failure of hps if hps are meant to model broken arms, if you accept that they're meant to model the 'plot armor' of genre fiction, it's a success.



Sage Genesis said:


> In general terms you can imagine that as a flow cart. First you must decide what action(s) to take, then dice must be rolled, and then finally it comes to resolution and description.
> 
> Let's compare 5e for a moment to a few other games: D&D 4e, Legend of the Five Rings, and 13th Age.
> 
> 4e tried to make the first step more exciting.  L5R tries to make the second step more exciting.  13A try to give the same kind of excitement you get from the first step, but they shunt it into the second step.



 So, 5e isn't trying to be exciting, but...


> Some of the advice given here in this thread can be summarized as, "describe things better". That is an excellent way to make the third step more exciting...



 ...you can try to make it more exciting. 







> but it won't improve the first and second steps. In 5e non-casters have relatively few action types available to them, or at least few that can be used often and are efficient. So if you want the first step (choosing an action) to be more exciting, you really kind of need to be a Wizard or something.



'Or something' being about 30 of the available sub-classes in the PH.  The choiceless non-casters are really there for people who abhor making choices.  The built-in assumption that those people never want to play someone who tosses magic, or that no one who wants to make a meaningful choice now and then would be interested in a non-caster class is problem, though.  It's the same problem as "high level doesn't need to be well-designed, and let's just speed through it, because 'no one plays high-level that much'" - the game has always (or almost always) been really bad at certain things, so it's easy to look at patterns of how people actually play and see a preference for (or at least indifference to) things being bad in exactly those ways.


[sblock="13A fighter SUX rant"]I played a 13A Fighter once.  It was in a playtest, but they haven't changed since then.  







> 13th Age's Fighters are kind of clever in this regard. Their main mechanic is that they roll attacks and then can add on one special effect, but which effect they can use depends on the d20 roll. Some of them can only be used on an even roll, some only on a 16+, some need to both odd and miss the target, etc. Not everybody's cup of tea, but it's a cute idea.



 I guess it goes to show you how much tastes vary.  I found the 13A fighter absolutely appalling.  It's a 0-agency class, it doesn't need a player, it needs a few line of code - it's not a character, it's a mob.  It just takes a random walk through the combat, with the dice dictating everything, an example of literal 'roll playing.'  The 13A expansion of dice mechanics to determine the activation of abilities is a great innovation for monsters, lightening the DM's load noticeably, and works OK as a resource-limiter for PC (your roll determines whether the ability stays available or needs to recharge) but as an activator (determining when you use an ability) it should never be inflicted on any PC class.  [/sblock]


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## Sage Genesis (Dec 16, 2015)

Tony Vargas said:


> So, 5e isn't trying to be exciting, but...
> ...you can try to make it more exciting.




That's not really what I meant. 5e is not trying to be exciting in a certain way, for certain classes. For example, Champions are not meant to come with lots of "Step 1" choices baked into the class. So if you're looking for that kind of experience it's not a good kind of subclass to pick. Getting your excitement in a different area, such as through narration, can elevate the overall play experience but that one specific complaint won't be addressed by it - a player who accidentally picked Champion and finds himself bored with his options can still be so even if you describe things in a fun way.


And as for 13th Age Fighters... well, I've run two different campaigns with entirely different groups which both had Fighters in them. Both players loved them and their mechanics. So I guess they did something right. Not every class should be (or even _can_ be) ideal for every player. Some people love them, some don't. That's fine.


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## jayoungr (Dec 16, 2015)

It was originally written up for Star Wars Saga Edition, but "The List" from the Order 66 podcast is great advice for many game systems.  I refer to it frequently when designing encounters for D&D.  Here's a summary of its points (taken from this forum post):

*Combat Encounter Checklist:*
1. Rule of Six (space adversaries at least 6 squares apart)
2. Large Area (2x2 squares of space per character)
3. Provide Cover
4. Provide Concealment
5. Include Terrain
6. Include Doors and lock some of them
7. Include Hazards
8. Include opportunities for Skill checks
9. Include Elevations


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## Tony Vargas (Dec 16, 2015)

Sage Genesis said:


> That's not really what I meant. 5e is not trying to be exciting in a certain way, for certain classes.
> 
> Not every class should be (or even can be) ideal for every player. Some people love them, some don't.



That is one of the limitations of class-based systems, yes.  A class generally covers both a range of concepts and a set of playstyles, hardwiring a linkage between the two.  If your playstyle & desired concept don't fit the resultant stereotype, you're out of luck.  So it's really a case of 'can't be.'  Ideally, a player should be able to play the character he wants and have a good experience with it.  But a narrowly-designed class can spoil that - unless there's another class that can cover the same sort of concept, but works for different styles.  13A, for instance, also has a Barbarian and added a Commander class, so you can have different approaches to a warrior concept that suit very different styles of play.  5e, for a more relevant instance, has the Sorcerer and Warlock (and Lore Bard, EK, & AT) providing alternatives to it's version of the traditional Wizard (which, itself, has 8 sub-classes to choose from).


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## EzekielRaiden (Dec 17, 2015)

My experience of 5e, such as it is, has not illustrated that the combat system is particularly interesting, and can in fact get quite boring. People frequently tout the speed of combats, but I have yet to see a 5e combat run meaningfully faster than 4e would. Out of a 3-4 hour session, we still spend 1-2 hours in combat. If we only get a single combat in a session, it might drop down to half an hour, but certainly no less than that. We use a grid (via Roll20, so all the math stuff, distances, and grid positions are handled for us), but AFAICT no variant rules.

And, despite having taken community advice on the kind of character to play as a 4e-fan+5e-skeptic trying to give 5e a chance, I still feel like I have far too few choices. We've only gotten up to level 3, but combats are still mostly meat-grinder-y, leaving me terrified for my character's survival--a non-ideal situation when I'd specifically made the character for being decent-to-good at melee (a grappling Valor Bard). Unlike most people, I don't find a constant substantial risk of death to be exciting, I find it harrowing and unpleasant, a constant specter hanging over my head.* I habitually describe my character's actions, so there's no improvement to be gained there, though I'm afraid I'm not quite clever/funny enough to come up with real zingers for _vicious mockery_ every turn. Which, incidentally, _vicious mockery_ the vast majority of what I do, because I have so few spells to work with, I feel compelled to hoard them until they're truly needed--mostly _cure wounds_, or the occasional _faerie fire_.

The most frustrating thing is that I feel like I am _supposed_ to have a substantial toolbox and lots of bells and whistles, but I'm either too terrified to use them, or can't justify the expenditure on so few threats (or so small a threat). For example, I'm playing a Dragonborn, but I have yet to use my dragon breath--because the only fight I've been in where it would've been worth using, I was bleeding on the floor by the end of the first round and never got the chance. I have allegedly powerful utility spells like _sleep_, but they succeed so rarely or so minimally, I can't justify spending the slot when it could instead be used to keep one of my allies from getting pasted. I don't dare get in melee range most of the time, because almost every time I have, I've been brutally punished for it (first: zombie nearly knocked me out in one hit; second: mummy attacked me _exactly once_ and cursed me almost to death; third: bandit lord _should have_ killed me and I was only saved by DM fiat)--which doubly sucks because melee is core to what I've tried to do with the character.

I know lots of people are pleased with the simplicity of 5e, but I just straight up haven't seen most of the good things people talk about, and the bad things seem significantly worse than how most people sell them. I'm still invested in the 5e campaign my group is playing, but the system has thus far proven a frustration I tolerate, not a facilitator of anything positive.

*For me, random death = "game over, you lose, please stop playing now," not "ooh, so close, try again!" because I find it difficult or even impossible to invest in randomly-generated characters. This is not likely to change anytime soon.



Tony Vargas said:


> So, 5e isn't trying to be exciting, but...
> ...you can try to make it more exciting. 'Or something' being about 30 of the available sub-classes in the PH.  The choiceless non-casters are really there for people who abhor making choices.  The built-in assumption that those people never want to play someone who tosses magic, or that no one who wants to make a meaningful choice now and then would be interested in a non-caster class is problem, though.  It's the same problem as "high level doesn't need to be well-designed, and let's just speed through it, because 'no one plays high-level that much'" - the game has always (or almost always) been really bad at certain things, so it's easy to look at patterns of how people actually play and see a preference for (or at least indifference to) things being bad in exactly those ways.




Yeah, I can definitely agree with that. It's one of D&D's numerous "chicken-and-egg" problems, and also one of its "all solutions MUST be extreme"* problems, unfortunately. (Really, it's "all solutions in the past have been extreme, so an edition which mainly prioritizes dressing up traditional mores must follow suit." But that's not as pithy.)



dmnqwk said:


> So to get the most out of 5th edition combat, you either need your reaction to matter... or you need to learn to appreciate what other people do in combat to keep yourself interested in the outcome.




I...find the second option you suggest hard to comprehend. What does the events during other peoples' turns matter, for my enjoyment of what _*I'm *_doing? Whether or not the things they do are interesting/dangerous/boring is...entirely orthogonal to whether I am turned off by the combat (whether through lack of engagement, removal of most options due to substantial risk of death, or whatever else). Though it doesn't help that even in a party where everyone can cast spells, everyone is either making a regular attack (possibly with a bit of movement) or casting a cantrip 80%+ of the time.



strider13x said:


> Only boring people get bored...




Wow! Thanks for that. So insightful. I'll make sure to be a less boring person in the future!


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## Celtavian (Dec 17, 2015)

EzekielRaiden said:


> And, despite having taken community advice on the kind of character to play as a 4e-fan+5e-skeptic trying to give 5e a chance, I still feel like I have far too few choices. We've only gotten up to level 3, but combats are still mostly meat-grinder-y, leaving me terrified for my character's survival--a non-ideal situation when I'd specifically made the character for being decent-to-good at melee (a grappling Valor Bard). Unlike most people, I don't find a constant substantial risk of death to be exciting, I find it harrowing and unpleasant, a constant specter hanging over my head.* I habitually describe my character's actions, so there's no improvement to be gained there, though I'm afraid I'm not quite clever/funny enough to come up with real zingers for _vicious mockery_ every turn. Which, incidentally, _vicious mockery_ the vast majority of what I do, because I have so few spells to work with, I feel compelled to hoard them until they're truly needed--mostly _cure wounds_, or the occasional _faerie fire_.




The bard is annoying the hell out of me too. I don't have any idea what round after round of _vicious mockery_ would look like in an adventure. Every bard is a quick-witted comedian? I don't know what inspiration would like either. In 3E/_Pathfinder_ I knew what the bard's powers looked like. It isn't the same in 5E.




> I know lots of people are pleased with the simplicity of 5e, but I just straight up haven't seen most of the good things people talk about, and the bad things seem significantly worse than how most people sell them. I'm still invested in the 5e campaign my group is playing, but the system has thus far proven a frustration I tolerate, not a facilitator of anything positive.




You may not be the target audience. 5E is more a throwback edition of D&D aimed at bringing back the people that left because they didn't like 4E. When you're coming from _Pathfinder_, 5E is much, much faster, especially at higher levels.


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## Celtavian (Dec 17, 2015)

Tony Vargas said:


> Given the latitude the DM has, not /that/ difficult.  Maybe difficult to do without feeling like a jerk or stretching credulity, but you can always throw another/tougher encounter at the party until you've attritted them to your satisfaction.




It has been difficult for me. The CRs aren't much help. Some high CR creatures are pushovers, some lower CR creatures very tough. Encounter guidelines in the DMG aren't very helpful. Getting the right level of challenge has been difficult in this edition since monsters seem to fall into the too weak to too deadly category that doesn't seem to have a great deal to do with CR.



> That's a failure of hps if hps are meant to model broken arms, if you accept that they're meant to model the 'plot armor' of genre fiction, it's a success.




It's a failure for anyone that wants to model a grittier wound system. That's why it's always required optional rules to incorporate those concepts. I don't think hit points model 'plot armor.' I think hit points were chosen to create a simple system for a death mechanic to keep combat from becoming overly bogged down with wound tracking and making the game too deadly.


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## Celtavian (Dec 17, 2015)

iserith said:


> I played D&D 3.Xe for 8 years, followed by 7 years of D&D 4e. (I still play the latter on occasion.) Now I chiefly play D&D 5e. I've killed my fair share of 5e characters, including higher-level ones. My 11th-level campaign ended with the death of two PCs. (It ended because it was done, not because they died.) I'd say my body count is consistent across editions.




I'd love to see those numbers, but I imagine no way to get them other than memory. My death count is far higher in past editions. Spike damage and burst damage were much, much higher in 3E.  The harsh tactics you could employ to snuff characters much more vicious than anything I've seen in 5E. That could lead to quick, surprising character death. In 1E and 2E getting snuffed was one missed saving throw away. 

In 5E past the low levels, say 1-4 or 5, death is rather rare so far. 

I must admit I've ony DMed one group to level 6 or 7 and another group to level 5 so far. I'm about to unleash an encounter on my group I'm a bit worried will kill some of them. We shall see. A CR 17 legendary creature against seven level 5 PCs. I'm a little worried I've went too far, but at the same time I want them to feel fear when they face this creature.


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## Celtavian (Dec 17, 2015)

iserith said:


> It is always strictly true that the DM controls the difficulty of the challenge. I see nothing "over the top" about a CR 10 monster versus 1st-level characters. In fact, I've just written a Planescapesque (that's a word) adventure where the primary antagonist is a Yochlol (CR 10) and the PCs are 1st level. The risk of death is serious and it can still be defeated. It just requires the players to go about it in clever ways of their own devising.
> 
> I also have no issue attacking unconscious PCs. I encourage my players to create backup characters so we're prepared for this sort of thing.




Level 1 characters can die very easy. I'd be more interested in seeing something like a MM vampire against level 4 or 5 characters. Or a MM Beholder against level level 5 to 7 characters.


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## TheLoneRanger1979 (Dec 17, 2015)

EzekielRaiden said:


> People frequently tout the speed of combats, but I have yet to see a 5e combat run meaningfully faster than 4e would. Out of a 3-4 hour session, we still spend 1-2 hours in combat. If we only get a single combat in a session, it might drop down to half an hour, but certainly no less than that. We use a grid (via Roll20, so all the math stuff, distances, and grid positions are handled for us), but AFAICT no variant rules.




This surprised me quite a bit. Mostly because of the seaming similarity between our games. We are also a lvl 3 group of 4, and our play sessions last 3-4 hours on average. Actual combat also averages on 1.5 hours. We also use grid at times, not always, but around 2/3rds of the time. What is very different is that we "breeze" through at least 3 encounters at that time. On the average a fight doesn't last more then 20 minutes. Only boss fights can exceed this limit, but they are not that often and even they ended within 40 minutes so far. It's not like we play some uber optimized PCs or have it easy on us either. So far we've had 3-4 KO's and one near death. 
In comparison our 4E equivalent campaign at this level, we could play 2 encounters on average, maxing at 3 if they were really easy. Right now, the DM often can't prepare enough encounters for us, so we stall and limit our selves at 3-4 per night. But it's not a problem a it leaves us more time for role playing.  Obviously we are having extremely different experiences with this one.


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## EzekielRaiden (Dec 17, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> It has been difficult for me. The CRs aren't much help. Some high CR creatures are pushovers, some lower CR creatures very tough. Encounter guidelines in the DMG aren't very helpful. Getting the right level of challenge has been difficult in this edition since monsters seem to fall into the too weak to too deadly category that doesn't seem to have a great deal to do with CR.




It's nice to hear a fan echo my (mostly reading-based, but now partially play-experience-based) criticisms, though I wish it didn't have to be part and parcel with "and thus things are unnecessarily difficult." 



TheLoneRanger1979 said:


> This surprised me quite a bit. Mostly because of the seaming similarity between our games. We are also a lvl 3 group of 4, and our play sessions last 3-4 hours on average. Actual combat also averages on 1.5 hours. We also use grid at times, not always, but around 2/3rds of the time. What is very different is that we "breeze" through at least 3 encounters at that time. On the average a fight doesn't last more then 20 minutes. Only boss fights can exceed this limit, but they are not that often and even they ended within 40 minutes so far. It's not like we play some uber optimized PCs or have it easy on us either. So far we've had 3-4 KO's and one near death.
> In comparison our 4E equivalent campaign at this level, we could play 2 encounters on average, maxing at 3 if they were really easy. Right now, the DM often can't prepare enough encounters for us, so we stall and limit our selves at 3-4 per night. But it's not a problem a it leaves us more time for role playing.  Obviously we are having extremely different experiences with this one.




Technically, we always use the battlemap, and mine is a group of five rather than four (Devotion Paladin, Moon Druid, Tempest Cleric, probably-but-not-yet-decidedly Beast Master Ranger, and my own Valor Bard). That's a 25% increase in the number of players, so 20*1.25 = 25 minutes, plus some slowdown because two of our players are new to D&D and another hasn't played a TTRPG in over a decade, gives a rough length of 30 minutes for a normal combat. But my experience with 4e at similar levels has been pretty much exactly the same.

If I had to guess, it's a difference of preparation. Every 4e player I've played with has either known their character sheet very well, or (in one case) had the DM prepare some simple advice for what to do at any given time (the two were old friends, but the player had never played 4e before). In my case, my "character sheet" is often just names + highly condensed details; I keep a separate file with a full, precise list of abilities (effectively my own form of "power cards") so I can quick-reference during play. I also find that my mind wanders a lot more while playing 5e, because I've found I don't actually need to pay much attention to anything but the flowery descriptions when it's anyone else's turn.* With 4e, things felt too dynamic and interactive (between party members, mostly), so it was uncommon for me not to have an idea of what I wanted to do next the moment my turn came up, and my co-players' reaction times seemed to reflect the same thing. *shrug*

*This happens a lot when a system's mechanics fail to keep me engaged. Dungeon World--a game I adore--is even worse than 5e on that front. I basically zone out, analytically, whenever it's anyone else's turn. I remain plenty engaged with the fiction, but the combat needs only the barest fraction of my attention and the rest just sort of churns on itself. At an actual gaming table, I fear it would become a real problem; since I do all my gaming over the internet at present, I have things to keep me occupied instead.


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## dmnqwk (Dec 17, 2015)

When it comes to the Bard, if you choose to play every Bard as a comedian, that is a choice. I am playing my Bard as slightly more serious (though I cannot fully resist the lure of insiuating their lineage contains hamster dna or that a certain smell lingers on their parent's breath).

Currently playing as a 4th level Bard I get the most out of combat when I see my Inspiration Dice matter - allowing our hunter to sharpshooter because he rolled a 6 on the inspiration dice means, suddenly, all the damage from a colossus slayer arrow is down to me, not him. Or when I inspire our Battlemaster to attack, then sweep as a result of hitting, I take credit for all of his damage. As a Bard I have to tactically assess the battlefield to determine who, if anyone, would benefit from inspiration the most. After that I then don't often see anyone I can kill at this low level (though in other games where my stats were not rolled I would let off a crossbow bolt for serious damage) I see which creature is better off being mocked, and I use a more crazed psycho inflection to my tone as I inform the giant spider the worthless spawn of lolth is about to get washed down a drainpipe.

I do agree the illusion of choice can be missing, as in the belief that if you choose option a) they get a -1 here, +1 there and -1/2 point on their mileage while option b) is a +2, -1 and a pillowcase but, to me, those options were rarely different from each other in 3rd edition. If I played my Bard without considering what other people are doing on their turn, I would probably also agree I have nothing to contribute, but then I'd probably choose not to play a Bard (since they lack a lot of bonus action spells and are stuck with a poor choice of damage options until 6th level, when they get extra attack or magical secrets). Their reaction options are absolutely great as a lore bard, however, which still puts them firmly in the place where they have to pay attention the entire round. And if you're the kind of person who only cares what you can do, personally, on your turn then I don't think Bard is right for you in the slighest and it might be why you are getting bored.


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## EzekielRaiden (Dec 17, 2015)

dmnqwk said:


> When it comes to the Bard, if you choose to play every Bard as a comedian, that is a choice. I am playing my Bard as slightly more serious (though I cannot fully resist the lure of insiuating their lineage contains hamster dna or that a certain smell lingers on their parent's breath).




In combat, my Bard engages in _vicious mockery_ quite frequently, but out of combat he's in the running for the most serious party member.



> I do agree the illusion of choice can be missing, as in the belief that if you choose option a) they get a -1 here, +1 there and -1/2 point on their mileage while option b) is a +2, -1 and a pillowcase but, to me, those options were rarely different from each other in 3rd edition.




I...don't actually want _illusion_ of choice, though. My experience with 4e hasn't felt like an "illusion" of choice. I have enough variety of options from level-up powers that I can actually have meaningfully different options each turn, like a single-target spike, a whirlwind attack, etc. I honestly didn't play that much of 3e, in part because of the illusory "choices" you mention (particularly since specialization was the only way to make _one_ of them good...unless you were a caster, of course. )



> If I played my Bard without considering what other people are doing on their turn, I would probably also agree I have nothing to contribute, but then I'd probably choose not to play a Bard (since they lack a lot of bonus action spells and are stuck with a poor choice of damage options until 6th level, when they get extra attack or magical secrets). Their reaction options are absolutely great as a lore bard, however, which still puts them firmly in the place where they have to pay attention the entire round. And if you're the kind of person who only cares what you can do, personally, on your turn then I don't think Bard is right for you in the slighest and it might be why you are getting bored.




Kay so...I'm playing a Valor Bard, rather than Lore...and even if I weren't, I would only have _just_ gotten it last session. So that's not super helpful, just from the get-go. (And, before it's asked: the DM insisted on beginning at level 1. I _did_ ask, once, politely.)

Secondly, I never said I _don't care at all_ what other people are doing. I do care. But with only two uses of Bardic Inspiration _per day_, and at the moment *zero* things I can do with my reaction (not counting OAs), I don't really have a whole lot of options there. I had hoped that I could initiate some combos by grappling enemies, but my character is so fragile that trying to engage in melee has proven a death sentence (in one case, literally). I've handed out my BI dice...and then they typically go unused, even though I made every effort to remind people about them.

I'm not sure what else I can be doing. I wanted to be providing a form of battlefield control by Grappling enemies (the Moon Druid typically takes Wolf form, so we have ample sources of Prone already), but as stated before, I got so thoroughly screwed up for trying, multiple times, I'm afraid to risk my character's life again. I wanted my spells to be clever battlefield-manipulations (my character sees himself as a budding blademaster), but instead they end up going almost purely to healing because combats have pasted us multiple times (in the span of...6 or 7 sessions, we've rolled _at least_ 15 death saves between the five of us).

My point about the "enjoying other peoples' turns" was not that I don't _care_ what they do, but rather that what others do doesn't define my _engagement_ with the rules. Whether I have to exert cognitive effort to participate in the fight is completely orthogonal to whether I care about the things other people are doing during their turns. As it stands, I feel like I have too few tools to work with, too few opportunities to use the tools I have, and too much pressure to conserve extremely precious resources because most every fight is a harrowing, barely-survived-with-some-people-bleeding-out experience. Most of the time, there's either too little material to engage with, or I don't get the chance to engage at all (like the combat where I dropped from full to 0 HP in the middle of the first round, because it's totally cool for a CR 2 enemy to have three attacks and thus do more average damage than I have health as a level 2 Bard).


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## Azurewraith (Dec 17, 2015)

My usual game tomorrow night is off so I'll b running my on off game 4lvl 3pcs ill track CR n combat times see how it goes


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## Celtavian (Dec 17, 2015)

EzekielRaiden said:


> My point about the "enjoying other peoples' turns" was not that I don't _care_ what they do, but rather that what others do doesn't define my _engagement_ with the rules. Whether I have to exert cognitive effort to participate in the fight is completely orthogonal to whether I care about the things other people are doing during their turns. As it stands, I feel like I have too few tools to work with, too few opportunities to use the tools I have, and too much pressure to conserve extremely precious resources because most every fight is a harrowing, barely-survived-with-some-people-bleeding-out experience. Most of the time, there's either too little material to engage with, or I don't get the chance to engage at all (like the combat where I dropped from full to 0 HP in the middle of the first round, because it's totally cool for a CR 2 enemy to have three attacks and thus do more average damage than I have health as a level 2 Bard).




As a DM I'd let you write a cantrip that better suits what you want the power to be like as long as it fit the parameters of the equivalent spell. I'm hoping they come out with more cantrip attack options for classes like bard and cleric. Their options are so limited right now it's frustrating. The nice thing about 5E is it allows you to customize abilities for an individual without breaking the game as long you stay in the parameters of similar abilities. You can pretty much let a player write flavor text or slightly modify abilities to suit their vision of what they want the character to do.


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## EzekielRaiden (Dec 17, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> As a DM I'd let you write a cantrip that better suits what you want the power to be like as long as it fit the parameters of the equivalent spell. I'm hoping they come out with more cantrip attack options for classes like bard and cleric. Their options are so limited right now it's frustrating. The nice thing about 5E is it allows you to customize abilities for an individual without breaking the game as long you stay in the parameters of similar abilities. You can pretty much let a player write flavor text or slightly modify abilities to suit their vision of what they want the character to do.




Unfortunately, our DM is big on playing RAW and without any frilly/extra rules, in part because he's somewhat new to 5e. That's the main reason why we started at level 1, for example. (Some of our players being new to TTRPGs in general also factored into that choice.) Also, part of the reason for our combats being so meat-grinder-y is that his other 5e group regularly punches well above its weight, while ours struggles to punch _at_ weight. Game's currently on hiatus for the holidays, but he has repeatedly expressed his dismay at our group being unexpectedly easy to overwhelm. Thus far, his efforts to adjust have not quite felt effective, but it might be a problem of perspective for me.


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## ExploderWizard (Dec 17, 2015)

Boredom can set in if there is too much repetition, and not enough risk to make things exciting. This can happen in any system, not just 5E. 

After all, having 12 different mechanical options at your fingertips can still be pretty boring if all of them lead to the ho-hum damage/hinder enemy, reduce HP total, rinse and repeat until the inevitable victory. Piling on more mechanical options doesn't address the underlying issues producing the boredom. 

D&D in its many iterations has always featured abstract combat. Static defenses, bags of hit point, etc. The design goal in doing so was in speed and ease of resolution. If we take a resolution system that was designed to be quick and dirty and fill entire game sessions with it, then we shouldn't be shocked that the repetition of a super simple process would eventually get boring. 

The answer then is not to rely on the mechanics to make the game interesting. The mechanics are the simplest of building blocks used to create the fun & interesting aspects of the game, which must come from the players. 

So mechanical aspects aside, what makes a game exciting to play? For me, uncertainty and risk create excitement no matter what the nuts and bolts of the rules are. Imagine playing a game of Texas Hold'em. In this game, there is no betting (eliminating risk), and the two cards dealt to each player are dealt face up (eliminating uncertainty). How interesting would the game be? The basic rules remain the same, and the winner is still the player with the best hand. I would be bored from the start. It is the uncertainty and the risk that make the game exciting. 

I look at D&D the same way. For me if the game is overly concerned with story continuity at the expense of real risk and uncertainty then its hard to muster up any real excitement. No matter intricate the mechanics are the game lacks the crucial elements that make play exciting. 

Step one to eliminating boredom is a group committed to wanting exciting game play. Once you have that, any rules you are using can be tweaked and adjusted to provide that.


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## Patrick McGill (Dec 17, 2015)

I've found that it is the environment that helps to switch things up when I run. Making sure that you're not fighting in convenient 50 x 50 square battlefields. Use elevations as well as put things in the battlefield a player (or an NPC) might use to their advantage. Lots of cover, maybe a large fiery brazier a player can tip over to spew hot coals over enemies.

I've found that grids are helpful if you aren't using those. Also make sure that you as the DM are not stopping your story to do combat. Make combat the story. Fighting should be a very dramatic moment in the game. It's a game of life and death at that point! Avoid speaking in simple game terms (the orc hits, the goblin misses, rolls a one.) Try to use natural story language to describe events. (You parry the orc's blow, the goblin's spear misses wide and he nearly trips, allowing you an opportunity to attack.)

Edit: Just to add, one thing I did was print out a list of common actions that players might not think about doing in combat. Things like grappling, pushing, etc that are standard actions. I don't have the books on me or I'd give you a page number, but they're listed in the PHB. If you find your players simply doing basic attacks over and over again, printing out a list of possible actions might inspire them to try them.


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## Huntsman57 (Dec 17, 2015)

iserith said:


> Risk of death in D&D 5e comes from attrition. The more challenges you face do in an adventuring day, the more the difficulty increases as resources dwindle.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




While certainly there is a sense of growing tension as your resources deplete and you're confronted with more and more challenges, a day like this for a party of adventurers should be an epic day of days. It's ridiculous that every day they are confronted with a never ending series of dangerous encounters.

Even after the party is worn down by numerous fights, we are still in the spot where not a single one of them likely has any realistic chance of having been killed because of the death saving throw system. It's either TPK or everybody lives most of the time.

At the end of the day there was something special, IMO, in 2E and 3.5 when you actually felt like any combat encounter, or hidden danger could spell the end of you if you were careless for just a moment, or even if you just got unlucky. It just made scenarios feel more visceral and realistic.


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## iserith (Dec 17, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> Level 1 characters can die very easy. I'd be more interested in seeing something like a MM vampire against level 4 or 5 characters.




I did that one, too.


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## Patrick McGill (Dec 17, 2015)

When my current group first fought a bugbear, the first time it hit one of them was a moment of beauty. It scared the living hell out of them. It was like a scene from Aliens. "Game over man, game over!"

Now, as a level 5 group, if I plop down a bugbear they still wince a bit. Pavlov's bugbear.


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## iserith (Dec 17, 2015)

Huntsman57 said:


> While certainly there is a sense of growing tension as your resources deplete and you're confronted with more and more challenges, a day like this for a party of adventurers should be an epic day of days. It's ridiculous that every day they are confronted with a never ending series of dangerous encounters.




It is the expectation set by the game as to what a party of characters can handle. See DMG, page 84. And it's not every _day_, but every _adventuring day_, that is, days where the PCs are actually adventuring. Six to eight medium to hard encounters, more if easier, fewer if harder. Do this and the risk of death will loom.



Huntsman57 said:


> Even after the party is worn down by numerous fights, we are still in the spot where not a single one of them likely has any realistic chance of having been killed because of the death saving throw system. It's either TPK or everybody lives most of the time.
> 
> At the end of the day there was something special, IMO, in 2E and 3.5 when you actually felt like any combat encounter, or hidden danger could spell the end of you if you were careless for just a moment, or even if you just got unlucky. It just made scenarios feel more visceral and realistic.




It sounds like you don't attack unconscious PCs.


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## hejtmane (Dec 17, 2015)

iserith said:


> It is the expectation set by the game as to what a party of characters can handle. See DMG, page 84. And it's not every _day_, but every _adventuring day_, that is, days where the PCs are actually adventuring. Six to eight medium to hard encounters, more if easier, fewer if harder. Do this and the risk of death will loom.
> 
> 
> 
> It sounds like you don't attack unconscious PCs.




I do but I am mean in fact the last encounter they where fighting trolls while the druid did a spell it was aoe the cleric took damage as while as the troll oh he failed his check and was knocked prone the troll was all over that having advantage etc hit him hard knocked him to 0 hit points lucky for him that ended the troll attacks and one of the guys paid enough attention ran over and gave him a heal on their action; probably the only reason he did not die


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## Celtavian (Dec 17, 2015)

iserith said:


> I did that one, too.




How did the actual fight go against the vampire? Did you run it with a party that failed to get to him in two minutes? And if so, how did that fight go?


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## iserith (Dec 17, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> How did the actual fight go against the vampire? Did you run it with a party that failed to get to him in two minutes? And if so, how did that fight go?




The PCs got slaughtered, basically. They failed to get to him in two minutes. Viktor, Selene, and Vlad took down Lora and Winston pretty quickly and they rose as vampire spawn. This overwhelmed Bulette who went down soon after. Lady Wilhelmina resigned herself to her fate to be by Vampenstein's side for an eternity of undeath and we rolled credits. Fun ending.


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## jayoungr (Dec 17, 2015)

EzekielRaiden said:


> My experience I have yet to see a 5e combat run meaningfully faster than 4e would. Out of a 3-4 hour session, we still spend 1-2 hours in combat. If we only get a single combat in a session, it might drop down to half an hour, but certainly no less than that.



So putting these three points of data together, am I correct in deducing that a typical 4E combat for you runs half an hour?  If so, I think your 4E experience is faster than most people's.  (Which wouldn't surprise me; you of all people probably know how to keep 4E combat humming along, since you both love the system and have played a lot of it.)



> We use a grid (via Roll20, so all the math stuff, distances, and grid positions are handled for us), but AFAICT no variant rules.



I play 5E over Roll20 with a grid as well, and we use the variant flanking rule (my players are coming from 3.5 and they really missed flanking, so we decided to add it back in).  Most of our big boss fights last an hour or so, with non-boss fights being shorter.  This is slowed down both by our tendency to joke around and by the fact that I'm not really proficient with Roll20.  Fights go a bit faster when we can get together face to face and actually play at a table.

Just a bit of anecdotal evidence, for what it's worth.



> I'm afraid I'm not quite clever/funny enough to come up with real zingers for _vicious mockery_ every turn.





Celtavian said:


> The bard is annoying the hell out of me too. I don't have any idea what round after round of _vicious mockery_ would look like in an adventure. Every bard is a quick-witted comedian?





dmnqwk said:


> When it comes to the Bard, if you choose to play every Bard as a comedian, that is a choice. I am playing my Bard as slightly more serious (though I cannot fully resist the lure of insiuating their lineage contains hamster dna or that a certain smell lingers on their parent's breath).



I'm playing my bard as a foul-mouthed little halfling whose insults just happen to resonate with the primal words of creation.  I got a Shakespearean insult generator book for Christmas last year, and every time I do VM, I pick one of those to hurl at the enemy.  There are free generators online too, for anyone else who wants to try this technique:  Here's a Shakespeare one ("Thou viperous motley-minded horse-drench!"), and here's a more piratical make-your-own version that you could print out and keep with your character sheet ("Ahoy, you pig-faced, jelly-boned freebooter!").


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## iserith (Dec 17, 2015)

When coming up with pithy lines for vicious mockery is a challenge, I just switch to descriptive roleplaying and say, for example, "I unleash a string of jibes so insulting that they can affect the mind of the recipient."


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## Celtavian (Dec 17, 2015)

jayoungr said:


> I'm playing my bard as a foul-mouthed little halfling whose insults just happen to resonate with the primal words of creation.  I got a Shakespearean insult generator book for Christmas last year, and every time I do VM, I pick one of those to hurl at the enemy.  There are free generators online too, for anyone else who wants to try this technique:  Here's a Shakespeare one ("Thou viperous motley-minded horse-drench!"), and here's a more piratical make-your-own version that you could print out and keep with your character sheet ("Ahoy, you pig-faced, jelly-boned freebooter!").




That's the problem. _Vicious mockery_ fits that type of character. I'm playing a bard that is a dancer and a singer. She doesn't jest at all and wasn't raised to jest. She is a very proper lady. I've decided her particular use of _vicious mockery_ is harsh song notes. Her Cutting Words is more of a song of defense. Her inspiration is uplifting music that resonates within the mind until the inspired uses it. It's a change of flavor that accomplishes the same thing. That's what I encourage to bards that don't feel like using the flavor text of the abilities exactly as written.


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## Celtavian (Dec 17, 2015)

iserith said:


> The PCs got slaughtered, basically. They failed to get to him in two minutes. Viktor, Selene, and Vlad took down Lora and Winston pretty quickly and they rose as vampire spawn. This overwhelmed Bulette who went down soon after. Lady Wilhelmina resigned herself to her fate to be by Vampenstein's side for an eternity of undeath and we rolled credits. Fun ending.




That's good to hear. I'll post my creature after I use it and let people know how it went. My players may come to this forum. I don't want them to know anything about the creature until I use it.


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## hejtmane (Dec 17, 2015)

Remathilis said:


> The DMG lists a few options:
> 
> Roll Initiative Each Round (w/Speed Factor): Adds randomness and uncertainty to combat, and demands greater choices of action (since high-weapon damage and higher-level spells now trade of effect for speed).
> 
> .




The other way instead of having to bore yourself with Dice roles and always having Dex builds with the advantage is use what some people call the popcorn method where the players decide who goes first and then that player picks who goes next and so on (or sometimes I pick who starts and then they go off that so it is changed up). Nothing gets more boring then rolling the dice for initiative every round when the rogue over there has a +4 to dex and you the wizard has a +1 gee yea great . I found the popcorn method kept players better engaged; players where able to use some strategy and hey they get to make the choice not me or some random dice role. Just my two cents

(I never understood why initiative did not go off the classes main stat)


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## Tony Vargas (Dec 17, 2015)

EzekielRaiden said:


> My experience of 5e, such as it is, has not illustrated that the combat system is particularly interesting, and can in fact get quite boring. People frequently tout the speed of combats, but I have yet to see a 5e combat run meaningfully faster



Speed is what saves it from being as boring as you might expect just from looking at the relative lack of options.  And, you really should be seeing that difference, because it's prettymuch hardwired in.  Attacks hit more often, saves fail more often, damage is higher, spells more powerful, and hps, at low level, anyway, are a lot lower.  A turn may or may not go faster depending on who's taking it with what character under what circumstances, but there should simply be fewer rounds in most combats.



> And, despite having taken community advice on the kind of character to play as a 4e-fan+5e-skeptic trying to give 5e a chance, I still feel like I have far too few choices.



Obviously, you should be playing a full caster.  How short of choices can you feel with a character who chooses mod+3 dailies to 'know' vs at most 2 or 3 and casts 2 or 3 three of them vs 1, while still getting multiple at-wills?  You still get to choose a Background, too.  And, though you don't get a feat at 1st level, you aren't paying any 'feat taxes,' either.  It seems like, as long as you want to play the right concept, you have a lot of choice relative to 4e.  Nothing like 3.5, but that's not where you're coming from.



> We've only gotten up to level 3, but combats are still mostly meat-grinder-y, leaving me terrified for my character's survival--a non-ideal situation when I'd specifically made the character for being decent-to-good at melee



By 3rd that should really be tapering off noticeably.  Give it to 5th, if you don't see a complete turn-around by then, something's wrong.  

But you do bring up one way that 5e combats can drag on a bit - and it's familiar to the point of nostalgic to those of us who played AD&D.  1st level characters are so fragile, and the new backgrounds/traits so encourage players to invest in their characters, that just letting them die like flies doesn't sit well with every DM.  You can't just dial down encounters to the point their 'safe,' that'd not just be comical, it'd give far too little experience.  What 5e does leave wide-open is 'ruling' in favor of the PCs' survival ('fudging') and that can make a combat that should have ended swiftly in a TPK drag on quite a bit.



> I habitually describe my character's actions, so there's no improvement to be gained there, though I'm afraid I'm not quite clever/funny enough to come up with real zingers for _vicious mockery_ every turn. Which, incidentally, _vicious mockery_ the vast majority of what I do, because I have so few spells to work with, I feel compelled to hoard them until they're truly needed--mostly _cure wounds_, or the occasional _faerie fire_.



My players had a lot of fun with vicious mockery - it probably accounted for most of the mechanically-inspired fun they had, at 1st level, now that I think of it.   But, yeah, focusing on the responsibility of the band-aid role will not provide you with a lot of fun.  Cast spells like you would dailies in 4e if you had that many of them:  whenever they'd be particularly helpful.  Use Cure Wounds only if getting someone back up is critically important at that moment.  Not only will it leave you more actions to have fun with, it'll run the party out of hps faster, so they'll rest sooner, and you'll re-charge your dailies.



> The most frustrating thing is that I feel like I am _supposed_ to have a substantial toolbox and lots of bells and whistles, but I'm either too terrified to use them, or can't justify the expenditure on so few threats (or so small a threat). For example, I'm playing a Dragonborn, but I have yet to use my dragon breath--because the only fight I've been in where it would've been worth using, I was bleeding on the floor by the end of the first round and never got the chance. I have allegedly powerful utility spells like _sleep_, but they succeed so rarely or so minimally, I can't justify spending the slot when it could instead be used to keep one of my allies from getting pasted.



You're definitely not managing your slots optimally.  Healing is best used to bring an ally up from zero, when their next potential action after you revive them will be vital to the party's success.  Anything less than that, and you can probably find a better use for the slot.  



> I don't dare get in melee range most of the time, because almost every time I have, I've been brutally punished for it



That's fine, casters are supposed to be melee-shy.



> Yeah, I can definitely agree with that. It's one of D&D's numerous "chicken-and-egg" problems, and also one of its "all solutions MUST be extreme"* problems, unfortunately. (Really, it's "all solutions in the past have been extreme, so an edition which mainly prioritizes dressing up traditional mores must follow suit." But that's not as pithy.)



Not sure I follow the parenthetical, there...  



> I...find the second option you suggest hard to comprehend. What does the events during other peoples' turns matter, for my enjoyment of what _*I'm *_doing? Whether or not the things they do are interesting/dangerous/boring is...entirely orthogonal to whether I am turned off by the combat



Staying engaged includes staying interested in the whole battle, including what everyone else is doing.  Though some groups can handle just playing on their turns, that's usually what gives a player a sense of combat being 'slow' or 'boring' (that and having to wait longer for their turn because everyone is having an individually-interesting turn).  If you can enjoy the whole game, not just your 1/4th or 6th slice of it, it's less boring.  In 5e, party composition matters.  If you're all playing complex 'interesting' casters there'll be more time between your turns, if you've got some quick-turn classes in there, you get a larger share of play time in proportion to them.



Celtavian said:


> It has been difficult for me. The CRs aren't much help. Some high CR creatures are pushovers, some lower CR creatures very tough. Encounter guidelines in the DMG aren't very helpful.



Coming from 3.5, you should be accustomed to compensating for comparatively rough CR guidelines.  The key is not to trust them, and to go ahead and adjust on the fly, since no amount of pre-planning is going to be perfect.  5e frees you to do that, since it seems to have effectively undercut the Cult of RAW that gripped the 3e-era community.  



> Getting the right level of challenge has been difficult in this edition since monsters seem to fall into the too weak to too deadly category that doesn't seem to have a great deal to do with CR.



It is, indeed, like the olden days.  More a matter of feel than numbers.



> It's a failure for anyone that wants to model a grittier wound system. That's why it's always required optional rules to incorporate those concepts. I don't think hit points model 'plot armor.'



Then they've always been a failure, for you, of course.  



Celtavian said:


> I'd love to see those numbers, but I imagine no way to get them other than memory.



iserith is very much a storyteller, I doubt he has any entirely-un-planned deaths in his campaigns, and don't doubt that the body count is little-impacted by edition.  5e certainly gives a DM more lattitude to play in that style than 3.5 did, or rather, community attitude now vs then, thus.



> In 1E and 2E getting snuffed was one missed saving throw away.
> 
> In 5E past the low levels, say 1-4 or 5, death is rather rare so far.



Of course, in 1e, saves got genuinely easier as you leveled up.



EzekielRaiden said:


> Unfortunately, our DM is big on playing RAW and without any frilly/extra rules, in part because he's somewhat new to 5e. That's the main reason why we started at level 1, for example. (Some of our players being new to TTRPGs in general also factored into that choice.)



Ooch. Not a great choice.  Level 1 is really, strangely, not for beginners - it's where the game is tough/gritty/deadly/frustrating or however you want to couch it.  Level 3 is a better place to start all around.  A little overwhelming to jump into a full caster at 3rd, maybe, but there are a few simpler (sub-)class choices.

And playing RAW 5e is almost a contradiction in terms.  The RAW tells the DM to ditch the RAW and make rulings, instead.



> Also, part of the reason for our combats being so meat-grinder-y is that his other 5e group regularly punches well above its weight, while ours struggles to punch _at_ weight. Game's currently on hiatus for the holidays, but he has repeatedly expressed his dismay at our group being unexpectedly easy to overwhelm. Thus far, his efforts to adjust have not quite felt effective, but it might be a problem of perspective for me.



5e really did 'Empower' the DM, but that does mean that the success/failure/excitement of the play experience is more on his shoulders than the system's.  FWIW.


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## dmnqwk (Dec 17, 2015)

Speaking of Bardic Insults, I insulted an Ogre in our last session with the words "You dumb, me laugh at you ha ha ha." because sometimes you have to tailor the insult to the target, and to an Ogre that seems to mock them more than referring to them as a "tempestuous canker blossom on the bowels of humanity." Sadly, however, he rolled an 18 for his save and decided to walk away from the fighter with a pike, and over to me where I proceeded to get smacked down to 1 hit point...

Using Roll20, our combats don't take too long because most of us have macros set up to help with things - my cutting words macro, for instance, is a one-click action that takes a couple of seconds while I'm adding insult to (avoid) injury. Having fewer dice to roll definitely speeds up combat, and in the case of 5e it's done a decent job of eliminating how many dice you need to roll all the time (the one exception being 5e loves D4s too much)


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## jayoungr (Dec 17, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> That's the problem. _Vicious mockery_ fits that type of character. I'm playing a bard that is a dancer and a singer. She doesn't jest at all and wasn't raised to jest. She is a very proper lady. I've decided her particular use of _vicious mockery_ is harsh song notes. Her Cutting Words is more of a song of defense. Her inspiration is uplifting music that resonates within the mind until the inspired uses it. It's a change of flavor that accomplishes the same thing. That's what I encourage to bards that don't feel like using the flavor text of the abilities exactly as written.



I think that's an awesome solution.  (BTW, my halfling bard _also_ happens to sing beautifully--he's a former choirboy--but he has the urchin background, which is where he picked up his more colorful phrases.)

Someone should make a Jane Austen Insult Generator for the more prim-and-proper types who might want to use the cantrip!


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## iserith (Dec 17, 2015)

Tony Vargas said:


> iserith is very much a storyteller, I doubt he has any entirely-un-planned deaths in his campaigns, and don't doubt that the body count is little-impacted by edition.  5e certainly gives a DM more lattitude to play in that style than 3.5 did, or rather, community attitude now vs then, thus.




Unplanned deaths are definitely a thing in my games, to the extent that I don't give a single flumph if a character dies. I just try to plan ahead for what comes next, generally in the form of having backup characters ready to go so the player's participation doesn't take a hit. I care about the players in this regard, not the characters.

The way I generally design things is to make fighting your way through a challenge "hard mode." If you take the time to engage in exploration and social interaction, you can find ways or things to reduce the difficulty. Or there will typically be alternate goals to achieve victory. I pull no punches otherwise and never fudge. When I decide that rules and dice are in coming into play, I abide by their results. (Otherwise I wouldn't have rolled in the first place.)

I _have _had it where players want to kill off a character because that's what would make for the best story, however. And this may be more what you were referring to. This doesn't happen too often though.


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## Tony Vargas (Dec 17, 2015)

iserith said:


> I _have _had it where players want to kill off a character because that's what would make for the best story, however. And this may be more what you were referring to. This doesn't happen too often though.



That's the sort of thing I was expecting, given what I recall hearing from you over time, yes.  I'm a little surprised at the pull-no-punches/never-fudge stuff, but I'll take your word for it.


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## iserith (Dec 17, 2015)

Tony Vargas said:


> That's the sort of thing I was expecting, given what I recall hearing from you over time, yes.  I'm a little surprised at the pull-no-punches/never-fudge stuff, but I'll take your word for it.




It's just part of my agenda - if I'm going to engage the system to determine an outcome, I'm not then going to reverse the decision the dice have made. Seems pointless to do otherwise.

As for pulling no punches, I like to run and play in challenging games. The monsters are going to come hard at you and then go after your family.


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## robus (Dec 17, 2015)

Tony Vargas said:


> Ooch. Not a great choice.  Level 1 is really, strangely, not for beginners - it's where the game is tough/gritty/deadly/frustrating or however you want to couch it.  Level 3 is a better place to start all around.  A little overwhelming to jump into a full caster at 3rd, maybe, but there are a few simpler (sub-)class choices.




I'm surprised you say this, Tony? Level 1 is definitely for beginners and as such the encounters should pedal softly. There's no real need to throw them in the deep end. The first set of encounters in LMoP are interesting but I don't think they're particularly hard. The PC deaths from that chapter I'd wager are pretty minimal? And they only need 300 XP to get to level 2.

But sure, if the DM is not prepared to ease players in at level 1 then yeah it's instant death. But why would a DM do that?


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## Tony Vargas (Dec 17, 2015)

robus said:


> I'm surprised you say this, Tony? Level 1 is definitely for beginners and as such the encounters should pedal softly.



The implementation of the lowest levels is one of the areas 5e has really fallen short of my hopes for the edition.  Yes, it's intuitive that 1st level should be for beginners.  But, in a few ways it's mechanically inappropriate for new players - especially if the whole group is new, vs an experienced DM easing them into it.  For instance, 5e death & dying rules really provide quite a comfortable safety-net for PCs - but not at 1st level, when instant death is very much on the table.  It's odd, but it's easy to fix, most simply, by not starting at 1st level.  And, yes, you can very carefully soft-pedal encounters, too.  

The one plus side I see to 5e's version of low-level play is that it makes the game seem much harder and deadlier than it actually is.  Set player expectations that way with their first experiences, and you don't have to worry so much about creating a sense of jeopardy later, which lets 5e get away with the kind of 'too easy encounters'/'too weak monsters' you hear people complain about, but which it needs to keep combats fast.


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## Huntsman57 (Dec 17, 2015)

iserith said:


> It is the expectation set by the game as to what a party of characters can handle. See DMG, page 84. And it's not every _day_, but every _adventuring day_, that is, days where the PCs are actually adventuring. Six to eight medium to hard encounters, more if easier, fewer if harder. Do this and the risk of death will loom.
> 
> 
> 
> It sounds like you don't attack unconscious PCs.




Most enemies would make their priority to deal with the very much alive threats first unless it's a special situation. If the DM regularly had its NPCs prioritize unconscious adversaries over the ones swinging swords at them, the players wouldn't know why to be mad first, because it made no tactical sense or because they were now dead because it made no tactical sense. Actually that would be an "insult to injury" scenario I believe...


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## iserith (Dec 17, 2015)

Huntsman57 said:


> Most enemies would make their priority to deal with the very much alive threats first unless it's a special situation. If the DM regularly had its NPCs prioritize unconscious adversaries over the ones swinging swords at them, the players wouldn't know why to be mad first, because it made no tactical sense or because they were now dead because it made no tactical sense. Actually that would be an "insult to injury" scenario I believe...




Reasons abound for unconscious PCs to be the target of attacks. They could be included in an AOE. An enemy might try to use attacking the PC as leverage to get the other still-standing PCs to surrender. A monstrosity or undead might just want to chow down. An NPC might be so full of rage or evil that mutilating the body of a fallen foe is a priority over the other PCs. And so on.

I just don't think it's a fair criticism to say that D&D 5e's mechanics make it less deadly than other systems if one is willing to take a perfectly viable means of threatening the PCs off the table. I think this is especially so when there are rules specifically for taking damage at 0 hit points (counts as failed death save).


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## Huntsman57 (Dec 18, 2015)

iserith said:


> Reasons abound for unconscious PCs to be the target of attacks. They could be included in an AOE. An enemy might try to use attacking the PC as leverage to get the other still-standing PCs to surrender. A monstrosity or undead might just want to chow down. An NPC might be so full of rage or evil that mutilating the body of a fallen foe is a priority over the other PCs. And so on.
> 
> I just don't think it's a fair criticism to say that D&D 5e's mechanics make it less deadly than other systems if one is willing to take a perfectly viable means of threatening the PCs off the table. I think this is especially so when there are rules specifically for taking damage at 0 hit points (counts as failed death save).




Yes, aside from the stray AOE, or maybe something lacking a sense of self preservation like a demon on the prime without fear of permadeath and more interested in causing harm than surviving...or possibly something with an extreme degree of aggression relative to a very low intelligence. Anything with a 5+ intelligence that can feel pain and die and is sane is simply not going to attack a downed creature as a priority. The small remainder? Maybe they would, and maybe they wouldn't.

A failed save...it should be a coup de grace. A failed save isn't particularly meaningful since you're statistically more likely to make than fail a save, the downed PC, odds are, will made up the difference next round and succeed. If you were low on hitpoints in prior editions and were hit too hard, you would go under -9 and you would be outrights dead instantly, or at a low negative in hitpoints and the act of saving your life became an urgent matter for your team. There are very few spots where you can blink and be dead in 5E. I don't have my DMG handy, but are there even any save or die effects in 5E? Every rule in 5E is designed to be more carebear than prior editions.

I just don't understand how anyone who played 2E or 3.5 could argue there is any comparison in lethality between the systems. In the older editions character deaths inevitably happened throughout a campaign from time to time. It just doesn't seem to happen in 5E...again, unless the party is at the point of being TPKd. Having just one character make a wrong move and suddenly end up pushing up daisies before they can be aided by a teammate or more likely just stabilize on his own (that last part is utterly ridiculous) is simply something that doesn't happen in 5E.


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## Tony Vargas (Dec 18, 2015)

iserith said:


> I just don't think it's a fair criticism to say that D&D 5e's mechanics make it less deadly than other systems if one is willing to take a perfectly viable means of threatening the PCs off the table.



It's not like you couldn't attack downed PCs in prior eds, either.  In those editions, there was a -hp death threashold, and those negative hps added up, in 5e you get a failed death save, instead.  So, at least two hits while you're down to finish you, if you haven't already failed a death save, 3 if you're constantly making your saves.  In 1e, if the DM didn't have you die outright at 0, you died at -10, and it's not like it's hard to do 10 hps in one hit.  2e, IIRC, and 3e automatically used the -10 hp threshold, too.  So they're all deadlier than 5e when you're down and the enemy is beating on you...

OTOH, 5e's instant death rule is negative your hps, which, if you're 1st, just might be less than 10.  So you can be insta-ganked more easily in 5e, at 1st level (maybe even 2nd if your CON sucks).  FREX, a 1st level magic-user would have had 4 hps in 3e-and-earlier, and could go to -10 before dying (for a total of 14 hps between him and instant death), while in 5e a 6hp 1st-level wizard is only 12 hps away from instant death even when fully-healed.  OK, 2hps isn't a /big/ difference, but still, you can so totally die in one hit. The same applies as long as you have fewer than 10 hps, so apart from the tougher melee types, everyone dies easier in 5e than any prior ed, _at first level_.   
That's gotta count for something in terms of being 'deadly.'


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## Huntsman57 (Dec 18, 2015)

Tony Vargas said:


> everyone dies easier in 5e than any prior ed, _at first level_.
> That's gotta count for something in terms of being 'deadly.'




I'm actually bewildered as to why 5E even bothered with the instant death rule. As soon as you gain a few levels the prospect of taking enough damage to actually 1 shot you becomes rather absurdly bad unless you're facing something that you're way too low level to fight. Bravo to 5E for at least putting one instant life or death decision into the hands of the player...even if it is an obvious one. Ancient dragon? Maybe I shouldn't fight it...


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## Tony Vargas (Dec 18, 2015)

Huntsman57 said:


> I'm actually bewildered as to why 5E even bothered with the instant death rule. As soon as you gain a few levels the prospect of taking enough damage to actually 1 shot you becomes rather absurdly bad



Yeah.  "Let's have a really big, soft safety net - except for new 'apprentice' characters, who can just die like flies..."  ???  

The only thing I can think of is that it sets new player expectations to "wow this game is deadly," when it's really _not_, outside of that low-level corner case.  But, first impressions are powerful, so from then on the game is relieved of the need to create any sense of challenge or jeopardy.  Maybe?  Or too much double-think?  :shrug:


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## devincutler (Dec 18, 2015)

I am playing a battlerager with 3 levels of fighter (champion) for the critical hits.

While at first it might seem I have no choices in combat but rolling a D20, this is entirely wrong. Let's see what this non spellcasting class has as combat choices (including GWM feat):

1. Swing great axe

2. Rage (bonus action)

3. Reckless attack (a very important high risk high reward option available every single round)

4. Great Weapon Master "power attack" (-5 to attack, +10 to damage) available every single round

5. Extra Dash action (bonus action while raging)

6. Spiked armour bonus attack (bonus action while raging)

7. Grapple (causing spiked armour damage while raging)

8. Second wind (bonus action, 1 per short rest)

9. Action surge (1 per short rest)

10. Bonus greataxe attack on a critical or bringing opponent to zero hp (bonus action)

As you can see, I have 10 different options to consider, with 5 of them competing for my bonus action slot. This doesn't consider other options like using an item, dodging, or shoving.

Every class has a nice array of things they can do in combat aside from simply rolling a D20 to make an attack. The only exception is the Fighter (champion) path, and that was specifically made simple to allow newbies to be able to step right up and play a character of any level.


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## devincutler (Dec 18, 2015)

Tony Vargas said:


> The same applies as long as you have fewer than 10 hps, so apart from the tougher melee types, everyone dies easier in 5e than any prior ed, _at first level_.
> That's gotta count for something in terms of being 'deadly.'




This is so false I am taken aback. Than in ANY prior edition? Really?

Original D&D. Magic-User. 1st level. Roll a d4. Did you roll a 1? Do you have a Con less than 15? Welcome to 1 hp and you DIE if you lose it. Thanks for playing. Come again.

As I recall, even in 1st edition you died easier as a 1st level wizard than you do in 5th edition.


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## devincutler (Dec 18, 2015)

iserith said:


> Reasons abound for unconscious PCs to be the target of attacks. They could be included in an AOE. An enemy might try to use attacking the PC as leverage to get the other still-standing PCs to surrender. A monstrosity or undead might just want to chow down. An NPC might be so full of rage or evil that mutilating the body of a fallen foe is a priority over the other PCs. And so on.
> 
> I just don't think it's a fair criticism to say that D&D 5e's mechanics make it less deadly than other systems if one is willing to take a perfectly viable means of threatening the PCs off the table. I think this is especially so when there are rules specifically for taking damage at 0 hit points (counts as failed death save).




There is almost no reason to attack downed PCs unless they keep getting up again. Remember, most NPCs and monsters have their own lives and are not willing to sacrifice their own to take out a foe. Even hungry creatures tend to desire to eat a meal in peace. As well, a captured enemy is far more useful than a dead one. It can be tortured for information, sacrificed to a deity at an altar, made sport of, held for ransom, et al. There is really, aside from a final hopeless lashing out or a foe who keeps re-entering combat, to attack a downed foe.


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## devincutler (Dec 18, 2015)

Huntsman57 said:


> I just don't understand how anyone who played 2E or 3.5 could argue there is any comparison in lethality between the systems. In the older editions character deaths inevitably happened throughout a campaign from time to time. It just doesn't seem to happen in 5E...again, unless the party is at the point of being TPKd. Having just one character make a wrong move and suddenly end up pushing up daisies before they can be aided by a teammate or more likely just stabilize on his own (that last part is utterly ridiculous) is simply something that doesn't happen in 5E.




And even if you die...so what? Revivify is a 3rd level spell and coming back from death now doesn't even cost you a level...just gold and we all know there is almost nothing to spend money on in 5th edition. Aside from TPKs, after 4th level death is absolutely meaningless in 5th edition.


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## Tony Vargas (Dec 18, 2015)

devincutler said:


> Than in ANY prior edition? Really?



As long as the -10 'death door' option was in use in 1e, sure.  Not so sure about 0D&D, no death door option back then, IIRC, so it can claim deadlierness in that sense, in that limited corner case, if you like.  



> Original D&D. Magic-User. 1st level. Roll a d4.



Or not, there were a lot of starting-hp variants back then.  Max was common, as it is in 5e.  5e has variants too, of course, but they could (inconceivably) include rolling at 1st level (sucky as it would be to instantly die upon taking 2hps).

But, yeah, if your CON penalty and/or roll made you bump up against the 1hp minimum in 1e, you were 11 hps away from death instead of 12 for the 6 hp 5e wizard I was talking about.  Of course, add a CON penalty, even just an 8 CON for a -1, and your 5e wizard is 10 hps away from instant death.  

So, yeah, 'fraid so.

Of course, it more than makes up for it as you go.  Everyone gets full CON bonus to every HD and gets a HD every level straight through 20th...

...but, right at first, weirdly lethal.  It's like a sheep in wolf's clothing or something.


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## Huntsman57 (Dec 18, 2015)

devincutler said:


> I am playing a battlerager with 3 levels of fighter (champion) for the critical hits.
> 
> While at first it might seem I have no choices in combat but rolling a D20, this is entirely wrong. Let's see what this non spellcasting class has as combat choices (including GWM feat):
> 
> ...




I love that about 5E. I'm playing a Battlemaster/Abjurer. In addition to my regular attacks I can use my bonus action to feint, misty step, or 2nd wind while I can use my reaction to cast shield, feather fall, absorb elements, counterspell, parry, or riposte. At the same time I'm managing my arcane ward. I love bonus actions and reactions..so many options! I've got my other spells on top of that along with action surge.


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## Huntsman57 (Dec 18, 2015)

devincutler said:


> death is absolutely meaningless in 5th edition.




Indeed. Of course I can always house rule the crap out of this aspect of the game. Perhaps we should remove spells like Revivify, and make a single failed death save mean instant death. In addition to that, instituting 2E "Combat and Tactics" and Skills and Powers" crits would be a nice touch. I would probably also consider reducing the hitpoints that can be recovered per hit die from a short rest and put a cap on the hitpoints that can be recovered in this way so that even after bandaging yourself up you're still injured. I might also re-introduce certain save or suck effects. What I'm most tentative about is how to change the death from massive damage rule so that it's a factor without being too lethal.


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## Tony Vargas (Dec 18, 2015)

Huntsman57 said:


> What I'm most tentative about is how to change the death from massive damage rule so that it's a factor without being too lethal.



You could make it -10 or -CON_score_ instead of -hp.  That'd make it less deadly at very low level, but less cushy at high level.


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## AaronOfBarbaria (Dec 18, 2015)

Tony Vargas said:


> ...but, right at first, weirdly lethal.  It's like a sheep in wolf's clothing or something.



I don't think 5th edition is actually quite as "weirdly lethal" as it seems to someone who has some prior knowledge of D&D versions besides 5th, or at least I don't think anyone that actually reads and understands the various bits of advice and guidance that 5th edition gives on establishing and running encounters is going to find quite as much lethality as folks coming to 5th edition with confidence that they know how to run a game are finding.

Of course, that is likely me over-estimating the ability of brand-new DMs to counter-balance how most folks underestimate them... and possibly projecting that because I've not had a single character death at all, let alone the "well, something crit so someone died" that other version of the game made a common occurrence no matter the level of the characters involved, that other folks having characters die (unexpectedly, at least) are doing something that they don't have to be doing to cause those events.


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## devincutler (Dec 18, 2015)

Huntsman57 said:


> Indeed. Of course I can always house rule the crap out of this aspect of the game. Perhaps we should remove spells like Revivify, and make a single failed death save mean instant death. In addition to that, instituting 2E "Combat and Tactics" and Skills and Powers" crits would be a nice touch. I would probably also consider reducing the hitpoints that can be recovered per hit die from a short rest and put a cap on the hitpoints that can be recovered in this way so that even after bandaging yourself up you're still injured. I might also re-introduce certain save or suck effects. What I'm most tentative about is how to change the death from massive damage rule so that it's a factor without being too lethal.




I use the same rule I used in my 3.5 campaign. It's called The Touch of Mergurr (Mergurr is my world's God of Death). 

Every time you come back from the dead, your soul becomes more and more desirous to spend its eternity in the afterlife, and you gain 1 point in Touch of Mergurr. In order to resist the allure of the afterlife, you must make a check against the Touch of Mergurr. Failure of this check means your soul is not willing or able to come back to the body and that person is permanently dead.

The DC for the Touch of Mergurr check starts at DC 5. You add your Con, Wis, and Cha mods to the check. However, a 1 is always a failure, 20 is always a success. This check can NEVER be modified by any ability, feat, spell or item, including those that raise your stats. Only inherent bonuses (if playing 3.5) count. For each point of Touch of Mergurr you have, the DC increases by 1.

So, a PC with a 16 Wis, 14 Con, and 20 Cha will have a net +10 modifier. That means he will come back on anything but a 1 until he has died 7 times. 

This rule makes death survivable, but still something to be avoided because you can always roll that 1 and tear up your character sheet.


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## iserith (Dec 18, 2015)

Huntsman57 said:


> Yes, aside from the stray AOE, or maybe something lacking a sense of self preservation like a demon on the prime without fear of permadeath and more interested in causing harm than surviving...or possibly something with an extreme degree of aggression relative to a very low intelligence. Anything with a 5+ intelligence that can feel pain and die and is sane is simply not going to attack a downed creature as a priority. The small remainder? Maybe they would, and maybe they wouldn't.






devincutler said:


> There is almost no reason to attack downed PCs unless they keep getting up again. Remember, most NPCs and monsters have their own lives and are not willing to sacrifice their own to take out a foe. Even hungry creatures tend to desire to eat a meal in peace. As well, a captured enemy is far more useful than a dead one. It can be tortured for information, sacrificed to a deity at an altar, made sport of, held for ransom, et al. There is really, aside from a final hopeless lashing out or a foe who keeps re-entering combat, to attack a downed foe.




So I think I see the issue at play here.

You _don't_ want to attack dying PCs, so you imagine reasons why monsters won't do it.

I _do_ want to attack dying PCs, so I imagine reasons why they might.

Which approach makes the game deadlier and imparts a greater sense of risk to the players?


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## Tony Vargas (Dec 18, 2015)

AaronOfBarbaria said:


> I don't think 5th edition is actually quite as "weirdly lethal" as it seems to someone who has some prior knowledge of D&D versions besides 5th



Sure.  To completely new players it might just seem lethal (that first impression thing) and even when they realize it gets very survivable at higher level, well that's just how it is.  It's only when you examine it as longtime gamer and compare it to other editions and to presumed design objectives that it seems 'weird' that it'd mechanically be at it's most lethal when played at a level you'd expect novices to start with.


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## devincutler (Dec 18, 2015)

iserith said:


> So I think I see the issue at play here.
> 
> You _don't_ want to attack dying PCs, so you imagine reasons why monsters won't do it.
> 
> ...




Let me try to rephrase what you are saying:

Me: I try to play my NPCs and monsters as if they are not cardboard props for my PCs and try to have them react intelligently. That results in a high degree of non-lethality and not attacking downed PCs usually.

You: I want to kill my PCs and so I am willing to forego realism in order to do that.

There....does that clarify it for you?


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## iserith (Dec 18, 2015)

devincutler said:


> Let me try to rephrase what you are saying:
> 
> Me: I try to play my NPCs and monsters as if they are not cardboard props for my PCs and try to have them react intelligently. That results in a high degree of non-lethality and not attacking downed PCs usually.
> 
> ...




Perhaps that clarifies how you see things, but it is inaccurate as far as my viewpoint goes. "Rephrasing" means expressing the same idea in an alternate way, so should I take that to mean I got your viewpoint correct in the post you quoted?

As to clarifying _my _viewpoint, given it is a game based on imagination, I can come up with any number of reasonable fictional justifications for my NPCs and monsters to attack dying PCs. On the fly even. This helps me achieve a goal of imparting that feeling of risk that some suggest is lacking in D&D 5e.


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## AaronOfBarbaria (Dec 18, 2015)

Tony Vargas said:


> Sure.  To completely new players it might just seem lethal (that first impression thing)...



Or, the alternative I was actually presenting: It might not seem that lethal at all because their 1st level characters are facing off against individually weak enemies (i.e. kobolds) and if there is one side outnumbering the other it is the PCs outnumbering their opponents rather than the other way around, and it's statistically probable that they reach 2nd level without anyone having died yet (though some characters are likely to have found themselves on their backs here and there).


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## Huntsman57 (Dec 18, 2015)

iserith said:


> So I think I see the issue at play here.
> 
> You _don't_ want to attack dying PCs, so you imagine reasons why monsters won't do it.
> 
> ...




Your job as the DM isn't to try to kill or to try to save your players character. Your job as a dm is to create a living breathing world while being an impartial adjudicator. If you are doing your job correctly in 5e, then the system isn't threatening enough.


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## iserith (Dec 18, 2015)

Huntsman57 said:


> Your job as the DM isn't to try to kill or to try to save your players character. Your job as a dm is to create a living breathing world while being an impartial adjudicator. If you are doing your job correctly in 5e, then the system isn't threatening enough.




You didn't answer my question though. I'll ask it a different way: Which approach makes for a more threatening game?


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## Huntsman57 (Dec 18, 2015)

iserith said:


> You didn't answer my question though. I'll ask it a different way: Which approach makes for a more threatening game?




Clearly if you're dming in a way that most would criticize as incorrect by trying to kill your players..of course it will be more lethal. There's no need to ask questions with obvious answers. The question is if we're unhappy with the system's lethality, how do we respond? Your answer is that you prefer a sadistic rather than impartial style of dming and don't put a premium on realistic NPC behavior. For my part I would prefer to retain the integrity of the DM's role and instead amend the healing and dying aspect of the rules of what is otherwise a great system.


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## iserith (Dec 18, 2015)

Huntsman57 said:


> Clearly if you're dming in a way that most would criticize as incorrect by trying to kill your players..of course it will be more lethal.




I wasn't aware there was an incorrect way to DM (edit: short of the group not achieving the goals of play - having a good time together and creating an exciting, memorable story during play). And I'm not trying to kill my players - my monsters are trying to kill their characters. I as DM make sure the monsters want to do that so as to bring about the threat that some of you are saying is lacking. And I'm using the tools the game gives us to do it.



Huntsman57 said:


> The question is if we're unhappy with the system's lethality, how do we respond? Your answer is that you prefer a sadistic rather than impartial style of dming and don't put a premium on realistic NPC behavior.




Incorrect. My answer is to use the tools they gave us to keep the game lethal. The same tools you seem to take off the table, then in the same post complain that the system isn't threatening. And I would argue that the DM's impartiality is in regard to the application of the rules. Monsters do as we please for whatever fictional reason we can imagine.



Huntsman57 said:


> For my part I would prefer to retain the integrity of the DM's role and instead amend the healing and dying aspect of the rules of what is otherwise a great system.




I see nothing about the "integrity of the DM's role" being diminished by making use of the tools we're given to threaten the characters.


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## The Human Target (Dec 18, 2015)

Yes, yes it is.


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## Argyle King (Dec 18, 2015)

Thus far,  I've only regularly been on the player side of the table, but my perception is this:

HP being the primary way for enemies to advance results in some battles dragging at high levels. 

At mid to high tier play, 5E combat appears very swingy; either a combat is a cakewalk or the enemy trounces the PCs.

Ranged combat seems to benefit greatly from the low AC & high damage output style of 5E foes; you take advantage of a weakness rather easily while avoiding an enemy's strength completely. 

There are a lot of options for a caster to bypass HP entirely and end a fight very quickly. 


Boring?  That's hard for me to answer.   I'd say that I enjoy 5E, but it's a lot more shallow than I'd prefer.   I'm starting to feel a little burned out, and that seems a bit odd so early.  Maybe part of it is the lack of granularity and choice; occasionally,  combat seems to highlight that.


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## Eejit (Dec 18, 2015)

Huntsman57 said:


> I'm actually bewildered as to why 5E even bothered with the instant death rule. As soon as you gain a few levels the prospect of taking enough damage to actually 1 shot you becomes rather absurdly bad unless you're facing something that you're way too low level to fight.




There could be environmental hazards/traps which would do enough damage for instant death even at mid-high levels.


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## EzekielRaiden (Dec 18, 2015)

jayoungr said:


> So putting these three points of data together, am I correct in deducing that a typical 4E combat for you runs half an hour?  If so, I think your 4E experience is faster than most people's.  (Which wouldn't surprise me; you of all people probably know how to keep 4E combat humming along, since you both love the system and have played a lot of it.)




I'd say it falls between 30 and 45 minutes, yeah. Close enough to 5e that I haven't noticed a difference. I actually haven't played nearly as much 4e as I'd like--only about twice as many sessions of it as 5e, in fact. The longest fight I've had clocked in somewhere around an hour and a half, two hours--and that was because we (somewhat foolishly) alerted an entire fort's worth of small, separate combats so they got mashed together into a single huge beat-'em-up. It was tense and exciting; I almost went down a couple times, but our Bard kept my Paladin up, and we laid down the pain. The DM was actually quite pleased to not have to go through a bunch of disconnected trash fights, though he only told me that after the fact, of course! 



Tony Vargas said:


> Speed is what saves it from being as boring <snip>...there should simply be fewer rounds in most combats.




Perhaps that's part of the problem. No fight I've been in has been less than five rounds in 5e. Oftentimes, this is because we lose at least one party member within the first round or two, which is why I feel I must focus so much on healing. Admittedly, we have only just hit level 3 and that _is_ a breakpoint for many classes...but when we still have people dropped (or, in the Druid's case, thrown out of wild shape) in the first or second round after the DM openly tells us he's going to try to pitch us some softballs...well, it's hard to believe that one more level will make _that_ much of a difference.



> Obviously, you should be playing a full caster.  How short of choices can you feel with a character who chooses mod+3 dailies to 'know' vs at most 2 or 3 and casts 2 or 3 three of them vs 1, while still getting multiple at-wills?  You still get to choose a Background, too.  And, though you don't get a feat at 1st level, you aren't paying any 'feat taxes,' either.  It seems like, as long as you want to play the right concept, you have a lot of choice relative to 4e.  Nothing like 3.5, but that's not where you're coming from.




Well...I kind of am playing a full caster? The Bard _is_ a full caster in 5e, isn't it...?

Background thus far has had zero influence on the campaign--though technically speaking it's about to have a huge one. Our target turns out to have been a fiend disguised in human form, and has made off to hell with a sacred object of the city's patron goddess (thus dooming the town to ruin until it is returned). Being only (freshly) 3rd level characters, getting to hell is normally out of our league...but my character's Academy contacts were explicitly called out as a good thing to pursue if we want to follow/track this guy down. So I guess it's going to matter in the future, but for now that's literally the _only_ time Background will have mattered for our group.



> By 3rd that should really be tapering off noticeably.  Give it to 5th, if you don't see a complete turn-around by then, something's wrong.




Honestly, unless my character dies again (the frustratingly high chance of that continues to cast an unfortunate pall over my experience of 5e), I'll be sticking with the game until it ends, whether by wrapping up or falling apart. Due diligence--giving 5e a full, honest commitment, not just a token effort--is a part of it, but it's more just that I'm gaming with friends, and would rather not say "screw this, I'm done" unless something actually "bad" happens.



> What 5e does leave wide-open is 'ruling' in favor of the PCs' survival ('fudging') and that can make a combat that should have ended swiftly in a TPK drag on quite a bit.




Fudging doesn't really work over Roll20 though--we can all see the dice. Our DM _has_ "ignored" certain monster features (e.g. he checked a particular demon's spell, saw that one cast would put anyone who failed the save to 0, and decided "nope, not casting that"), but other than being exceedingly gracious about bringing my character back from the dead, has avoided any "screw the book, I make the rules" behavior as far as I can tell. Well, I guess he's also said that levelling up gave us some of the benefits of a long rest when we reached level 2, but I dunno if that counts?



> But, yeah, focusing on the responsibility of the band-aid role will not provide you with a lot of fun.  Cast spells like you would dailies in 4e if you had that many of them:  whenever they'd be particularly helpful.  Use Cure Wounds only if getting someone back up is critically important at that moment.  Not only will it leave you more actions to have fun with, it'll run the party out of hps faster, so they'll rest sooner, and you'll re-charge your dailies.




Yeah...about that...the DM is not exactly _stingy_ with long rests, but definitely expects us to play a "full day" even if we only get into one fight. And, as said above, a fight where nobody's down, or damn close to it, by the second round is a miracle, I don't believe I've seen that happen at all the whole campaign. I even missed a session where the same happened--some spiders apparently screwed the party all to hell, and my _vicious mockeries_, done by the DM on my behalf, apparently saved the day). Perhaps I just have a too-heavily "make sure everyone can participate"-focused mentality; taking such a..."mercenary" attitude (not the best word, but the only one that comes to mind) about my allies lying in the dirt doesn't sit well with me, even if it actually would be better for the party in the long run.



> That's fine, casters are supposed to be melee-shy.




Though profoundly frustrating, when I went for 16 Str and have specifically built for being a grappler, which (Valor) Bards are supposed to be good at...



> Not sure I follow the parenthetical, there...




Spoilered for length and digressing from the main topic.
[sblock]5e, explicitly, prioritizes a "traditional" look and feel. In every edition except 4e, the approach to choice and variety for characters has been, "if you wanted choice, you should've played a caster! Why are you playing a Fighter if you like choices?!" and "if you _don't_ like having lots of choices, why are you playing a Wizard?!" In other words, the traditional approach has been the extreme of giving casters most/all of the bells and whistles, and giving the non-casters nothing beyond their imaginations. (And, for everyone else: please don't bother bringing up how powerful the imagination can make you, it's not an argument that will result in anything useful added to the thread, and I'm 99.99% certain you won't change my opinions any more than the last two dozen attempts did.) 4e also took an extreme, non-traditional solution: "EVERYONE has lots of choices! What do you mean you don't like making choices?!" It tried to back away from that with the Essentials subclasses, but I'm not really sure how well that worked.

I truly wish that 5e had taken a much more middle-of-the-road approach, an approach like the ones talked up early in the playtest, where a Wizard could choose to be about as simple as the low-complexity Fighter, and a Fighter could choose to be close in complexity to a typical Wizard. Really, I would've liked "the range of complexity found in the whole of 4e, Original and Essentials both," but that definitely didn't happen. I suppose you could argue that 5e did take a bit of both sides, but IMO taking the _worst_ of both rather than the best. It's still, to use your term, "choiceless non-casters" vs. choice-saturated casters, but now we have the oh-_so_-lovely "oh, you want choices? Here, YOU CAN BE A CASTER TOO" thing, almost doubling down on the "casting is for choices, non-casting is for if you abhor choices."

Heck, even the Warlock is like that--the choices are just ones you have to make at character creation/development rather than on the battlefield. (I still haven't gotten over the irony of the supposedly-"simpler" caster being dramatically _more_ dependent on optimization than the supposedly-"complex" ones.)

My experience of 5e, such as it is, has been that it hews to whatever extremes were taken in prior editions. Occasionally it incorporates something more modern, e.g. at-will abilities, but always in a way that more closely resembles the old extreme rather than the new one (only casters have at-will abilities).[/sblock]



> In 5e, party composition matters.  If you're all playing complex 'interesting' casters there'll be more time between your turns, if you've got some quick-turn classes in there, you get a larger share of play time in proportion to them.




Moon Druid, Devotion Paladin, Tempest Cleric, soon-to-be-Beast Master Ranger, and myself (Valor Bard). Often, a self-debate about whether to use a spell slot comes up for every character but the Ranger, and that's mostly because the Ranger's player doesn't really like spells that much (but likes the "spell-less" Ranger even less). But then they end up just regular-attacking anyway, or in the Cleric's case, attack + that bonus action storm thingy.



> Ooch. Not a great choice.  Level 1 is really, strangely, not for beginners - it's where the game is tough/gritty/deadly/frustrating or however you want to couch it.  Level 3 is a better place to start all around.  A little overwhelming to jump into a full caster at 3rd, maybe, but there are a few simpler (sub-)class choices.
> 
> And playing RAW 5e is almost a contradiction in terms.  The RAW tells the DM to ditch the RAW and make rulings, instead.
> 
> 5e really did 'Empower' the DM, but that does mean that the success/failure/excitement of the play experience is more on his shoulders than the system's.  FWIW.




Yeah, when I asked the DM about it, I pointed out basically that--more to learn, but we'll survive much better--and he more or less said "nah it'll be fine." I think he may be regretting that decision now. I've also noticed he tends to generously round XP now, whereas he didn't so much in the first few sessions, so he might be subtly trying to push us past this "hump" without an overt "I'mma do it my way" solution.

As for the RAW, my problem pretty much lies in your "almost." It may be _intended_ for the book to be overtly and eternally second-place to the DM's preferences...but what about when the DM's preferences are "don't change what the book says"? I know for a fact that, even when he's found a particular effect unfortunate, he's gone with it _unless_ I convince him that that's not what the book says. (Specific example: an enemy with Multiattack making an Opportunity Attack against one of my party-mates, where the second attack crit. I told him Multiattack doesn't apply to OAs, and he was adamant that it did until I provided a page reference and he checked the book himself, even though he openly lamented doing so much damage to the character in question.)



robus said:


> I'm surprised you say this, Tony? Level 1 is definitely for beginners and as such the encounters should pedal softly. There's no real need to throw them in the deep end. The first set of encounters in LMoP are interesting but I don't think they're particularly hard. The PC deaths from that chapter I'd wager are pretty minimal? And they only need 300 XP to get to level 2.
> 
> But sure, if the DM is not prepared to ease players in at level 1 then yeah it's instant death. But why would a DM do that?




I cannot claim to know my DM's mind. He and I have...very different ways of thinking. But my experience has, as I've said, been "a fight without at least one character at 0 HP, and rolling death saves unless healed, almost never happens." It may be because of his other 5e group, which started a month or two before ours; apparently, they have repeatedly tackled above-level challenges and come out relatively unscathed, despite also beginning at level 1. Since this group was my DM's first 5e group, perhaps he got a mistaken first impression that low-level 5e characters are substantially more robust than they really are?



AaronOfBarbaria said:


> Or, the alternative I was actually presenting: It might not seem that lethal at all because their 1st level characters are facing off against individually weak enemies (i.e. kobolds) and if there is one side outnumbering the other it is the PCs outnumbering their opponents rather than the other way around, and it's statistically probable that they reach 2nd level without anyone having died yet (though some characters are likely to have found themselves on their backs here and there).




What's the point of having the early levels be so nail-bitingly dangerous if you, as DM, are "supposed" to walk on eggshells until things aren't dangerous? Kind of paints "DM empowerment" in a funny light, too--you can do whatever you want, but unless you're being perverse, you_ should_ want to do X.

Also, whoever said the lethality stops at 2nd level? That's the level we nearly TPK'd (and my character _did_ actually die).


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## werecorpse (Dec 18, 2015)

Eejit said:


> There could be environmental hazards/traps which would do enough damage for instant death even at mid-high levels.




Or if your max hit points are say 50 and you are down to 1 then 51hp damage kills you 

And if you are unconscious on 0 and some scumbag rogue stabs you (autocrit) with his wyvern poison dagger you could die from the damage.


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## AaronOfBarbaria (Dec 18, 2015)

EzekielRaiden said:


> What's the point of having the early levels be so nail-bitingly dangerous if you, as DM, are "supposed" to walk on eggshells until things aren't dangerous?



The early levels, or any levels actually, are only "nail-bitingly dangerous" if the DM chooses to make them that way, and following the advice the DMG actually gives on encounter building should not be referred to as walking on eggshells. Really, I think you are thinking that I said something other than what I did, since your question has basically nothing to do with anything I was saying.


EzekielRaiden said:


> Kind of paints "DM empowerment" in a funny light, too--you can do whatever you want, but unless you're being perverse, you_ should_ want to do X.



The only funny light I see is the one you are shining - I never said anything about wanting to do something besides the not-really-that-lethal advice provided by the game is "being perverse."


EzekielRaiden said:


> Also, whoever said the lethality stops at 2nd level? That's the level we nearly TPK'd (and my character _did_ actually die).



No one said the lethality stops at 2nd level, and whether it does or not is entirely irrelevant to the statements that I made to which you are responding. Lethality does have a noticeable decline at 2nd level, though, since PC hit points increase by a large percentage (as much as doubling) while the damage monsters are likely to be dealing increases by a significantly smaller percentage.


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## Celtavian (Dec 18, 2015)

Tony Vargas said:


> Coming from 3.5, you should be accustomed to compensating for comparatively rough CR guidelines.  The key is not to trust them, and to go ahead and adjust on the fly, since no amount of pre-planning is going to be perfect.  5e frees you to do that, since it seems to have effectively undercut the Cult of RAW that gripped the 3e-era community.




Not yet, but I'll get there.



> Then they've always been a failure, for you, of course.




Why would you make such an assumption? They're a failure for those wanting a gritty, realistic wound system. Many other games model such a thing much better than D&D. Hit points work well enough as far I'm concerned. I don't consider them 'plot armor' like you do. Just a choice made for by the designer of the game to keep it simple.



> iserith is very much a storyteller, I doubt he has any entirely-un-planned deaths in his campaigns, and don't doubt that the body count is little-impacted by edition.  5e certainly gives a DM more lattitude to play in that style than 3.5 did, or rather, community attitude now vs then, thus.




I have read absolutely nothing written by *iserith* to indicate he plans deaths. I think he designs encounters and lets the chips fall where they may. That means if he was playing a more lethal edition, he would have a higher body count given the nature of the effects of creatures due to poor rolls. A single missed saving throw in 1E or 2E and you were done. Even in 3E prior to 3.5 a single missed save meant you could be done as well. Coup De Gras or a bunch of creatures teeing off on you.

In 5E you could miss a _hold person_ save against a bunch of weak creatures and all they'll get is advantage on the attacks and automatic crits much lower than they used to be. If you have an AC in the 22 plus range, even advantage on attacks may not help you much. You get held in 3E and you get an automatic critical hit and a death save.



> Of course, in 1e, saves got genuinely easier as you leveled up.




And yet even at level 20 plus character had a 1 in 20 chance of outright dying to an effect or spell that caused death. Watched many a high level character die due to an unlucky 1. No Advantage. No hero points. Full health. Snuffed. Energy drain was especially brutal in 1E and 2E and more brutal in 3E than 5E. Ever watched a high level character in heavy plate with 250 hit points and no energy drain protection get swarmed by specters? No fun for them. No save, negative levels. Hammered.

1E, 2E, and even 3E much more brutal and dangerous than 5E by a good measure.

I still recall how unhappy my friend was in 2E when his level 10 paladin he really loved rolled a 1 against a banshee wail. Poor guy's character was done. Death saves really scared people even if they had a high save and tons of magic items. Roll that 1 and you're done.

The reality is this: there a bunch of people that want to hear no criticism of 5E. The criticisms are by design. Lower chance of death is by design. Easier monsters are by design. So arguing that it isn't true is basically arguing that the 5E designers failed to accomplish what they set out to accomplish: a less lethal, faster to play, simpler game with less highs and lows. Past editions of D&D were far more lethal by design. If you weren't killing more players, you must have been doing something very different with the available tools than the rest of us.


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## Celtavian (Dec 18, 2015)

jayoungr said:


> I think that's an awesome solution.  (BTW, my halfling bard _also_ happens to sing beautifully--he's a former choirboy--but he has the urchin background, which is where he picked up his more colorful phrases.)
> 
> Someone should make a Jane Austen Insult Generator for the more prim-and-proper types who might want to use the cantrip!




I picture her bard abilities as a cross between an opera singer and  female Celtic singer.


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## iserith (Dec 18, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> The reality is this: there a bunch of people that want to hear no criticism of 5E.




I'm fine with criticisms of D&D 5e. But when it comes to the issue of threat and lethality, I just think some people aren't trying hard enough.


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## Huntsman57 (Dec 18, 2015)

iserith said:


> I wasn't aware there was an incorrect way to DM (edit: short of the group not achieving the goals of play - having a good time together and creating an exciting, memorable story during play). And I'm not trying to kill my players - my monsters are trying to kill their characters. I as DM make sure the monsters want to do that so as to bring about the threat that some of you are saying is lacking. And I'm using the tools the game gives us to do it.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




The tools of the game are a framework of rules upon which to build a living, breathing world. They do not suggest that you should lean on them in unnatural ways to make the RP aspect of the world feel absurd. Roleplaying is more than what happens out of combat. Monsters don't do as we please for contrived reasons. We need to put ourselves in their shoes. If the characters are fighting the avatar of the Abrahamic god then yes, we need to ask the question "what would Jesus do?"

I may come off as judging, and I really do think that most players wouldn't put up with a DM who operates as you describe...but at the end of the day if you have a stable group and everyone is having gun then you do you. Most players would prefer a change to the rules that everyone understood upfront. It's fair, and doesn't break immersion.


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## iserith (Dec 18, 2015)

Huntsman57 said:


> The tools of the game are a framework of rules upon which to build a living, breathing world.




I disagree. I see the rules as tools I can use to resolve uncertainty. What my game setting looks like and how it operates in a fictional sense aren't necessarily based upon the rules.

Edit: So far as I can recall, there are also no rules that say whether or not a monster attacks a dying PC. That is solely up to the DM to decide.



Huntsman57 said:


> They do not suggest that you should lean on them in unnatural ways to make the RP aspect of the world feel absurd.




If there is a reasonable fictional justification provided for a monster attacking a dying PC, then it's hardly absurd, right? It's trivial to come up with such a reason, at least for me, being a game of imagination and all.


Huntsman57 said:


> Roleplaying is more than what happens out of combat. Monsters don't do as we please for contrived reasons. We need to put ourselves in their shoes. If the characters are fighting the avatar of the Abrahamic god then yes, we need to ask the question "what would Jesus do?"




He would do what any other fictional character would do - what the author says he does for any reason the author likes with whatever reasonable fictional justification the author chooses to offer.



Huntsman57 said:


> I may come off as judging, and I really do think that most players wouldn't put up with a DM who operates as you describe...but at the end of the day if you have a stable group and everyone is having gun then you do you. Most players would prefer a change to the rules that everyone understood upfront. It's fair, and doesn't break immersion.




What data do you have to assert that "most" players agree with you? What rules do you think I'm changing? And what definition of "immersion" are you using here?


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## Celtavian (Dec 18, 2015)

iserith said:


> I'm fine with criticisms of D&D 5e. But when it comes to the issue of threat and lethality, I just think some people aren't trying hard enough.




In 1E and 2E, I had to try harder not to kill people. Every time you put one of those save or die effects in the game, you had to hope the players didn't miss their save or they were done.

3E/_Pathfinder_ was similar. You had to worry a lot about critical hits and coup de gras attacks. The Helpless condition was extremely dangerous. You had to be careful to freeze people. Hold and save or suck spells are why so many people in my 3E/_Pathfinder_ group stopped playing fighters, rogues, and just about anything with a low will save. You had to be very careful of overly ruthless tactics because pop-up healing didn't work. Low hit points was dangerous because one crit when you had low hit points and you were likely dead, even if you were super high level. If you were unconscious, you were dead if in one round no matter how many hit points you had or what death saves you made.

So there was issue of threat and lethality. 1E, 2E, and 3E were objectively more dangerous games due to the mechanical design of the game.

No one is saying you can't die in 5E. It's just harder because there are less lethal options and healing is very different. The only way to kill someone in this edition is _Power Word Kill_ and knocking them to zero hit points. Attacks don't do near as much damage in 5E as they do in 3E. Rocket Tag was a very real thing in 3E. Not that I liked it, but it did make the game more lethal. You had to be real careful in 3E entering battle. I have casters barely using defensive spells in 5E they used to need to stack in 3E.

Not sure why acknowledging the 5E mechanics have changed the lethality of the game is something people are arguing when it's empirically provable that 1E, 2E, and 3E mechanics are more lethal than 5E mechanics. Different design goals in each game.


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## iserith (Dec 18, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> Not sure why acknowledging the 5E mechanics have changed the lethality of the game is something people are arguing when it's empirically provable that 1E, 2E, and 3E mechanics are more lethal than 5E mechanics. Different design goals in each game.




Sure, they're different games. I thus see no good reason to compare them. I know how to kill characters in every edition. Knowing there were more save-or-die effects in D&D 3.Xe doesn't help me make my D&D 5e game any more threatening. Hitting dying PCs, on the the hand, is practical, useful advice as is how to design challenges to be deadly.


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## Tony Vargas (Dec 18, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> Why would you make such an assumption?



No assumption, you came right out and said it.



> They're a failure for those wanting a gritty, realistic wound system.



Because they're not a wound system, at all.  They also fail as model of climate change, for similar reasons. ;P  



> Many other games model such a thing much better than D&D.



For any given thing an RPG can do, there are many games that do it better than D&D.  There's not exactly a shortage of games that do everything better than D&D.  Heck, even if D&D, itself, goes and does enough things better than it had been, it gets labeled 'not D&D.'  Quality of sub-systems just isn't a major issue.



> 1E, 2E, and even 3E much more brutal and dangerous than 5E by a good measure.



5e starts to feel pretty well padded by 5th level or so, sure.  The level you run/play it at seems to make a big difference in perceptions.  I've run mostly Encounters and 1st-level intro games, so I'm acutely aware of how randomly deadly it can be at 1st level.  You've finished whole adventure paths with it, you've seen how easy it gets as it progresses.



> I still recall how unhappy my friend was in 2E when his level 10 paladin he really loved rolled a 1 against a banshee wail. Poor guy's character was done.



Until he was raised, which was fairly readily available at that level, of course. 



> The reality is this: there a bunch of people that want to hear no criticism of 5E.



There always are some folks who won't hear a bad thing said about a current edition, and others who can't be anything but critical, deserved or not.  In between, the rest of us try to have discussions.  When that failed catastrophically, we got the edition war.  Nothing that bad's going on.



> The criticisms are by design. Lower chance of death is by design. Easier monsters are by design.



Maybe.  But it's not consistent.  If the design is just to be easy and survivable, why make 1st level characters so fragile?  IMHO, the design is mainly one of the things they said it was:  an attempt to capture the feel of the classic game.  That includes characters dying easily at 1st level and being blaze about supposedly deadly danger at higher level.  The reasons for the latter have shifted a bit, but, by and large, 5e has succeeded in that design goal.



> So arguing that it isn't true is basically arguing that the 5E designers failed to accomplish what they set out to accomplish: a less lethal, faster to play, simpler game with less highs and lows.



Of those, only 'faster' and 'simpler' were design goals, and the latter contingent on choice of modules.  



> Past editions of D&D were far more lethal by design.



Well, 4e only a little more lethal overall, and less so at low level.  3e & earlier, more lethal out of the lower levels.  AD&D and earlier had much better saves at high level, and death was readily rendered a temporary inconvenience.  So, no it's not a simple 'easier by design,' it's shooting for the same feel by slightly different means, and leaving most of it to the DM.  The DM can coddle even fragile 1st level characters and make them feel invincible, or erase optimized high level parties at his whim.



EzekielRaiden said:


> I'd say it falls between 30 and 45 minutes, yeah.



That seems quick to me, for a serious/engaging/challenging 'set piece' encounter, anyway.



> Perhaps that's part of the problem. No fight I've been in has been less than five rounds in 5e. Oftentimes, this is because we lose at least one party member within the first round or two, which is why I feel I must focus so much on healing. Admittedly, we have only just hit level 3 and that _is_ a breakpoint for many classes...but when we still have people dropped (or, in the Druid's case, thrown out of wild shape) in the first or second round after the DM openly tells us he's going to try to pitch us some softballs...well, it's hard to believe that one more level will make _that_ much of a difference.



One or two levels will make a difference.  Really you should already be seeing the difference, especially with the Druid (getting 'knocked out of wildshape,' btw, is nbd).  



> Well...I kind of am playing a full caster? The Bard _is_ a full caster in 5e, isn't it...?



Absolutely.  But if you go all heal-bot with it, you've thrown away a lot of versatility.  



> Honestly, unless my character dies again (the frustratingly high chance of that continues to cast an unfortunate pall over my experience of 5e), I'll be sticking with the game until it ends, whether by wrapping up or falling apart. Due diligence--giving 5e a full, honest commitment, not just a token effort--is a part of it, but it's more just that I'm gaming with friends, and would rather not say "screw this, I'm done" unless something actually "bad" happens.



If you've just hit 3rd, you've only just started to actually play 5e.  It's not really until you're well quit of apprentice tier that you can say you've given it even a small chance, let alone a fair one.  If at all possible, I'd suggest starting future campaigns at higher than 1st level if you really want to give it a fair chance.  And, definitely try several full-caster classes, at least one of which isn't a heal bot.  



> Fudging doesn't really work over Roll20 though--we can all see the dice.



Wot no DM screen?    Wouldn't run 5e without one.



> has avoided any "screw the book, I make the rules" behavior as far as I can tell.



But, but... the book was begging for it! 



> 5e, explicitly, prioritizes a "traditional" look and feel. In every edition except 4e, the approach to choice and variety for characters has been, "if you wanted choice, you should've played a caster! Why are you playing a Fighter if you like choices?!" and "if you _don't_ like having lots of choices, why are you playing a Wizard?!"



Yep. That's the paradigm.



> I truly wish that 5e had taken a much more middle-of-the-road approach, an approach like the ones talked up early in the playtest, where a Wizard could choose to be about as simple as the low-complexity Fighter, and a Fighter could choose to be close in complexity to a typical Wizard.



It's always possible they'll add more meaningful class choices to the 'advanced' game.



> Moon Druid, Devotion Paladin, Tempest Cleric, soon-to-be-Beast Master Ranger, and myself (Valor Bard).



There's no way you should feel forced into being a heal-bot in a Cleric where literally everyone can heal.  How the heck do you manage to snatch character deaths from the jaws of victory with a group like that.  You've got Druid Wildshape hp buffer, lay on hands, and Cure Wounds/Healing Word on multiple class lists.  WTF?  I guess you're just lacking in DPR, so fights drag on?



> Yeah, when I asked the DM about it{starting at 3rd level}, I pointed out basically that--more to learn, but we'll survive much better--and he more or less said "nah it'll be fine." I think he may be regretting that decision now. I've also noticed he tends to generously round XP now, whereas he didn't so much in the first few sessions, so he might be subtly trying to push us past this "hump" without an overt "I'mma do it my way" solution.



You're also supposed to speed through the first few levels very quickly, the exp chart is skewed that way.  If you go longish, full-'day' sessions, you could even do a level per session, in theory.  



> As for the RAW, my problem pretty much lies in your "almost." It may be _intended_ for the book to be overtly and eternally second-place to the DM's preferences...but what about when the DM's preferences are "don't change what the book says"?



Then he's "doin' it wrong."  ;P  Yes, I'm aware of the irony.  But, really, the only reason to run 5e "by the book" is because you like the results.  (Well, and during the playtest, to actually /test/ it, but the playtest is over - as an aside, I didn't get out of 'playtest mode' the first time I ran 5e, and the results were disastrous, as soon as I got back into the old-school swing of 'screw the book' and got behind a DM screen, it was fine... well, not fine, HotDQ was still pretty awful...)



> I know for a fact that, even when he's found a particular effect unfortunate, he's gone with it _unless_ I convince him that that's not what the book says.



Yeah, you're definitely not getting a fair chance to see what 5e can do.



> What's the point of having the early levels be so nail-bitingly dangerous if you, as DM, are "supposed" to walk on eggshells until things aren't dangerous? Kind of paints "DM empowerment" in a funny light, too--you can do whatever you want, but unless you're being perverse, you_ should_ want to do X.



You should want to run a game that's fun for your players.  That may or may not include killing their characters off constantly.  If your players don't like frequent PC deaths, you have to tweak the game harder at low level than at high - if they do like the feel of constant jeopardy, you have to tweak it a lot harder at high level than low.



> Also, whoever said the lethality stops at 2nd level? That's the level we nearly TPK'd (and my character _did_ actually die).



It ratchets down.  By 5th it really, really should be gone, but you should be noticing it tapering off at 3rd.


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## jayoungr (Dec 18, 2015)

EzekielRaiden said:


> Perhaps that's part of the problem. No fight I've been in has been less than five rounds in 5e. Oftentimes, this is because we lose at least one party member within the first round or two, which is why I feel I must focus so much on healing.



Wow.  All I can say is that your DM does things very differently from me--and when I say "from me," I should say "from the published adventures I'm running," because that's where I'm getting most of my encounters (although I tweak them sometimes).  Hardly any of our fights go five rounds or more.  I'm curious what it is about your table that makes the fights run so long.  It _sounds_ like the DM is throwing a lot of high-HP monsters at you--probably ones with high damage too, since your PCs keep going down on the first round.  And maybe your group's AC is lower than mine on average?  (I do feel like my group managed to get high AC really fast, and for a while it felt like nothing could hit them...but I'm hoping Bounded Accuracy will help deal with that as we face monsters with higher chances to hit.)


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## EzekielRaiden (Dec 19, 2015)

Tony Vargas said:


> That seems quick to me, for a serious/engaging/challenging 'set piece' encounter, anyway.




It's possible--my 4e games have never gotten to particularly high level, only like 6th I think, so perhaps I just haven't had a chance to see what the system can really do if "pushed" (in a good way, that is).



> One or two levels will make a difference.  Really you should already be seeing the difference, especially with the Druid (getting 'knocked out of wildshape,' btw, is nbd).




I hope it will. Going from 1->2 felt like almost no difference at all. Sure, we no longer had to fear being knocked to 0 by a single zombie's attack, but essentially at-level threats (a CR 2 Bandit Captain plus his four like CR 1/4 cronies) wiped the floor with us, and even just plain old giant spiders (whom we outnumbered) proved an unpleasant challenge. As for the Druid, it's just...well, when I see that fat buffer of (pseudo-temporary?) HP evaporate in just one or two hits, I get scared. 



> If you've just hit 3rd, you've only just started to actually play 5e.  It's not really until you're well quit of apprentice tier that you can say you've given it even a small chance, let alone a fair one.  If at all possible, I'd suggest starting future campaigns at higher than 1st level if you really want to give it a fair chance.  And, definitely try several full-caster classes, at least one of which isn't a heal bot.




That...okay. I'm gonna be frank here. I think that's a huge load of BS. I have to play through 6+ levels just to "give it a fair chance"? The game experience is _intentionally_ sub-par unless you specifically choose to start above first level? This is exactly the kind of stuff I complained would happen in the playtest, and people ignored me or denied that it was a thing. Frustrating as hell. I've played a good 20+ hours of 5e now, and I "haven't given it even a small chance" yet? Ridiculous!



> Wot no DM screen?    Wouldn't run 5e without one.
> But, but... the book was begging for it!




Apparently it _is_ possible to roll in secret, our DM just doesn't do so. As for "but the book begs for screw the book, I make the rules stuff," that's just frankly not how this guy plays. I have made quite clear to the group that this is how 5e is expected to work--multiple times saying, "well this is what the book says, but the real answer is 'whatever the DM says' "--but I have yet to really see it in action from this DM. I don't know if it's inexperience overall, inexperience with 5e particularly, personal preference, or what, but that's what I'm dealing with.



> It's always possible they'll add more meaningful class choices to the 'advanced' game.




I guess if I'm legit trying to give 5e its fair shot, I should _try_ to be open-minded about this sort of thing. But my gut tells me "ain't never gonna happen, don't even think of dreaming about it."



> There's no way you should feel forced into being a heal-bot in a Cleric where literally everyone can heal.  How the heck do you manage to snatch character deaths from the jaws of victory with a group like that.  You've got Druid Wildshape hp buffer, lay on hands, and Cure Wounds/Healing Word on multiple class lists.  WTF?  I guess you're just lacking in DPR, so fights drag on?




That could be it. I don't really know. See my below info about the combat that almost TPK'd us. But yeah, I really genuinely do feel like if I'm not conserving _at least_ 50% of my spells for healing, somebody's going to _die_ die, not merely roll a death save or two.



> You're also supposed to speed through the first few levels very quickly, the exp chart is skewed that way.  If you go longish, full-'day' sessions, you could even do a level per session, in theory.




Our sessions tend to be on the short side--only around 3 hours, occasionally 4 if the DM feels up to it--such that a "full day" tends to run longer than a single session, but never more than two. We've played something like 6 or 7 sessions thus far, and right at the end of the last session hit 3rd level.



> Then he's "doin' it wrong."  ;P  Yes, I'm aware of the irony.  But, really, the only reason to run 5e "by the book" is because you like the results. ... Yeah, you're definitely not getting a fair chance to see what 5e can do.




Not sure what else to do or say, then--how can I actually get a "fair chance to see 5e"? Do I have to start interviewing my DMs before I join a game? If nothing else, _that_ seems like a pretty serious flaw...



> It ratchets down.  By 5th it really, really should be gone, but you should be noticing it tapering off at 3rd.




Alright. Like I said, I'm not giving up on the game until it ends, whether gracefully or crash'n'burn. Here's hoping you're right.



jayoungr said:


> Wow.  All I can say is that your DM does things very differently from me--and when I say "from me," I should say "from the published adventures I'm running," because that's where I'm getting most of my encounters (although I tweak them sometimes).  Hardly any of our fights go five rounds or more.  I'm curious what it is about your table that makes the fights run so long.  It _sounds_ like the DM is throwing a lot of high-HP monsters at you--probably ones with high damage too, since your PCs keep going down on the first round.  And maybe your group's AC is lower than mine on average?  (I do feel like my group managed to get high AC really fast, and for a while it felt like nothing could hit them...but I'm hoping Bounded Accuracy will help deal with that as we face monsters with higher chances to hit.)




Typically, we have either one big nasty, two big nasties, or one big nasty and a gaggle (2-5) of flimsy cronies. The Cleric has the highest AC, with Chain+Shield. The Paladin, regrettably, chose to partially forgo a shield (the DM, in one of his rare "rulings," added a "Buckler"/"light shield" that gives only +1 AC and counts as a "free hand" for manipulating objects, but not for carrying a weapon; said Paladin is going for a light-armor, high-Dex type, but is stuck on the idea of using the buckler rather than a full shield unfortunately). I think after that, it's my Bard at 15 AC (Studded Leather, +2 from Dex, +1 from Buckler) and the Ranger's either the same or slightly below. The Druid typically uses Wolf form, but I don't remember how much AC that has. Unfortunately, the DM lands the majority of his attacks--and crits easily twice as often as our entire team combined. He's commented, more than once, on the difference between his luck and ours, but it's not like we can blame the dice--we're all using the same Roll20 algorithm, and as stated, all rolls are made openly (Roll20 even gives a breakdown of die rolls when multiple dice are rolled). We also tend to roll below-average or even minimum damage, which merely compounds the "not enough damage output" problem.

--

Just for reference: the combat that killed my character (he got better, with some DM kindness) was a Bandit Captain (CR 2) and his four mookish buddies (Bandits, CR 1/8, from what I can tell--you can find their stats on page 6 of the HotDQ supplement). We were a little worse for wear at that point--just finished a combat with spiders, and were starting a short rest in a place we thought was deserted, so I'm sure that didn't help the situation at all. So springing a multiplier-adjusted 900 XP fight on us (halfway between Hard and Deadly for five 2nd-level PCs) may have been a bit unwise...but, as I've said, our DM has frequently talked of how difficult his other 5e group is to challenge, and how surprised he is that our group is so much more fragile. I went down at the end of the first round, having managed to cast one spell (Sleep, which took out two of the mooks), then the Cleric and Paladin both went down in round 2, and the Ranger in round 3. By then end of round...6 I think, my character was dead (3 failed saves), the Druid was out of wild shapes and trying to retreat, and the Ranger was one save from dying as well. The only reason we survived at all is because the Ranger got a death save crit the next round, and thus stood back up and felled the Bandit Captain (which caused the still-conscious goons to scatter).

The biggest issue, really, was the sheer number of attacks the Bandit Captain could pump out, coupled with having enough health that we couldn't take him down quickly. Three attacks a round, at +5 to hit and dealing a minimum of 4 damage a pop, means nearly-guaranteed damage. Even a slightly-above-average damage roll, if all three attacks hit (and I don't think he missed once) was enough to incapacitate any single member of our party*, and a below-average roll would just be followed up by a crossbow shot from one of the mooks in the back.

*E.g. (4+3)*2+3+3 = 20 damage. Our highest-HP person is the Ranger, due to a +3 Con mod and d10 HP. At full health, he would've been left with only 2 HP. He blew through his half-orc endurance before he'd even gotten to act in the second round. As I recall, I _was_ at full health, and the Bandit Captain didn't even need to use all of his attacks on me to take me down. I don't remember if it was because of a crit, or because one of the mooks landed a crossbow shot first, but I definitely remember that he was able to move to another player, the Cleric IIRC, and hit him as well before the end of the first round.


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## Azurewraith (Dec 19, 2015)

EzekielRaiden said:


> The biggest issue, really, was the sheer number of attacks the Bandit Captain could pump out, coupled with having enough health that we couldn't take him down quickly. Three attacks a round, at +5 to hit and dealing a minimum of 4 damage a pop, means nearly-guaranteed damage. Even a slightly-above-average damage roll, if all three attacks hit (and I don't think he missed once) was enough to incapacitate any single member of our party*, and a below-average roll would just be followed up by a crossbow shot from one of the mooks in the back.
> 
> *E.g. (4+3)*2+3+3 = 20 damage. Our highest-HP person is the Ranger, due to a +3 Con mod and d10 HP. At full health, he would've been left with only 2 HP. He blew through his half-orc endurance before he'd even gotten to act in the second round. As I recall, I _was_ at full health, and the Bandit Captain didn't even need to use all of his attacks on me to take me down. I don't remember if it was because of a crit, or because one of the mooks landed a crossbow shot first, but I definitely remember that he was able to move to another player, the Cleric IIRC, and hit him as well before the end of the first round.




Sounds to me the DM maybe should of given you an out or saved the encounter for later throwing a deadly encounter at a half dead party with sub-optimized chars is just asking for a TPK if you ask me. "Hey throw down your belongings or well gut you" seems like a pretty stranded bandit thing to do they dont want to fight even wounded foes they just want to get paid.


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## EzekielRaiden (Dec 19, 2015)

Azurewraith said:


> Sounds to me the DM maybe should of given you an out or saved the encounter for later throwing a deadly encounter at a half dead party with sub-optimized chars is just asking for a TPK if you ask me. "Hey throw down your belongings or well gut you" seems like a pretty stranded bandit thing to do they dont want to fight even wounded foes they just want to get paid.




They were actually seeking revenge, as we'd killed some of their friends previously, while on an official mission to investigate the desecrated temple outside the city. We had had to leave the place behind (spiders ed up our party while we were still 1st level), and they sprang a trap on us when we returned two days later.


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## S'mon (Dec 19, 2015)

TheLoneRanger1979 said:


> Right now, the DM often can't prepare enough encounters for us, so we stall and limit our selves at 3-4 per night.




You don't need to prepare encounters in 5e though - a monster manual and a random encounter table works fine.


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## Azurewraith (Dec 19, 2015)

EzekielRaiden said:


> They were actually seeking revenge, as we'd killed some of their friends previously, while on an official mission to investigate the desecrated temple outside the city. We had had to leave the place behind (spiders ed up our party while we were still 1st level), and they sprang a trap on us when we returned two days later.




Ah well in that case what goes around comes around! I imagine that they would of been stalking your for a while then.


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## jedijon (Dec 19, 2015)

There are now 14 pages to say - "you wrote 'boring' but you meant 'monotonous', i.e. simple in a bad way". And, "here, let me help..."

Have you ever played a tabletop war game?

Your assignment is to play 3 different systems, pick 1 you like the best, then play against one of the players in your game. In that game, name the members of your warband/army, describe the stuff they do each round, narrate and react to the results. Then, bring that energy back to your D&D game.

If that doesn't work - play without HP.

If neither solves your combat woes, quit and spend that time reading instead.


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## wolfmanhunley (Dec 19, 2015)

Use crit and fumble charts. If you crit for fumble, roll percentile die, and look up damage type and number. Also beef up encounters. Its not fun if its too easy.


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## EzekielRaiden (Dec 19, 2015)

jedijon said:


> There are now 14 pages to say - "you wrote 'boring' but you meant 'monotonous', i.e. simple in a bad way". And, "here, let me help..."




Well, uh..."monotonous" ("lacking in variety; tediously unwavering") is a synonym of "boring" (gerund of the verb "to bore," meaning "to weary by dullness, tedious repetition, unwelcome attentions, etc.")...



> Have you ever played a tabletop war game?




'fraid not.



> Your assignment is to play 3 different systems, pick 1 you like the best, then play against one of the players in your game. In that game, name the members of your warband/army, describe the stuff they do each round, narrate and react to the results. Then, bring that energy back to your D&D game.
> 
> If that doesn't work - play without HP.
> 
> If neither solves your combat woes, quit and spend that time reading instead.




So...my(?) assignment is now to play another _three_ game systems (of a completely different type that I may not enjoy in the first place) long enough to form a meaningful opinion of each, convince one of my coplayers to _also_ play one of those systems with me, apply a technique I'm already using to a whole army instead of a single character, and then re-apply that same technique back to D&D? I hope you'll understand that lots of people are going to consider this far too much _effort_ just to improve one area of a particular game system. Particularly when, for some of us, we already have played other D&D games that had no such problems in this area.

Playing without HP is a DM choice, not a player choice--a bit hard for me to apply it to the game I'm playing in.


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## Jester David (Dec 19, 2015)

Right now I'm doing some mini campaigns after ending my Pathfinder campaign but before I go balls deep into 5e. Some FATE, some Shadows of Esteren, and some Icons. None of which give combat more than a smidgen more detail than other conflict resolution. Compared to them, the character advancement and combat system of 5e looks incredibly complex.


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## Tony Vargas (Dec 19, 2015)

EzekielRaiden said:


> It's possible--my 4e games have never gotten to particularly high level, only like 6th I think, so perhaps I just haven't had a chance to see what the system can really do if "pushed" (in a good way, that is).



Level should barely matter.  At very low level, the first time you play, it's a little slower as you get used to it.  The first time you reach Paragon it can get jammed up a bit.  If your group at some point skews heavily to off-turn actions, that can have an effect. 

But, overall, the system is as stable, balanced & playable at high level as low.  Only time you could say that about D&D. 




> I hope it will. Going from 1->2 felt like almost no difference at all. Sure, we no longer had to fear being knocked to 0 by a single zombie's attack, but essentially at-level threats (a CR 2 Bandit Captain plus his four like CR 1/4 cronies) wiped the floor with us



There's really no such thing as 'at level' in 5e.   CR is more ballpark, and you can take on much higher CRs or be trounced by lower level ones, especially if you're outnumbered. 




> I have to play through 6+ levels just to "give it a fair chance"?



Yes.  And you have to find the right class for the experience, too.



> The game experience is _intentionally_ sub-par unless you specifically choose to start above first level?



I'm not so sure.  It's intentionally evocative of low-level play in the classic game, which may not be to a more modern gamer's taste.



> I guess if I'm legit trying to give 5e its fair shot, I should _try_ to be open-minded about this sort of thing. But my gut tells me "ain't never gonna happen, don't even think of dreaming about it."



Heroes should listen to their guts.  IRL, some loratadine might help.



> That could be it. I don't really know. See my below info about the combat that almost TPK'd us. But yeah, I really genuinely do feel like if I'm not conserving _at least_ 50% of my spells for healing, somebody's going to _die_ die, not merely roll a death save or two.



That could turn self-fulfilling.  If you'd been more profligate with your spells, you might have saved the party a lot of damage.  Facile, I know, but not entirely without merit.



> Not sure what else to do or say, then--how can I actually get a "fair chance to see 5e"? Do I have to start interviewing my DMs before I join a game? If nothing else, _that_ seems like a pretty serious flaw...



5e leans heavily on the human aspect of play rather than the mechanical, and you might be losing some of that playing on-line.  In person play, whether you can be certain of a 'good' (enough) DM or not, might be a better way to get a fair impression of the system.


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## AaronOfBarbaria (Dec 19, 2015)

Tony Vargas said:


> Only time you could say that about D&D.



It can be said about BECMI and 2nd edition too.


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## S'mon (Dec 19, 2015)

EzekielRaiden said:


> Just for reference: the combat that killed my character (he got better, with some DM kindness) was a Bandit Captain (CR 2) and his four mookish buddies (Bandits, CR 1/8, from what I can tell--you can find their stats on page 6 of the HotDQ supplement). We were a little worse for wear at that point--just finished a combat with spiders, and were starting a short rest in a place we thought was deserted, so I'm sure that didn't help the situation at all. So springing a multiplier-adjusted 900 XP fight on us (halfway between Hard and Deadly for five 2nd-level PCs) may have been a bit unwise...but, as I've said, our DM has frequently talked of how difficult his other 5e group is to challenge, and how surprised he is that our group is so much more
> fragile.




You do seem to be an unusually weak group - the newbies I GM 5e for would have easily 
slaughtered that bandit captain & his mooks with their 2nd level PCs. I can understand why your GM is a bit frustrated, I guess the best thing would be if he gave you the chance to fight weaker 
encounters - treat you as a level or two below your actual level, say.


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## MechaPilot (Dec 20, 2015)

robus said:


> The first set of encounters in LMoP are interesting but I don't think they're particularly hard. The PC deaths from that chapter I'd wager are pretty minimal? And they only need 300 XP to get to level 2.
> 
> But sure, if the DM is not prepared to ease players in at level 1 then yeah it's instant death. But why would a DM do that?




When I ran LMoP for my current group, they were almost killed by the first encounter.  The two PCs left the two NPCs with the wagon to guard it, and the two PCs were hit by surprise by the first barrage from the ranged attackers.  One of the PCs was a drow, and he had disadvantage because of the sunlight.  They took another barrage while trying to figure out where the archers were, and it was only the cleric pulling up the wagon for the two PCs to take cover behind that prevented both of the PCs from being killed.

After some healing from the cleric npc and a couple critical hit rolls from the halfling rogue npc, the party was able to regroup enough to win the day.  However, they had to go straight to town and rest up before following the goblin trail.


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## MechaPilot (Dec 20, 2015)

Tony Vargas said:


> Sure.  To completely new players it might just seem lethal (that first impression thing) and even when they realize it gets very survivable at higher level, well that's just how it is.  It's only when you examine it as longtime gamer and compare it to other editions and to presumed design objectives that it seems 'weird' that it'd mechanically be at it's most lethal when played at a level you'd expect novices to start with.




I agree with you that 5e is at its most lethal in the early levels, but I can't say that it's more so than other editions.  I no longer have my AD&D 2e DMG to look at, but I recall it having random encounter tables for different terrains, and they did not care about the level of the PCs.  You could end up rolling a random encounter with multiple enemies having substantially more HPs and damage potential than the PC party.

I also recall AD&D 2e monster entries having a "number appearing" line.  For goblins it was 4D6, which is an average of 14 goblins.


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## MechaPilot (Dec 20, 2015)

jayoungr said:


> So putting these three points of data together, am I correct in deducing that a typical 4E combat for you runs half an hour?  If so, I think your 4E experience is faster than most people's.  (Which wouldn't surprise me; you of all people probably know how to keep 4E combat humming along, since you both love the system and have played a lot of it.)




My 4e encounters also did not generate the "slog" experience that I have seen others describe.  I was actually taken aback the first time I heard someone describe it that way, because my group had never had that experience.

After enough time of hearing others describe their experiences, I think I was able to pinpoint the differences that led to my 4e combats being faster:

1) Most enemies have a survival instinct.  This is naturally untrue with regard to mindless undead, zealots, etc.  However, most creatures that get into a fight want to escape with their lives when it turns substantially against them.  To simulate this in the game, I used the bloodied condition as the trigger for them wanting to flee or surrender.  In retrospect, doing this was effectively the same as halving the HPs of most enemies.

2) Monsters improvise.  Basically what it says on the tin.  Smart monsters think outside the box, just like the PCs should, using the environment to their advantage, and actively trying to get the most of their abilities.  I recall one encounter where an enemy dove between a PC's legs and then went total defense just so its allies would get the benefit of doing extra damage when flanking an enemy.


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## AaronOfBarbaria (Dec 20, 2015)

MechaPilot said:


> When I ran LMoP for my current group, they were almost killed by the first encounter.  The two PCs left the two NPCs with the wagon to guard it, and the two PCs were hit by surprise by the first barrage from the ranged attackers.  One of the PCs was a drow, and he had disadvantage because of the sunlight.  They took another barrage while trying to figure out where the archers were, and it was only the cleric pulling up the wagon for the two PCs to take cover behind that prevented both of the PCs from being killed.
> 
> After some healing from the cleric npc and a couple critical hit rolls from the halfling rogue npc, the party was able to regroup enough to win the day.  However, they had to go straight to town and rest up before following the goblin trail.



...and my current group saw a horse stuck full of arrows, expected it to be an ambush, took cover in and under the wagon while trying to spot said ambush, and ended up chasing off the last of the goblin ambushers in round 3 with the party having taken a collective 10 damage.

It's an encounter that is only difficult if poor choice are made or dice rolls run heavily against the PCs.


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## FormerlyHemlock (Dec 20, 2015)

Tony Vargas said:


> Until he was raised, which was fairly readily available at that level, of course.




Since we're talking about a 2nd edition paladin:

1.) Raise Dead usually had no better than a 75% to 92% chance of working, which means a fair chance of leaving you permanently dead.

2.) It permanently drained 1 point of Constitution even if it worked.

It's not like 5E where every 5th level cleric can Revivify you with no permanent impact and no chance of failure.


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## Huntsman57 (Dec 20, 2015)

Hemlock said:


> Since we're talking about a 2nd edition paladin:
> 
> 1.) Raise Dead usually had no better than a 75% to 92% chance of working, which means a fair chance of leaving you permanently dead.
> 
> ...




I don't remember a chance of failure in 2E. Are you sure? I rather like it though.  I do remember the CON or level drain which I'm glad disappeared in 3E. To my thinking you either want your character back whole or you'd simply prefer to roll a new one.

Revivify is just plain stupid. I rather dislike low level res spells since I feel it mucks up the realism of the fiction (nobody ever need ever die since there's got to be 100 folks in any given city that can fix that minor ailment). Would I simply tear revivify out of the game? Maybe not, but it probably wouldn't be a spell I'd let the player simply learn as part of his normal leveling selection process...some quest may need to be involved. Further, the spell should come with some noteworthy drawbacks. Perhaps a chance of failure and perma-death as you mentioned. The character should also come back with a ton of levels of exhaustion which should take a week to recover from.


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## robus (Dec 20, 2015)

AaronOfBarbaria said:


> ...and my current group saw a horse stuck full of arrows, expected it to be an ambush, took cover in and under the wagon while trying to spot said ambush, and ended up chasing off the last of the goblin ambushers in round 3 with the party having taken a collective 10 damage.
> 
> It's an encounter that is only difficult if poor choice are made or dice rolls run heavily against the PCs.




I had the first flurry of goblin arrows come hair splittingly close (I.e. A narrative attack rather than a rolled attack) and then rolled initiative from there. But then my group was 80% newbies and I didn't want to have a "gotcha" in the first bit of action. One of the PCs did get a nasty bit of damage because he didn't take cover and I rolled high on damage. But he got the idea after that 

They made it through the first chapter but not without sweating a couple of times. Which seemed perfect to me.


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## AaronOfBarbaria (Dec 20, 2015)

Huntsman57 said:


> Revivify is just plain stupid. I rather dislike low level res spells since I feel it mucks up the realism of the fiction (nobody ever need ever die since there's got to be 100 folks in any given city that can fix that minor ailment). Would I simply tear revivify out of the game? Maybe not, but it probably wouldn't be a spell I'd let the player simply learn as part of his normal leveling selection process...some quest may need to be involved. Further, the spell should come with some noteworthy drawbacks. Perhaps a chance of failure and perma-death as you mentioned. The character should also come back with a ton of levels of exhaustion which should take a week to recover from.



You say revivify is "plain stupid," and then proceed with comments that seem as though you are elaborating on why you think that, but actually seem to indicate you haven't even read the spell:

1) 100 folks in any given city being able to cast revivify doesn't mean 100 folks in any given city available within 1 minute of anyone's unnatural death, nor able to afford the expense at any given time.
2) Anyone that can "simple learn as part of the leveling process" is actually specifically a cleric or a paladin, which don't so much "learn" spells as they are "gifted" them by a higher power (even when it is their own faith, rather than a deity doing the gifting), or is a bard using their very limited magical secrets choices to learn the spell - so it's not really all that simple to grab the spell.
3) Noteworthy drawbacks include the monetary cost of 300 gp, but not just any 300 gp - it has to be in the form of diamonds - and the extremely narrow window of time in which the spell can be cast (1 minute).
4) The character coming back to life doesn't get off that easy by default either, since they return to life with 1 hit point, which is likely to mean the only difference between the character staying dead or coming back to life is whether the party is hiring a new member or just taking a long rest when they get back to safety where they are immediately heading because getting a character from 1 hp to ready to adventure tapped enough of the party's resources that resting is the best course of action.

Of course, all my opinions about character death and recovery from death revolve around my experience that players respond to harsh consequences like random failure to resurrect, ability score reductions, and level loss by abandoning the dead character in favor of a completely new character if that gets them around the penalty, and if they can't avoid the penalty by abandoning their character they either enjoy the campaign less from that point forward (and likely keep dying and suffering more penalties, since the penalties for death are typically things which make you even more likely to die than you already were), or stop participating in the campaign entirely.


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## Chaosmancer (Dec 20, 2015)

So, after reading all of this I think we have two "issues" that explain why the one game with the Bard is going badly, but that has little to do with the combat system of 5e.

The first is starting at level 1. You don't get most of your interesting abilities or really much of anything until level 3, and you are very vulnerable. A team of 4 1st level character fighting 3-4 CR 1/4 gnolls would probably be slaughtered in short order if it was a fair fight. Between 3 and 5 is where I start my groups, and I still have some issue with them surviving but not nearly as much. I actually had a team of six 5th level adventurers fight a horde of gnolls (12 or so I think), a pair of shadow demons, and a Fang of Yeenoghu. After some bad rolls early on they won, but they were sweating the entire time despite most of the enemies being CR 1/4, in a bottleneck, and not having great ranged options.

The second thing, it sounds like you guys just have crappy luck. Consistently rolling low damage and the DM critting more than your entire team consistently... the dice gods are out to get you guys and there is no known cure for that except to slog through until the wind changes. This is the biggest reason you feel the need to constantly heal in my humble opinion. You guys just haven't been firing at full strength yet.


Honestly, for as long as a lot of you guys sound like you've been playing DnD, you all know the tricks and tips to make it more interesting. I can add nothing to that, but as a DM you has been very cautious and nervous about houseruling the system, I wonder a few things.

I wonder how many DM's feel comfortable adding in the optional rules from the DMG, I have a few I like to use but some of them are harder to run with new players involved.

I wonder how many DM's or players remember all of the things you can do. Dash, Disengage, Dodge, Help, breaking up Movement between attacks, Grappling, Shoving, these are all things any character or monster can do at first level. I for example, often forget about the Dodge action unless someone has it as a special ability like the Rogue or the Monk. If you are playing for the first time, it may be hard to remember things in the book that are not on your sheet.

Finally, I wonder if part of the problem is how much experience a lot of you guys already have. I play a lot of video games, and sometimes I'll love a game for the first few hours, but find the experience a bit tedious by hour 30 or 40. I'm sure some of you guys have clocked in 1,000 hours of tabletop gaming. Things that are novel and exciting to me are old hat to you guys. Times when I may be wondering about the combat tactics available, you guys may already have played out the battle and likely moves. It's harder to surprise and excite you guys, not impossible, but harder, meaning what I see as small hiccups in the game, turn into bigger issues for you guys.


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## Rhenny (Dec 20, 2015)

Chaosmancer said:


> I wonder how many DM's or players remember all of the things you can do. Dash, Disengage, Dodge, Help, breaking up Movement between attacks, Grappling, Shoving, these are all things any character or monster can do at first level. I for example, often forget about the Dodge action unless someone has it as a special ability like the Rogue or the Monk. If you are playing for the first time, it may be hard to remember things in the book that are not on your sheet.
> 
> Finally, I wonder if part of the problem is how much experience a lot of you guys already have. I play a lot of video games, and sometimes I'll love a game for the first few hours, but find the experience a bit tedious by hour 30 or 40. I'm sure some of you guys have clocked in 1,000 hours of tabletop gaming. Things that are novel and exciting to me are old hat to you guys. Times when I may be wondering about the combat tactics available, you guys may already have played out the battle and likely moves. It's harder to surprise and excite you guys, not impossible, but harder, meaning what I see as small hiccups in the game, turn into bigger issues for you guys.




Good points. 

I often try to remind my players to think narratively rather than mechanically so that they don't "look" for things to do.  If they think more about how their PC behaves, there are plenty of options and ways for the DM to adjudicate the outcome.  If they "look" for things to do, they often forget what's possible and they usually get stuck in repetitive patterns (and it tends to slow the game down and make each turn more choppy and less organic).   Dodge is a great option many times and it is often what a surrounded creature would do if faced by overwhelming odds.  Move attack move is also incredibly versatile...probably one of the most important changes made for 5e in relation to prior versions.  Even exposing a PC to Opportunity Attack may be worth it to gain better position or cover for the rest of the turn, and shoving to trip a foe can be great especially if there is an rogue ally nearby.  Even the help action is often overlooked.  In a party where weaker PCs are locked in melee, the help action can be a great choice (especially if a rogue, or Paladin with smite, can clobber the foe before it gets a chance to act).

Also, to your other point about the novelty wearing off, this is another byproduct of focusing too heavily on game mechanics rather than narrative.  Game mechanics don't change.  They are static.  Eventually, knowledge and use of game mechanics will become rote/tedious.  Narrative is always changing and has endless permutations.  It is harder to burn out when the narrative is always changing and evolving.


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## MechaPilot (Dec 20, 2015)

AaronOfBarbaria said:


> ...and my current group saw a horse stuck full of arrows, expected it to be an ambush, took cover in and under the wagon while trying to spot said ambush, and ended up chasing off the last of the goblin ambushers in round 3 with the party having taken a collective 10 damage.
> 
> It's an encounter that is only difficult if poor choice are made or dice rolls run heavily against the PCs.




I wouldn't say that it was a poor choice on their part, so much as it was necessary.  When the party pulled up and saw the dead horse blocking the trail with the woods on either side of the trail, they knew that they needed to move the horse to get through.  They could have looked for a different way to get to Phandalin, but they were simply given directions on how to get there and had no map.  They figured it was a choice between moving the horse and potentially getting lost while trying to find another trail that may not even exist.

Additionally, they did send the two most observant members of the party out to deal with the horse.  One of the two, a fighter, was the best-armored member of the group.  The second came in third as it relates to AC, the cleric was in second place, but he was only one point behind the cleric.  The cleric and the rogue, both of whom stayed with the wagon, were ready with ranged weapons in case bandits came out of the woods and attacked them.  They were about as prepared as they could have been.


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## Huntsman57 (Dec 20, 2015)

AaronOfBarbaria said:


> You say revivify is "plain stupid," and then proceed with comments that seem as though you are elaborating on why you think that, but actually seem to indicate you haven't even read the spell:
> 
> 1) 100 folks in any given city being able to cast revivify doesn't mean 100 folks in any given city available within 1 minute of anyone's unnatural death, nor able to afford the expense at any given time.
> 2) Anyone that can "simple learn as part of the leveling process" is actually specifically a cleric or a paladin, which don't so much "learn" spells as they are "gifted" them by a higher power (even when it is their own faith, rather than a deity doing the gifting), or is a bard using their very limited magical secrets choices to learn the spell - so it's not really all that simple to grab the spell.
> ...




The issue with revive in general...you ever read a fantasy novel set in a D&D world and been like...well why didn't they just cast raise dead on the guy? He was a king after all. He could afford it.

At the end of the day raising folks from the dead needs to be a big damn deal, and it hasn't been portrayed as such in recent editions. It should be a rare occurrence, never easy, and never without a price that goes well beyond simple money.

The 1 minute limitation is fine, but my critique goes beyond revivify. That's simply the worst offender because it removes the needful bite from dying even earlier than the other spells.

As far as I can tell you can choose to cast revivify if you're high enough level to do so. I see no restrictions about this unless they're put into place by the DM on behalf of the character's gods for some reason.

In any event, coming back to life with 1 hit point is getting off extremely easy, especially in 5E. 

As far as the casting cost, that could be a thing, particularly at lower levels. I suspect most DMs don't make material component acquisition a stumbling block for their players, but even if they do not, this would be a good spell to make an exception.


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## ZickZak (Dec 20, 2015)

Dom de Dom said:


> Some of the guys in my regular 5e group are becoming a bit bored with the simplicity of 5th edition combat. Not having played through 4th (oldschool returning 2e guy) I don't really have much of a point of reference.Do any other people in here share this problem, and have you any examples of house rules or other methods you use to spice up combats which might otherwise me a bit ploddy?



I loved 4e and I can tell you that it is roughly the same. The only difference was that you could do multiple options, however... most of them were given when to use and so it werent really options but more like a WoW rotation depending on the encounter. It is true though that if you forbid MCing, a lot of martial classes will be a bit bored, because everything "cool" in 5e is a spell.

What I trully dont miss are HealingSurges - the ability to heal yourself several times to full per day during 5 min break.


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## MechaPilot (Dec 20, 2015)

ZickZak said:


> I loved 4e and I can tell you that it is roughly the same. The only difference was that you could do multiple options, however... most of them were given when to use and so it werent really options but more like a WoW rotation depending on the encounter. It is true though that if you forbid MCing, a lot of martial classes will be a bit bored, because everything "cool" in 5e is a spell.
> 
> What I trully dont miss are HealingSurges - the ability to heal yourself several times to full per day during 5 min break.




I think you are misstating or transferring your dislike.

5e still basically has healing surges.  Every character has potential HP recovery from HDs equal to their HP total.  That's roughly equivalent to having two to four healing surges.  The only real differences between surges and HDs as game mechanics are that surges gave a static amount of HPs (1/4 of your total) while HDs require a roll, and that HDs cannot be spent in combat.  Otherwise, both isolate part of a character's daily HP potential and are usable during a short rest.

Based your statement about surges, what you truly seemed to dislike are 1) the duration of 4e's short rests, and 2) either the number of surges available to characters per day or the amount of HP recovery allowed by each surge.

I think one thing that might have been of benefit to you would have been if 4e explicitly mentioned that healing preferences were easily modable.  I know that the 4e DMG had a section that specifically talked about altering the rules, as the DMGs of most editions do (IIRC), but they could have included a few more examples other than just critical fumbles; in particular, a slower overnight healing rate would have appealed to some players/DMs.

For example, it would have been quite easy to declare that short rests must be longer than five minutes, or that each surge granted 1d8 HPs +2 HPs per level above first, or that each character gets half as many surges, or that the Con mod was applied to surge recovery instead of granting other surges.  Each of those things would have made for a good potential example of a rule change.


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## ZickZak (Dec 20, 2015)

MechaPilot said:


> Based your statement about surges, what you truly seemed to dislike are 1) the duration of 4e's short rests, and 2) either the number of surges available to characters per day or the amount of HP recovery allowed by each surge.



Yes


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## Rod Staffwand (Dec 20, 2015)

So what tactical choices are missing? What would you need to add to bring 5e up to snuff?

I'm not a huge fan of how 5e classes are put together, but it seems to me that they have access to just about everything in the 3X/Pathfinder line in some form or another. At the same time, there's less emphasis on one-trick pony martials and buffed-to-no-end casters. As for 4e, classes had lots of options, I found myself using the same attack power progression and tricks 90% of the time [best encounter --> second best encounter --> at-wills; insert daily(ies) as needed], there really wasn't much true choice. D&D combat (any edition) is basically a solved problem anyway, white board speaking. Buff Selves. Control Battlefield. Focus Fire. Rest. Repeat. 

How would you unsimplify and unbore 5e combat to your taste?


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## AaronOfBarbaria (Dec 21, 2015)

MechaPilot said:


> I wouldn't say that it was a poor choice on their part, so much as it was necessary.



I'll have to disagree that approaching the horse, rather than taking cover while discerning if this is just an obstacle in the road or the bait in a very obvious trap, wasn't a poor choice. Of course, I don't mean to suggest that no one should ever make any poor choices - it's bound to happen at some point, and the choice should make things more difficult but not entirely impossible, which seems to have been the case given that your party survived their poor choice and defeated the challenge while doing so.


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## AaronOfBarbaria (Dec 21, 2015)

Huntsman57 said:


> The issue with revive in general...you ever read a fantasy novel set in a D&D world



We can make a full stop here and my answer is "No."

I don't read D&D novels; I play D&D campaigns. What might happen in a D&D novel has no bearing upon my games, and the poor writing you refer to of someone dying and it not being clear why they couldn't just be raised is poor writing, not par for the course in a D&D world.



Huntsman57 said:


> At the end of the day raising folks from the dead needs to be a big damn deal, and it hasn't been portrayed as such in recent editions. It should be a rare occurrence, never easy, and never without a price that goes well beyond simple money.



In my campaigns coming back from the dead is always a big damn deal, is a rare occurrence, and costs severe complications above and beyond the not trivial monetary costs... but I can see how someone would read the same rules materials as I have and reach a different result, as not everyone out there has the same amount of willingness to declare advice and/or guidelines present in the DMG to be wrong (i.e. the stuff in the 3.5 DMG about what level of character of each class is likely present in any given settlement which I disregard in their entirety because NPCs with class levels should not be so common, let alone so predictably high level as those guidelines make them).



Huntsman57 said:


> As far as I can tell you can choose to cast revivify if you're high enough level to do so. I see no restrictions about this unless they're put into place by the DM on behalf of the character's gods for some reason.



Well, high enough level of the appropriate classes to have it on your spell list, choosing to prepare it rather than something else, and having the appropriate amount of wealth in the appropriate form of diamonds - which I guess a DM can choose to make no more difficult than "I go buy diamonds," if that's what they want to do.



Huntsman57 said:


> In any event, coming back to life with 1 hit point is getting off extremely easy, especially in 5E.



It is getting off extremely easy compared to the punishments and complications that accompanied coming back from the dead in some prior versions of the game, yes - but that doesn't make it actually objectively getting off easy, nor does it mean that it isn't detrimental _enough._ I've never seen a player view coming back due to a casting of revivify (nor any higher level spell) as anything other than a significant setback (sure, not the most significant possible setback, but significant enough to matter all the same).



Huntsman57 said:


> As far as the casting cost, that could be a thing, particularly at lower levels. I suspect most DMs don't make material component acquisition a stumbling block for their players, but even if they do not, this would be a good spell to make an exception.



When it comes to what "most DMs" do or don't do, I don't feel there is much point in bringing it up - especially when you are effectively saying "Most DMs create the problem I am talking about for themselves," so the solution is simply that the DMs viewing it as a problem should just stop choosing to cause problems for themselves.


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## Azurewraith (Dec 21, 2015)

So As i Said i would not down my combats from last session with their slog factor and asked my PCs to rate it on enjoyment the party was all 3rd lvl with a champion fighter, tempest cleric, Wild sorcerer and a valor bard im also running the sytem shock and lingering injuries along with vitalaty optional rules. Only had 2 encounters one was a random encounter with two kuo-tuo(the fish people) in a river they didn't want to fight tried to escape but one of the pcs hit the turbo button on their alien motor boat crushing the tiny row boat of the kuo-tuo throwing the bard and fighter into the water on impact the kuo-tuo saw there chance and went for some revenge the sorcerer mopped up 1 with a exact HP chromatic orb and then the other one fled after seeing his friend into fish finger's. 1action combat everyone agreed it didn't last long enough to be boring the 2nd fight was the same 3 against an aquatic troll that latched onto the side of there boat they had no clue about fire or acid and i used the loathsome limbs variant and it lost an arm on the deck of the boat at one point this one did drag on a bit but after 5rounds the bard just hit the turbo button and steered into a wall creating a belt-sander and the troll let go. They enjoyed this fight as they found a alternative solution and they enjoyed the severed arm getting up and darting round the boat. Oh i mentioned a cleric ye he didn't do anything that session he got hung up on trying to learn an alien language so he seemed to be enjoying him self so left him to it. Small sample size i know but it is what it is i guess.


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## Celtavian (Dec 21, 2015)

I think my players enjoy 5E combat. They miss some of the _Pathfinder_ options on occasion, but mostly seem to enjoy figuring out ways to make use of their 5E abilities.

My main gripes are based on DMing 5E. Creatures are very weak, especially creatures like fiends which are often big bags of hit points that the party easily carves through. It's the Bounded Accuracy effect. Just makes it too easy to do a ton of damage. The creatures don't have enough hit points to make fights interesting. They rarely get to use their abilities. If you were watching a movie with some of these 5E battles the fearsome demon or undead would jump out growling and seeming like a scary enemy, the party would kill it in six or twelve seconds leaving the audience underwhelmed. Since most of my players play this game to live out the fantasy stories they've read or watched, it makes for underwhelming battles that leave the imagination unsatisfied.


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## Deleven (Dec 21, 2015)

NotActuallyTim said:


> The basic rules for combat are pretty darned simple, and it's true that some people with experience in playing more complex combat systems may get bored quickly.
> 
> There's a lot of ways to solve this. You could refocus on things other than combat to get people engaged, by introducing more social opportunities. You can wildcard combat by introducing alternate win conditions (Get out of the room before the floor crumbles away!). You could spend a lot of time inventing new combat rules (I'm actually doing this, but I'm nowhere near finished).
> 
> However, if they're super bored because they don't have enough actions and numbers to memorize, I'd suggest you just start improvising actions with your monsters. Then point out that if the players want to start tossing sand into people's eyes all they have to do say "My character throws sand into the Orc's face!"




This is prettymuch exactly my point of view


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## Mephista (Dec 21, 2015)

How I solved the "boring combat" problem.  I gave my enemies combat feats.  For example, I made an anti-party to harass the PCs, and did the following - Polearm Mastery on the orkish war cleric, the yuan-ti assassin had Mage Slayer, the tiefling blade-warlock had Sentinel.   Two dedicated casters - a green dragonborn sorcerer that focused on mind controls and poison, and a human necromancer, were more by-the-book, but they had lots of goodies on their own.  

In short, the "problem" I encountered with combat being boring is that the monsters were basically too simplistic.  They use dumbed down abilities, despite sometimes clearly using class abilities (re: goblins and Cunning Actions).  So, I upped the ante by making the monsters have access to the same complexity and ability as the PCs.  If they saw orcs with spears, they learned not to approach carelessly.  They saw shields and wondered if they'd be knocked down and swarmed if they moved in range.  

Given how easy it is to reference classes and feats now, even making spontaneous warriors and casters is easy.  

--------------------------

Oh, and on the issue of throwing sand in eyes....  that's actually a standard tactic for a thief I played, who carried around a bunch of caltrops, powders, and other small "traps" to use with his Cunning Action.  Trap Master Ikka.  Ah, fun times.


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## EzekielRaiden (Dec 21, 2015)

Well [MENTION=6786252]Mephista[/MENTION] it sounds like that's a decent choice when your group *isn't* floundering. Any ideas for one that is?


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## Mephista (Dec 21, 2015)

Frankly, EzekielRaiden, it depends on the group.  Some people aren't be happy with 5e because what they want is a tactical war game.  Others aren't happy because they feel like things are set up to be a stand-and-swing fest.  Another group might actually be having issues because they don't like hitting as often.  A fourth table might find that out of game designing is a huge part of their enjoyment.   A new party might have issues when it comes to abilities that don't naturally lend themselves to evocative imagery to them.  

And this is compounded by the fact that people don't actually know what they want.  The brain is a complex affair, and even a simple high chance of success on dice rolling triggers less endorphins and affects the enjoyment of the game.  First, we have to figure out what the exact issue is, because every group is different.  I'm not going to suggest that my method is a cure-all for everyone.  I'm good at spontaneously adapting new spins on abilities or altering monsters on the fly.  I encourage crazy stunts, and I have a list of house-rules to fix feats and classes to make them more interesting and dynamic.   Hells, I have a system for mid-game changing of your subrace if you're an elf!   I have a setting where its not unheard of to have entire covens of warlocks of different kinds working together as a challenge.  

My best suggestion for someone seeking to emulate my style is to look into different feats and spells that alter the terrain, and start using those.  Web, Entangle, Evard's Black Tentacles, Arms of Hadar, Darkness, almost any illusion spell, some mind control effects.   Anticipation and the unknown are two powerful weapons to keep your player's attention.  I consider simple to be bad because its generally predictable.  Predictable is boring.  So, if you avoid being predictable while not going entirely off the walls, it helps a lot.  

Lairs are also fun.  Use lair traits whenever possible when the players are exploring a dungeon, even if you have to steal them from other monsters, or design your own.  I once made up Lair traits for a cursed sword that was spewing shadows into the local area that had to be fought while taking down a necrotic energy barrier.

If your players know the MM fairly well, and know what to expect from enemies, design new ones.  Don't use what they expect to see all the time.  Give that orcish rager grappling abitlies and drag the rogue away from the party.  Give the goblins some drow poison that they stole when fleeing their ex-mistresses during a surface raid, and some shamanistic backup.  Have the secret cultists you were sent to exterminate uses a rope of entanglement when you weren't expecting it.  Give the thief guild invisibility potions inside of fake teeth instead of cyinide capsuls.  Make the leader of this thief guild a halfling-vampire or a blue dragon.


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## Mephista (Dec 21, 2015)

I just read the post about playing a grappling lore bard.   Some things I'd like to address first.  One is that you're level 3.  All the games are pretty weak at low level.  Its an unfortnate feature - the game starts comign together around level 5, imho.   Second, the bard is primarily a support character that's not always easy to enjoy playing.  Its entirely plausable that your issues with the game could be a direct result of the class, and not something else.  Third is that I'm frankly unamused with the bard design as a whole.  Bard's always been one of my top four classes.  I can't really enjoy the 5e bard.   

One solution I suggest is talking to your GM to allow you to get access to the Booming Blade cantrip.  Its thematically appropriate for a Skald, and something a bit more interesting to do with your turn.


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## iserith (Dec 21, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> I think my players enjoy 5E combat. They miss some of the _Pathfinder_ options on occasion, but mostly seem to enjoy figuring out ways to make use of their 5E abilities.
> 
> My main gripes are based on DMing 5E. Creatures are very weak, especially creatures like fiends which are often big bags of hit points that the party easily carves through. It's the Bounded Accuracy effect. Just makes it too easy to do a ton of damage. The creatures don't have enough hit points to make fights interesting. They rarely get to use their abilities. If you were watching a movie with some of these 5E battles the fearsome demon or undead would jump out growling and seeming like a scary enemy, the party would kill it in six or twelve seconds leaving the audience underwhelmed. Since most of my players play this game to live out the fantasy stories they've read or watched, it makes for underwhelming battles that leave the imagination unsatisfied.




I used a lot of demons in my Summer at the Lake campaign (10th- to 11th-level PCs). I found the battles they had with these monsters to be very engaging. Some examples:


A lake battle with a hezrou as it sought to destroy the PCs' keel boat - the party cleric made excellent use of _control water_ here.
A running combat with vrocks through a trap-filled area of the dungeon which split the party.
An intense fight between the PCs and a glabrezu, battling near prismatic walls. One PC went down and another was almost pushed in before turning the tables on the demon.
An awesome battle between a succubus and her wight consorts. The elf rogue was seriously drained after this fight, maximum hit points in the single digits. She later became their ally for a time before the PCs betrayed her.
A fight with a chasme and some mummies as the PCs were either trying not to fall off a huge demonic statue or struggling to climb out of the pit of bones at its feet. The halfling fighter/rogue leaped onto the back of the chasme and crash landed it.
The climactic battle was with a balor on a fiery battlefield with a horde of dretches roaming about. Two PCs died in this fight, but they managed to save the day.

There were others, but these were the ones that I recall off the top of my head. You can read the transcripts from the game, including mechanics, in the link I provided above. They were all great scenes with a good level of difficulty. So I'm beginning to wonder if either my expectations are different from other folks or whether I'm designing challenges in an entirely different fashion.


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## Mephista (Dec 21, 2015)

EzekielRaiden said:


> Well...I kind of am playing a full caster? The Bard _is_ a full caster in 5e, isn't it...?



 Sort of.  You have full spell casting progression, but the bard isn't what I'd call a dedicated spellcaster.  Even the Lore Bard tends to rely more on skill tricks and Cutting Words and the Vicious Mockery cantrip than on pure magic.  I can draw more parallels to the paladin and ranger than I can to the wizard or cleric for the bard here.   

You have a lot of neat tricks, but you really still a play like a hybrid type instead of pure caster.


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## Celtavian (Dec 21, 2015)

iserith said:


> I used a lot of demons in my Summer at the Lake campaign (10th- to 11th-level PCs). I found the battles they had with these monsters to be very engaging. Some examples:
> 
> 
> A lake battle with a hezrou as it sought to destroy the PCs' keel boat - the party cleric made excellent use of _control water_ here.
> ...




You do most likely have different expectations. I come from _Pathfinder_. I'm accustomed to the fiends having potent spell-like abilities and summoning as well as outright immunity to major attacks. From your descriptions it sounds like the environmental conditions had more to do with the challenge of the battles than the enemies. I want the actual creatures themselves to be a powerful challenge without adding any odd environmental effects or conditions. Just a powerful demon that can fight the characters in a straight up battle and really challenge them without any strange environmental challenges for them to face. If the balor shows up alone, he can go toe to toe with the party on a flat, open surface because he is a balor, a creature of such immense power that legions of demons bow to him. I don't want this to be something I narrate. I want a balor to mechanically be able to make a legion of demons bow. If 10 glabrezu, a 1000 dretches, 100 vrocks, and whatever they can summon up attacks the balor, he rips the entire group apart. That's my expectation. 

In game terms that means if a group of level 15 characters show up to fight this guy, they better have some powerful magic and bring their A game to even have a chance of downing him alone. This was something that I knew how to build in _Pathfinder_ and I don't quite have a handle on yet in 5E. I'll get there, but these kinds of monsters aren't an inherent part of the game and the tools I have to make them are different. So it's going to take some work to get the proper feel.

When I unleash a certain monster I built, I'll direct you to it to see an example of what I'm trying to build. I'll provide a summary of the encounter, since this will be a test run of a powerful legendary creature built closer to how I want it to be. My design goal is the ability with minimal support and environmental advantage to take on a party of six level 5 characters in brutal battle. I hope they don't die, but I won't be pulling punches.

As an aside, let me ask:
1. Was  _Protection from Evil and good_ on main tank?
2. Do you allow feats like Sentinel or Great Weapon Master?
3. Did you have a caster using _banishment_? 
4. Did you have a dedicated healer? Prferably a cleric or bard with buffing and countering abilities?
5. Did you have a wizard or other dedicated caster?
6. Did you have a powerful ranged striker?

My group in general always includes those types of effects. _Banishment_ is especially useful against fiends. They are very uncomfortable without a dedicated healer and usually won't play without one. Though they have learned that a dedicated wizard isn't as necessary in 5E.


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## GrahamWills (Dec 21, 2015)

iserith said:


> I used a lot of demons in my Summer at the Lake campaign (10th- to 11th-level PCs). I found the battles they had with these monsters to be very engaging. Some examples




Actually, I think your post makes the opposite point to what you were intending. You, the GM, made the *battles* very engaging, despite the fact that the *monsters* were not particularly so. Let me be really clear -- this is a good thing, and it is far preferable to have a GM who makes engaging fights with boring monsters, than autopilot combat with fun monsters. But as far as it pertains to this thread, the nature of the monsters and the 5E combat system does not seem to have helped you. Your statements about how fun the combat are have everything to do with your skill as a GM and nothing to do with the system. They read just as well as:


A lake battle with an orc as it sought to destroy the PCs' keel boat - the party cleric made excellent use of _control water_ here.
A running combat with orcs through a trap-filled area of the dungeon which split the party.
An intense fight between the PCs and an orc, battling near prismatic walls. One PC went down and another was almost pushed in before turning the tables on the orc.
An awesome battle between an orc and her goblin consorts. The elf rogue was seriously drained after this fight, maximum hit points in the single digits. She later became their ally for a time before the PCs betrayed her.
A fight with a orc and some goblins as the PCs were either trying not to fall off a huge demonic statue or struggling to climb out of the pit of bones at its feet. The halfling fighter/rogue leaped onto the back of the orc and crash landed it.
The climactic battle was with n orc on a fiery battlefield with a horde of goblins roaming about. Two PCs died in this fight, but they managed to save the day.

As is always the case, a good GM trumps system. But I think, if you were to run the same fights in AD&D, they would have been much the same. In 3.5 or 4E they would have been more complex -- which can either be a good thing or a bad thing; allowing players to do more cool stuff or monsters to have differentiating abilities, or bogging the game down into standard attack pattern nova-1. 

Is 5E's combat too simple? My general feeling is that the monsters are a little too simple -- I way, WAY prefer 13th Age's take on monster design. For rules, I'm not sure. I haven't really experienced enough. But I do like to have monsters which I cannot just swap out for a generic one and have essentially the same combat.


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## iserith (Dec 21, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> You do most likely have different expectations. I come from _Pathfinder_. I'm accustomed to the fiends having potent spell-like abilities and summoning as well as outright immunity to major attacks. From your descriptions it sounds like the environmental conditions had more to do with the challenge of the battles than the enemies. I want the actual creatures themselves to be a powerful challenge without adding any odd environmental effects or conditions. Just a powerful demon that can fight the characters in a straight up battle and really challenge them without any strange environmental challenges for them to face. If the balor shows up alone, he can go toe to toe with the party on a flat, open surface because he is a balor, a creature of such immense power that legions of demons bow to him. I don't want this to be something I narrate. I want a balor to mechanically be able to make a legion of demons bow. If 10 glabrezu, a 1000 dretches, 100 vrocks, and whatever they can summon up attacks the balor, he rips the entire group apart. That's my expectation.




I think a scene with just a monster and nothing else going on is lacking, both in terms of challenge and engagement. I try to turn the volume up on all counts. That was true in both D&D 3.Xe and D&D 4e as well. It's never _just _the monster for me. I don't see why it should be.

Based on your comments, I'm thinking it's not expectations - it's how I design challenges that differs.



Celtavian said:


> In game terms that means if a group of level 15 characters show up to fight this guy, they better have some powerful magic and bring their A game to even have a chance of downing him alone. This was something that I knew how to build in _Pathfinder_ and I don't quite have a handle on yet in 5E. I'll get there, but these kinds of monsters aren't an inherent part of the game and the tools I have to make them are different. So it's going to take some work to get the proper feel.
> 
> When I unleash a certain monster I built, I'll direct you to it to see an example of what I'm trying to build. I'll provide a summary of the encounter, since this will be a test run of a powerful legendary creature built closer to how I want it to be. My design goal is the ability with minimal support and environmental advantage to take on a party of six level 5 characters in brutal battle. I hope they don't die, but I won't be pulling punches.




It's less about the monster in my view and more about everything - including the monster - that goes into the challenge. The monster is just part of it. Perhaps even central to it, but not the end all be all.



Celtavian said:


> As an aside, let me ask:
> 1. Was  _Protection from Evil and good_ on main tank?
> 2. Do you allow feats like Sentinel or Great Weapon Master?
> 3. Did you have a caster using _banishment_?
> ...




1. I don't recall.
2. Yes. I don't prohibit anything in my games.
3. I don't recall. Maybe.
4. For part of the campaign until a scheduling issue caused the player to drop.
5. For part of the campaign until a scheduling issue caused the player to drop.
6. Yes, an elf rogue who had respectable sneak attack dice.

The party generally consisted of a human barbarian, halfling fighter/rogue, a paladin (with a _holy avenger_ sword), and an elf rogue. The two players who had to drop ran a human fighter/cleric and human fighter/wizard if I remember correctly. Respectable damage especially the paladin with the _holy avenger_ and smites (mostly undead and fiends in this game), good staying power even without a dedicated healer. My guess is that this will be seen as "not optimized enough," but my counter to that is simply to add more difficulty in the form of additional monsters, traps, and hazards. As I mentioned upthread, the DM is in all respects in control of the difficulty of a challenge.


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## iserith (Dec 21, 2015)

GrahamWills said:


> Actually, I think your post makes the opposite point to what you were intending. You, the GM, made the *battles* very engaging, despite the fact that the *monsters* were not particularly so. Let me be really clear -- this is a good thing, and it is far preferable to have a GM who makes engaging fights with boring monsters, than autopilot combat with fun monsters. But as far as it pertains to this thread, the nature of the monsters and the 5E combat system does not seem to have helped you. Your statements about how fun the combat are have everything to do with your skill as a GM and nothing to do with the system. They read just as well as:
> 
> 
> A lake battle with an orc as it sought to destroy the PCs' keel boat - the party cleric made excellent use of _control water_ here.
> ...




I disagree. The monsters' abilities played a significant role in the specific challenges I created. Typically, I see what the monsters can do and then fit the environment around them to suit them. The hezrou's ability to swim and its poisonous stench made it difficult to get to for melee types and dangerous to pursue in turbulent waters because checks would be at disadvantage. The vrocks could fly which made it easier for them to avoid the traps, plus their speed meant they could easily keep ahead of pursuing PCs. The glabrezu's spell-like abilities made things difficult for the party, leading to PC incapacitation and nearly death. And so on. Not to mention the advantage on saving throws against magic. (This of course came into play less as two of the main spellcasters dropped from the game.)

So I see it as the thinking the monster should be the whole challenge when that's really just not how it is in my view.


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## Celtavian (Dec 21, 2015)

iserith said:


> I used a lot of demons in my Summer at the Lake campaign (10th- to 11th-level PCs). I found the battles they had with these monsters to be very engaging. Some examples:
> 
> There were others, but these were the ones that I recall off the top of my head. You can read the transcripts from the game, including mechanics, in the link I provided above. They were all great scenes with a good level of difficulty. So I'm beginning to wonder if either my expectations are different from other folks or whether I'm designing challenges in an entirely different fashion.




Hmm. I read some of those transcripts. What an oddly built party. I couldn't see my group building a party like this. They would feel too lacking.

Someone cast _guardian of faith_? What an odd spell to cast. Was _bless_ not used very often with a cleric and paladin? I'm perusing the sessions. Their tactics are odd.

I think I see some of the problem between our perspectives. I think you play with a wider variety of people. I play with the same group I've been playing with for twenty plus years. There is little variation in what we do. We build a group a certain way incorporating types of characters we deem important. Every group usually has an optimized ranged striker, arcane caster, dedicated healer, and tank. We play with five or six. The last two spots are usually occupied by an optimized damage dealer or two. We don't test a lot of spells. We want someone casting _bless_. We want someone with _banishment_ since it works against non-fiends against charisma, usually a weak save. We employ _wall of force_ to break up battlefields or seal someone off (not as easy now with concentration). We have one or two characters with _fly_. These types of things are planned and negotiated during the leveling up process. Even who wears what magic items is usually a discussion of how to optimize the group with items. We don't usually change players much, so each group is the same with different players playing different roles using the same optimal tactics with moderate variation. That would definitely lead to very different play experiences between someone that played with different people on a campaign by campaign basis.


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## ChrisCarlson (Dec 21, 2015)

When you always use cookie cutters, your cookies will always come out the same shape...


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## iserith (Dec 21, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> Hmm. I read some of those transcripts. What an oddly built party. I couldn't see my group building a party like this. They would feel too lacking.
> 
> Someone cast _guardian of faith_? What an odd spell to cast. Was _bless_ not used very often with a cleric and paladin? I'm perusing the sessions. Their tactics are odd.
> 
> I think I see some of the problem between our perspectives. I think you play with a wider variety of people. I play with the same group I've been playing with for twenty plus years. There is little variation in what we do. We build a group a certain way incorporating types of characters we deem important. Every group usually has an optimized ranged striker, arcane caster, dedicated healer, and tank. We play with five or six. The last two spots are usually occupied by an optimized damage dealer or two. We don't test a lot of spells. We want someone casting _bless_. We want someone with _banishment_ since it works against non-fiends against charisma, usually a weak save. We employ _wall of force_ to break up battlefields or seal someone off (not as easy now with concentration). We have one or two characters with _fly_. These types of things are planned and negotiated during the leveling up process. Even who wears what magic items is usually a discussion of how to optimize the group with items. We don't usually change players much, so each group is the same with different players playing different roles using the same optimal tactics with moderate variation. That would definitely lead to very different play experiences between someone that played with different people on a campaign by campaign basis.




Sure, but that doesn't change the DM's control of the difficulty of challenges at all or how the monsters are just a part of a well-designed challenge. It would be no trouble for me to challenge the party you're talking about without ever changing a single monster's stat block. At any level of play.


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## Celtavian (Dec 21, 2015)

iserith said:


> I think a scene with just a monster and nothing else going on is lacking, both in terms of challenge and engagement. I try to turn the volume up on all counts. That was true in both D&D 3.Xe and D&D 4e as well. It's never _just _the monster for me. I don't see why it should be.
> 
> Based on your comments, I'm thinking it's not expectations - it's how I design challenges that differs.




It seems like expectations to me. I expect a powerful monster to be able to take the party on alone. That is my expectation. Whereas you prefer to design challenges where the expectations are that the party take on the monster, the environmental challenge, and whatever else you've thrown in as a sort of combination to overcome the environmental hazard while fighting a monster you believe they have a chance of victory against with perhaps some other goal thrown in. That can be fun now and again as an encounter.

To me a powerful demon lord shouldn't need environmental factors to pose a challenge. And a high level group should have little trouble eliminating environmental challenges as well as creating their own to use against the monster.




> It's less about the monster in my view and more about everything - including the monster - that goes into the challenge. The monster is just part of it. Perhaps even central to it, but not the end all be all.




My view is that certain things should be able to take on a party in battle without any bells and whistles. Powerful demons like balors or pit fiends, dragons, archwizards, and other creatures that might be considered legendary. They should be so powerful in my opinion that they can devastate armies by themselves. That is why you need high level adventurers to put an end to them. As players like _Hemlock_ have shown, skeleton archers or an army of human lvl 1 or 2 archers can end an adult or higher dragon or a balor due to Bounded Accuracy and the lack of adequate defenses due to probabilities and hit point attrition. This was not the case in _Pathfinder_/3E. Those creatures were powerful enough that the chance of a low level creature hitting them was next to nothing. If you hit them with a weapon that wasn't built to harm them, it did nothing. In 5E a Balor isn't immune to attacks from normal weapons and can be killed by a group of skeleton archers with mundane weapons by a necromancer. That doesn't meet my expectations for a demon lord like a balor.




> The party generally consisted of a human barbarian, halfling fighter/rogue, a paladin (with a _holy avenger_ sword), and an elf rogue. The two players who had to drop ran a human fighter/cleric and human fighter/wizard if I remember correctly. Respectable damage especially the paladin with the _holy avenger_ and smites (mostly undead and fiends in this game), good staying power even without a dedicated healer. My guess is that this will be seen as "not optimized enough," but my counter to that is simply to add more difficulty in the form of additional monsters, traps, and hazards. As I mentioned upthread, the DM is in all respects in control of the difficulty of a challenge.




Strange party. 

At the end of the day I agree that fun is the primary goal. If you and your group had fun, then you did it right. 

We differ on what we want creatures to be able to do. It doesn't mean either of us are playing the game wrong or that 5E is a bad game. As I've stated before, I've had to increase the power of things in every edition of D&D using the available tools. I had reached a point of system mastery in 3E/_Pathfinder_ where I could do this quite easily. I haven't reached that point in 5E yet where I know how to make the mechanics fit the play-style I'm going for. You seem to have found the right way to implement your play-style. I'll get there, but at the moment the game is too soft for my tastes.


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## ChrisCarlson (Dec 21, 2015)

I've come to find it is often better to use a boat rather than try to waterproof a car...


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## Celtavian (Dec 21, 2015)

iserith said:


> Sure, but that doesn't change the DM's control of the difficulty of challenges at all or how the monsters are just a part of a well-designed challenge. It would be no trouble for me to challenge the party you're talking about without ever changing a single monster's stat block. At any level of play.




I agree the DM controls the difficulty. I would have to see how you fare against our party. It would be an interesting test. It would definitely interest me to read the transcripts of you running an optimized group using excellent tactics. I'd like to see how you run that. If you ever do such a campaign, please post the transcripts so I can check it out.


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## Tony Vargas (Dec 21, 2015)

Rod Staffwand said:


> I'm not a huge fan of how 5e classes are put together, but it seems to me that they have access to just about everything in the 3X/Pathfinder line in some form or another. At the same time, there's less emphasis on one-trick pony martials and buffed-to-no-end casters.



Not nearly everything, no, but the basics, 'in some form,' sure.  That's still far short.  You can certainly play a veteran-soldier with a pole-arm, for instance, but you won't be having the impact of a 3.x/PF 'battlefield control' build.  Between backgrounds and re-skinning you can probably model almost any concept, the result just might not be that viable or that interesting in actual play.  



> As for 4e, classes had lots of options



A lot of build options, and more choice in-play than 5e martial characters, but vastly less flexibility than 5e neo-Vancian casters.



> I found myself using the same attack power progression and tricks 90% of the time [best encounter --> second best encounter --> at-wills; insert daily(ies) as needed]



 You could optimize a striker for damage, that way, using multi-attack and minor-action-attack encounter powers and generate a lot of damage in the first round or two of combat.  A party full of such characters made for very short combats - most of the time, perhaps punctuated by the occasional disaster when something didn't fit their formula.  The result was faster - and, perhaps, less interesting - combats.  Much like 5e has delivered.



> D&D combat (any edition) is basically a solved problem anyway, white board speaking. Buff Selves. Control Battlefield. Focus Fire. Rest. Repeat.



Heh.



MechaPilot said:


> I agree with you that 5e is at its most lethal in the early levels, but I can't say that it's more so than other editions.



5e and classic both give the DM a lot of latitude in how deadly to make his game.  Heck, the idea that, maybe, you shouldn't actively try to wipe out the party every session wasn't even exactly universal back then. 

But, just, by the numbers.  Dying at -10 vs at -hps is deadlier if you have fewer than 10 hps.  FWIW.



> I no longer have my AD&D 2e DMG to look at, but I recall it having random encounter tables for different terrains, and they did not care about the level of the PCs.  You could end up rolling a random encounter with multiple enemies having substantially more HPs and damage potential than the PC party.
> 
> I also recall AD&D 2e monster entries having a "number appearing" line.  For goblins it was 4D6, which is an average of 14 goblins.



Yep, classic D&D prettymuch lacked any sort of 'balanced-encounter' guidelines, so you could easily have had a newish DM overstocking his dungeons.  



Hemlock said:


> Since we're talking about a 2nd edition paladin



I don't know why discussions of AD&D or classic D&D always shift to 2e.  



> Raise Dead usually had no better than a 75% to 92% chance of working, which means a fair chance of leaving you permanently dead.
> 
> It's not like 5E where every 5th level cleric can Revivify you with no permanent impact and no chance of failure



You also didn't die that often at high level.  We were talking about a character that needed to roll a 1 to fail a save, rolling that one on an SoD without any other recourse (if it was a poison save, FREX, neutralize poison would have worked even after the fact.

Revivify was introduced in 3.5, which also did away with system shock & CON loss and the like, when you could find yourself dying a whole lot more often and more suddenly, especially to the ever-rising DCs of save-or-dies.




Huntsman57 said:


> Revivify is just plain stupid.



It's not so bad, a life-saving spell.  Maybe a little anachornistically EMT-ish.  



AaronOfBarbaria said:


> (and likely keep dying and suffering more penalties, since the penalties for death are typically things which make you even more likely to die than you already were)



That's a whole 'nuther "death spiral."



Chaosmancer said:


> The first is starting at level 1.



Yep.  Doesn't exactly showcase 5e's best.



> The second thing, it sounds like you guys just have crappy luck.



A system can be more or less vulnerable to that kind of thing.  5e shouldn't be, because of DM Empowerment....



> I wonder how many DM's feel comfortable adding in the optional rules from the DMG, I wonder how many DM's or players remember all of the things you can do.



A DM runs more creatures than a player, and they're different every time, so it's pretty easy to 'forget' - or intentionally skip over - some of their options.  



> Dash, Disengage, Dodge, Help, breaking up Movement between attacks, Grappling, Shoving, these are all things any character or monster can do



which does make them less interesting to players.  



> I wonder if part of the problem is how much experience a lot of you guys already have.



That works both ways.  5e is very much pointed at the long-time or even nostalgic player, its familiarity is one of its biggest selling points.


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## iserith (Dec 21, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> I agree the DM controls the difficulty. I would have to see how you fare against our party. It would be an interesting test. I wonder what you would do if the party refused to engage the encounter as you wanted them to do. It would definitely interest me to read the transcripts of you running an optimized group using excellent tactics. I'd like to see how you run that. If you ever do such a campaign, please post the transcripts so I can check it out.




It's unlikely I'd do the transcripts again as it was a lot of work. If you want to workshop a challenge together for your party some day, we can certainly do that here on the forums. As you may or may not know, I post short-form scenarios on the forums on a regular basis so I'd be happy to do one for your group with some guidance from you. Then you can test it out on them. It may be educational and entertaining for other community members as well.


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## Celtavian (Dec 21, 2015)

iserith said:


> It's unlikely I'd do the transcripts again as it was a lot of work. If you want to workshop a challenge together for your party some day, we can certainly do that here on the forums. As you may or may not know, I post short-form scenarios on the forums on a regular basis so I'd be happy to do one for your group with some guidance from you. Then you can test it out on them. It may be educational and entertaining for other community members as well.




Tell me what you think of this challenge. It's the final room of a dungeon for 6 level 6 characters. You think it can give them a good run?


*J8. Bramblemounds:* _A huge tree 30 feet high covered in thorny vines resides in the center of the room room. Several smaller trees around 20 feet high stand about the room in various places. The room is 60 feet high with arched of glass. Sunlight lights the room._

This tree is alive. It is an enormously powerful treant that has been given the duty of guarding the druid’s treasure until forest defenders return. Brambleheart shouts at the PCs, _“You are not welcome here. No one can have the treasures of the druids. Death to those that invade the Vault of Thorns.”_

*Lair Action:* On initiative count 20 (losing initiative ties), Brambleheart takes a lair action to cause one of the following effects:

Entangle: Brambleheart can cause an area to act as the equivalent of an entangle spell. DC 15 strength save and check to escape.


*Brambleheart.* Legendary Treant. Gargantuan Plant Neutral Evil
Armor Class 18 (natural armor); Hit Points 312 (16d20 + 96); Speed 30ft.
STR 24 (+7) DEX 8 (- 1) CON 22 (+6) INT 12 (+1) WIS 16 (+3) CHA 12 (+1)
Saves Str +11, Con +11, Wis +7
Skills Perception +7, Investigation +5, Athletics +11
Damage Resistances bludgeoning, piercing
Damage Vulnerabilities fire
Senses passive Perception 17
Languages Common, Druidic, Elvish, Sylvan
Challenge 12 (8400 XP)

False Appearance. While the treant remains motionless, it is indistinguishable from a normal tree.
Siege Monster. The treant deals double damage to objects and structures.

ACTIONS
Multiattack. The treant makes two slam attacks. 

Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +11 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 4d6+7 bludgeoning damage.

Rock. Ranged Weapon Attack: +11 to hit, range 60/180 ft., one target. Hit: 28 (5d10+7) bludgeoning damage. 10: rocks scattered about the room in easy reach for the treants.

Animate Trees (1/Day). The treant magically animates one or two trees it can see within 60 feet of it. These trees have the same statistics as a treant, except they have Intelligence and Charisma scores of 1, they can't speak, and they have only the Slam action option. An animated tree acts as an ally of the treant. The tree remains animate for 1 day or until it dies; until the treant dies or is more than 120 feet from the tree; or until the treant takes a bonus action to turn it back into an inanimate tree. The tree then takes root if possible.

Legendary Resistance: 3/day. If the Brambleheart fails a saving throw, it can choose to succeed instead.

Legendary Actions: The treant can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be usedat a time and only at the end of another creature's turn. The treant regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Blood-drinking Bramble: Melee Weapon Attack: +11 to hit, reach 30 ft., one target. Hit: 4d6+7 piercing damage.
The blood-drinking bramble stalk wraps the target in a thorny vine that drinks the blood of the target healing the treant. The target takes 6d6 necrotic damage on a hit that the treant heals. The target is restrained and must make a DC 19 strength check to escape from the bramble. The target does not take any more piercing damage from the vine. It does take the blood drain every round. If the treant moves, the target gets dragged with the treant must make a DC 19 Dex save or Acrobatics check to stay on their feet. If they fail, they are knocked prone and dragged with the treant. A vine can be severed by doing 20 points of damage to it. It has an AC of 18. It has the same resistance to bludgeoning and piercing damage as the treant. Fire can burn the bramble to cinders. The treant is covered in the vines and can continue to attack with them indefinitely. 

Rock (2 actions): Brambleheart can throw a second rock.

Attack: The treant can make a Slam attack.


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## iserith (Dec 22, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> Tell me what you think of this challenge. It's the final room of a dungeon for 6 level 6 characters. You think it can give them a good run?
> 
> [sblock]
> *J8. Bramblemounds:* _A huge tree 30 feet high covered in thorny vines resides in the center of the room room. Several smaller trees around 20 feet high stand about the room in various places. The room is 60 feet high with arched of glass. Sunlight lights the room._
> ...




What kind of party does your group have? If you posted it already, please point me to the post as I may have missed it in the exchange. It seems sufficiently powerful for a 4-man 6th-level party. Though if you have 6 PCs, a straight-up fight starts looking easy to me just on action economy alone.

What's the PCs' primary goal here? It seems to be to get the druids' treasure. Can they just grab it and go? Can they take this thing down from range or does the forest prohibit ranged attacks after a certain distance due to its thickness?

What's up with those glass arches? When I see a treant's siege monster ability and glass arches, I'm thinking it needs to be raining sharp glass like nobody's business which makes for a nice AOE and potentially areas of hazardous terrain that lingers.

I'd also be inclined - especially if you have more than 4 PCs - to replace Animate Trees with Create Buttload of Needle Blights. Or perhaps have that as a Legendary Action.


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## Celtavian (Dec 22, 2015)

iserith said:


> What kind of party does your group have? If you posted it already, please point me to the post as I may have missed it in the exchange. It seems sufficiently powerful for a 4-man 6th-level party. Though if you have 6 PCs, a straight-up fight starts looking easy to me just on action economy alone.
> 
> What's the PCs' primary goal here? It seems to be to get the druids' treasure. Can they just grab it and go? Can they take this thing down from range or does the forest prohibit ranged attacks after a certain distance due to its thickness?
> 
> ...




The Party:
1. Eladrin Rogue 2/Sorcerer 4
2. Hill Dwarf Cleric of light 6
3. Half-elf Lore Bard 6
4. Human Ftr 1/Warlock 5
5. Human Paladin (Oath of Vengeance) 6
6. Ranger (Hunter) 6 Sharpshooter

The primary goal is defeat the guardian of the treasure. They've been sent to this place to recover weapons used by an ancient order of druids and rangers to use against an army of giants threatening their home. They will reach this room after traversing several rooms with a mix of threats. 

Tactics:
1. Animate two trees which will add two treants with slam attacks and around 130 hit points each to the fight. That will boost its side to three attack actions for six attacks with three legendary actions and one lair actions versus the party's six actions along with bonus actions and reactions. 

2. It will attempt to entangle as many people as possible using its lair action giving them the restrained condition. Hopefully this will help it deal with ranged attackers who usually have high dex, but lower strength. 

3. The blood-drinking vine should help it heal itself.

4. The boulders laying about will provide it a potent ranged attack that dose an average of 34 damage a hit with two possible boulders a round. This is the attack that really worries. Could take out a PC in one round.

5. It has unbeatable resistance to slashing and piercing damage, but vulnerability to fire.

6. I think the room is 60 by 60 feet with a 30 foot ceiling. This stops them from keeping it at range to mitigate damage, though they could try to fire arrows from the door. Likely the rocks would be used to create a barricade to cut them off or the blood-drinking vine or treant drag them in the room.

My main concern is the creature's damage output is high. The creature itself along with the two treants is a lot of damage to stand against for 6th level characters. Then again it likely wont' hit with all its attacks. 

Breaking the glass arches might be something it does in desperation. This is the home it guards, so it will try to avoid its destruction unless it is on the verge of death. I might write in some Sampson moment when it is dying it uses its reaction to shatter the glass arches hoping to kill its enemy before it falls. Sort of like a balor death effect. That might be cool.


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## Azurewraith (Dec 22, 2015)

Seems good to be i wouldn't worry to much about the damage it you have a pretty bulky party and have some healing on hand if needed. Nailing the rogue/sorcerer with the bramble should help keep it alive as they will struggle to break out alone and it will take an action to break it for them by someone else on top of a nice healthy healing chunk. Personal i would use the animated trees to try and separate the party and have them fighting on several fronts to try and draw fire away from brambleheart and if possible grapple a low skill pc so brambleheart can really go to town.

If things do seem to get out of hand Brambleheart could suggest the pcs leave this place to avoid incurring his wrath.


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## iserith (Dec 22, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> The primary goal is defeat the guardian of the treasure. They've been sent to this place to recover weapons used by an ancient order of druids and rangers to use against an army of giants threatening their home. They will reach this room after traversing several rooms with a mix of threats.




It's not clear to me if the weapons are in the room beyond this treant or in the same room. I'd probably put them in the same room, perhaps tangled up in its roots or high up in its branches. Small subchambers spread out in the room might also be good for this (like one weapon per room) or small mounds. This adds the exploration pillar to the challenge.

If the PCs can figure out a way to get the weapons and get out, then the damage output of the monsters effectively become a countdown to doom - linger and pay with blood. Get the weapons and flee and you have a better chance of survival. This is a good way for you to set aside any concern about the monster's damage output. One good hit will demonstrate the danger in slugging it out to the bitter end and, if your players are as savvy as you say, they'll modify their approach accordingly.



Celtavian said:


> Tactics:
> 1. Animate two trees which will add two treants with slam attacks and around 130 hit points each to the fight. That will boost its side to three attack actions for six attacks with three legendary actions and one lair actions versus the party's six actions along with bonus actions and reactions.




I still think the needle blights are the way to go. They're easier to dispatch individually or perhaps with an AOE, increase the action economy of Team Monster, and are a little more interesting than a couple of extra trees to fight. Two dozen or so ought to do it. If the thought of running 24 monsters is troubling, you could make it a swarm that degrades into 12 individual monsters when reduced to half hit points.



Celtavian said:


> 4. The boulders laying about will provide it a potent ranged attack that dose an average of 34 damage a hit with two possible boulders a round. This is the attack that really worries. Could take out a PC in one round.




I would probably limit the boulders to three and have the chamber be big enough where if the boulder is thrown at a PC at the edge of the chamber, then the treant has to move to recover a boulder. If the players are clever, they can get the boulders spaced out enough to where the treant can't use that throw rock Legendary Action.



Celtavian said:


> 5. It has unbeatable resistance to slashing and piercing damage, but vulnerability to fire.




How much access to fire does the group have? What's your call on a PC lighting up his or her arrows? Does one of the druid weapons have some kind of "flaming" quality? I would probably put one of those in as a reward for engaging with the exploration pillar, provided you use the idea I mentioned above.



Celtavian said:


> Breaking the glass arches might be something it does in desperation. This is the home it guards, so it will try to avoid its destruction unless it is on the verge of death. I might write in some Sampson moment when it is dying it uses its reaction to shatter the glass arches hoping to kill its enemy before it falls. Sort of like a balor death effect. That might be cool.




When I see Siege Monster, I want to break stuff. I would give some serious thought to building the environment such that this becomes a thing. The Samson moment is cool and is a classic trope of the cavern/ruins crumbling after the BBEG goes down - the challenge of escaping the place before being cut to shreds might be a good finish.

Another idea might be to have the chamber be some kind of big thorny pit with the treant in the center and wooden platforms running from the door to a central platform that surrounds it and out to other chambers (perhaps where the weapons are stored). The treant generally stays put in the center, but it can smash the platforms the PCs are standing on, causing a fall. It can also smash the platforms that lead to the weapon chambers, complicating the PCs' efforts to reach them. This may also alleviate some of your concerns about its damage output since it isn't attacking PCs if it's attacking platforms.


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## Condiments (Dec 23, 2015)

iserith said:


> A lake battle with a hezrou as it sought to destroy the PCs' keel boat - the party cleric made excellent use of _control water_ here.
> A running combat with vrocks through a trap-filled area of the dungeon which split the party.
> An intense fight between the PCs and a glabrezu, battling near prismatic walls. One PC went down and another was almost pushed in before turning the tables on the demon.
> An awesome battle between a succubus and her wight consorts. The elf rogue was seriously drained after this fight, maximum hit points in the single digits. She later became their ally for a time before the PCs betrayed her.
> ...




This is very interesting to hear. As I've designed fights throughout of the 10 or so months of my DMing career, its gotten easier to design flashier tactically interesting fights, but I don't think I have a clear idea of how to repeat it with success. I play on Roll20 and run on a grid, so I usually design maps beforehand. Do you have some sort of methodology when designing these set piece battles to ensure they become incredible fights? I put in environment effects and different elevations but its a fine line to walk. You want to provide interesting decisions to players while not frustrating them with overly punishing environmental challenges that make for un-interesting gameplay.


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## Jeff Albertson (Dec 23, 2015)

Condiments said:


> This is very interesting to hear. As I've designed fights throughout of the 10 or so months of my DMing career, its gotten easier to design flashier tactically interesting fights, but I don't think I have a clear idea of how to repeat it with success. I play on Roll20 and run on a grid, so I usually design maps beforehand. Do you have some sort of methodology when designing these set piece battles to ensure they become incredible fights? I put in environment effects and different elevations but its a fine line to walk. You want to provide interesting decisions to players while not frustrating them with overly punishing environmental challenges that make for un-interesting gameplay.




Iserith doesn't really approach the game in a normal way, more of a tactical, skirmish, gameshow, board-game, scenario approach.  They all seem to boil down to: Grab the cherry, and place it in the golden diaper, before the clock hits 12.


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## Celtavian (Dec 23, 2015)

iserith said:


> It's not clear to me if the weapons are in the room beyond this treant or in the same room. I'd probably put them in the same room, perhaps tangled up in its roots or high up in its branches. Small subchambers spread out in the room might also be good for this (like one weapon per room) or small mounds. This adds the exploration pillar to the challenge.




The weapons are hidden in a hidden vault. The treant rests on top of the vault. The key to open it is inside the treant. It is set up so the key cannot be stolen. 



> If the PCs can figure out a way to get the weapons and get out, then the damage output of the monsters effectively become a countdown to doom - linger and pay with blood. Get the weapons and flee and you have a better chance of survival. This is a good way for you to set aside any concern about the monster's damage output. One good hit will demonstrate the danger in slugging it out to the bitter end and, if your players are as savvy as you say, they'll modify their approach accordingly.




I want them to slug it out with the treant. No fun to make monsters if they don't fight them. My plan was to use this as a test run for monster design in 5E. That's why I want them to fight it. See if I could design a monster that was capable of an epic fight even with the action economy in their favor and all their special abilities being required for victory.




> I still think the needle blights are the way to go. They're easier to dispatch individually or perhaps with an AOE, increase the action economy of Team Monster, and are a little more interesting than a couple of extra trees to fight. Two dozen or so ought to do it. If the thought of running 24 monsters is troubling, you could make it a swarm that degrades into 12 individual monsters when reduced to half hit points.




Needle Blights were used earlier in the module. A bunch of little cone attacks would be nasty. 



> I would probably limit the boulders to three and have the chamber be big enough where if the boulder is thrown at a PC at the edge of the chamber, then the treant has to move to recover a boulder. If the players are clever, they can get the boulders spaced out enough to where the treant can't use that throw rock Legendary Action.




My players like to leverage ranged power. I'd like to be sure to be able to match them if they do. Three boulders feels too limiting.




> How much access to fire does the group have? What's your call on a PC lighting up his or her arrows? Does one of the druid weapons have some kind of "flaming" quality? I would probably put one of those in as a reward for engaging with the exploration pillar, provided you use the idea I mentioned above.




I think one sorc/rogue has _fire bolt_. The cleric of light has _scorching ray_ and _fireball_. That will help. Most of the others are physical attackers. The bard is mostly a buffer.




> When I see Siege Monster, I want to break stuff. I would give some serious thought to building the environment such that this becomes a thing. The Samson moment is cool and is a classic trope of the cavern/ruins crumbling after the BBEG goes down - the challenge of escaping the place before being cut to shreds might be a good finish.
> 
> Another idea might be to have the chamber be some kind of big thorny pit with the treant in the center and wooden platforms running from the door to a central platform that surrounds it and out to other chambers (perhaps where the weapons are stored). The treant generally stays put in the center, but it can smash the platforms the PCs are standing on, causing a fall. It can also smash the platforms that lead to the weapon chambers, complicating the PCs' efforts to reach them. This may also alleviate some of your concerns about its damage output since it isn't attacking PCs if it's attacking platforms.




I see the lair action as an environmental factor. There are a bunch of bushes and grass in the area that it causes to entangle people. 

My main goal here is to try my method of creature building to see if I can build the type of creature that can go toe to toe with a 5E party and stand up to them with its own abilities. I don't want to use the environment or any other factors until I see if this creature can do it. So far the PCs have been steamrolling most encounters because they don't have the standard four PCs most monsters are built to challenge, we're using feats, and they are optimized. I have to figure out how to build a creature that can go toe to toe with them with those advantages. 

I worked in environmental factors in some earlier encounters like chasme in a poisonous cloud on a high platform and needle blights in a hedge maze with the ability to move through the hedges like a teleport. I built them like _Pathfinder_ Twigblights. This fight I want to be a challenge power on power. It will be interesting to see if I accomplished my goal.


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## iserith (Dec 23, 2015)

Condiments said:


> This is very interesting to hear. As I've designed fights throughout of the 10 or so months of my DMing career, its gotten easier to design flashier tactically interesting fights, but I don't think I have a clear idea of how to repeat it with success. I play on Roll20 and run on a grid, so I usually design maps beforehand. Do you have some sort of methodology when designing these set piece battles to ensure they become incredible fights? I put in environment effects and different elevations but its a fine line to walk. You want to provide interesting decisions to players while not frustrating them with overly punishing environmental challenges that make for un-interesting gameplay.




Mostly I go with my gut (been at this a long time!), but I do try to include the opportunity for all three pillars to come into play during the challenge. Engaging with the exploration or social interaction pillars is at the players' option and usually rewards the players with things that make the challenge easier. Typically, the combat pillar is beyond deadly, by the official numbers anyway, and has a goal other than Kill All Monsters - though the players can do that if they wish. Sometimes the monsters have their own goals too, the achievement of which means the PCs lose.

I look at a monster's traits and abilities, then build the environment or goals around it. Thus, I cannot agree when posters suggest that D&D 5e monsters are lacking as written. They are inspirational enough to me at least to build fun challenges. You just can't stick them in a featureless white room and expect the challenge to be awesome. As someone said on Twitter regarding this part of the discussion, "They're throwing whole apples at a sack of flour and complaining that the pie is terrible. It's not a pie yet."

If you haven't already seen them, here is a link to some scenarios I created and posted that shows some of what I'm talking about.


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## Celtavian (Dec 23, 2015)

iserith said:


> Mostly I go with my gut (been at this a long time!), but I do try to include the opportunity for all three pillars to come into play during the challenge. Engaging with the exploration or social interaction pillars is at the players' option and usually rewards the players with things that make the challenge easier. Typically, the combat pillar is beyond deadly, by the official numbers anyway, and has a goal other than Kill All Monsters - though the players can do that if they wish. Sometimes the monsters have their own goals too, the achievement of which means the PCs lose.
> 
> I look at a monster's traits and abilities, then build the environment or goals around it. Thus, I cannot agree when posters suggest that D&D 5e monsters are lacking as written. They are inspirational enough to me at least to build fun challenges. You just can't stick them in a featureless white room and expect the challenge to be awesome. As someone said on Twitter regarding this part of the discussion, "They're throwing whole apples at a sack of flour and complaining that the pie is terrible. It's not a pie yet."
> 
> If you haven't already seen them, here is a link to some scenarios I created and posted that shows some of what I'm talking about.




The fact that you're using monsters beyond deadly with environmental challenges only confirms what we've all been saying: 5E monster are weak if you follow the guidelines for their use. That's the disconnect in this discussion between us. None of us are saying that you can't build a challenging fight in 5E. We're just saying that out of the box, the game is soft and the encounter guidelines don't provide the challenge befitting the name. This can go both ways with some creatures that are lower xp being much harder and some monsters that are higher xp being much easier. When compared to older editions, this one doesn't have the lethality for things like _energy drain_, critical hits, death saves, and the like. It's all built around hit point attrition even if you're a paralyzed guy laying on the ground.

D&D out of the box was always fairly soft with some outliers for missed saves outright killing you in older editions. 3E/_Pathfinder_ CRs and encounter building guidelines weren't helpful. You had to build stuff to fit your party or they would get wasted. I had that system down. I could build encounters to fit what I wanted them to do very well. I don't have that kind of system mastery with 5E yet.

The the following analogy fits closer to my view, "Challenging experts with a game made for novices don't work." I've acknowledged that with 5E and started building my own stuff to get what done what I want to get done.


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## iserith (Dec 23, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> The fact that you're using monsters beyond deadly with environmental challenges only confirms what we've all been saying: 5E monster are weak if you follow the guidelines for their use. That's the disconnect in this discussion between us. None of us are saying that you can't build a challenging fight in 5E. We're just saying that out of the box, the game is soft and the encounter guidelines don't provide the challenge befitting the name. This can go both ways with some creatures that are lower xp being much harder and some monsters that are higher xp being much easier. When compared to older editions, this one doesn't have the lethality for things like _energy drain_, critical hits, death saves, and the like. It's all built around hit point attrition even if you're a paralyzed guy laying on the ground.
> 
> D&D out of the box was always fairly soft with some outliers for missed saves outright killing you in older editions. 3E/_Pathfinder_ CRs and encounter building guidelines weren't helpful. You had to build stuff to fit your party or they would get wasted. I had that system down. I could build encounters to fit what I wanted them to do very well. I don't have that kind of system mastery with 5E yet.
> 
> The the following analogy fits closer to my view, "Challenging experts with a game made for novices don't work." I've acknowledged that with 5E and started building my own stuff to get what done what I want to get done.




I think the expectation that the monsters on their own, out of the box, should be engaging and challenging is folly and has never really been the case in any edition of D&D in my experience. The challenge and engagement is about more than just the monsters' stat blocks and CR has never been a reliable gauge of difficulty. Advice given in DMGs generally suggests giving thought to the goals, environment, and other factors that contribute to a good challenge. Given this, I wonder where this expectation some posters have come from.


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## ChrisCarlson (Dec 23, 2015)

That treant encounter earlier looked pretty easy actually. At least for me and _my_ group it would be. Because we are so epically tactical and always make sure our party is designed optimally, and under the understanding that we require every base and contingency to be not only coverable, but easily manhandled. We could probably take that encounter down with four 3rd-level PCs, to be honest. No sweat. But that's just because we are so awesome...


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## Tony Vargas (Dec 23, 2015)

iserith said:


> I think the expectation that the monsters on their own, out of the box, should be engaging and challenging is folly and has never really been the case in any edition of D&D in my experience... CR has never been a reliable gauge of difficulty ... I wonder where this expectation some posters have come from.



They may have had a different experience than you did with one or more editions.  You're right that CR has not been a reliable gauge of difficulty, but, technically, only 3.x/PF and 5e ever used CR, and they've proven notoriously poor at gauging difficulty of encounters.  Classic D&D may also have required more art than science in encounter-design (if it could even be said to have a concept of encounter-design), but had HD, exp values, and grouped some monsters together in tables by monster-summoning-spell-level or dungeon-level or the like, providing a very rough guide, but no CR.  4e assigned monsters a level/exp-value and it's level-treadmill made them fairly tight fits to that level, but it had no CR (CR would have been a combination of level + secondary role into a single statistic obscuring both those components - and you can see how that'd've been a poor guide - for instance, it'd've made a 1st level solo and 10th level standard the same CR).


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## Jester David (Dec 23, 2015)

Tony Vargas said:


> They may have had a different experience than you did with one or more editions.  You're right that CR has not been a reliable gauge of difficulty, but, technically, only 3.x/PF and 5e ever used CR, and they've proven notoriously poor at gauging difficulty of encounters.
> ...
> 4e assigned monsters a level/exp-value and it's level-treadmill made them fairly tight fits to that level, but it had no CR (CR would have been a combination of level + secondary role into a single statistic obscuring both those components - and you can see how that'd've been a poor guide - for instance, it'd've made a 1st level solo and 10th level standard the same CR).



CR is a term for gauging the difficulty of a monster. Level is a term for gauging the difficulty of a monster. Level and CR are effectively the exact same thing. A rose by any other name.  
You could replace "Challenge Rating" in 5e with "Monster Level" and the system would work exactly the same. And you could replace "Level" in 4e with "CR" with identical results. 
The name has no effect on balance or the effectiveness of a mechanic.

Pretty much the only reason they went with CR over level is because of fractional monsters at low levels. A 1/8 level monsters is odd. And starting at 1 rather than 1/8 would have the oddity of level 1 PCs regularly facing level 3 or 4 monsters.


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## Tony Vargas (Dec 23, 2015)

Jester Canuck said:


> CR is a term for gauging the difficulty of a monster. Level is a term for gauging the difficulty of a monster. Level and CR are effectively the exact same thing.



Nope, they're really not, at least, not consistently across editions.  A monster in AD&D might or might not have had a 'level' assigned to it, and it might have been a level based on the dungeon-level it was expected to appear, or the level of spell that could summon it, or the number of HD it had, or whatever.  It might have had 3 or more different effective levels for different purposes - or no discernible level, at all.  A 4e 11th-level solo was a very different challenge from an 11th-level minion, and intentionally so.  It's true that the 4e level treadmill made monster level a strong indicator of the level of party that could be challenged by that monster, but it wasn't CR, and it wasn't, by itself, enough to design encounters - secondary role also had to come into it.  So, even though that system may have worked, it's not technically an example of CR working.  

It may well be where some folks got the expectation that CR should work, but, when you think about the latitude 5e gives DMs, not just to change the game if they want to, but in running the game, at all, it's obvious there's no way for a simple statistic like CR to provide any but the roughest of guidelines.


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## Jester David (Dec 23, 2015)

Tony Vargas said:


> Nope, they're really not, at least, not consistently across editions.  A monster in AD&D might or might not have had a 'level' assigned to it, and it might have been a level based on the dungeon-level it was expected to appear, or the level of spell that could summon it, or the number of HD it had, or whatever. It might have had 3 or more different effective levels for different purposes - or no discernible level, at all.



I didn't mention AD&D.
And I imagine the over use of the term "level" was likely why they went with "CR" in 3e. 



Tony Vargas said:


> A 4e 11th-level solo was a very different challenge from an 11th-level minion, and intentionally so.  It's true that the 4e level treadmill made monster level a strong indicator of the level of party that could be challenged by that monster, but it wasn't CR, and it wasn't, by itself, enough to design encounters - secondary role also had to come into it.  So, even though that system may have worked, it's not technically an example of CR working.



It wasn't _exactly_ the same no. That's nitpicky. 
But at it's heart, the 4e level system and the 3e/5e CR system were about determining the appropriate challenge of monsters. You can look at a level 5 monster and a CR 5 monster and know they're appropriate for a level 5 party, easy for a level 6 party, and harder for a level 4 party. Give or take. 

4e could have easily (_easily_) had CR11 solo and CR11 minions. The reason they didn't was because the CR system was so-so in 3e, and just changing the name made it more accepted. It's pure perception. 



Tony Vargas said:


> It may well be where some folks got the expectation that CR should work, but, when you think about the latitude 5e gives DMs, not just to change the game if they want to, but in running the game, at all, it's obvious there's no way for a simple statistic like CR to provide any but the roughest of guidelines.



True... but I could say the same thing about "level" in 4e. If I change and house rule the game, level just provides a rough guideline. 
And from what I've heard (and experienced) of 4e, level was a pretty rough guide of the challenge of encounters as well. My party ripped through some pretty hard encounters with high level crap.


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## Tony Vargas (Dec 23, 2015)

Jester Canuck said:


> I didn't mention AD&D.



I did.


> It wasn't _exactly_ the same no. That's nitpicky.
> But at it's heart, the 4e level system and the 3e/5e CR system were about determining the appropriate challenge of monsters. You can look at a level 5 monster and a CR 5 monster and know they're appropriate for a level 5 party, easy for a level 6 party, and harder for a level 4 party.



That was kind of the heart of the complaint I was addressing: that you couldn't.  A 3.x CR 5 monster was meant to be a 'speed bump' challenge for a level 5 party, by itself.  Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn't (in either direction).  Two CR 5 monsters were supposed to be a similar challenge for a level 7 party, and 4 for a level 9.  That got even less certain.  



> 4e could have easily (_easily_) had CR11 solo and CR11 minions.



But, if all you looked at was that hypothetical CR, you'd have some CR 11 monsters that put up a tough fight, and some that folded instantly, and you'd be wondering how anyone could published such an fdup sub-system.  CR, alone, can't do everything 3.5 expected of it.

5e doesn't quite depend as exclusively on CR, either.  There are some monsters of a given CR that have a lot more hps than others - 'bosses.'  And, there are Legendary monsters.  So you have some nuance beyond just that one CR number.  



> True... but I could say the same thing about "level" in 4e. If I change and house rule the game, level just provides a rough guideline.



Always the case, if you feel the need to, and especially if you do so unadvisedly.  4e, for all the controversy and edition warring, though, was a fairly clear little system, and didn't really cry out for house rules, re-skinning was very often all you needed.  5e, OTOH, cries out for 'rulings' from the get-go, it's very DM-Empowering, that way, which is one of it's greatest strengths.  It also makes any 'guidelines' pretty rough, because you're going to be making rulings that'll essentially fine-tune 'em, anyway.  In essence, 5e doesn't need CR to be dependable as level/role was, just like it doesn't need mechanical class balance, because all that is stuff the DM is free to work with, himself, and tune to the needs of his players & campaign.



> And from what I've heard (and experienced) of 4e, level was a pretty rough guide of the challenge of encounters as well. My party ripped through some pretty hard high-level encounters.



Nod, more dependable than either version of CR, but still just a guideline:  player choices, the environs of the battle, and how the DM chose to run the enemies could all make a big difference.


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## Jester David (Dec 23, 2015)

Tony Vargas said:


> That was kind of the heart of the complaint I was addressing: that you couldn't.  A 3.x CR 5 monster was meant to be a 'speed bump' challenge for a level 5 party, by itself.  Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn't (in either direction).  Two CR 5 monsters were supposed to be a similar challenge for a level 7 party, and 4 for a level 9.  That got even less certain.



And in 4e, the Target Encounter XP four level 5 PCs was 1000. Which was two level 10 monsters or one level 14 monster. Or 10 level 1 monsters. Neither would be as effective and satisfying a fight as five level 5 monsters. 
Even then, without a nice mix of roles (such as the five Encounter Templates in the DMG) just having five monsters might not be an appropriate challenge. 

The 3e system was twitchy. Especially when adding opponents and calculating CR. The 4e system was hampered by the rate of bonuses. The 5e system can produce swingy fights (and monsters). 
No system is perfect.


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## Tony Vargas (Dec 23, 2015)

Jester Canuck said:


> Target Encounter XP four level 5 PCs was 1000. Which was two level 10 monsters or one level 14 monster. Or 10 level 1 monsters. Neither would be as effective and satisfying a fight as five level 5 monsters.



More of the point I just made, yes:   If you just looked at level, or if you just looked at exp value, or if you just looked at secondary roles you'd get a less dependable result, even an awful one.  If you took all of them into account, it'd be much more reliable.  Consider a mix of primary roles, budget some exp to traps/hazards to create a hostile battlefield or a skill challenge to add a critical in-combat objective, and you had a more nuanced challenge. 

CR in 3.x/PF or 5e is comparable to just looking at level.  It won't get you consistent results.  With 5e, for instance, it's particularly critical to apply that multiplier for not outnumbering the enemy sufficiently, so you can use an exp budget as well as CR (plus it has Legendary creatures).  CR, by itself (as in 3.5), a lone statistic, just falls short.  



> No system is perfect.



All other systems don't have to be flawless to cogently discuss one of them.


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## MechaPilot (Dec 24, 2015)

Jester Canuck said:


> Level and CR are effectively the exact same thing.




I have to take issue with that for one specific reason: effectiveness.  In my experience, 4e's levels were more accurate than 3e's CRs.

I also have to disagree about the reason they went with CRs relating to the fractional CRs.  All of the fractional CRs could have been rolled into CR 1, with the Xp value doing the work of the fraction.


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## Jester David (Dec 24, 2015)

MechaPilot said:


> I have to take issue with that for one specific reason: effectiveness.  In my experience, 4e's levels were more accurate than 3e's CRs.



Just because one works and one doesn't, doesn't mean they're not the same thing. THAC0, BAB, and proficiency bonus to attacks are also effectively the same thing. THAC0 doesn't cease to be a method of determining hit resolution just because there are more effective methods, and neither does CR cease to be a method of determining the challenge of monsters.



MechaPilot said:


> I also have to disagree about the reason they went with CRs relating to the fractional CRs.  All of the fractional CRs could have been rolled into CR 1, with the Xp value doing the work of the fraction.



No. Sorry, but that's confusing. Because the challenge of those monsters isn't the same. 

And that just means you're looking at the xp value rather than the CR (since, at that point, it could vary for any monster). Really, why have CR at that point? And then we're back to AD&D... Which would work and mean only a single place to look rather than two, but it's harder for new DMs to know that "Y xp means an appropriate challenge for level 1 PCs" while you need two monsters of Z xp to challenge that same party. 
Even without consulting the encounter chart in the DM you can guess a challenge 1 monster is a good single fight for four level 1 PCs while you need four CR 1/4 monsters.


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## MechaPilot (Dec 24, 2015)

Jester Canuck said:


> No. Sorry, but that's confusing. Because the challenge of those monsters isn't the same.
> 
> And that just means you're looking at the xp value rather than the CR (since, at that point, it could vary for any monster). Really, why have CR at that point? And then we're back to AD&D... Which would work and mean only a single place to look rather than two, but it's harder for new DMs to know that "Y xp means an appropriate challenge for level 1 PCs" while you need two monsters of Z xp to challenge that same party.
> Even without consulting the encounter chart in the DM you can guess a challenge 1 monster is a good single fight for four level 1 PCs while you need four CR 1/4 monsters.




The challenge isn't the same, that's why the Xp reward would be different.  The CR would be there to indicate the minimum level that a party should be when encountering the creature (in case you care about creating balanced encounters).


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## Jester David (Dec 24, 2015)

MechaPilot said:


> The challenge isn't the same, that's why the Xp reward would be different.  The CR would be there to indicate the minimum level that a party should be when encountering the creature (in case you care about creating balanced encounters).



It's still less intuitive. If I see a monster is worth 5,000 xp for encounter building, I don't know if it's appropriate for my party without checking the table in the DMG.


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## FormerlyHemlock (Dec 24, 2015)

Jester Canuck said:


> No. Sorry, but that's confusing. Because the challenge of those monsters isn't the same.




The challenge already isn't the same. For example, goblins are harder than orcs in a typical dungeon environment (lots of dim light and hiding places), but the orcs are CR 1/2 and the goblins are CR 1/4. The CR is already 'wrong' from a difficulty perspective, so you already have to know your party and the monster stats instead of relying on CR.

Goblins are only easier than orcs if someone knows Sleep.


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## Xeviat (Dec 24, 2015)

Not sure if it's been addressed, but 4E wouldn't have a party of level 5 characters fight a level 14 opponent, even if it fit the XP Budget; 4E used solo monsters, who were x5 stronger than normal, instead of having you fight something so much higher. A level 14 opponent would have a +9 attack, AC, and Defense bonus over the level 5 characters, and be nearly impossible to hurt or hit.


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## iserith (Dec 24, 2015)

Hemlock said:


> The challenge already isn't the same. For example, goblins are harder than orcs in a typical dungeon environment (lots of dim light and hiding places), but the orcs are CR 1/2 and the goblins are CR 1/4. The CR is already 'wrong' from a difficulty perspective, so you already have to know your party and the monster stats instead of relying on CR.
> 
> Goblins are only easier than orcs if someone knows Sleep.




For what it's worth, if the goblins have an advantage that the PCs do not - such as easy hiding places or the ability to see in the dark - then we're told the difficulty steps up by one grade (DMG, page 84-85).

There also seems to be some conflation of challenge and difficulty in this exchange. _Difficulty_ in D&D 5e is determined via the adjusted XP value. Whether or not a given monster is an appropriate _challenge _for a given party level is stated via the CR, "appropriate" here meaning "not too hard, not too easy."

This is not to say the difficulty level predicted by the numbers is actually accurate when the rubber hits the road, however. What's more, difficulty changes based on the players' decisions (or should).


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## Jester David (Dec 24, 2015)

Hemlock said:


> The challenge already isn't the same. For example, goblins are harder than orcs in a typical dungeon environment (lots of dim light and hiding places), but the orcs are CR 1/2 and the goblins are CR 1/4. The CR is already 'wrong' from a difficulty perspective, so you already have to know your party and the monster stats instead of relying on CR.
> 
> Goblins are only easier than orcs if someone knows Sleep.




Right so they shouldn't be CR 1 creatures with varying xp values, as was being suggested.


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## Rhenny (Dec 24, 2015)

Contrary to some, I actually like how difficult it is to design perfectly challenging encounters.  I find it more thrilling when some encounters are easier than expected and others are harder than expected.  For over 30 years, I've been running games and designing encounters not so much based on predetermined challenge levels, but more on story appropriateness.   Random rolls that change the tone/direction of an encounter can be very exciting.  Using the CR and xp budget as a guideline doesn't have to be exacting for my gaming experiences.

I've also experienced my fair share of deadly encounters as a DM and player over the past few years (although most of our experiences have been from level 1-8).  Death is very real in 5e.  The death saves are definitely tension building especially when a player rolls a "1" or the foes deal damage to unconscious PCs. If a DM uses the death save as a threat, the players play their PCs much more carefully.  

Party size and number of foes is really the number 1 determinant of encounter difficulty with 5e, and to me that makes perfect sense.   Small party will have more swinginess in combat.  Larger parties will be much more competent if combat is the chief obstacle.   Not that D&D has to emulate real world, but this is completely intuitive based on real world experience.

For my own preferences, and excitement in combat, I prefer playing with 3-4 players rather than 5 or more.


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## MechaPilot (Dec 24, 2015)

Xeviat said:


> Not sure if it's been addressed, but 4E wouldn't have a party of level 5 characters fight a level 14 opponent, even if it fit the XP Budget; 4E used solo monsters, who were x5 stronger than normal, instead of having you fight something so much higher. A level 14 opponent would have a +9 attack, AC, and Defense bonus over the level 5 characters, and be nearly impossible to hurt or hit.




While I agree with you that solos were typically what would be thrown at an entire party, DMs were free to design whatever encounters they desired and the range that was suggested in the DMG was something like this: creatures more than eight levels apart from the level of the party are not an appropriate challenge for the characters.  Creatures more than eight levels below provided no experience, and the general assumption was that creatures more than eight levels above would just wipe the party and are not intended to be placed in a combat encounter with the party, though a social encounter with one could absolutely work.


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## Uchawi (Dec 28, 2015)

Rhenny said:


> Contrary to some, I actually like how difficult it is to design perfectly challenging encounters.  I find it more thrilling when some encounters are easier than expected and others are harder than expected.  For over 30 years, I've been running games and designing encounters not so much based on predetermined challenge levels, but more on story appropriateness.   Random rolls that change the tone/direction of an encounter can be very exciting.  Using the CR and xp budget as a guideline doesn't have to be exacting for my gaming experiences.
> 
> I've also experienced my fair share of deadly encounters as a DM and player over the past few years (although most of our experiences have been from level 1-8).  Death is very real in 5e.  The death saves are definitely tension building especially when a player rolls a "1" or the foes deal damage to unconscious PCs. If a DM uses the death save as a threat, the players play their PCs much more carefully.
> 
> ...



I don't think anyone would disagree that variance in encounter challenge makes for a more interesting and lest predictable experience. And designing encounter challenges with more predictable results is a tool versus the end goal. If I can create an easy versus hard challenge, then it is less likely I will fudge or change things on the fly when the results would contradict what I wanted to occur as part of the story. With 5E there is more variance so it is harder to master. In regards to simple combat, there are less options on the table for the party to control the combat environment so the solutions tend to be repeated or there are none (unless you have high level magic).


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## Azurewraith (Dec 28, 2015)

Encounter variance is also great way to make PCs blow resources for no reason like when the 3rd lvl cleric blows a first lvl spell to kill a giant snake its priceless. His deity had a word with him in a dream about invoking his power for such a minor task was amusing.


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## Malshotfirst (Dec 28, 2015)

Experienced "Tactical" players coming from Pathfinder might find it refreshing that classes other than WIZARD/CLERIC/BARBARIAN/PALADIN actually do well in combat by comparison, though it may seem "tactically" shallow.


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## Azurewraith (Dec 28, 2015)

Malshotfirst said:


> Experienced "Tactical" players coming from Pathfinder might find it refreshing that classes other than WIZARD/CLERIC/BARBARIAN/PALADIN actually do well in combat by comparison, though it may seem "tactically" shallow.




Not pathfinder per-say but 3.5 and you are right the fact that martial characters are a thing without requiring a whole toddlers xmas of goodies to be effective is great on top of they then can do more than just hit stuff sans barbarian and champions.


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## Malshotfirst (Dec 28, 2015)

Azurewraith said:


> Not pathfinder per-say but 3.5 and you are right the fact that martial characters are a thing without requiring a whole toddlers xmas of goodies to be effective is great on top of they then can do more than just hit stuff sans barbarian and champions.




In my experience both 3.5 and Pathfinder have that issue, though Pathfinder less so (MINUTELY). I wasted a TON of money and time on both and that demanding specificity was what killed it for me.


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## Azurewraith (Dec 28, 2015)

Malshotfirst said:


> In my experience both 3.5 and Pathfinder have that issue, though Pathfinder less so (MINUTELY). I wasted a TON of money and time on both and that demanding specificity was what killed it for me.



It was annoying how as a martial you had to be optimized to the hilt just to match the weakest caster in the party


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## EzekielRaiden (Jan 2, 2016)

Well, my 5e game has folded, at least for the foreseeable future. What had sounded like a temporary hiatus has been clarified (or changed--as I've said, I don't quite "get" how the guy who was DMing thinks) to an indefinite stop. It's a bittersweet thing. On the one hand, I was getting more and more frustrated with the system. On the other, I was trying some character things I'd never done before, and was actually somewhat interested in the story and where it was headed.

So now, as I said in the "5e resolutions" thread, I guess I'm on the lookout for the right conjunction of a good-or-better DM, the appropriate starting level, and more "equitable" distribution of good/bad rolls between the opposition and the PCs. (Though again I'd like to stress that all rolls were made in the open using Roll20, so there was no chance for 'cheating' or 'bad dice' or whatever else--just unusually DM-favoring, party-harming results in a few too many combats.)



Azurewraith said:


> It was annoying how as a martial you had to be optimized to the hilt just to match the weakest caster in the party




Well, if I'm being honest, I consider 4e the gold standard on that subject. I didn't really get to see which edition 5e is more like, though, because 75% or more of my spells went to healing (and literally all but one of the "monster saves" spells I cast--the remaining 25%--the monster ALWAYS made the saves). Not counting cantrips, of course.


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## Azurewraith (Jan 2, 2016)

EzekielRaiden said:


> Well, my 5e game has folded, at least for the foreseeable future. What had sounded like a temporary hiatus has been clarified (or changed--as I've said, I don't quite "get" how the guy who was DMing thinks) to an indefinite stop. It's a bittersweet thing. On the one hand, I was getting more and more frustrated with the system. On the other, I was trying some character things I'd never done before, and was actually somewhat interested in the story and where it was headed.
> 
> So now, as I said in the "5e resolutions" thread, I guess I'm on the lookout for the right conjunction of a good-or-better DM, the appropriate starting level, and more "equitable" distribution of good/bad rolls between the opposition and the PCs. (Though again I'd like to stress that all rolls were made in the open using Roll20, so there was no chance for 'cheating' or 'bad dice' or whatever else--just unusually DM-favoring, party-harming results in a few too many combats.)
> 
> ...



4e nailed balance but then it was designed to be I guess


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## MechaPilot (Jan 2, 2016)

Azurewraith said:


> 4e nailed balance but then it was designed to be I guess




5e tried to get pretty darn close as well.  How well they did is certainly up for debate.  However, in both instances I recall references to balance indicating that they were attempting to stretch the "sweet spot" of earlier editions across the entire range of levels in the newer editions.  Whatever one thinks of the results and the methods used to achieve those results, I think the effort was a laudable one.


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## Azurewraith (Jan 2, 2016)

MechaPilot said:


> 5e tried to get pretty darn close as well.  How well they did is certainly up for debate.  However, in both instances I recall references to balance indicating that they were attempting to stretch the "sweet spot" of earlier editions across the entire range of levels in the newer editions.  Whatever one thinks of the results and the methods used to achieve those results, I think the effort was a laudable one.



Its not bad its not 4e(every ability was a clone) other than maybe gwm and ss feats bm hunters and wild sorc oh and 4element monk its not 2bad


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## EzekielRaiden (Jan 3, 2016)

Azurewraith said:


> *Its not bad its not 4e(every ability was a clone*) other than maybe gwm and ss feats bm hunters and wild sorc oh and 4element monk its not 2bad




...was the bolded bit really necessary? Couldn't we have avoided saying that another edition was "bad" and made up solely of "clone[d]" abilities?

Though I do agree that, as much as people talk up the balance of 5e, there are a pretty decent number of places where the warts aren't hard to find. They definitely clamped down on some of the bigger, more obvious flaws of 3e, but I feel that people give 5e an unfairly large amount of slack for this stuff. In part because "You're the DM! You fix it!" is the universal 5e reply to requests for advice or help. (It's not the _only_ reply, but you won't see a thread that doesn't get it at least once--and often multiple times, even on the first page.)



MechaPilot said:


> 5e tried to get pretty darn close as well.  How well they did is certainly up for debate.  However, in both instances I recall references to balance indicating that they were attempting to stretch the "sweet spot" of earlier editions across the entire range of levels in the newer editions.  Whatever one thinks of the results and the methods used to achieve those results, I think the effort was a laudable one.




I know I've seen those statements made by 4e's designers, but I haven't (as far as I remember) seen them about 5e. In fact, I had thought they were specifically NOT going for that. That's why there's 3-5 "apprentice" levels, and then the top 5 levels or so are expected to be a whole other kind of play. (Hence why most modules stop at 15, IIRC.) 4e wanted the general experience to be uniform, and simply more..._punctuated_ as you got into higher tiers (e.g. "Once per day, when you die..." ED features). 5e's tiers seem to be more about changing the "kind" of experience you have, not the "degree" of it.

Edit: Or, as the satirical tongue-in-cheek part of my brain just thought, "Tiers: another thing that 4e and 5e do in _completely different ways._"


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## Tony Vargas (Jan 4, 2016)

MechaPilot said:


> 5e tried to get pretty darn close as well.  How well they did is certainly up for debate.



I think whether 'balance' was a meaningful objective is pretty well up for debate, too.  Sure, if they were aiming for any sort of robust balance, they missed.  If they were aiming for balance only among specific mixes of classes on 6-8 encounter days, maybe they hit it.  But, if they were just aiming for loose guidelines that DMs could adapt to however they wanted to run their game, while delivering classes and game play that really evoked past editions (that weren't well-balanced at all), and leaving enforced balance to the DM  if that's something he wanted to prioritize, then they came 'pretty darn close,' indeed.

5e has been called just a starting place for the game, and balance is a more emergent quality than that, there's little point to designing balance into something when the expectation is that it will be changed, anyway.  There's still inevitably things that affect balance, of course, and thus, changes that need to be made advisedly.



> However, in both instances I recall references to balance indicating that they were attempting to stretch the "sweet spot" of earlier editions across the entire range of levels in the newer editions.  Whatever one thinks of the results and the methods used to achieve those results, I think the effort was a laudable one.



The 4e treadmill and 5e bounded accuracy both stretch the 'sweet spot' as far as they go, which is, primarily, in making combats play out similarly at all levels, while retaining some sense of advancement.  The treadmill provided advancement mainly in terms of bonuses to d20 rolls, BA restricted those while providing advancement mainly in terms of damage/hps.  Even then, though, there are differences as you level.  In 4e, characters become a little more complex at 11th level, when they gain new features, and at several points after 20th.  In 5e, spell progression is still dramatic enough to change game play as you level and PCs are very fragile at very low level, but the exp chart is tuned to speed play through those less-sweet very low and higher levels, so that's something, anyway.

Obviously, 4e was 'better balanced' and 'expanded the sweet spot' more than 5e did.  The former, though, I'd argue, wasn't even a meaningful goal of 5e, and the latter was necessarily compromised to retain more of the feel of the classic game (which includes having a distinct mid-level sweet-spot), said feel being a very important goal of 5e.  The result is thus entirely successful, if we make the right assumptions about what they were trying to do.  



EzekielRaiden said:


> ...was the bolded bit really necessary? Couldn't we have avoided saying that another edition was "bad" and made up solely of "clone[d]" abilities?



The lies of the edition war were repeated more than enough to become truth to those who wanted to believe them.  



> I feel that people give 5e an unfairly large amount of slack for this stuff. In part because "You're the DM! You fix it!" is the universal 5e reply to requests for advice or help. (It's not the _only_ reply, but you won't see a thread that doesn't get it at least once--and often multiple times, even on the first page.)



5e's trying to be all D&Ds to all D&Ders.  Empowering the DM to not only change/add-to the game but to make rulings to keep his campaign on the rails and w/in his prefered style/theme/tone/etc lets it get just about as close to that unobtainable goal as might be possible.  That means that balance is virtually a non-issue from a design standpoint, and one of many things that the DM is going to be supplying, himself.


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## Azurewraith (Jan 5, 2016)

EzekielRaiden said:


> ...was the bolded bit really necessary? Couldn't we have avoided saying that another edition was "bad" and made up solely of "clone[d]" abilities




Oh I'm not being negative about it the only way to ensure true balance is copy pasta across the board I think 4e is my fave edition but depends on the day you ask me.


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## Celtavian (Jan 5, 2016)

Azurewraith said:


> Oh I'm not being negative about it the only way to ensure true balance is copy pasta across the board I think 4e is my fave edition but depends on the day you ask me.




I don't like balance. Not good for telling stories which is the primary reason I play these games. I've read few stories where balance between the capabilities of the characters was in any way important. I much prefer a focus on appropriate capabilities for a given fantasy role. I think 5E is much closer to this than 3E or 4E. A fighter should be better at fighting than anything a wizard can summon, but his abilities should never work like a wizard's spells. Strong and appropriate differentiation should always be the primary guiding principle in design in true role-playing games where characters are playing roles based on fictional types of characters, not balance.


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## Azurewraith (Jan 5, 2016)

Celtavian said:


> I don't like balance. Not good for telling stories which is the primary reason I play these games. I've read few stories where balance between the capabilities of the characters was in any way important. I much prefer a focus on appropriate capabilities for a given fantasy role. I think 5E is much closer to this than 3E or 4E. A fighter should be better at fighting than anything a wizard can summon, but his abilities should never work like a wizard's spells. Strong and appropriate differentiation should always be the primary guiding principle in design in true role-playing games where characters are playing roles based on fictional types of characters, not balance.



As much as I enjoy a good story I'm a balance nut I think its from my 1
0year WoW addiction. The main reason I like 4e is the tactical depth.


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## Zardnaar (Jan 5, 2016)

Tony Vargas said:


> I think whether 'balance' was a meaningful objective is pretty well up for debate, too.  Sure, if they were aiming for any sort of robust balance, they missed.  If they were aiming for balance only among specific mixes of classes on 6-8 encounter days, maybe they hit it.  But, if they were just aiming for loose guidelines that DMs could adapt to however they wanted to run their game, while delivering classes and game play that really evoked past editions (that weren't well-balanced at all), and leaving enforced balance to the DM  if that's something he wanted to prioritize, then they came 'pretty darn close,' indeed.
> 
> 5e has been called just a starting place for the game, and balance is a more emergent quality than that, there's little point to designing balance into something when the expectation is that it will be changed, anyway.  There's still inevitably things that affect balance, of course, and thus, changes that need to be made advisedly.
> 
> ...




 They could have phrased it a bit better but 4E was kind of clone like in its powers. Every single one across every class was usually 1W+ some effect or a d6 (d8, d10) etc + some effect. Its like trying to read the 3.5 spell compendium but in a PHB. It about as much fun as reading an instruction book. 

 I learnt the game with BECMI and yeah reading the rule books was half the fun. To this day I can't name a single 4E power above level 8 that does anything but I generally know what Meteor Swarm does (maybe not the exact amount of dice rolled). I would be hard pressed to think of more than a handful of 4E power from the PHBs at lower levels as well off the top of my head.

Villains menace for example IIRC its +2 to hit daily power vs a big bad and some other effect for some amount of time. To me they based 4E off a hybrid of the old 3.5 D&D minis game+ Book of 9 Swords. I even liked the minis game but it was a supplement to 3.5 rather than a replacement for it.


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## Celtavian (Jan 5, 2016)

Azurewraith said:


> As much as I enjoy a good story I'm a balance nut I think its from my 1
> 0year WoW addiction. The main reason I like 4e is the tactical depth.




Video games are different from role-playing games. Video games require balance, role-playing games do not require the same level of balance. And WoW is a bad example to base a role-playing game on. All the stupid names in WoW. Role-playing in WoW was non-existent. I hate the idea of D&D being built like a video game. Video games don't mirror fantasy fiction at all. They are repetitive, limited, and based on the imagination of others, not the imagination of the players. D&D is a game that requires imaginative, engaged players to really shine. Ones that appreciate playing a role and living an imaginary life in a fantastic world. If that level of engagement isn't there, it just becomes a game of numbers. I know some don't mind such games, but I find them painfully boring. Then again I'm not a huge fan of video games. I know the younger generation is and will push D&D in that direction as they replace the older gamer base. Writing is on the wall for that to happen if D&D wants to continue to court the younger generation and their digital addiction.


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## Azurewraith (Jan 5, 2016)

Celtavian said:


> Video games are different from role-playing games. Video games require balance, role-playing games do not require the same level of balance. And WoW is a bad example to base a role-playing game on. All the stupid names in WoW. Role-playing in WoW was non-existent. I hate the idea of D&D being built like a video game. Video games don't mirror fantasy fiction at all. They are repetitive, limited, and based on the imagination of others, not the imagination of the players. D&D is a game that requires imaginative, engaged players to really shine. Ones that appreciate playing a role and living an imaginary life in a fantastic world. If that level of engagement isn't there, it just becomes a game of numbers. I know some don't mind such games, but I find them painfully boring. Then again I'm not a huge fan of video games. I know the younger generation is and will push D&D in that direction as they replace the older gamer base. Writing is on the wall for that to happen if D&D wants to continue to court the younger generation and their digital addiction.



See I'm 50/50 on balance as I feel combat needs some semblance of balance as casters and kadys isn't fun for me


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## EzekielRaiden (Jan 5, 2016)

Celtavian said:


> Video games are different from role-playing games. Video games require balance, role-playing games do not require the same level of balance. And WoW is a bad example to base a role-playing game on. All the stupid names in WoW. *Role-playing in WoW was non-existent.* I hate the idea of D&D being built like a video game. Video games don't mirror fantasy fiction at all. They are repetitive, limited, and based on the imagination of others, not the imagination of the players. D&D is a game that requires imaginative, engaged players to really shine. Ones that appreciate playing a role and living an imaginary life in a fantastic world. If that level of engagement isn't there, it just becomes a game of numbers. I know some don't mind such games, but I find them painfully boring. Then again I'm not a huge fan of video games. I know the younger generation is and will push D&D in that direction as they replace the older gamer base. Writing is on the wall for that to happen if D&D wants to continue to court the younger generation and their digital addiction.




*ahem*

I spent a good 3-4 years doing that. From late-BC to late-Cata. Good to know those years I spent and friends I made were non-existent!

Or, less flippantly: What you say never existed did, in fact, exist. I spent more time roleplaying (and writing for) WoW than I've spent on _any_ tabletop roleplaying game, with a far greater number of people too. You didn't engage with it; that's fine. But it DID exist--and, I'm sure, it still exists now.

And I'm with Azurewraith here. "Casters and caddies" is *@#$%ing bull&+!**. That I (or anyone) should have a dramatically more limited set of tools, simply because this time, I choose to play a gritty mercenary or retired gladiator instead of an academic in a dress, is stupid. If I am meant to be an equal participant--and _all_ players _should_ be equal participants--then I bloody well better be equipped to participate equally! Equal participation, of course, does not and should not be taken to mean _uniform_ participation. I can engage the world with an equally powerful/broad/enabling set of tools, without using the exact same tools. And if both of us have "the power of imagination" in our back pocket--so what? That just means it's something we can assume is present--indeed, _uniform_--on both sides, and move on to the places where the sides are non-uniform but still equal.


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## Azurewraith (Jan 5, 2016)

Rp in WoW was a thing had to know where to look. It wasn't standard but it was there if you found the correct server/guild.


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## Sage Genesis (Jan 5, 2016)

Celtavian said:


> I don't like balance. Not good for telling stories which is the primary reason I play these games. I've read few stories where balance between the capabilities of the characters was in any way important. I much prefer a focus on appropriate capabilities for a given fantasy role. I think 5E is much closer to this than 3E or 4E. A fighter should be better at fighting than anything a wizard can summon, but his abilities should never work like a wizard's spells. Strong and appropriate differentiation should always be the primary guiding principle in design in *true role-playing games where characters are playing roles based on fictional types of characters*, not balance.




Roleplaying games are not stories. Stories have pre-defined narratives which exist to satisfy only an audience, not the participants of the story itself. So let us just say that I for one reject your definition of "true" roleplaying games.


Edit:
I suppose you could also say there are improv make-it-up-as-you-go-along types of stories. Which is fair, but even there you usually don't have one participant who gets to add more and better parts to the story than others just because he wrote "wizard" on his name badge.


Edit2:
Actually let's take this one step further. What do we all mean when we talk about "balance"? I'm copy-pasting this from elsewhere, but there's several different kinds.

Numerical Balance: Ensuring that most characters' raw numeric outputs (bonuses, damage, etc.) are roughly on par when averaged out over a range of typical gameplay scenarios.
Narrative Balance: Ensuring that all player characters' abilities are roughly equal in narrative scope (as distinct from being equal in mechanical scope).
Spotlight Balance: Furnishing mechanical incentives for all player characters to receive approximately equal "screen time".
Contributory Balance: Structuring the game's major player character archetypes so that, for a given set of assumptions about the shape of play, each archetype is equally able to contribute to the group's success.
Build Balance: Preserving interest in player-driven character creation as a discrete minigame by ensuring that the process of character-building isn't dominated by obvious "no brainer" choices.
Tactical Balance: Preserving interest in mechanically mediated conflict - which may or may not boil down to combat - by ensuring that turn-to-turn decision making isn't dominated by obvious "no brainer" choices.
Logistical Balance: Ensuring that the game's mechanical resource economy presents interesting choices during play, such that success is dependent on effective management of mechanical resources.
PVP Balance: Preserving interest in player-versus-player conflict by ensuring that the various player character archetypes can fight each other on reasonably even mechanical footing.


In a "true" roleplaying game, which of these is bad? Which of these is good? Which of these are outright ignored? People throw the word "balance" around too often without specifying what they actually mean with that.


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## Xeviat (Jan 5, 2016)

As it stands now, the spellcasters, especially the 1-9 spellcasters, have more toys than the other classes. Their players have more decisions to make, and thus take more time to weigh those decisions, and thus take up more spotlight time. Their spells can solve problems that noncasters can't hope to, unless they're very good at the "DM may I" required by 5E's wide open skill system. The battle master tries to give the fighters some toys to play with in combat, but the assassin and thief lack them, and the barbarian lacks a lot.

5E fights are too fast; they're over in 3 or 4 rounds, tops, even for hard fights. The monsters are boring; all of the dragons are basically the same thing, for instance. Too many monsters are just "a ton of HP and an attack". To top it off, having 6 to 8 "fair" fights a day, to ensure that the noncasters get to use their fabled "endurance" and to tap out the noncasters, is a chore; the fights have to be too easy and then the casters don't even need to use their spells, and can just use them to ride all over the exploration and social scenes.

I fundamentally believe that 4E's problem was 75% presentation. I bet if the powers hadn't been presented as cards, and if the classes were obfuscated to look different in structure from each other, or if we had gotten something more like Essentials first, more people would have loved it. Book of Nine Swords was popular in 3E, and there were plenty of powers in there that would feel right on a "fighter".

5E is great for a quick system. I want an Advanced upgrade.


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## Azurewraith (Jan 5, 2016)

And adnd 5e would be very nice indeed the system is a Tad to light for my tastes but this is a blessing and a curse as I can add as appropriate just takes time I'm currently expanding the weapon list to make each weapon special so its more than a choice of 2d6 vs 1d12


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## EzekielRaiden (Jan 5, 2016)

Xeviat said:


> As it stands now, the spellcasters, especially the 1-9 spellcasters, have more toys than the other classes. Their players have more decisions to make, and thus take more time to weigh those decisions, and thus take up more spotlight time. Their spells can solve problems that noncasters can't hope to, unless they're very good at the "DM may I" required by 5E's wide open skill system. The battle master tries to give the fighters some toys to play with in combat, but the assassin and thief lack them, and the barbarian lacks a lot.
> 
> 5E fights are too fast; they're over in 3 or 4 rounds, tops, even for hard fights. The monsters are boring; all of the dragons are basically the same thing, for instance. Too many monsters are just "a ton of HP and an attack". To top it off, having 6 to 8 "fair" fights a day, to ensure that the noncasters get to use their fabled "endurance" and to tap out the noncasters, is a chore; the fights have to be too easy and then the casters don't even need to use their spells, and can just use them to ride all over the exploration and social scenes.
> 
> ...




Can't click XP enough for this. Is there some kind of secret, hidden super-XP button available? 

More seriously, the only major disagreement I have is that, in my experience as I said earlier in the thread, the combats haven't actually been so quick. A lot of it is simply because much of 5e's answer to making monsters "interesting" seems to be either (a) give them a resistance or super-high HP or AC so they take forever to kill (unless you know how to get around their resists), or (b) give them a horribly nasty awful ability that makes you scared to get anywhere near them. (All the monsters my 5e DM ran were 100% by the book--a mixture of undead, brigands, and demons.) When combat slows down, it's a pain; when it's quick, which I have yet to see, it's hard to see it as more than a speedbump.

It would be cool if they made an "Advanced 5e," perhaps as a replacement for the never-quite-delivered "tactical combat module." Heavier, crunchier, mathier. The same core system, but with more bits and bobs woven in as "assumed" parts rather than as hidden or obscure options.


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## TwoSix (Jan 5, 2016)

Celtavian said:


> Video games are different from role-playing games. Video games require balance, role-playing games do not require the same level of balance. And WoW is a bad example to base a role-playing game on. All the stupid names in WoW. Role-playing in WoW was non-existent. I hate the idea of D&D being built like a video game. Video games don't mirror fantasy fiction at all. They are repetitive, limited, and based on the imagination of others, not the imagination of the players. D&D is a game that requires imaginative, engaged players to really shine. Ones that appreciate playing a role and living an imaginary life in a fantastic world. If that level of engagement isn't there, it just becomes a game of numbers. I know some don't mind such games, but I find them painfully boring. Then again I'm not a huge fan of video games. I know the younger generation is and will push D&D in that direction as they replace the older gamer base. Writing is on the wall for that to happen if D&D wants to continue to court the younger generation and their digital addiction.



I hope the kids didn't damage the flowers too much before you got them off of your lawn.


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## Tony Vargas (Jan 5, 2016)

Celtavian said:


> I don't like balance. Not good for telling stories which is the primary reason I play these games.



It's good for _collective_ storytelling.  


> I've read few stories where balance between the capabilities of the characters was in any way important.



Most stories are written by a single author.  If the author creates an ensemble cast instead of a lone hero, though, there's likely some 'spotlight balance' among them.  Each will have a specialty or a moment to shine, even if the author 'forces' the latter.  



> I much prefer a focus on appropriate capabilities for a given fantasy role. I think 5E is much closer to this than 3E or 4E.



I can't agree.  D&D characters deviate pretty substantially from the sorts of capabilities displayed by protagonists in the fantasy genre.  In part to make archetypes playable as part of a team, while fiction tends towards the lone hero or hero + sidekicks (and, perhaps, a mentor).  Though also in part just due to the perpetuation of system eccentricities as sacred cows. 



> Strong and appropriate differentiation should always be the primary guiding principle in design in true role-playing games where characters are playing roles based on fictional types of characters, not balance.



In a game (even a storytelling game), rather than a single-author story, balance keeps everyone on the same page and helps them avoid accidentally stepping on or overshadowing eachothers' characters.  No degree of balance is sufficient to prevent intentionally wrecking the game for others, though decent balance makes that intent pretty obvious.  

For any FRPG campaign to be successful for more than one of the participants, some balance is required.  It can be supplied in part by the system as a baseline, it can be enhanced by player restraint and consideration for eachother, and it can be engineered and even outright forced by the DM.  

If a group is on the same page to begin with and considerate of eachothers' enjoyment, they'll naturally seek balance, that balance won't need to come from the system and may even seem 'invisible' since it's coming naturally.  Similarly, if a group has a single dominant personality leading it, lack of balance is essentially invisible as long as it favors the dominant participant.  5e works extremely well in both sorts of cases - the latter, particularly, when the group's dominant personality is the DM.



Zardnaar said:


> Tony Vargas said:
> 
> 
> > I think whether 'balance' was a meaningful objective is pretty well up for debate, too...
> ...



That is a bad phrasing, yes.  Sticking to a format and defining jargon terms improves clarity, and it does result in a book that's a better reference than a read.  D&D spell lists have always been like that, for instance, with a distinct format that spells(npi) out basic stats like range/area/save/components/etc.  Storyteller was a good example of the opposite extreme: the books were pleasant to read cover-to-cover and even inspiring at times, but were nearly useless when you tried to look up anything specific.  

5e's penduluum-swing toward natural language makes it more pleasant to browse through, though I doubt it'd make much of a cover-to-cover read the way oWoD could be.  But natural language also makes it more problematic to interpret 'RAW' - which dovetails neatly with it's emphasis on DM-rulings over rules(as-written).  That's also consistent with any theoretical balance built into system being largely moot.  The system is what the DM makes of it - including balanced or otherwise - at his discretion. 



Sage Genesis said:


> Actually let's take this one step further. What do we all mean when we talk about "balance"?



One of the best and most straightforward definitions of 'balance' in the context of games that I've heard is:  a game is balanced if it presents the players with enough choices that are both meaningful and viable.  

People will often hold up a game with no choices or where all choices are essentially identical as a strawman of extreme 'balance' gone too far, but one choice or no meaningful choices are just as extremely imbalanced as many choices, only one of which is the obvious-best choice.  



> In a "true" roleplaying game, which of these is bad? Which of these is good? Which of these are outright ignored? People throw the word "balance" around too often without specifying what they actually mean with that.



Those are fair examples of areas or ways in which an RPG might display some balance.  5e leans heavily on a DM-moderated version of "spotlight balance" from your list, for instance.  3.5/PF balance is submerged in a ocean of sub-par choices making for a deep, system-mastery meta-game, with balance an emergent quality among the Tier 1 classes and builds, so what you're calling "build balance," and, incidentally, some PvP balance.  4e delivered all but that last, PvP, form of balance, the roles it used to support narrative/spotlight/contributory balance being antithetical to PvP.



EzekielRaiden said:


> More seriously, the only major disagreement I have is that, in my experience as I said earlier in the thread, the combats haven't actually been so quick. A lot of it is simply because much of 5e's answer to making monsters "interesting" seems to be either (a) give them a resistance or super-high HP or AC so they take forever to kill (unless you know how to get around their resists), or (b) give them a horribly nasty awful ability that makes you scared to get anywhere near them. (All the monsters my 5e DM ran were 100% by the book--a mixture of undead, brigands, and demons.) When combat slows down, it's a pain; when it's quick, which I have yet to see, it's hard to see it as more than a speedbump.



As in another thread, I honestly think your DM is just "missing the point" of 5e in running it that way.   By-the-book & above-board is a good way to test a game, and a good way to play a game that has clear, consistent, balanced mechanics.  But, the playtest is over, and 5e chose natural language over clarity, differentiation over consistency, and tradition over balance.  The result is wonderfully evocative of classic D&D, and wide-open for DMs to get creative and have fun with.  But running it RAW as if it were 3.5 or above-board as if it were 4e can result in some really negative play experiences.  



> It would be cool if they made an "Advanced 5e," perhaps as a replacement for the never-quite-delivered "tactical combat module." Heavier, crunchier, mathier. The same core system, but with more bits and bobs woven in as "assumed" parts rather than as hidden or obscure options.



That could deliver a more 3.5 sort of experience.  Maybe they figure there's no point with PF already catering to that audience?



Xeviat said:


> As it stands now, the spellcasters, especially the 1-9 spellcasters, have more toys than the other classes.



Then again, all classes cast spells.  OK, Monks & Barbarians don't exactly literally /cast/ them, per se, and yes, there are a handful of entirely non-casting sub-classes.  But, if you don't have the toys, it's because you decided not to play with them, not just because of your choice of class.



Celtavian said:


> Video games are different from role-playing games. Video games require balance, role-playing games do not require the same level of balance.



Video games and RPGs need to be balanced in different ways.  RPGs, if anything, require more and more robust balance than video games - but, they also have GMs who can compensate when mechanical balance fails.



> D&D is a game that requires imaginative, engaged players to really shine. Ones that appreciate playing a role and living an imaginary life in a fantastic world. If that level of engagement isn't there, it just becomes a game of numbers.



And nothing kills that engagement faster than severe imbalance.  The moment you realize that what your character does doesn't matter, *pop*, it's gone.  

The 'engagement' that is, not the character, though it might as well be.


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## FormerlyHemlock (Jan 6, 2016)

EzekielRaiden said:


> More seriously, the only major disagreement I have is that, in my experience as I said earlier in the thread, the combats haven't actually been so quick. A lot of it is simply because much of 5e's answer to making monsters "interesting" seems to be either (a) give them a resistance or super-high HP or AC so they take forever to kill (unless you know how to get around their resists), or (b) give them a horribly nasty awful ability that makes you scared to get anywhere near them.




Huh. Kids these days.

5E simply doesn't have really scary things any more. Why, back in my day, merely touching a Sphere of Annihilation was enough to kill you, no saving throw and no possibility of resurrection. Now it just does 4d10 Force damage--barely a love tap.


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## Greg Benage (Jan 6, 2016)

Grumpy grognardic, possibly incoherent rant incoming...

After a year and a half, for my preferences, I'm beginning to think the game rules are too _complex_ and too boring (<-- see "for my preferences" back over there). Compared to editions I came up with, the PCs are buffed to 11 and the monsters are nerfed. Encounters often feel like, "Roll initiative and then apply your character build to whatever page of the Monster Manual we're on." We can play "theater of the mind" just fine, because ranged attackers always have a feat to take care of range and cover. Who cares where anything is? None of it matters. Are you in melee or not? That's all that matters. Wait...with Crossbow Expert, even that doesn't matter. When it's your turn in the initiative order, apply your character sheet. Then it's the next guy's turn.

For me, I increasingly feel like the emphasis has shifted from skilled play to character optimization. I increasingly despise feats. In practice, with the feats players actually choose, they don't enrich or expand a character concept -- they simply apply a specialized mechanical benefit. You take Polearm Master not so that you can use a polearm, but so you become twice as effective with a polearm as any other weapon. Actually, the Weapon Master feat that actually could expand a character concept...LOL at the idea of anyone ever taking it! So much for the days when fighters were weapon masters who could always use the right tool for the job, based on player skill and the tactical situation in actual play. "Uh, I've got Great Weapon Fighting Style, Great Weapon Master, and Polearm Master. What the f--- am I going to do with sword-and-shield or a bow? There's a flying creature? Someone better cast fly on me otherwise the DM is 'punishing' my build."

So yeah, it can get boring. Everyone is hyperspecialized, the monsters no longer have any game-changing abilities to fear, so exploration, recon, information-gathering, dungeon diplomacy and all the rest of it are simply replaced by everyone taking turns executing their specialized mechanical operations.

I'm playing a fighter in a B/X game. I have Str 16 and Dex 13. I carry a spear and use it from the second rank or throw when I engage, then go sword-and-board. I do 1d6+2 with the spear, 1d8+2 with the sword, and 1d6 with the bow (and that's only because we're using the optional variable weapon damage rules). Wizards are powerful, but they need me to keep them alive. Hit points are low and you're dead if they touch 0. Save-or-die effects abound. Tactics matter. Morale matters. Knowing what you're getting into before initiative is rolled matters. The game rules are stupid simple. Kobolds are tough in packs because the DM plays them as intelligent humanoids that use tactics. They don't have a "pack tactics" special ability in their stat block. 5e turns the "tactics" into yet another mechanical operation to execute. Actually, it's really amazing how WotC has made the monsters both more complex and less interesting. Quite an accomplishment!

And that's my assessment of the game as a whole. Too complex, too boring -- for me. I get that many, many players really love character building and optimization, and for them executing those mechanical operations is great fun. Some want _even more_ mechanical operations to build, combinate and execute. I've got no problem with that -- people playing games and having fun makes me happy. I, personally, just find that I'm having less fun with 5e, compared to classic editions, and (at least one of the reasons is the opposite of the thread title: Too complex, too boring.


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## Celtavian (Jan 6, 2016)

EzekielRaiden said:


> *ahem*
> 
> I spent a good 3-4 years doing that. From late-BC to late-Cata. Good to know those years I spent and friends I made were non-existent!
> 
> ...




Did you really role-play? Did you? The raid bosses you talked to responded to you? As did the shopkeepers and orc chieftains and the random wandering creatures? They responded to your attempts to role-play? You mean I was missing out when I was reading quest text and I could have talked to them like I do in pen and paper D&D? Or do you mean you were talking with other players? Making friends and conversing with other players is not role-playing. Who gives a crap if you spoke with the other player "in character." The world itself does not allow role-playing. You can't interact with the creatures in ways other than the set parameters of the game. You don't get to negotiate with the Lich King or the dragons in the world.

Sorry, there was no role-playing in WoW. At least not what I consider role-playing. The world was a preset, preprogrammed world that responded the same way every time. That is why raid and play strategies were a matter of rote memory rather than creative play. There is no getting around it even if you and your buddies were talking "in character" among yourselves. It had no effect on the reactions of the game world.


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## Celtavian (Jan 6, 2016)

Azurewraith said:


> Rp in WoW was a thing had to know where to look. It wasn't standard but it was there if you found the correct server/guild.




It was non-existent due to the limitations of the surrounding world. I do not consider talking with other characters in character role-playing. The world must respond to the role-playing or its very one-sided and impotent.

I played Everquest and WoW for years. It's how I learned how unsatisfying both games are when it comes to role-playing. I knew plenty of folks that tried to talk in character. It did nothing to affect the world and was completely pointless in the game. Raiding and instancing was a repetitive act meant to accumulate for more advanced raiding and instancing. The entire game is repetitive and doesn't come close to a well done role-playing experience.


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## Celtavian (Jan 6, 2016)

Sage Genesis said:


> Roleplaying games are not stories. Stories have pre-defined narratives which exist to satisfy only an audience, not the participants of the story itself. So let us just say that I for one reject your definition of "true" roleplaying games.




I care not that you reject it. I play this game to participate in a fantasy story. If you play it for some other reason, so be it.

My audience is the players. I build my game to satisfy them. Writers that write stories often see the reader as a participant in the story. All the writing tricks writers use are intended to draw the reader in as though they were there with the character. Sure, a reader knows they aren't really there logically. But when writing is done well, you feel invested in the story and drawn into the characters and actions occurring, often empathizing with or analyzing the story as though you are there watching the events.

The difference with a role-playing game is you happen to be one of the characters in the story. Your direct actions drive the story along as the writer puts characters, events, and setting about you and lets you attempt to build your character through his interactions with his surroundings.




> Edit:
> I suppose you could also say there are improv make-it-up-as-you-go-along types of stories. Which is fair, but even there you usually don't have one participant who gets to add more and better parts to the story than others just because he wrote "wizard" on his name badge.




Because a player is given a character to write hardly means it isn't a story. Knowing the outcome of a story makes that story quite boring. Even writers often like to let the characters lead them somewhere they may not be aware prior to the character's arrival.




> Edit2:
> Actually let's take this one step further. What do we all mean when we talk about "balance"? I'm copy-pasting this from elsewhere, but there's several different kinds.
> 
> Numerical Balance: Ensuring that most characters' raw numeric outputs (bonuses, damage, etc.) are roughly on par when averaged out over a range of typical gameplay scenarios.
> ...




I don't worry about balance. I want appropriately built characters. I want them to do be built according to roles in fantasy stories. So when a player plays that character, they feel like they are playing a particular character they liked. If they make Bilbo Baggins, they should feel like a highly effective, stealthy rogue with some fighting ability. If they make an Launcelot-type, they should feel like an extraordinarily skilled fighter capable of defeating numerous enemies in battle. When they make a Raistlin-like wizard, they should feel like that powerful, mysterious figure capable of wielding magic in an extraordinary fashion. 

You are correct. Balance is thrown out there far too often. When I see it, I figure they mostly mean numerical balance much like they attempt to do in video games like WoW, mostly so PVP is balanced enough so that any character can effectively defeat any other character. That type of balance is poisonous to a good pen and paper role-playing game. It overrides creativity and makes fantasy archetypes bland and inappropriate, so you don't get the experience of playing a fantasy role inspired by fantasy fiction. 

I love how people claiming RPGs aren't stories completely ignore the fact that nearly every RPG creator, every one I know of including the original creator Gygax, listed as their inspiration numerous works of fiction in nearly every version of D&D created. D&D was very much inspired by a desire to create a game that allowed people to participate in a fantasy story. It was inspired by Gygax reading tons of books and saying, "How do I make a game where I can be this character I love to read in this book? How do I make mechanics that allow me to tell a story and have an interesting and appropriate way to resolve the interactions in the game?" 

It has always been incredibly obvious from the time I picked up the books way back when that Gygax was trying to combine his love of fiction and his love of war games into a game that allowed you to play a story in a fantastical world. A cooperative story with an unknown outcome determined by a combination of DM and player creativity and game mechanics.


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## Celtavian (Jan 6, 2016)

Xeviat said:


> As it stands now, the spellcasters, especially the 1-9 spellcasters, have more toys than the other classes. Their players have more decisions to make, and thus take more time to weigh those decisions, and thus take up more spotlight time. Their spells can solve problems that noncasters can't hope to, unless they're very good at the "DM may I" required by 5E's wide open skill system. The battle master tries to give the fighters some toys to play with in combat, but the assassin and thief lack them, and the barbarian lacks a lot.
> 
> 5E fights are too fast; they're over in 3 or 4 rounds, tops, even for hard fights. The monsters are boring; all of the dragons are basically the same thing, for instance. Too many monsters are just "a ton of HP and an attack". To top it off, having 6 to 8 "fair" fights a day, to ensure that the noncasters get to use their fabled "endurance" and to tap out the noncasters, is a chore; the fights have to be too easy and then the casters don't even need to use their spells, and can just use them to ride all over the exploration and social scenes.
> 
> ...




I agree to a degree. Out of the box 5E is very basic. I think it was intended to be very basic.

I disagree that I need an advanced upgrade. I have not had an edition of D&D inspire me like 5E does in ages. I'm writing up magic items. Writing up monsters. I'm creating traps and hazards. I'm doing more creative work on D&D than I've done in years due to the simplicity of the system. In 5E you can write so much in plain language and make it work with the simple mechanics that it is a pleasure to create again. No complex mechanics to worry about. Just write it up as you think it should work and play it out.  It is easily one of the best editions of D&D yet made for telling a story and making interesting encounters. 

Sure, 5E out of the box is too easy for experience players. 5E leaves lots of room for creative play if you allow players to try things that aren't covered by the rules and create challenges that highly player capabilities.


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## Xeviat (Jan 6, 2016)

Azurewraith said:


> And adnd 5e would be very nice indeed the system is a Tad to light for my tastes but this is a blessing and a curse as I can add as appropriate just takes time I'm currently expanding the weapon list to make each weapon special so its more than a choice of 2d6 vs 1d12




I'd love to see what you do with it.

I'm getting ready to test out the 3.5 weapon table and the 3.5 magic items when added to the system. I'm also looking at testing out a faster proficiency system and a graded skill system, and maybe adjust the number of encounters per day. The monsters ... I want to rewrite them entirely. I find their balance to be okay (a hard encounter feels like a hard encounter), but their options are just too low.


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## EzekielRaiden (Jan 6, 2016)

Celtavian said:


> Did you really role-play?




Yes.



> Did you?




Yes.



> The raid bosses you talked to responded to you? As did the shopkeepers and orc chieftains and the random wandering creatures? They responded to your attempts to role-play? You mean I was missing out when I was reading quest text and I could have talked to them like I do in pen and paper D&D?




No? What does the scripted nature of bosses or shopkeepers have to do with it? It's not like D&D bosses and shopkeepers are radically different most of the time. I can count the number of actual D&D "bosses" I've been able to meaningfully negotiate with on one hand. And that was specifically because the DM in question likes worlds that get you to challenge preconceived notions. (But even his worlds have ancient vampires and goblin-slaver warchiefs who don't negotiate.)

 (Also, I very rarely did raids--though sometimes we wove our own stories around raids or, more commonly, instances).



> Or do you mean you were talking with other players? Making friends and conversing with other players is not role-playing. Who gives a crap if you spoke with the other player "in character."




First: Get the frak off your high horse. Second: Let me get this straight. Being able to have a two-way conversation with a shopkeeper or BBEG is roleplaying, but _talking in character_ isn't roleplaying. WTF? Really? So 99% of the _tabletop_ gaming I've done isn't roleplaying _either._ Because I spend way more time interacting with the other people at my table (well, electronic table) than I do killing baddies or trading.

We had a guild. All guild meetings were conducted in-character. OOC comments were held for the period after (or posted in the appropriate place on the website). We arranged interactions with other guilds--both Alliance and Horde--to have "live" allies and opponents as well as computer-operated ones. We would arrange times to do content, not because it had any mechanical value, but because adventuring through a particular area gave the right background for the story we wanted to tell. Sometimes, a story would come to us, that we'd play out in a particular instance--and sometimes, as we had our characters react to the world around them even in an instance we _were_ doing for the loot, a story would evolve out of it anyway.



> The world itself does not allow role-playing. You can't interact with the creatures in ways other than the set parameters of the game. You don't get to negotiate with the Lich King or the dragons in the world.




Not within the client, no. That's why you strike a balance between what you can do "live," within the game client, and what you can do in stories, where the limitations of the client are relaxed (though some limitations remain--as limitations remain in almost all campaigns, tabletop or otherwise). But in our stories, we _could_ interact with these forces (though not always negotiate--Arthas, much like Demogorgon or Graz'zt, or the aforementioned slaver goblins and vampire ancient, has little need or desire to "negotiate" with anyone). We _could_ do things that aren't possible in the client alone. And with the right addons, it's possible to communicate much of this "layered on top" story.



> Sorry, there was no role-playing in WoW. At least not what I consider role-playing.




See above: given your statements, I'm really confused about what you _do_ consider roleplaying. Interacting with your party members doesn't count, but haggling with a shopkeeper does?



> The world was a preset, preprogrammed world that responded the same way every time. That is why raid and play strategies were a matter of rote memory rather than creative play. There is no getting around it even if you and your buddies were talking "in character" among yourselves. It had no effect on the reactions of the game world.




Sure, if you consider the only parts of the game world to be the monsters, baddies, and shopkeepers in it, and completely neglect the players and their ability to interact with each other, as well as the built-in factions, variety of cultures, petty political squabbles with minimal grand impact, or potential to tell your own story of how a particular enemy was defeated--or not defeated!--mechanics be damned. But, as I've said above, if you ignore any and all contributions from your fellow-players in a TTRPG, you're going to have a pretty damn spare "roleplay" experience anyway.


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## mflayermonk (Jan 6, 2016)

Sage Genesis said:


> Roleplaying games are not stories. Stories have pre-defined narratives which exist to satisfy only an audience, not the participants of the story itself. So let us just say that I for one reject your definition of "true" roleplaying games.






This is an excerpt from the podcast Imaginary Worlds, where Paul La Farge talks about the time he sat down and played a game of D&D with Gygax.
Starts around 24:35 and is about 3 minutes long.
https://soundcloud.com/emolinsky/rolling-the-twenty-sided-dice


Interviewer is Eric Molinsky (EM)
Guest is Paul La Farge (PLF)

EM: "After the interview was over, Gary Gygax offered to DM a game with Paul and his colleague." 

PLF: "He came out of the wargaming world which was very much strategy-based, and he (Gygax) played D&D as if it were a wargame. He posed problems to the players and there were better solutions and worse solutions and he had very little compunction about killing characters off if the occasion warranted.
And his thought was if you play smart you are going to win and if you don't you're very likely going to lose, and now let's sit down and see how you play."

EM: "But it sounds like you were slightly disappointed a little bit in terms of you really were...were you more interested in the character?"

PLF: "No, it was great because if as a kid if someone had waved their magic wand over me when I was eleven years old and said poof you are in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and here is Gary Gygax and he is running a game of D&D,  here is your seat at the table...go. Which actually would have been possible because he loved to Dungeon Master and he ran games at conventions.

But if it had happened then I would have been disappointed because I would have lost... I wouldn't have gotten into the problem solving aspect of it, and there wouldn't have been room for the part I liked and I would have felt frustrated.

But to meet him in the context of doing this as a grown-up, it was kind of perfect because it was as if Gary were saying 'hey this is about reality now, here's a problem, see if you can solve it'. You don't get into the theatrics of being an elf because who cares about the theatrics of being an elf...you're not an elf."


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## Emerikol (Jan 6, 2016)

Xeviat said:


> As it stands now, the spellcasters, especially the 1-9 spellcasters, have more toys than the other classes. Their players have more decisions to make, and thus take more time to weigh those decisions, and thus take up more spotlight time. Their spells can solve problems that noncasters can't hope to, unless they're very good at the "DM may I" required by 5E's wide open skill system. The battle master tries to give the fighters some toys to play with in combat, but the assassin and thief lack them, and the barbarian lacks a lot.
> 
> 5E fights are too fast; they're over in 3 or 4 rounds, tops, even for hard fights. The monsters are boring; all of the dragons are basically the same thing, for instance. Too many monsters are just "a ton of HP and an attack". To top it off, having 6 to 8 "fair" fights a day, to ensure that the noncasters get to use their fabled "endurance" and to tap out the noncasters, is a chore; the fights have to be too easy and then the casters don't even need to use their spells, and can just use them to ride all over the exploration and social scenes.
> 
> ...




I disagree that 4e's "problem" was presentation.  4e's "problem" was that it dramatically switched sides in the game design philosophy department.   It made those who had "suffered" in prior editions, or who hadn't known better and would suffer now, realize the sort of game they really wanted.   The "problem" is that an awful lot of people still want the original side that D&D had taken.   4e basically split the playerbase irrevocably.   I never wanted 4e and I'd never be happy with it.  I'd gladly play 3e before 4e or 5e.   

So 5e was tasked (impossibly I might add) with reuniting the playerbase.   The problem is that the two sides have seen what they like and what they don't like.  We are no longer ignorant.   Now having said that, I believe the WOTC staff is too blind to even see the distinctions between the two sides.   

So Xeviat, I really do respect your position and preferences but I don't share them.  I want the options complexity of 3e with traditional spell casters and martials but streamlined combat mechanics with fewer hit points like 5e.   You might say that is 2e but I want a system.  I want it all to fit together.   The very things the designers grumbled about when working on 3e are things I probably like having.   I want it all to work together like a good machine.   

I think we are like two political factions.  There are obviously moderates out there that we can get to play in games we like but who can also play the other way too.   We though are true believers in our style and enjoy that style.  Nothing whatsoever like that.   I will say though that the way I play I never or very rarely see the problems that you see in my style.


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## Tony Vargas (Jan 6, 2016)

Xeviat said:


> I fundamentally believe that 4E's problem was 75% presentation. I bet if the powers hadn't been presented as cards, and if the classes were obfuscated to look different in structure from each other, or if we had gotten something more like Essentials first, more people would have loved it. Book of Nine Swords was popular in 3E, and there were plenty of powers in there that would feel right on a "fighter".



Business factors were by far the biggest problems:  promising 2-4x the revenue the entire industry was pulling down, and the death of the key developer of the subscription-based service that was supposed to drive that revenue, while simultaneously burning OGL bridges were just three big strikes against WotC at the time.  

More circumspect presentation might've given edition-warriors less ammunition, but they never had any trouble making up more.  Powers were only presented as 'cards' in the CB, for instance.  No amount of obfuscation would have undermined class balance enough to deliver the kind of system-mastery-rewards PF could.  But, yes, maybe leading with Essentials and improving on it to get to 4e would have been a better path.  IMHO, timing was off, too.  It was too early to toss 3.x to the curb, and OSR was just getting rolling.  



> As it stands now, the spellcasters, especially the 1-9 spellcasters, have more toys than the other classes.



Well, other sub-classes.  All classes have some access to spells.



> Their players have more decisions to make, and thus take more time to weigh those decisions, and thus take up more spotlight time. Their spells can solve problems that noncasters can't hope to, unless they're very good at the "DM may I" required by 5E's wide open skill system.



That's only a problem if you insist on playing a non-caster.  The game's fairly up-front about that being something to do only if you hate having choices & 'agency,' and just want to hit stuff.



> 5E fights are too fast; they're over in 3 or 4 rounds, tops, even for hard fights. The monsters are boring; all of the dragons are basically the same thing, for instance. Too many monsters are just "a ton of HP and an attack".



That's just the pendulum swinging.  4e swung away from 3.x rocket tag to big set-piece encounters and 5e swung back.  Inevitably that's going to be too fast for some of us.  We can always just have 3-4 doubled-up, thus bigger, longer & more complex, encounters per day, with a short rest after each of 'em.  That'd be the same amount of exp and the same number of short rests per day - probably at least as many rounds/day, too.



> To top it off, having 6 to 8 "fair" fights a day, to ensure that the noncasters get to use their fabled "endurance" and to tap out the noncasters, is a chore; the fights have to be too easy and then the casters don't even need to use their spells, and can just use them to ride all over the exploration and social scenes.



It's the attrition model:  it's not just any theoretical balance that might exist, it's the whole challenge of the play experience that's emergent over that magic number of 6-8 encounters.  Maybe there's a point w/in that 6-8 Encounter prescription where the party's mix of classes (if it even includes any non-casters) will happen to balance, maybe not, regardless the DM can contrive to impose spotlight balance.



> 5E is great for a quick system. I want an Advanced upgrade.



That's what the PH options and DMG modules are. They're the Advanced Game.  The pdf, by itself, is the quick & simple Basic Game.


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## GX.Sigma (Jan 6, 2016)

Greg Benage said:


> After a year and a half, for my preferences, I'm beginning to think the game rules are too _complex_ and too boring (<-- see "for my preferences" back over there). Compared to editions I came up with, the PCs are buffed to 11 and the monsters are nerfed. Encounters often feel like, "Roll initiative and then apply your character build to whatever page of the Monster Manual we're on." We can play "theater of the mind" just fine, because ranged attackers always have a feat to take care of range and cover. Who cares where anything is? None of it matters. Are you in melee or not? That's all that matters. Wait...with Crossbow Expert, even that doesn't matter. When it's your turn in the initiative order, apply your character sheet. Then it's the next guy's turn.
> 
> For me, I increasingly feel like the emphasis has shifted from skilled play to character optimization. I increasingly despise feats. In practice, with the feats players actually choose, they don't enrich or expand a character concept -- they simply apply a specialized mechanical benefit. You take Polearm Master not so that you can use a polearm, but so you become twice as effective with a polearm as any other weapon. Actually, the Weapon Master feat that actually could expand a character concept...LOL at the idea of anyone ever taking it! So much for the days when fighters were weapon masters who could always use the right tool for the job, based on player skill and the tactical situation in actual play. "Uh, I've got Great Weapon Fighting Style, Great Weapon Master, and Polearm Master. What the f--- am I going to do with sword-and-shield or a bow? There's a flying creature? Someone better cast fly on me otherwise the DM is 'punishing' my build."
> 
> So yeah, it can get boring. Everyone is hyperspecialized, the monsters no longer have any game-changing abilities to fear, so exploration, recon, information-gathering, dungeon diplomacy and all the rest of it are simply replaced by everyone taking turns executing their specialized mechanical operations.




This matches a lot of my experience and feeling in the first year and a half of running 5e. Inevitably, the more you are able to customize your character, the more optimization is possible. My first 5e group was mostly "power gamers"--they were new to D&D, but they were very competitive at MTG and Diablo. They built their characters by looking in the PHB for the most powerful combinations possible. The game consistently felt way too easy, and it got boring for me (the DM), and probably for them too. This may have also been because the challenges in the official adventures are laughably easy even for a non-optimizing party. If I was a better DM and willing to put in the effort, I maybe could have made it challenging enough (though their numbers were truly outrageous)

These days, I'm running for a different "group" (a brother and sister pair). They're also new to TRPG. They're pretty hardcore gamers, but they don't care about character building. They have access to the full PHB, but they're essentially both using pre-gens. And you know what? We're all having a great time. The players are acting in character, and interacting with their surroundings in a natural and organic way.

I think the real lesson here (beyond "don't play with optimizers") is that if you want to cut down on optimization, you have to cut down on options. I don't think it's a coincidence that my first campaign (with character building) was boring, and my second campaign (with pregens) was fun. I agree that 5e's feats lead to boring gameplay, so I intend to restrict them from now on. Actually, here is my full list of tweaks for a hypothetical future "basic 5e" campaign:


Roll stats in order with 3d6 (you can switch any pair of scores, you may reroll if total mods are negative)
Restricted class/subclass list (Fighter/Champion/Battlemaster/Eldritchknight, Rogue/Thief, Wizard/all, Barbarian/Berserker, maybe Cleric/some)
Humans only, for story reasons, but demihumans would theoretically be restricted to certain classes (Moon Elf = Bard, Wood Elf = Ranger, Dwarf = Fighter, etc.) and have "personality trait" baggage
Restricted feat list (basically just Magic Initiate and the ones that give you new proficiencies)
No multiclassing unless you really really want to
Most XP doesn't come from combat


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## Rhenny (Jan 7, 2016)

GX.Sigma said:


> Roll stats in order with 3d6 (you can switch any pair of scores, you may reroll if total mods are negative)
> Restricted class/subclass list (Fighter/Champion/Battlemaster/Eldritchknight, Rogue/Thief, Wizard/all, Barbarian/Berserker, maybe Cleric/some)
> Humans only, for story reasons, but demihumans would theoretically be restricted to certain classes (Moon Elf = Bard, Wood Elf = Ranger, Dwarf = Fighter, etc.) and have "personality trait" baggage
> Restricted feat list (basically just Magic Initiate and the ones that give you new proficiencies)
> ...




Rolling up a PC with 3d6 in order is a very cool idea that will help make the game more challenging for players.  I do like the idea that PCs are born, not made.  Random generation with some player manipulation definitely makes it feel like the PC you play is more organic, warts and all.  We are playing (or we started a campaign...and have been on hold for the last few months) where we rolled 4d6 drop one in order and then created our PCs from whatever we rolled.  I really like it because it forced me to make an unusual cleric that has strengths and weaknesses/quirks that make it more interesting to play.

I'm also totally behind the idea that most xp doesn't come from combat.  Story awards, and awards for doing interesting and cinematic things that make the game more thrilling is so much better for 2 reasons:  1) It is easier for the DM to assign it rather than calculating each creature xp, etc.  2) It rewards players for doing "real" interesting things and looking for options that are not always "kill the monsters and take their stuff."

Interestingly, I think these options are also better for more experienced players because they have the wherewithal to survive when things go badly, or use their experience to bring more options to the table in various game situations.


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## Rhenny (Jan 7, 2016)

Celtavian said:


> I agree to a degree. Out of the box 5E is very basic. I think it was intended to be very basic.
> 
> I disagree that I need an advanced upgrade. I have not had an edition of D&D inspire me like 5E does in ages. I'm writing up magic items. Writing up monsters. I'm creating traps and hazards. I'm doing more creative work on D&D than I've done in years due to the simplicity of the system. In 5E you can write so much in plain language and make it work with the simple mechanics that it is a pleasure to create again. No complex mechanics to worry about. Just write it up as you think it should work and play it out.  It is easily one of the best editions of D&D yet made for telling a story and making interesting encounters.
> 
> Sure, 5E out of the box is too easy for experience players. 5E leaves lots of room for creative play if you allow players to try things that aren't covered by the rules and create challenges that highly player capabilities.




I'd even go so far as say that for some experienced DMs and players (like me and the people I play with and DM), the streamlined, less prescribed 5e system is better because it allows each DM/game table to add/improvise what works best for his/her table or campaign.  I'm an old timer, and many of my players are old timers.  We enjoy the rules light way 5e runs and don't find combat boring as long as encounters fit with the building campaign story and there are a wide variety of encounter types, many of which can be "won" with limited or no fighting at all.


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## devincutler (Jan 7, 2016)

Rhenny said:


> Rolling up a PC with 3d6 in order is a very cool idea that will help make the game more challenging for players.  I do like the idea that PCs are born, not made.  Random generation with some player manipulation definitely makes it feel like the PC you play is more organic, warts and all.  We are playing (or we started a campaign...and have been on hold for the last few months) where we rolled 4d6 drop one in order and then created our PCs from whatever we rolled.  I really like it because it forced me to make an unusual cleric that has strengths and weaknesses/quirks that make it more interesting to play.
> 
> I'm also totally behind the idea that most xp doesn't come from combat.  Story awards, and awards for doing interesting and cinematic things that make the game more thrilling is so much better for 2 reasons:  1) It is easier for the DM to assign it rather than calculating each creature xp, etc.  2) It rewards players for doing "real" interesting things and looking for options that are not always "kill the monsters and take their stuff."
> 
> Interestingly, I think these options are also better for more experienced players because they have the wherewithal to survive when things go badly, or use their experience to bring more options to the table in various game situations.




This is how it was done back in the day. 3d6 in order. And paladins and monks had huge requirements to enter, so just playing one was a rare and wondrous treat.

I, too, much prefer playing PCs as rolled with interesting stat flaws. I think too much is made of min-maxing (and then those same people complain the game is too easy....go figure!). I just recently played a 3.5 druid with a 6 Cha and an 8 Int. It was a blast. Was I a little behind the 8 ball in Animal Handling? Yeah...but nothing too horrific and by 3rd level I was auto handling my animal companion. But playing a clever person who was simply not interested in complex ideas or written lore was a kick. And I played her 6 Cha not as physically ugly, but as a nature child who never bathes, never washes her clothes, is picking lice out of her hair, and who has absolutely no social filters whatsoever. If the king is overweight, she might remark: "Hello king...wow you're fat!"


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## EzekielRaiden (Jan 7, 2016)

Rhenny said:


> Rolling up a PC with 3d6 in order is a very cool idea that will help make the game more challenging for players.  I do like the idea that PCs are born, not made.  Random generation with some player manipulation definitely makes it feel like the PC you play is more organic, warts and all.  We are playing (or we started a campaign...and have been on hold for the last few months) where we rolled 4d6 drop one in order and then created our PCs from whatever we rolled.  I really like it because it forced me to make an unusual cleric that has strengths and weaknesses/quirks that make it more interesting to play.




Whereas, for me, it's a constant reminder that I'm not actually the author of my character--the dice are. And if I can't have authorship of my character, I won't be invested in it.* For you, strict dice-rolled characters liberate you from your preconceptions. For me, the dice constrain me to stuff I don't want to do. It will be a constant reminder of the _artificiality_ of the character--exactly the opposite of what it is to you.



> I'm also totally behind the idea that most xp doesn't come from combat.  Story awards, and awards for doing interesting and cinematic things that make the game more thrilling is so much better for 2 reasons:  1) It is easier for the DM to assign it rather than calculating each creature xp, etc.  2) It rewards players for doing "real" interesting things and looking for options that are not always "kill the monsters and take their stuff."




This, on the other hand, I'm 100% down with. It's one of the reasons I so appreciate 4e explicitly making "Quest XP" a _thing_ described and explained in the rules--because many DMs may not even think to give XP for things other than combat, it just might never occur to them. Having the book explicitly say, "Hey, this is a thing you can do!" is a huge deal. (IIRC, it _also_ has a sidebar about how the DM can just handwave XP entirely, and simply tell the party when they've levelled up, which is great for DMs who aren't big on bookkeeping.)

*Of course, the _one_ time I rolled a strict-order character, I happened to not only get a good roll, but a _great_ roll, which perfectly fit the concept I'd been toying with--but that's a (quite literally) one in a million (or more!) event.


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## devincutler (Jan 7, 2016)

EzekielRaiden said:


> Whereas, for me, it's a constant reminder that I'm not actually the author of my character--the dice are. And if I can't have authorship of my character, I won't be invested in it.* For you, strict dice-rolled characters liberate you from your preconceptions. For me, the dice constrain me to stuff I don't want to do. It will be a constant reminder of the _artificiality_ of the character--exactly the opposite of what it is to you.




Sometimes constraint is required in order to be liberated (howze that for a koan?).

The philosophy of rolling the dice in order is twofold:

1) You cannot control what you are born as. I wish I were thin and handsome and could play baseball and had a kick ass singing voice, but I am not and cannot. Oh well. So you make the best of it and find other unique things you can do to which you are more suited.

2) It forces you, at times, to think outside the box. You can still play almost any character in 5e with almost any stats, and while 3.x had some hard limits on spellcasters, you could still do it with even a mild score in your spellcasting class.

To flip your argument around, doesn't the standard array or 4d6 drop one and reorder also technically constrain you? What if your great vision of this character you wish to author is someone who is immensely strong, charmingly handsome, cunningly intelligent, and as nimble as a ballerina? By gosh, I guess you'll be needing 18s in 4 stats to realize your character concept....won't you?

I would hope that an experienced role player would have the chops to be able to play a variety of characters and work to "author" your character working from the stats rolled.


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## Azurewraith (Jan 7, 2016)

Xeviat said:


> I'd love to see what you do with it.
> 
> I'm getting ready to test out the 3.5 weapon table and the 3.5 magic items when added to the system. I'm also looking at testing out a faster proficiency system and a graded skill system, and maybe adjust the number of encounters per day. The monsters ... I want to rewrite them entirely. I find their balance to be okay (a hard encounter feels like a hard encounter), but their options are just too low.




Ye if i ever get time to get it finished ill be sure to post it around here.


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## Celtavian (Jan 7, 2016)

EzekielRaiden said:


> No? What does the scripted nature of bosses or shopkeepers have to do with it?




Interacting with NPCs as though they are real persons is role-playing. Scripted responses with button clicks are not role-playing.



> It's not like D&D bosses and shopkeepers are radically different most of the time. I can count the number of actual D&D "bosses" I've been able to meaningfully negotiate with on one hand. And that was specifically because the DM in question likes worlds that get you to challenge preconceived notions. (But even his worlds have ancient vampires and goblin-slaver warchiefs who don't negotiate.)




I can't count the number of times I negotiated or interacted with NPCs on any number of hands I could possibly estimate.

What's the difference? Bosses interact often with the PCs adapting to their tactics. You don't get to show up and know exactly what they will do each time like WoW. They don't say exactly the same thing. They respond to the tactics of the PCs had many, many different options. It's obvious to anyone that has played WoW/Everquest what the difference is between a video game boss monster and a D&D monster is. They are extremely different. If you haven't noticed this, then you are playing a very different game than I have played. 



> (Also, I very rarely did raids--though sometimes we wove our own stories around raids or, more commonly, instances).




Instance bosses and NPCs are just as scripted as raid bosses and not role-playing.





> First: Get the frak off your high horse. Second: Let me get this straight. Being able to have a two-way conversation with a shopkeeper or BBEG is roleplaying, but _talking in character_ isn't roleplaying. WTF? Really? So 99% of the _tabletop_ gaming I've done isn't roleplaying _either._ Because I spend way more time interacting with the other people at my table (well, electronic table) than I do killing baddies or trading.




Talking in character is only a small aspect of role-playing. If you can't change the world based on role-playing decisions, you aren't role-playing no matter how high a horse you get on to claim that you are. Your role-playing decisions did nothing to affect the game world. That is the very essence of role-playing.



> We had a guild. All guild meetings were conducted in-character. OOC comments were held for the period after (or posted in the appropriate place on the website). We arranged interactions with other guilds--both Alliance and Horde--to have "live" allies and opponents as well as computer-operated ones. We would arrange times to do content, not because it had any mechanical value, but because adventuring through a particular area gave the right background for the story we wanted to tell. Sometimes, a story would come to us, that we'd play out in a particular instance--and sometimes, as we had our characters react to the world around them even in an instance we _were_ doing for the loot, a story would evolve out of it anyway.




Bunch of people got together in a guild meeting and talking in character and it still had no effect on the game world. Meaningless to someone like me. I tried RPG servers. Once I found it consisted of a bunch of people talking in character with no effect on the game world, I left. That isn't role-playing to me. 




> Not within the client, no. That's why you strike a balance between what you can do "live," within the game client, and what you can do in stories, where the limitations of the client are relaxed (though some limitations remain--as limitations remain in almost all campaigns, tabletop or otherwise). But in our stories, we _could_ interact with these forces (though not always negotiate--Arthas, much like Demogorgon or Graz'zt, or the aforementioned slaver goblins and vampire ancient, has little need or desire to "negotiate" with anyone). We _could_ do things that aren't possible in the client alone. And with the right addons, it's possible to communicate much of this "layered on top" story.




If you had fun writing WoW stories that had no effect on the game world, so be it. It didn't interest me. If my characters actions can't affect the game world, I'm not role-playing. I would have been bored to tears doing what you were doing. That's why I left those games after I was done seeing the world and raiding. The only appeal those games had for me was to see the visual representations in the world and the challenge. I felt no satisfaction role-playing in those games. I couldn't control anything in the world with my role-play actions. Even my equipment was worn by the same people playing the same class because of how limited character customization in the game was. 




> See above: given your statements, I'm really confused about what you _do_ consider roleplaying. Interacting with your party members doesn't count, but haggling with a shopkeeper does?




Interacting with the party members alone would not be considered role-playing if it has no effect on the game world. Killing the same named monster over and over again because your actions have no effect on the game world was a real wake up call that I was not role-playing and not in a role-playing game. When you've killed such and such boss in such and such instance twenty or more times after he's said the same thing to you each time, it kind of hits home that you're not role-playing. You're in a repetitive game in a fantasy world that you cannot effect.

In D&D when you slay a named dragon or a named wizard, it is recorded in the history of that world. A DM gives you all accolades for doing so in that world. It's a very different experience and the role-playing you do with the other PCs is very important because it can affect every aspect of the encounter. You can even choose to negotiate with the creature or trap it or come up with some other way to defeat it. It's not a repetitive experience unless the DM makes it so. 



> Sure, if you consider the only parts of the game world to be the monsters, baddies, and shopkeepers in it, and completely neglect the players and their ability to interact with each other, as well as the built-in factions, variety of cultures, petty political squabbles with minimal grand impact, or potential to tell your own story of how a particular enemy was defeated--or not defeated!--mechanics be damned. But, as I've said above, if you ignore any and all contributions from your fellow-players in a TTRPG, you're going to have a pretty damn spare "roleplay" experience anyway.




If I cannot have an effect on the game world when role-playing, then I don't consider it role-playing. If I cannot by role-playing with the other PCs and we as a group have an effect on the game world, then I do not consider it role-playing. I went into WoW and Everquest hoping for a role-playing experience. I found something very different. It was fun and at challenging, but not role-playing. I even went so far as to make sure at least to pick names appropriate for a fantasy character rather than some of the absolutely stupid names I saw in those games like Chris420 or Sucknit and the like. I gave it a shot. Once I found out I would be killing the giant hand in Karnor's castle 20 times or defeating Nagafen 30 times, the idea of WoW/Everquest being an RPG was out the window. I just accepted that video games and pen and paper RPGs are a different experience and I would enjoy each for what it was. When I want to role-play, I want the game engine to be a DM to being make decisions that allow mine and my buddies role-playing to have a permanent effect on the game world.

If I ever play with a DM that respawns creatures in the same place for me to fight again or writes scripts he repeats each time I go to a shopkeeper with no ability to negotiate, I'll be out the door. 

A recent example of what I'm talking about was the paladin in the market buying armor. He took a _philter of love_ and negotiated for its sale with a duergar merchant. He was fortunate that the duergar merchant had a lady friend in question to use it on. So he offered a more than fair price due to his need. The paladin made a good selling argument and a good Persuasion roll. I as the DM made sure this had an effect on the world by coming up with the story the guy was trying to make a beautiful slave woman he purchased love him. So he was willing to pay more money for the philter. This is the kind of material I'm looking for in a role-playing experience that I did not get in WoW/Everquest (though Everquest is much, much closer than WoW ever was).

The closest a video game ever got to providing a very cool RPG experience in a game was _Everquest[/]. They had encumbrance. The primary market was the weekend player run bazaar in the East Commonlands. It required grouping to succeed. And had way more interaction required than WoW. Even that game was repetitive where you sat in a room with a bunch of buddies killing stuff over and over again. It was still a very cool experience, much closer to a pen and paper RPG than WoW. If you were satifised by role-playing in WoW, you would have loved the original Everquest._


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## Celtavian (Jan 7, 2016)

mflayermonk said:


> This is an excerpt from the podcast Imaginary Worlds, where Paul La Farge talks about the time he sat down and played a game of D&D with Gygax.
> Starts around 24:35 and is about 3 minutes long.
> https://soundcloud.com/emolinsky/rolling-the-twenty-sided-dice
> 
> ...




Here is an answer from Gary saying it's not story-telling as normally presented. I can agree with that. It is not a pre-scripted story. It's a mix of things that very much includes elements of story-telling, which he always included in his modules. 

Whether Gary intended it or not, D&D has strong elements of story within it. The game plays much better when such elements are included in the game. The designers that were drawn to the game tend to love story-telling. It is a game that is very attractive to people that like telling or participating in stories, even if not in the traditional scripted manner.

_Gary: Insightful, that question, and allow me comment on it a bit before answering.

I do not, and I stress NOT, believe that the RPG is “storytelling” in the way that is usually presented. If there is a story to be told, it comes from the interaction of all participants, not merely the Game Master–who should not be a “Storyteller” but a narrator and co-player! The players are not acting out roles designed for them by the GM, *they are acting in character to create the story, and that tale is told as the game unfolds, and as directed by their actions, with random factors that even the GM can’t predict possibly altering the course of things.* Storytelling is what novelists, screenwriters, and playwrights do. It has little or no connection to the RPG, which differs in all aspects from the entertainment forms such authors create for.

As false to the game form as the pre-scripted “story,” is play that has little more in it than seek and destroy missions, vacuous effort where the participants fight and kill some monster so as to gain more power and thus be able to look for yet more potent opponents in a spiral that leads nowhere save eventual boredom. So pure hack and slash play is anathema to me too.

Tactical, and strategic, play is a fine addition to the RPG, and if it is in-character, something I see as desirable, In this category fall such things as exploration, economics, politics, and even intrigue.

The LA RPG was designed to accommodate any and all styles and play approaches, and hopefully so presented as to encourage an amalgam of all the elements of the game form. That encourages varied adventures, different challenges from time to time, and well-rounded characters (and players) that find the game has long-term interest for them. In short, I agree with you in that all aspects of the RPG should be presented and played.

Now, as to the LA MMPO game, I have not yet had the opportunity to really get into anything like what actual online play will be. We have discussed that a good bit, naturally, and soon I expect to be adventuring about with an Avatar in more than just a general environment, as has been the case up until now. What is particularly exciting to me about that is the new facets of play that will be presented thus, things not now contained in the LA pen-and-paper game._

Here is another interview with Gygax with the man himself admitting how strongly influenced he was by fiction including Tolkien: http://archives.theonering.net/features/interviews/gary_gygax.html

Whether Gygax believes his game is story-telling or not is irrelevant. The story-telling influences on the game are clear. He created a game where a group of people could participate in a story. It is obviously not in the traditional scripted sense, but an open-ended, cooperative story in a fictional world with outcomes decided by game mechanics and dice.


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## EzekielRaiden (Jan 7, 2016)

devincutler said:


> Sometimes constraint is required in order to be liberated (howze that for a koan?).
> 
> The philosophy of rolling the dice in order is...




...something I already get. I get why people want it. Just like I get why people want to watch horror movies. But _cognitively_ understanding what people get from it, and _emotively_ understanding it, are two distinct things. I get no--zero, zip, zilch, nada--catharsis out of watching horror movies. They leave me feeling depressed, upset, even anxious--I have to "unwind" after watching them by doing some other thing entirely. I can cognitively understand that, for other people, going through the emotions elicited by a good horror movie is cleansing, relieving, an outlet for all sorts of things. But I don't feel _any_ of that when I watch them--so I choose not to. Same for strict-rolled characters. I'll do it, if a friend or the like is offering a game where it's required--I get a good portion of my enjoyment of an RPG from interacting with the other players. But that character creation method will not contribute to my enjoyment, and may reduce it (slightly, but still).



> To flip your argument around, doesn't the standard array or 4d6 drop one and reorder also technically constrain you? What if your great vision of this character you wish to author is someone who is immensely strong, charmingly handsome, cunningly intelligent, and as nimble as a ballerina? By gosh, I guess you'll be needing 18s in 4 stats to realize your character concept....won't you?




"The perfect is the enemy of the good." Also, it's a rookie mistake to assume that a character that's great at everything will be a character that wins audiences or naturally/easily produces compelling stories. Superman is quite possibly the most _iconic_ superhero--and yet he's often reviled for being a boring, impossible-to-challenge, powers-on-demand character. It IS possible to write good, even great stories that revolve around the Man of Steel (who is, in fact, one of my favorite superheroes)--it just takes dramatically more work than other characters, because (near-)perfection makes drama harder, not easier. To challenge Superman, you basically have to go outside the limits of the superhero story--because he's already won that--and into something else. Like _Superman: Red Son_, or _Kingdom Come_, or _What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?_, or _For the Man Who Has Everything_. The last two, incidentally, were also adapted as stories for the DCAU, and are fairly faithful adaptations. If you're not big on comics but have the time to watch (respectively) an animated film, _Superman vs. the Elite,_ or TV episode, _For the Man Who Has Everything_ (JLU ep 2).

What you ask is sort of the logical opposite of an actual question in virtue ethics: can we truly call effective, challenging evil _completely_ unvirtuous? The answer given is usually no: an evil being that was completely, utterly devoid of all virtues would be incapable of any meaningful action. Evil, then, lies not in a _total absence_ of virtue, but the _privation_ of virtue. (As Aristotle put it in the Nichomachean Ethics, "Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feeling or in action, but Virtue finds and chooses the mean.") Having a story where all of the villains are so cowardly they cannot take actions, or so stupid that they never take actions that benefit them, or so reckless that they always get themselves killed through constantly challenging opponents--well, that would be a pretty gorram boring story! Instead we must mix just the _right_ amount of steel and rot and sweetness into each villain, so that they are capable threats, and compelling characters, while still being revolting. A good author, similarly, knows to give protagonized characters a touch of clay to go with their steel, because you can't have drama if there was never a challenge to overcome in the first place.

Finding the balance between "sufficiently capable and likable" and "sufficiently flawed and incapable" is hard! But fortunately, point-bought or array stats _guarantee_ that you can get such a character. Dice rolls, on the other hand, cannot guarantee such things--in fact, they essentially guarantee that at least _some portion_ of them, in the long run, will be all flaws (sub-10 stats across the board) or all awesome (no stat less than 15).



> I would hope that an experienced role player would have the chops to be able to play a variety of characters and work to "author" your character working from the stats rolled.




I can create a story for just about anything. But it will be flat to me. Lifeless. It will exist, not because it reflects or contains anything within me, but because an inanimate object "told" me to do it. And that completely taints my enjoyment of it. Like I said, I will _constantly_ be reminded, "This wasn't my creation. This was made by someone else, or rather something else, and handed off to me." I *have* tried. Truly I have. And even with the dice on my side (as I said above), it wasn't enough. I was able to enjoy the game because the DM was good and the world was interesting. My character? I really couldn't have cared less if it died, except that that might mean I'd sit the rest of the session out, which would be boring and unfortunate.

A character I create is one that inspires me--perhaps like an old favorite dish, redolent with memories and pleasant nostalgia; or perhaps like a new experiment, a challenge to meet and investigate. A character handed to me, even by the dice, is neither of those things.

I don't expect you to change your mind about what you like or dislike. I am absolutely 100% supportive of your choice to roll and play such characters, because that is what gives you joy. All I ask is that you recognize that _it does not bring everyone joy_, and for some people (like me), it _opposes_ what gives them joy in RPGs.


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## Rhenny (Jan 7, 2016)

EzekielRaiden said:


> Whereas, for me, it's a constant reminder that I'm not actually the author of my character--the dice are. And if I can't have authorship of my character, I won't be invested in it.* For you, strict dice-rolled characters liberate you from your preconceptions. For me, the dice constrain me to stuff I don't want to do. It will be a constant reminder of the _artificiality_ of the character--exactly the opposite of what it is to you.



I hear ya.  It amazes me how everyone has sometimes similar and sometimes different preferences.  I'm glad D&D gives the choice.  The variety of preferences and play styles that the game has to cater to, makes me appreciate the challenge the designers had to face when they sifted through playtest comments and surveys to make 5e.


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## Cristian Andreu (Jan 7, 2016)

I love the combat system in 5e. I like it simple; I add the complexity narratively and by including twists to the rules/new mechanics in the moment depending on what the situation requires.

It fits very well with my group's playing style and continous stumbling into "Whip fight on the wing of an ornithopter that's being bombarded by pirates riding a steel-clad flying octopus while inside a volcano"-type situations.


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## devincutler (Jan 7, 2016)

I find stat point buys and standard arrays also tend to churn out cookie cutter PCs. One reason even though I do use the 4d6 drop method (because my players would never allow 3d6 in order), I would never assent to a standard array or point buy...because there are too many optimal allocations for each class and you end up seeing the same dump stats over and over and over and over again.


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## EzekielRaiden (Jan 8, 2016)

devincutler said:


> I find stat point buys and standard arrays also tend to churn out cookie cutter PCs. One reason even though I do use the 4d6 drop method (because my players would never allow 3d6 in order), I would never assent to a standard array or point buy...because there are too many optimal allocations for each class and you end up seeing the same dump stats over and over and over and over again.




Recognizing that your players would rebel if you tried to make them do 3d6-strict: 4d6-L, rearrange to taste, _also_ produced fairly cookie-cutter characters. I've seen a very nicely presented statistical analysis of the expected values for 4d6-L; you can view it yourself here. Long story short: the standard deviations for the first few 'highest dice' are small, and the curves have such a thin left-skewed tail that almost the entirety of the distribution lies in the 12+ range (for the estimate of the highest die, it's something like 90% lies above 14!) And being able to arrange your stats to taste means that you'll always see people put the lowest stat in the thing they need least, and their highest stat in the thing they need most--exactly as would happen in point buy or an array. In fact, the so-called "elite array" used in 3e and (without that name) in 5e (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8) is slightly below the expected output of 4d6-L/rearrange (16, 14, 13, 12, 10, 9), which is itself also slightly below the 4e standard array (16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10).

So...yeah. Allowing stats to be rearranged or modified removes most, though perhaps not all, of the "anti-cookie-cutter" effect of rolling stats. Unless someone gets an utterly fantastic roll (or cheats, which IME is strongly incentivized by asking for rolled stats), you'll still see "the same dump stats over and over and over and over again." And unless someone gets completely shat upon by the dice, you'll still see the same priorities for best stats, over and over and over and over again. And, on average, characters will trend toward the mean--so while no individual character _has_ to look like the expected value of 4d6-L, they'll cluster around those values pretty well over the course of a long gaming career. In a game where stats matter a lot, and where it's very easy for hurt feelings (or guilt) to arise from a noticeable gap between the worst-off character and the best-off one, I just don't see the benefits even remotely outweighing the costs.

Now, technically, you didn't actually _say_ you allow them to rearrange, but I've never heard of 4d6-L that didn't include it so I figured it was a safe assumption--please correct me if I'm wrong on that.


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## devincutler (Jan 8, 2016)

EzekielRaiden said:


> Recognizing that your players would rebel if you tried to make them do 3d6-strict: 4d6-L, rearrange to taste, _also_ produced fairly cookie-cutter characters. I've seen a very nicely presented statistical analysis of the expected values for 4d6-L; you can view it yourself here. Long story short: the standard deviations for the first few 'highest dice' are small, and the curves have such a thin left-skewed tail that almost the entirety of the distribution lies in the 12+ range (for the estimate of the highest die, it's something like 90% lies above 14!) And being able to arrange your stats to taste means that you'll always see people put the lowest stat in the thing they need least, and their highest stat in the thing they need most--exactly as would happen in point buy or an array. In fact, the so-called "elite array" used in 3e and (without that name) in 5e (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8) is slightly below the expected output of 4d6-L/rearrange (16, 14, 13, 12, 10, 9), which is itself also slightly below the 4e standard array (16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10).
> 
> So...yeah. Allowing stats to be rearranged or modified removes most, though perhaps not all, of the "anti-cookie-cutter" effect of rolling stats. Unless someone gets an utterly fantastic roll (or cheats, which IME is strongly incentivized by asking for rolled stats), you'll still see "the same dump stats over and over and over and over again." And unless someone gets completely shat upon by the dice, you'll still see the same priorities for best stats, over and over and over and over again. And, on average, characters will trend toward the mean--so while no individual character _has_ to look like the expected value of 4d6-L, they'll cluster around those values pretty well over the course of a long gaming career. In a game where stats matter a lot, and where it's very easy for hurt feelings (or guilt) to arise from a noticeable gap between the worst-off character and the best-off one, I just don't see the benefits even remotely outweighing the costs.
> 
> Now, technically, you didn't actually _say_ you allow them to rearrange, but I've never heard of 4d6-L that didn't include it so I figured it was a safe assumption--please correct me if I'm wrong on that.




I do let them arrange. And yeah, I already admitted it was a compromise position. But the difference is that with rolling you at least have the chance for 2 low stats (or 2 high stats) or more. At least it has a chance (and not as miniscule as you seem to imply) to throw some monkey wrenches into precise character design.

As far as "cheats" by rolling stats. That's easy. Have them roll in front of the DM. Problem solved.


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## Tony Vargas (Jan 8, 2016)

EzekielRaiden said:


> In fact, the so-called "elite array" used in 3e and (without that name) in 5e (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8) is slightly below the expected output of 4d6-L/rearrange (16, 14, 13, 12, 10, 9)



One thing I've found with running a lot of low-level 5e is that the edge 4d6-L gives the luckier PC or few in the party over standard array/pre-gens more than makes up for any PCs who are unlucky enough to roll worse than the array - and that 1st level is a little less frustrating/deadly with such PCs in the party (and a really unlucky PC runs a fair chance of dying and being replaced by one with better rolled stats).


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## Aeradom (Jan 9, 2016)

I've only played 5e once, but from that once and speaking from someone who has been out of the loop, I much prefer this system to 3.5. I love how you don't really have to worry about all those bonuses and negatives and instead it's simplified to the "advantage or disadvantage" system. And I feel like you can still be just as creative and complex with how you go about playing your character or solving a problem, but you don't have to worry about all the numbers now.


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## Jessica (Jan 10, 2016)

5e combat is a lot better and more interesting if you stick to playing a caster.


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## EzekielRaiden (Jan 11, 2016)

Zeuel said:


> 5e combat is a lot better and more interesting if you stick to playing a caster.




A true and lamentable assessment.


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## Rhenny (Jan 11, 2016)

EzekielRaiden said:


> A true and lamentable assessment.




It is only true for a certain type of player.  

Interestingly, I've always loved playing wizards and rogues because in past editions they were the ones with all of the choices and "cool" tricks.

Since 5e has been out, I've played a clerics, wizards and even a battle master fighter and a barbarian.

I thought I would hate playing the battle master and especially hate playing the barbarian.   The funny thing was that I really enjoyed both of them.  For the barbarian in particular, the lack of choices/options (rage and reckless attack - although the basic combat choices like shove, dodge, grapple, etc actually gave me more choices than I thought I'd have originally) made it very easy for me to think more about the story and the character personality than just making rule choices.  I liked it.  In addition, I carried a maul along with a battleaxe and shield, so depending on the situation, I could become more offensive or more defensive as desired.

Choices are not only what attack or what spell to cast.  Many people derive satisfaction from making choices that align with their character's personality, flaws, bonds and ideals.  These aspects of 5e have really breathed some life into PCs.  Sure, good players did it in other versions of the game because they created backgrounds and backstories and focused on roleplaying, but 5e has brought these choices into the arena for more people to enjoy.

I've been pretty happy playing all of the PCs I've been playing so far:  War Cleric, Tempest Cleric, Light Cleric, Basic Wizard (Evocation), Battle master fighter and Barbarian.  Granted, I've only played from levels 1-6, so I don't know what it feels like in the middle to upper levels, but so far, games are only as boring as the DM and the players make it.


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## jackal917 (Jan 11, 2016)

Coming from 4th edition, very much yes. I am glad its fast, because its not very interesting.


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## EzekielRaiden (Jan 11, 2016)

Rhenny said:


> It is only true for a certain type of player.
> 
> Interestingly, I've always loved playing wizards and rogues because in past editions they were the ones with all of the choices and "cool" tricks.
> 
> ...




Sounds like just a huge difference in our mental spaces. I never, _ever_ lack for space to think about the story. When combat becomes hypersimplified, I find myself with a large and completely unused mental space, which then leaves me antsy and grasping for something to fill it. Ironically, filling it (since I usually play over the internet, with stuff like Minesweeper) can easily cause me to be distracted. So I'm either bored out of my mind because I don't have to exert any cognitive effort at all, or (frequently) I'm scatterbrained instead, slowing things down.

Making "choices that align with [my] character's personality, flaws, bonds, and ideals" comes as natural to me as breathing. The only times I need to really think about those things are when the characters themselves need to really think about them. And having spent a good year and a half playing Dungeon World, I'm well-versed in those sorts of mechanics. I guess I just have a somewhat...skeptical perspective on 5e making it so "more people" can enjoy this stuff. BIFTs had plenty of forerunners, some of which were quite popular in 4e (Backgrounds and Themes), and nobody made a splash about them back then. Sure, 4e BGs weren't in the PHB1, but they did appear in the PHB2, which was equally "core" and less than a year into release.

The only 5e character I've meaningfully played was a Valor Bard, geared for grappling. Which was completely useless and got him killed (he got better, with significant DM lenience). We only just barely reached level 3 before the DM called off the game, both because he's busy and because he was getting frustrated at how fragile our party was compared to the other 5e group he DMs for.


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## discosoc (Jan 11, 2016)

The only problem I've had is with players that approach the game from a tactical perspective.  Those types generally aren't satisfied with "it's up to the GM" style answers to the many vague or undefined rules in 5e.  This generally means there's an adjustment period for anyone who's coming straight from Pathfinder, 4e, or something like Warhammer 40k, where the rules are hardline and there's little room for interpretation.


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## EzekielRaiden (Jan 11, 2016)

discosoc said:


> The only problem I've had is with players that approach the game from a tactical perspective.  Those types generally aren't satisfied with "it's up to the GM" style answers to the many vague or undefined rules in 5e.  This generally means there's an adjustment period for anyone who's coming straight from Pathfinder, 4e, or something like Warhammer 40k, where the rules are hardline and there's little room for interpretation.




A pedantic urge within me wants to correct this to "where there's _less_ room for interpretation." 4e and Pathfinder (I've never played WH40k) still have moments of interpretation and adjudication. Certainly in 4e, all improvisational actions are an adjudication of some kind. It's just that with 4e (IMO unlike 5e), there is a set of clear, well-balanced advice for _how_ to adjudicate, if you wish to use it.


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## Pickles III (Jan 11, 2016)

discosoc said:


> The only problem I've had is with players that approach the game from a tactical perspective.  Those types generally aren't satisfied with "it's up to the GM" style answers to the many vague or undefined rules in 5e.  This generally means there's an adjustment period for anyone who's coming straight from Pathfinder, 4e, or something like Warhammer 40k, where the rules are hardline and there's little room for interpretation.




If only 40k left little room for interpretation. But I take your point if you'd said Warmachine with exhaustive & literal rules for everything you can do in that game. Or any board game you played ever. 

The trouble is I paraphrase that as it's OK if you just want to roll dice & see what happens. I am not much of a fan of slot machines myself. 

If you want to do one of the many things not covered you have to enter the metagame of DM mind reading & wheedling.

I have had fun playing 5e mostly due to the people involved & bits of out of combat stuff & a couple of really fun encounters.  As I survey the future of my melee Ranger in the campaign I am about to start tonight I wonder if there is anything mechanically that I am looking forward to doing in the game.


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## discosoc (Jan 12, 2016)

EzekielRaiden said:


> A pedantic urge within me wants to correct this to "where there's _less_ room for interpretation." 4e and Pathfinder (I've never played WH40k) still have moments of interpretation and adjudication. Certainly in 4e, all improvisational actions are an adjudication of some kind. It's just that with 4e (IMO unlike 5e), there is a set of clear, well-balanced advice for _how_ to adjudicate, if you wish to use it.




Obviously no complicated ruleset is going to be without room for interpretation.  That's why we have judges and stuff.  Even Magic The Gathering has to clarify card rulings from time to time, and until the ruling is "official" the judges have to make a call.  I brought 40k up specifically because several of my players also play that (I used to, but not for a few years).  Yes, there's room for interpretation -- especially when dealing with terrain, measurements, or facing -- but the rules themselves are rarely unclear.  And when there are unclear or poorly-worded rules, it's nearly always possible to pull up an official FAQ or errata.

With 5e, there are very few "official" answers for questions, outside of clarifying actual misprints or trying to make a wording clearer.  Instead, the closest we get is communication from the writers on how they would personally handle the rule and maybe mention if that's different from how the rule was intended.  And in nearly every case, it's prefaced with "it's up to the GM, but...".

Now, I'm OK with that, and actually I really like how they are handling it.  Pathfinder, for example, just got to be too much over the years because the rules were like a hyrdra.  They'd clarify one thing and break two others.  I just find that not every player is quickly on board with the "it's up to the GM" thing, possibly because they're used to games where players are against each other.  The player I've had the most problem with would get frustrated with me when I'd make a rules call knowing full well that it probably wasn't the most accurate one, but it was the one that would keep the pacing fun for the time being until I had a chance to sit down and think it over later on.  He was completely ready to argue the point, leaving me in a position of either giving into him for the sake of not causing drama at the table at the expense of letting players be the GM, or argue with him until he finally realizes that being a GM is way more than just getting all the rules right.  Every time we went through that, it got better after a few minutes, but it's definitely an attitude I've seen with other people over the years -- typically 40k or MtG players.


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## Jessica (Jan 12, 2016)

EzekielRaiden said:


> Sounds like just a huge difference in our mental spaces. I never, _ever_ lack for space to think about the story. When combat becomes hypersimplified, I find myself with a large and completely unused mental space, which then leaves me antsy and grasping for something to fill it. Ironically, filling it (since I usually play over the internet, with stuff like Minesweeper) can easily cause me to be distracted. So I'm either bored out of my mind because I don't have to exert any cognitive effort at all, or (frequently) I'm scatterbrained instead, slowing things down.
> 
> Making "choices that align with [my] character's personality, flaws, bonds, and ideals" comes as natural to me as breathing. The only times I need to really think about those things are when the characters themselves need to really think about them. And having spent a good year and a half playing Dungeon World, I'm well-versed in those sorts of mechanics. I guess I just have a somewhat...skeptical perspective on 5e making it so "more people" can enjoy this stuff. BIFTs had plenty of forerunners, some of which were quite popular in 4e (Backgrounds and Themes), and nobody made a splash about them back then. Sure, 4e BGs weren't in the PHB1, but they did appear in the PHB2, which was equally "core" and less than a year into release.
> 
> The only 5e character I've meaningfully played was a Valor Bard, geared for grappling. Which was completely useless and got him killed (he got better, with significant DM lenience). We only just barely reached level 3 before the DM called off the game, both because he's busy and because he was getting frustrated at how fragile our party was compared to the other 5e group he DMs for.




The first two paragraphs are similar to how I am. If I'm not engaged by the mechanics(which generally means combat) then either the DM or the people I'm playing with better be absolutely positively amazing to be around because otherwise I zone out, get bored, covertly find something else to do at the table(usually surf Facebook online but in person I'll sometimes read a relevant rulebook or something), and eventually stop attending. The DM didn't have to be as good in 4e because the system could carry quite a fair bit of the load of the game. In 5e, with a minimalist system, a lot of pressure falls on the DM to perform.


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## Consona (Jan 13, 2016)

Dom de Dom said:


> Some of the guys in my regular 5e group are becoming a bit bored with the simplicity of 5th edition combat.




To me the simplicity is a substantial key to great and exciting combats. Because you don't rely on some pre-defined attacks or special abilities or whatever and instead you use your imagination. And that's the reason we don't use grid in our games either. Instead of counting squares and using "ability XY", I like when people around the table describe their actions, when they come up with something interesting and really cool, "I run towards him, bounce off the altar, jump and thrust my sword into the demon's chest while landing at him" (a friend of mine playing his beloved Barbarian attacking a Balor ), when they are curious about the world around them, not thinking about which specific ability to use but rather how to use an environment and things around them to their advantage, to make actions more awesome, etc., and whenever somebody tries something cool but difficult you can always call for an Ability check.


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## Tony Vargas (Jan 13, 2016)

Zeuel said:


> The DM didn't have to be as good in 4e because the system could carry quite a fair bit of the load of the game.



Sure, 4e was very easy to run, I've seen relative newbies run it with little effort or trouble.  And, a DM is always free (whether the tone of the system overtly encourages it or not) to take on that 'load' or 'pressure' if he has something he wants to do with it.  But, as in the RAW zietgiest of 3.5, the attitude of the players can also be a factor.  4e played well 'above board,' how it worked was obvious and consistent, so players were pretty likely to spot when you deviated from it.  If you were confident enough and had their trust, you could still do it with no issues, but it was a hurdle.  5e constantly calls on the DM to make rulings for playability, so when you make a ruling for an 'ulterior' reason, it's easy to slip it by.







> In 5e, with a minimalist system, a lot of pressure falls on the DM to perform.





Consona said:


> To me the simplicity is a substantial key to great and exciting combats.



Maybe I shouldn't be bursting this particular bubble, since it's a nice bubble to be in, but D&D - RPGs in general - have rarely been simple or minimalist in any meaningful sense.  Whether you're comparing RPGs in general to other sorts of games, or D&D to other RPGs, or different eds of D&D to eachother, they all come out pretty complex or complicated, one way or another.  But, 5e has done such a great job of feeling like classic D&D that it's very familiar to us, and familiar can feel simple/natural/right in a way that even a much simpler or more intuitive - but entirely unfamiliar - thing simply cannot (until you've become familiar enough with it, anyway).  



> Because you don't rely on some pre-defined attacks or special abilities or whatever and instead you use your imagination.



Spells are predefined effects, and every class design uses them in some way.  Attacks are all one predefined effect, too (that does damage on a hit, more damage on a crit, and nothing on a miss).  Sure, you can use your imagination and visualize or re-skin that stuff all you want, whether you're re-skinning one attack mechanic or myriad spell mechanics.



> "I run towards him, bounce off the altar, jump and thrust my sword into the demon's chest while landing on him"



Yep, you can say that instead of saying, "I move up to the nearest monster and attack ::roll d20::  did I hit?  ::roll d8:: 12 damage," but, in the end, you still did 12 damage.  If that was a declared action, rather than a description after the fact, then the DM might let you make some sort of check, probably STR (or two, maybe DEX for bouncing off the altar), to land on the monster's chest.  The DC might be 12 of 35, or you might not get a check at all, because you're getting into that whole "DM may I?" paradigm in trying to make something of your character's one mechanical option.


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## BryonD (Jan 13, 2016)

Zeuel said:


> DM didn't have to be as good in 4e because the system could carry quite a fair bit of the load of the game. In 5e, with a minimalist system, a lot of pressure falls on the DM to perform.



Yep

This was a both a strength and a flaw in 4e, depending on the group and circumstances


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## Consona (Jan 13, 2016)

Tony Vargas said:


> Yep, you can say that instead of saying, "I move up to the nearest monster and attack ::roll d20:: did I hit? ::roll d8:: 12 damage," but, in the end, you still did 12 damage.



No, in the end, my friend described an action that I will remember for the rest of my life and that's the important difference.



Tony Vargas said:


> Attacks are all one predefined effect, too (that does damage on a hit, more damage on a crit, and nothing on a miss).



But I hope the difference between "using ability XY: range Z, usable when A, B times a day, doing C damage" and "one action - imagine what you are doing and describe it to me" is more than obvious. And it makes vast difference experience-wise.



Tony Vargas said:


> Maybe I shouldn't be bursting this particular bubble, since it's a nice bubble to be in, but D&D - RPGs in general - have rarely been simple or minimalist in any meaningful sense. 5e has done such a great job of feeling like classic D&D that it's very familiar to us, and familiar can feel simple/natural/right in a way that even a much simpler or more intuitive - but entirely unfamiliar - thing simply cannot (until you've become familiar enough with it, anyway).



I don't consider my statements to be some universal truth or something. It's just the way I play the game. I'm used to DnD and so to me 5e is actually fairly free-form-ish when compared to 3.5e of 4e. And I like that. I play this game in very particular way. When I GM, I try to let my players somewhat forget about the rules, my players don't even know their HP, etc. I want them immersed, I want them speak, not counting numbers. But I still want to play DnD and 5e is the best compromise. It's about _ability checks_ and _one action + move_, in comparison to other editions. Attack is an ability check, Saving throws are an ability checks, an action economy is really simplified, to me and other guys used to DnD, it's a really easy system to use.


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## Tony Vargas (Jan 13, 2016)

Consona said:


> No, in the end, my friend described an action that I will remember for the rest of my life and that's the important difference. But I hope the difference between "using ability XY: range Z, usable when A, B times a day, doing C damage" and "one action - imagine what you are doing and describe it to me" is more than obvious. And it makes vast difference experience-wise.



If you don't happen to imagine anything cool, it makes a vast difference.  If you happen to imagine something cool, it doesn't.  That description could be used for an attack whether that attack was one of many clearly-defined granular options, an improvised action, or a lone abstract option requiring extensive DM adjudication.

Another thing to consider is that descriptions can get tired.  I mean, your friend could run around bouncing off vertical surface and jumping on monsters every round of every combat that has a vertical surface and monster available.  It wouldn't be memorable anymore, it'd get old.  Everyone else in the party could do the same thing.  It wouldn't be memorable anymore, it'd be silly.  As a DM, you'd stop that, you'd set higher DCs, say 'no you can't do that,' and just give the players a lecture about displaying a little creativity, you might get some resentment, but it's all in a day's work for the classic DM. 

Now, if you a player has a number of defined options, some of them unique to his character, and using limited resources, and one of them could enable a certain really cool description, then he can use that description infrequently, and others can't.  It won't get silly, and won't likely get old.  And, it will be mechanically meaningful as well as dramatically so.  



> I'm used to DnD and so to me 5e is actually fairly free-form-ish when compared to 3.5e of 4e. And I like that.



I have a lot of fun running 5e for a similar reason.  It's easy because it is so similar to the D&D I ran for decades, but even more so because it does leave so much of the basic flow of play in the DM's court.  It really is 'Empowerment' with all that implies.  It's definitely not simple, but I can shield my players from some of the complexity.


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## Consona (Jan 13, 2016)

Tony Vargas said:


> If you don't happen to imagine anything cool, it makes a vast difference.  If you happen to imagine something cool, it doesn't.  That description could be used for an attack whether that attack was one of many granular options, or a lone abstract option.



Agreed. The way it works for us is that we like to think about our game in terms of actual game world rather than "will I use Spinning sweep or Steel serpent strike?". It can put you into another mindset.



Tony Vargas said:


> I have a lot of fun running 5e for a similar reason.  It's easy because it is so similar to the D&D I ran for decades, but even more so because it does leave so much of the basic flow of play in the DM's court.  It really is 'Empowerment' with all that implies.  It's definitely not simple, but I can shield my players from some of the complexity.



For a DnD veteran it is simple, IMO. You definitely can shield players from some of the complexity, especially the new ones, I've done that myself, but when you play with other veterans it's quite simple. After all those years DnD is like a second nature to us.


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## Pickles III (Jan 13, 2016)

Consona said:


> No, in the end, my friend described an action that I will remember for the rest of my life and that's the important difference.
> 
> 
> But I hope the difference between "using ability XY: range Z, usable when A, B times a day, doing C damage" and "one action - imagine what you are doing and describe it to me" is more than obvious. And it makes vast difference experience-wise.




I think it's the difference between telling a story & playing a game & I prefer to emphasise the latter. 
I play Feng Shui for the dramatic action stuff & it's fine but wears thing after a while. D&D has always given me more depth than that. I think you can get some depth with 5e but at a more "operational" level aka combat as war (in a good way as I like combat as sport just fine too)


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## Tony Vargas (Jan 13, 2016)

Consona said:


> Agreed. The way it works for us is that we like to think about our game in terms of actual game world rather than "will I use Spinning sweep or Steel serpent strike?". It can put you into another mindset.



Here's another example:  the party is investigating mysterious murders in a city.  A halfling is climbing a building when Gargoyles attack the party.  At one point, a gargoyle is flying well out of reach of the halfling's ledge, when suddenly he leaps onto the gargoyle, stabs it fatally, and pushes off it's body to dive through a window of the floor right below that ledge.  

Pretty cool, huh?

We can't tell, from that description, what edition was being played, or whether it was an improvised action using system guidelines, a creative description enabled by a favorable DM ruling, a granular process-simulation & some remarkably good rolls, or a mechanically pre-defined (but freely re-skinnable) 'power.'  Because an imagination isn't promoted or discouraged by one or another of those, it's part and parcel of our hobby, regardless of system.



> For a DnD veteran it is simple, IMO. You definitely can shield players from some of the complexity, especially the new ones, I've done that myself, but when you play with other veterans it's quite simple. After all those years DnD is like a second nature to us.



Sorta my point, except I'm drawing a distinction between 'simple' and 'easy,' because simple is also an antonym of 'complex.'  A very complex, very familiar game - D&D in both our cases  - can be quite easy.  That doesn't make it simple, it's still complex.  I know it seems like a pedantic quibble, but it bugs me.


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## Jessica (Jan 13, 2016)

I do the same thing with 4e powers though. I describe how Mind Lock caused a bandit's head to inflate and explode in a very Scanners-esque way. I use Living Missile to lift my dwarf friend up and toss him through a window to get access to the second floor of a locked building. I describe how I shoot forth Force Spheres that smash into the giant mechanical worm and cause it to light up and disintegrate in a shower of light beams. Why is it that a 5e/3e/2e "attack action" is some magical thing that causes people to roleplay but things like "Spinning Sweep" or "Steel Serpent Strike" are just powers that cause people to not roleplay?


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## Consona (Jan 13, 2016)

Tony Vargas said:


> Here's another example:  the party is investigating mysterious murders in a city.  A halfling is climbing a building when Gargoyles attack the party.  At one point, a gargoyle is flying well out of reach of the halfling's ledge, when suddenly he leaps onto the gargoyle, stabs it fatally, and pushes off it's body to dive through a window of the floor right below that ledge.
> 
> Pretty cool, huh?
> 
> We can't tell, from that description, what edition was being played, or whether it was an improvised action using system guidelines, a creative description enabled by a favorable DM ruling, a granular process-simulation & some remarkably good rolls, or a mechanically pre-defined (but freely re-skinnable) 'power.'  Because an imagination isn't promoted or discouraged by one or another of those, it's part and parcel of our hobby, regardless of system.



Agreed. My original point was, for our group 5e combat is not boring although it is so simple. I agree that you can get that interesting description via various ways or styles of play.



Tony Vargas said:


> Sorta my point, except I'm drawing a distinction between 'simple' and 'easy,' because simple is also an antonym of 'complex.'  A very complex, very familiar game - D&D in both our cases  - can be quite easy.  That doesn't make it simple, it's still complex.  I know it seems like a pedantic quibble, but it bugs me.



No, it's ok, I can see your point, it makes sense and I agree.



Zeuel said:


> Why is it that a 5e/3e/2e "attack action" is some magical thing that causes people to roleplay but things like "Spinning Sweep" or "Steel Serpent Strike" are just powers that cause people to not roleplay?



I don't know whether it makes them roleplay or not but it can put you into a different mindset. One is more "meta-level" thinking more about abilities and grid and mechanics, the other is more immersed in the actual game world, you don't think about mechanics but about actual situation. But YMMV, of course. And you can get interesting situations from both styles of play, one is more like playing Diablo or WoW, more tactical, the other is more cinematic and free-form.


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## Tony Vargas (Jan 13, 2016)

Consona said:


> I don't know whether it makes them roleplay or not but it can put you into a different mindset. One is more "meta-level" thinking more about abilities and grid and mechanics, the other is more immersed in the actual game world, you don't think about mechanics but about actual situation. But YMMV, of course.



Again, you're probably seeing a phenomenon that's more about familiarity with the mechanics than the nature of the mechanics, themselves.  We're simply much more viscerally aware of mechanics that we're unfamiliar with, while those that are second-nature can vanish below a sort of threshold of perception.  Add a prejudice against one set of mechanics, or laboring against misinformation from those who do hold such a prejudice, and it gets that much worse.  



> And you can get interesting situations from both styles of play, one is more like playing Diablo or WoW, more tactical,the other is more cinematic and free-form.



It's more accurate to say that one is more cinematic, and the other is more free-form.  Evoking a cinematic feel involves calling back genre tropes, and that's something that you can get a lot more of with a system that embraces and models those tropes, instead of leaving a blank space to be filled in, or, in a third extreme that we haven't touched on much in this thread, instead of simulating the processes implied by the set-dressing around them.  

Another thing to think about is that 5e combines these two styles in one game.  Most of the PC options do present the player with many choices from a wide variety of high-agency, discrete, precisely-defined, resource-managed effects (mostly spells, by a huge margin), and they are, of course, free to add imaginative flourishes or attempt 'creative' uses  leveraging the wild range of things those effects can do.  The few that do not get such options default to one mechanic, the attack, to make one sort of contribution to the party (DPR) in combat, with whatever spin or imaginative flourishes they care to append to it, and, of course, are free to attempt any 'creative' improvisations that a person might plausibly attempt.  

Now, we could say that's 'the best of both worlds' or we could call it 'incoherent,' but it does just happen to be the way D&D shook out back in the day, too, and continued that way for a long time.  And that familiarity counts for a lot in making it work.


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## pepticburrito (Jan 13, 2016)

5e doesn't have detailed rules telling you exactly what you can do and when exactly when you're allowed to do it.  This allows for far more complex combat than 3.5/3.75 ever allowed.  

Imagine that you're on a raised part of a ship deck playing a pirates campaign.  There is a rope loosely "tied" to a pole.  You want to do what they do in pirate movies.  Grab on to the rope (use an object), swing (use movement), attack, keep swinging (use rest of movement), then let go of rope (no action required).  In 3.5/3.75, you'd be told you can't do that because the rules force a specific way of playing.  At my table, I'd give you an advantage on the roll if the target is currently in combat with someone else.

In 5e, you're limited by your imagination.  Some people lack imagination and would prefer to be told what they are allowed to do, thus they complain that 5e is too "simplistic".


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## Jessica (Jan 13, 2016)

pepticburrito said:


> In 5e, you're limited by your imagination.  Some people lack imagination and would prefer to be told what they are allowed to do, thus they complain that 5e is too "simplistic".




Doing a backflip off a chandelier to land and stab an orc versus walking up and saying "I attack" are definitely differences in flavor, but ultimately both are pretty much mechanically the same darn thing. You can describe the differences however you want but both are 1d20+5 attack for 1d8+3 damage with no extra riders and that is why A LOT of people play spellcasters or Battle Masters.


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## pepticburrito (Jan 13, 2016)

Zeuel said:


> Doing a backflip off a chandelier to land and stab an orc versus walking up and saying "I attack" are definitely differences in flavor, but ultimately both are pretty much mechanically the same darn thing. You can describe the differences however you want but both are 1d20+5 attack for 1d8+3 damage with no extra riders and that is why A LOT of people play spellcasters or Battle Masters.




There's no flavor in the fact that the action economy in 5e allows for more player agency in 5e than it does in 3.5/3.75.  There's no mechanical equivalent in 3.5/3.75 to what I described, you'd just be told by the DM that it's impossible to do it.  A second level 5e rogue can take it even further and disengage as a bonus action as he swings by his target.


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## Tony Vargas (Jan 13, 2016)

Zeuel said:


> Doing a backflip off a chandelier to land and stab an orc versus walking up and saying "I attack" are definitely differences in flavor, but ultimately both are pretty much mechanically the same darn thing.



Within the granularity of the system, anyway.  In 3.5, there's a difference between moving your speed and attacking, and tumbling half your speed and attack - the latter doesn't provoke.  And, 3.5 typically used minis & a play surface, so you might find yourself in a situation where, because of how everyone's positioned and the room is set up, you can't reach a target by moving & attacking without provoking, but you can make a tumble check to get to the same target by passing 'through' an enemy's square - so you make a tumble check, and maybe describe it as a backflip off the chandalier, or maybe not.   

If you're running the same scene TotM with no tumbling rules, you can just move & attack, because who know if there's a 'safe path' to the enemy.  You can describe it how you like.  It doesn't matter.  



> You can describe the differences however you want but both are 1d20+5 attack for 1d8+3 damage with no extra riders and that is why A LOT of people play spellcasters or Battle Masters.



IMHO, all the real fun to be had in 5e is on the DM's side of the screen.    But, yeah, casters' are your second-best bet.



pepticburrito said:


> 5e doesn't have detailed rules telling you exactly what you can do and when exactly when you're allowed to do it.  This allows for far more complex combat than 3.5/3.75 ever allowed.



Actually 5e does have rules telling you exactly when you're allowed to do things.  They're actually pretty tight.  You act on your turn.  Outside that, you get /one/ reaction.  Period.  And, if you want to use magic, 5e does have detailed rules telling you exactly what kind of magic you can do and how often you can do it.  



> Imagine that you're on a raised part of a ship deck playing a pirates campaign.  There is a rope loosely "tied" to a pole.  You want to do what they do in pirate movies.  Grab on to the rope (use an object), swing (use movement), attack, keep swinging (use rest of movement), then let go of rope (no action required).  In 3.5/3.75, you'd be told you can't do that because the rules force a specific way of playing.



In 3.x/PF, you'd roll Tumble (DC 15 to swing past the enemy, 25 to swing through his square) to swing up to half your speed in a situation like that.  Whether the DM let you attack and keep going is another question, given the nature of swinging from a rope, it'd seem reasonable (yeah, 5e is not the first edition were DMs had to make rulings, just the one where they have to do it every time), of course, if you had Spring Attack, no problem, and you might not even need the Tumble, since you already avoid provoking.  

In 5e, you can't necessarily do any of that, the DM has to rule whether you can and whether and how hard any rolls you need to make may be.  Your first level fighter might be able to pull it off without making a check (if you're sitting at my table, for instance), while another DM might make it too difficult for your 9th level Rogue with Expertise in Accrobatics to even bother trying.  That's actually a strength of 5e, because it lets each DM run with the tone he wants from the game.  Not that you can't do that sort of thing in any game, but 5e practically begs you to.



> In 5e, you're limited by your imagination.



If you're the DM.  Otherwise you're limited by the DM's imagination, and his opinion of you & your imagination...  



> Some people lack imagination.



Some people resort to insults.


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## iserith (Jan 13, 2016)

pepticburrito said:


> In 3.5/3.75, you'd be told you can't do that because the rules force a specific way of playing.




That's just a sign of a poor or inexperienced DM in my view, one who is treating D&D as a board game with prescriptive rules (you can only do X) instead of an RPG with largely descriptive rules (you can use the mechanics to resolve uncertainty in X, if you want).


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## JohnAMaddox (Jan 14, 2016)

In a recent game I had rolled poorly and ended up on the ground.  What my character did then


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## Unwise (Jan 14, 2016)

Without special DM effort to spice them up combats in pretty much every system are either tactical, but too slow, so they end up boring and taking a long time, or too simple so boring but taking a short time. I'll take boring and quick, it helps get on with the rest of the game.


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## Jessica (Jan 14, 2016)

The wargamer side of me is okay with long but mechanically engaging combats. Back when I played miniature games(Warmahordes, 40, WHFB), playing three to five 1-2 hour games in a day was definitely a thing. Back when I was in Iraq in 2008-2009, I spend the entire year playing PbP forum PvP games of 4e on RPOL. By the time I redeployed I got my Eladrin Wizard from level 1 to level 23-ish. I love long combats that make me squeeze my mind grapes.


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## Condiments (Jan 14, 2016)

Unwise said:


> Without special DM effort to spice them up combats in pretty much every system are either tactical, but too slow, so they end up boring and taking a long time, or too simple so boring but taking a short time. I'll take boring and quick, it helps get on with the rest of the game.




Why even simulate combat in such detail then? Even with 5e's combat being quick, if you run multiple combats during a session in the middle of an adventure(which is implied by the game's balancing) its going to eat up a lot time.

Given some time and thinking, 5e's combat isn't necessarily "bad" it just almost entirely reliant on the DM to create interesting combat scenarios. Putting together good monster synergies and environments makes for great fights, but it requires a DM knowing his stuff. I've run some great combats that my players really enjoyed using a grid, that usually force movement on the players. I still struggle with making good combat scenarios as a new DM. It would almost be worth starting a new thread pooling our knowledge together on how to make good 5e fights.


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## Unwise (Jan 14, 2016)

[MENTION=6802006]Condiments[/MENTION] One of the things about 4th edition D&D was that combat was all about set-pieces. You never had a random encounter, or a fight in a square room, or an open field. Every fights was on a sinking ship, around a faulty portal, during a tower collapse, in an elemental magic node, in an inn that is on fire etc. This was necessary as it could not do quick fights well and the highly tactical nature of the abilities worked well with environmental and weird effects and effort in drawing a map etc meant it was not worth it for small encounters.

As a DM, I loved moving to 5th, since I could put in small or simple fights that were over quickly enough to not be a drag and required no preparation. The thing is, I think I am relying on this quickness too much. I think I need to dip back into the 4e mindset and start making set-piece encounters again. The difference is, now in 5e, I can also do the little fights in between the epic ones. So now castles actually have wandering guards, small guard posts etc, not just the lord and his guards waiting in the cursed throne room around the unstable mystic portal.


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## Condiments (Jan 14, 2016)

Unwise said:


> @_*Condiments*_ One of the things about 4th edition D&D was that combat was all about set-pieces. You never had a random encounter, or a fight in a square room, or an open field. Every fights was on a sinking ship, around a faulty portal, during a tower collapse, in an elemental magic node, in an inn that is on fire etc. This was necessary as it could not do quick fights well and the highly tactical nature of the abilities worked well with environmental and weird effects and effort in drawing a map etc meant it was not worth it for small encounters.
> 
> As a DM, I loved moving to 5th, since I could put in small or simple fights that were over quickly enough to not be a drag and required no preparation. The thing is, I think I am relying on this quickness too much. I think I need to dip back into the 4e mindset and start making set-piece encounters again. The difference is, now in 5e, I can also do the little fights in between the epic ones. So now castles actually have wandering guards, small guard posts etc, not just the lord and his guards waiting in the cursed throne room around the unstable mystic portal.




I started DMing tabletop almost a year ago, and really had no prior experience before that. I was the one person in my group of friends that was going to put forward the effort to create a game. I've learned a ton in the last year that I've been DMing, and I'm a big fan of 5e in most of its aspects besides combat where I'm mixed. I remember playing combats and being really bored, and I think that may have extended to my players as well. Everything else is great, with it being so light on rules, I've been able to do some crazy situations on the fly. The best combats have really been related to set piece battles. Like my players holding off an undead horde on a fraying bridge while spine devils assault them from behind trying to toss them to their doom while they try to escape, an arena battle against enemies with class levels where pillars lining the field would periodically light up with electricity before exploding, a battle on top of and inside a building against archers and a tiefling sorcerer who then summoned a fire elemental to chase the ranger while engulfing all the building around it in flames, etc. Turned based combat really shines in these situations, otherwise it feels like the players running at the enemy exchanging damage.

Its just that these types of fights are kind of hard to do if you don't know what you're doing(which I don't).


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## Rhenny (Jan 14, 2016)

Unwise said:


> [MENTION=6802006]Condiments[/MENTION] One of the things about 4th edition D&D was that combat was all about set-pieces. You never had a random encounter, or a fight in a square room, or an open field. Every fights was on a sinking ship, around a faulty portal, during a tower collapse, in an elemental magic node, in an inn that is on fire etc. This was necessary as it could not do quick fights well and the highly tactical nature of the abilities worked well with environmental and weird effects and effort in drawing a map etc meant it was not worth it for small encounters.
> 
> As a DM, I loved moving to 5th, since I could put in small or simple fights that were over quickly enough to not be a drag and required no preparation. The thing is, I think I am relying on this quickness too much. I think I need to dip back into the 4e mindset and start making set-piece encounters again. The difference is, now in 5e, I can also do the little fights in between the epic ones. So now castles actually have wandering guards, small guard posts etc, not just the lord and his guards waiting in the cursed throne room around the unstable mystic portal.



I feel the same.  Because some 5e fights can be simple and others can be more set piece/complex, l feel more freedom as DM.  I'm also able to use variety to spice up the campaign and keep players guessing.  If they start a small fight with some guards, if they aren't quick and quiet, they may draw the attention of nearby foes.  After fighting a grand set piece encounter, a small group of scavengers might show up while the party is resting, and depending on what they are and if they surprise the group, this can lead to some interesting outcomes.  I'm finding that the ability to throw easy, medium, hard, deadly at any time is more exciting than when pcs are expecting balanced and challenging encounter after encounter. 

To me, the decision to use a fireball to kill 15 kobolds so that the threat is ended in 1 round rather than saving the spell slot and fighting it out for 3 or 4 rounds is just as meaningful as making other tactical decisions in a longer set piece battle.   I like to look at the chain of possible encounters as both a player and a DM when I make decisions so even easy encounters have their place and become meaningful.


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## Mistwell (Feb 22, 2022)

So, 6 year later, has this issue gotten better? Different? The same? Worse?


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## Zardnaar (Feb 22, 2022)

Mistwell said:


> So, 6 year later, has this issue gotten better? Different? The same? Worse?




 Bit bored myself but that's a generic thing. Takes me around 5 years to get sick of an edition and it's coming up 8 years.


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## TerraDave (Feb 22, 2022)

I still like that it is fast and fluid, and in my games at least, stuff happens.


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## Lyxen (Feb 22, 2022)

As we are always playing with new characters at new levels and actually have very few combats but in interesting specific circumstances, it's not boring at all, and it is still blindingly fast, which is a fantastic quality. I certainly don't want to inject anything that would slow it down.


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## clearstream (Feb 22, 2022)

Dom de Dom said:


> Some of the guys in my regular 5e group are becoming a bit bored with the simplicity of 5th edition combat. Not having played through 4th (oldschool returning 2e guy) I don't really have much of a point of reference.Do any other people in here share this problem, and have you any examples of house rules or other methods you use to spice up combats which might otherwise me a bit ploddy?



I've found a few things make a large difference.

1) Mixed types of foes are far more interesting than all one type.
2) It is _crucial _to include foes that can impose conditions and similar effects, rather than just deal damage.
3) Foes _must _do more than stand and swing.

Essentially, you want to make full use of the many ways 5e offers for foes to collaborate and deal out meaningful consequences. As DM, it's up to you what types of foes are encountered and what their abilities are. For instance, 3x CR 1 Xvart Warlocks tweaked to have _lance of lethargy _for their _eldritch blasts_, working with 3x CR2 Orogs, is a Hard encounter for a typical level 5 party. The xvarts should have _mage armor_ running, and pre-cast _expeditious retreat_ if the situation allows it. Perhaps swap the Orog's great axes for shields and battleaxes. What will make this fight interesting is how you use _lance_. It can slow down retreats and advances. Pin fragile characters. And so on.

I think tailoring foes is intended, and doing it using features already in the game doesn't seem like house ruling to me. For example, a foe whose cry delivers levels of exhaustion? That's from a published adventure. Levels of exhaustion are very consequential. But if you want to avoid even tweaking, then it's a matter of choosing your foes carefully. A beholder with it's antimagic eye-ray, working with a bunch of drow scouts, for instance. The floating beholder suppresses party magic, and the scouts fire from levitated positions 100+ feet away. The goal isn't just to make deadly encounters, but to make interesting problems with consequential results. After the first PC goes down, the beholder gets around to telling the survivors what it wants from them.

Foes should be repositioning, reconsidering their options, hiding, fleeing, begging, threatening and so on, throughout the fight. A foe scoring a critical hit might offer a chance for the party to back down. One that finds themselves outnumbered might run for more help. DM says how the tides of battle matter. What happens _because_ the paladin critted with smite and dealt a massive amount of damage? Most foes should not be unaffected by such things, even if they're not the one taking that damage.


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## clearstream (Feb 22, 2022)

Azurewraith said:


> Another major factor in 5e combats being stale to me anyway is there is 0risk of death outside blatant stupid actions add in some permanent injury rules this works 2ways it helps pcs want to pick fights so combat happens less often so seems just that lil bit fresher.



For me that's probably the core fault in 5e combat. Whack-a-mole healing. In my campaign I'm using "grievous" weapons that prevent healing for a round, and inflict lingering injuries on crits. I'm also considering making _healing word_ unavailable.


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## UngeheuerLich (Feb 22, 2022)

clearstream said:


> For me that's probably the core fault in 5e combat. Whack-a-mole healing. In my campaign I'm using "grievous" weapons that prevent healing for a round, and inflict lingering injuries on crits. I'm also considering making _healing word_ unavailable.



Never experienced whack a mole. But making healing word depending on hit dice could help.


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## Lyxen (Feb 22, 2022)

clearstream said:


> For me that's probably the core fault in 5e combat. Whack-a-mole healing. In my campaign I'm using "grievous" weapons that prevent healing for a round, and inflict lingering injuries on crits. I'm also considering making _healing word_ unavailable.




The thing is that there is a really good reason for this, and it's called having fun. It's all well and good to say that whack-a-mole healing is... s what exactly, it violates the verisimilitude that some DM want ? But in the end, when you are a player, sitting for hours and doing nothing because your character is unconscious is not fun at all. It's a game, and should be played mostly for fun.

And actually, at our tables, with very experienced players, there is not a lot of whack-a-mole healing, because it's very inefficient and leaves characters close to 0, and therefore in danger of being wiped out very quickly again, in particular at high level with AoE flying all over the place and damaging powers. So our groups use this to save people, but it's also a signal that something might turn badly in the encounter. And because we have few encounters, but usually on the very deadly side (we just narrate the small encounters with some resource impact), our groups almost always envision a change of tactics, including withdrawing / fleeing.

And in that context, healing word is really good, it does not allow to keep fighting forever, but it's really good at leaving no-one behind, which is a great purpose.


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## S'mon (Feb 22, 2022)

clearstream said:


> For me that's probably the core fault in 5e combat. Whack-a-mole healing. In my campaign I'm using "grievous" weapons that prevent healing for a round, and inflict lingering injuries on crits. I'm also considering making _healing word_ unavailable.




I perma*-killed 2 level 17 PCs last Tuesday (fight continues this afternoon), albeit the group did split the party and have all the casters fly up and meet the BBEG & his eldritch minions 200' up on the Tower of Evil's balcony, leaving all the party tanks down below.... 

*One PC burned to ash by lambent witchfyre, one PC killed by moon nymphs, then her body meteor-swarmed by the PC Wizard. The latter may be Reincarnated as an animal, though (player has erased her PC sheet so no coming back for the PC).


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## Jacob Lewis (Feb 22, 2022)

Mistwell said:


> So, 6 year later, has this issue gotten better? Different? The same? Worse?



Due to recent internet discussions and the transitive property, we can now confirm that D&D is either 90% or 50% simple/boring, depending on who you ask.


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## Mistwell (Feb 22, 2022)

Jacob Lewis said:


> Due to recent internet discussions and the transitive property, we can now confirm that D&D is either 90% or 50% simple/boring, depending on who you ask.



It's why I thought to bring this back up. Though I always worry when I necro a thread that people will get into rousing debates with posters who are no longer posting here.


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## Jer (Feb 22, 2022)

Mistwell said:


> So, 6 year later, has this issue gotten better? Different? The same? Worse?



Huh.  Interesting thread.  I missed it the first time around (I wasn't playing 5e at the time at all regularly, so that might be why).

5e is what it is. It's not a game that I'd throw people who are interested in tactical battles at - there are other games that do that better. Even from a narrative perspective the combat part of the game relies a lot on the quickness of players imaginations to describe what's going on without giving much in the way of prompts for what's happening. Tired or distracted players leads to boring combats ime, while in 3e or 4e IME combat would be a time when folks would wake up because a different part of their brain was engaging.

Interestingly IMO 5e is a version of D&D where I think combat is more boring if you use miniatures than if you don't.  I know I'm in the minority on that one because many in my own gaming groups disagree, but I think when you have minis out on the table with 5e it just kind of lays bare that the attacks are basically all fairly similar, and you end up somewhat constrained in describing moves to make them sound cooler by the minis on the table than when it's all in your head or on a whiteboard imo.


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## el-remmen (Feb 22, 2022)

80.9% of polled ENWorlders say that combat is either "_generally_ fun" or just "fun."

Only 19.1% of polled ENWorlders say that combat is either "_generally _not fun" or just "not fun."

<source>


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## dave2008 (Feb 22, 2022)

clearstream said:


> I've found a few things make a large difference.



FYI, you are responding to a person who was last seen on these forums almost 6 years ago.  So I'm thinking they are not checking out your reply!


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## TwoSix (Feb 22, 2022)

Mistwell said:


> So, 6 year later, has this issue gotten better? Different? The same? Worse?



After 7.5 years of regular play in multiple groups, the general tactics do start to get pretty familiar.  The best combats, I've found, are heavily spellcaster versus spellcaster with challenging terrain (multi-level, requiring climbing or flying, with lots of hazards).  Open terrain, or dungeon corridors with martial vs martial hit point attrition as the primary factor are generally the worst.


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## Lyxen (Feb 22, 2022)

Jer said:


> Interestingly IMO 5e is a version of D&D where I think combat is more boring if you use miniatures than if you don't.




I couldn't know whether it's a minority or not, but just be aware that I actually agree with you 100%.



Jer said:


> I know I'm in the minority on that one because many in my own gaming groups disagree, but I think when you have minis out on the table with 5e it just kind of lays bare that the attacks are basically all fairly similar, and you end up somewhat constrained in describing moves to make them sound cooler by the minis on the table than when it's all in your head or on a whiteboard imo.




For me, it's more that the grid system is extremely minimal and strapped on as a vague option, and it just reminds people who liked 4e how crisp and precise that system was for playing with grids and miniatures.

I would however distinguish between miniatures and a grid. The grid is what I'm mentioning above, using miniatures, well, we often did that even when the game was mostly Theater of the Mind, because figurines are cool and can be used to give relative positions on a large battlefield, or during a pursuit, etc. (things that 4e did really badly anyway).


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## clearstream (Feb 22, 2022)

dave2008 said:


> FYI, you are responding to a person who was last seen on these forums almost 6 years ago.  So I'm thinking they are not checking out your reply!



Yup, I noticed after writing that it was a helluva necro! I blame @Mistwell!


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## tetrasodium (Feb 22, 2022)

pepticburrito said:


> 5e doesn't have detailed rules telling you exactly what you can do and when exactly when you're allowed to do it.  This allows for far more complex combat than 3.5/3.75 ever allowed.
> 
> *Imagine that you're on a raised part of a ship deck playing a pirates campaign.  There is a rope loosely "tied" to a pole.  You want to do what they do in pirate movies.  Grab on to the rope (use an object), swing (use movement), attack, keep swinging (use rest of movement), then let go of rope (no action required).  In 3.5/3.75, you'd be told you can't do that because the rules force a specific way of playing.  At my table, I'd give you an advantage on the roll if the target is currently in combat with someone else.*
> 
> In 5e, you're limited by your imagination.  Some people lack imagination and would prefer to be told what they are allowed to do, thus they complain that 5e is too "simplistic".



You not knowing the rule that covers that  does not mean that there are no rules for it.  The relevant section is dm's best friend on dmg page 30  & possibly bonus types from dmg page21. Both of which you can read here.  Depending on the style of game the gm can choose to do lots of things for or against that dramatic move you describe, for example they could give +2 circumstance bonus to hit because the extra momentum makes it easier to punch through the target's armor  or they could point out that this is not that type of campaign and assign -2 circumstance penalty because you are less stable swinging from a rope.  Maybe they assign a +/-2 to your ac while you are subject to AoOs from the front liners trying to react to your leap from the rope towards your boss. 

All of that ask your gm is no different between editions with only the result of that gm call being a difference.  What differs is that with the 3.x one bob can use his gust cantrip & a 10 pound sack of flour to blind the foes with a circumstance/environmental +/-2 that helps you on your dramatic swing as appropriate to his efforts  & alice can crank the wheel on the ship hard to port so the ship lists in a way that throws the badguys off kilter for another +/-2 in your favor while in 5e they can do it sure but advantage is advantage your done so they shouldn't waste their action with dramatic stuff that does nothing & should just continue attacking like they did last round.


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## DND_Reborn (Feb 22, 2022)

Fun for my group, but we've revamped some things rather significantly... to the point others probably might not consider it D&D anymore, certainly not 5E.


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## Jer (Feb 22, 2022)

dave2008 said:


> FYI, you are responding to a person who was last seen on these forums almost 6 years ago.  So I'm thinking they are not checking out your reply!



If you start fighting with an account on a necro thread that hasn't posted any activity in 6 years is that like fighting zombies?


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## ehren37 (Feb 22, 2022)

devincutler said:


> I find stat point buys and standard arrays also tend to churn out cookie cutter PCs. One reason even though I do use the 4d6 drop method (because my players would never allow 3d6 in order), I would never assent to a standard array or point buy...because there are too many optimal allocations for each class and you end up seeing the same dump stats over and over and over and over again.



We have everyone roll 4d6, drop lowest, in order. This generates a number of stat arrays usable by anyone at the table. No jealousy over someone else's scores, because if someone rolls well you could use those stats too if you want.

Edit - dammit ,saw this was necrod from 2016 lol.


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## Jer (Feb 22, 2022)

ehren37 said:


> We have everyone roll 4d6, drop lowest, in order. This generates a number of stat arrays usable by anyone at the table. No jealousy over someone else's scores, because if someone rolls well you could use those stats too if you want.
> 
> Edit - dammit ,saw this was necrod from 2016 lol.



This does bring up a larger discussion though, even though the original poster might be gone.  Do stats really matter for character differentiation anymore?  It seems at my tables choice of subclass, race and background as well as the skills that player pick for the characters drive how they run their characters more than the stats themselves do.

Prior to 3e stats mattered a lot for creating an image for a character because you didn't have much more than that to work with.  3e and 4e stats mattered more because the game was built around mechanical bonuses and a lot of optimization for specific builds would be going on.  After playing 5e for a number of years I'm not sure that ability stats matter all that much for defining a character beyond the "sticking the highest score into the ability their class dictates they should" element that has been around forever, and there's really not much to optimize with stats beyond that.  So two fighters at the same table are going to be differentiated more often by the choices their players make around subclass and background than by the stat array they assign.


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## S'mon (Feb 22, 2022)

S'mon said:


> I perma*-killed 2 level 17 PCs last Tuesday (fight continues this afternoon), albeit the group did split the party and have all the casters fly up and meet the BBEG & his eldritch minions 200' up on the Tower of Evil's balcony, leaving all the party tanks down below....
> 
> *One PC burned to ash by lambent witchfyre, one PC killed by moon nymphs, then her body meteor-swarmed by the PC Wizard. The latter may be Reincarnated as an animal, though (player has erased her PC sheet so no coming back for the PC).




Played again today - no one else died, thought the Wizard was on 0 hp & 2 failed death saves vs lambet witchfyre (which burns you to ash on death) when he used Inspiration & rolled a 20.


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## clearstream (Feb 23, 2022)

S'mon said:


> Played again today - no one else died, thought the Wizard was on 0 hp & 2 failed death saves vs lambet witchfyre (which burns you to ash on death) when he used Inspiration & rolled a 20.



Did the party include anyone with _healing word_?


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## clearstream (Feb 23, 2022)

Jer said:


> If you start fighting with an account on a necro thread that hasn't posted any activity in 6 years is that like fighting zombies?



I'll be able to tell you how it looks from both sides in 2028.


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## S'mon (Feb 23, 2022)

clearstream said:


> Did the party include anyone with _healing word_?



Yes but they were still split up... I let the Druid use healing word on the dying wizard without line of sight, which helped.


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## CaptainSam (Oct 7, 2022)

Simply put.  A good DM can work with any system but characters need to feel special.  It is their story in the making. If characters want rinse and repeat— they should stick to video games.  If a DM is demanding their story— they should write a book.  5th edition is easy with bland characters.  3rd edition was superior to this but it required planning by all involved.  The experience is only as good as what is invested…. Combat should be fun and challenging or play a different game.  It is called Dungeons and Dragons after all .


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## AnotherGuy (Oct 7, 2022)

The real question is, after 1D&D is released are we going to have to change the terminology from necroing a thread to abjurating it?


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## pogre (Oct 7, 2022)

Dom de Dom said:


> Some of the guys in my regular 5e group are becoming a bit bored with the simplicity of 5th edition combat. Not having played through 4th (oldschool returning 2e guy) I don't really have much of a point of reference.Do any other people in here share this problem, and have you any examples of house rules or other methods you use to spice up combats which might otherwise me a bit ploddy?



I'll come at it from the opposite angle: My table is full of veteran players who LOVE combat. I have been trying to consider why - when many folks find 5th edition combat dull or boring. I'm not sure I have a great answer (except, maybe, my players are just different), but here are some characteristics of our combats/game:

1. The combats are very high paced and I do use scenery and miniatures. My players are miniature and terrain enthusiasts - so well-painted and constructed minis and terrain are a big part of the game for us;

2. I re-skin a lot of monsters. Many times players don't know what they are facing.

3. Monsters come in waves. As others have said, D&D is a game of attrition.

4. Monsters come from lots of different angles. Monsters fly in, teleport, come up through the ground, and approach from multiple directions.

5. As I referenced above, I use lots of terrain and incorporate a lot of vertical terrain these days.

6. We do not use a ton of description for every combat action. Too much description slows things down.

7. Monsters run away and warn others. Sometimes the monsters' offensive weapons are not the threat - their ability to warn others is a threat. See using waves above.

I fully realize none of these are necessarily "fixes" for your players. However, because you asked in the O.P. for methods and house rules - this is my list.

Good luck!


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