Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea

Jack the Lad posted:

A level 20 Fighter does just over 5 times more damage than a level 1 Fighter to equal CR enemies
A level 20 Monster has just under 29 times more HP than a level 1 Monster.

How many times more damage does a level 20 fighter do with the best-damaging magic sword in the game, though? People have mentioned that a flametongue does 2D6 fire damage on top of your normal damage. Assuming swords cap at +5, you'll be hitting 25% more often for 12 more damage per hit, which has got to invalidate your numbers somewhat.

Your numbers are based on the idea that magic items are optional, right? That idea's clearly rubbish due to the enemies with vast damage reduction against non-magic weapons.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Jack the Lad
Jan 20, 2009

Feed the Pubs

Gort posted:

Your numbers are based on the idea that magic items are optional, right? That idea's clearly rubbish due to the enemies with vast damage reduction against non-magic weapons.

Right. Tofu enemies (no DR/regen/etc) and no magic items.

I'm happy to run the math with items if you or anyone else wants to give me some numbers (i.e. at what level you get what).

Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Jul 14, 2014

Ratoslov
Feb 15, 2012

Now prepare yourselves! You're the guests of honor at the Greatest Kung Fu Cannibal BBQ Ever!

Jack the Lad posted:

Right. Tofu enemies (no DR/regen/etc) and no magic items.

Don't call them tofu enemies! Tofu is neither bland nor undiferentiated. Crispy-fried tofu is a true wonder of the culinary arts!

Wait, is this still the TG cooking thread too?

Underwhelmed
Mar 7, 2004


Nap Ghost

Ratoslov posted:

Don't call them tofu enemies! Tofu is neither bland nor undiferentiated. Crispy-fried tofu is a true wonder of the culinary arts!

Wait, is this still the TG cooking thread too?

So you lightning bolt the tofu and it is delicious, you just pound on it with a club and you end up with a bland paste that takes 15 rounds to kill. Your metaphor checks out.



Pimpmust posted:

Sounds more like a marketing gimmick. "We couldn't possibly forsee this, luckily our fixed page number wasn't actually fixed at all!"

It was a close one, but the book made its constitution save vs "bust at the seams with awesome".


By the way, I assume that the print starter set has more info than the online freebie. How are halflings or other small creatures working with regards to dual wielding? Is there still a master archer feat and can it be applied to a sling, if not can halflings use short bows in 5e? I want a halfling ranger or maybe fighter but I am not sure if the rules are going to blow up in my face as they did in 3e/PF, and after a rough read of the online starter set I didn't see much in the way of how small pcs work with equipment. Maybe I just missed that section?


Edit drat you phone posting

Underwhelmed fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Jul 14, 2014

MonsterEnvy
Feb 4, 2012

Shocked I tell you
I don't think level 20 characters will be fighting level 20 enemies at all times as well. (They even said they have less high level then low level enemies.) As the level 20 guys guys are like Balors and the Terrasque.

Power Player
Oct 2, 2006

GOD SPEED YOU! HUNGRY MEXICAN

Jack the Lad posted:

This is true - let me crosspost some of my stats and charts.

Here are the Starter Set monster stats:



Monster HP increased by an average of 119% for the levels we have information on between the playtest and the Starter Set:



Mearls has confirmed that this is intended and roughly correct:



Fighter DPR vs extrapolated Monster HP by CR:



Fighter DPR as a percentage of Monster HP, showing the playtest bestiary math for comparison:



The number of rounds it takes a Fighter to kill a monster of a given CR, with and without Action Surge:



A level 20 Fighter does just over 5 times more damage than a level 1 Fighter to equal CR enemies
A level 20 Monster has just under 29 times more HP than a level 1 Monster.
But we haven't even considered how magic items will affect the DPS yet! You know, the thing that everyone hated about 4e but somehow is now okay for the fighter to rely on them now

neonchameleon
Nov 14, 2012



Power Player posted:

But we haven't even considered how magic items will affect the DPS yet! You know, the thing that everyone hated about 4e but somehow is now okay for the fighter to rely on them now

Magic items are claimed not to be necessary. This is Mearls being taken at his word. And the 4E items had awful presentation.

treeboy
Nov 13, 2004

James T. Kirk was a great man, but that was another life.

AlphaDog posted:

The monster manual was splitting at the seams, so the dauntless, fearless design team had no option other than to cram in 32 more pages of awesome all for the same low low price!

That doesn't sound like a marketing gimmick to me.

gimmick it may be, i'm still cool with more content

Hubis
May 18, 2003

Boy, I wish we had one of those doomsday machines...
It's not really clear to me that CR should scale with Player Level

Rosalind
Apr 30, 2013

When we hit our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change.

Hubis posted:

It's not really clear to me that CR should scale with Player Level

...then what should it scale with? I still don't really understand what "CR" is in comparison to the level of the monster. It just seems needlessly confusing to me as someone coming from 4E.

treeboy
Nov 13, 2004

James T. Kirk was a great man, but that was another life.

Rosalind posted:

...then what should it scale with? I still don't really understand what "CR" is in comparison to the level of the monster. It just seems needlessly confusing to me as someone coming from 4E.

from what I can tell Challenge/CR is the level of the monster, they're just using an older term to appeal to people stuck in 3/3.5

Hubis
May 18, 2003

Boy, I wish we had one of those doomsday machines...

Rosalind posted:

...then what should it scale with? I still don't really understand what "CR" is in comparison to the level of the monster. It just seems needlessly confusing to me as someone coming from 4E.

I think that's part of it -- it's supposed to mean something entirely separate from 4e, where monsters were explicitly designed for a limited level range.

The idea behind "Bounded Accuracy" is that CRs are more universal -- a horde of Goblins will still be a thread to a level 5 party, just much less so than a level 1 party. In this case, "CR 8" doesn't mean "As hard for a PL8 Group as a CR1 Monster is for a PL1 Group", it just means "Challenge Rating 8" (which may imply greater damage-per-hit, defenses, special abilities, whatever). Basically, higher CRs kind of take on the role of Minion/Standard/Elite/Solo designations in 4e, rather than simply monster "level". In that sense, the idea that a higher CR monster would take more rounds to kill seems reasonable, since you'd want to use them where that monster would be a unique challenge that's the focus of the encounter (rather than part of a small or mass battle, where you'd use lower CR monsters).

To put it another way, it already doesn't make sense to design Monsters using PC rule, so rating them by PC power doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense either.

edit: or yet another way to look at -- CRs are "Descriptive", giving the effective challenge of whatever monster has been produced (which can be determined partially by guidelines but may also have to be judged through testing because of unique abilities or combinations of traits) wheras 4e was "Prescriptive" (telling you what a monsters attacks and defenses should be based on a given CR).

Hubis fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Jul 14, 2014

Ryuujin
Sep 26, 2007
Dragon God
And more tweets:

quote:

@Acr0ssTh3P0nd : I want my PCs to have at least a 16 in their main stat (point buy) even if they dont get a racial bonus to that stat. How to do?
@mikemearls : I'd let them set one stat to 16 to start, then give the point buy budget less the cost of a 15.
@vikke064 : I would have loved the point buy to include 16. Why was that removed? Would costing 2 points more than 15 work?
@mikemearls : IIRC, point buy models the most common outcomes of 4d6, drop lowest.

@AlessandroVio11 : Since you are allowing different kinds of drow characters, will the deities Eilistraee and Vhaeraun appear in any core book?
@mikemearls : Sorry, can't say yet.

@JonathanBolding : Man, we did livestreamed D&D 5e on Thursday and it was just crippling for me to rewatch
@mikemearls : every GM should tape themselves and watch - you wince, but you also improve

quote:

@mikemearls : Stan Shinn's D&D 1e to 5e Combat Tracker: http://youtu.be/lLWm8hX-bg4 via @YouTube

@jimlhopper : Is that conversion info in the basic set?
@mikemearls : it's fan made, but we'll have conversion guides
@limpin_jezus : Will we have to wait for the DMG?
@mikemearls : it's a scheduling issue - no date yet

@jrhyne1976 : also, the green dragon in starter set has no resistance to magic?
@mikemearls : don't think so - it's a little on the weak end for a dragon, not legendary

@jrhyne1976 : using the black dragon in GODS Castle, has magic resistance. Does that have effect w spells that roll an attack instead of save?
@mikemearls : nope - those spells create a physical object that you then hurl/magically direct at a foe

quote:

@gregbilsland : Pretty handy reference for #dnd 5e. MT @ritorix: I created a "low ink" version of my #DnD player reference sheet. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7n5bpadgZz4cUFDZ0stLTRyRk0/

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea

Jack the Lad posted:

Right. Tofu enemies (no DR/regen/etc) and no magic items.

I'm happy to run the math with items if you or anyone else wants to give me some numbers (i.e. at what level you get what).

I guess the most basic would be getting a +1 sword at level 2, +2 at 6th, +3 at 10th, +4 at 14th and +5 at 18th. Let's say d6 elemental damage at level 6, increasing to 2d6 at 14th?

Someone who has the starter set or latest playtest might have better suggestions.

copy
Jul 26, 2007

Hubis posted:

I think that's part of it -- it's supposed to mean something entirely separate from 4e, where monsters were explicitly designed for a limited level range.

The idea behind "Bounded Accuracy" is that CRs are more universal -- a horde of Goblins will still be a thread to a level 5 party, just much less so than a level 1 party. In this case, "CR 8" doesn't mean "As hard for a PL8 Group as a CR1 Monster is for a PL1 Group", it just means "Challenge Rating 8" (which may imply greater damage-per-hit, defenses, special abilities, whatever). Basically, higher CRs kind of take on the role of Minion/Standard/Elite/Solo designations in 4e, rather than simply monster "level". In that sense, the idea that a higher CR monster would take more rounds to kill seems reasonable, since you'd want to use them where that monster would be a unique challenge that's the focus of the encounter (rather than part of a small or mass battle, where you'd use lower CR monsters).

To put it another way, it already doesn't make sense to design Monsters using PC rule, so rating them by PC power doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense either.

edit: or yet another way to look at -- CRs are "Descriptive", giving the effective challenge of whatever monster has been produced (which can be determined partially by guidelines but may also have to be judged through testing because of unique abilities or combinations of traits) wheras 4e was "Prescriptive" (telling you what a monsters attacks and defenses should be based on a given CR).

I am not seeing how you can make something like this work in a system where monster HP ranges from like 5 to 500. Obviously no matter how bounded the accuracy is there are some challenges that are just functionally impossible for a low level party and pointlessly trivial for a high level party, so monsters are already not level-independent challenges ranked exclusively their CR. It just seems like it's something for the GM to fall back on when they accidentally make a fight that TPKs the party ("I mean they were all CR1 wizards I don't know why you guys couldn't fight your way out of that one!"). A system that actually endeavored to rank monsters based on PC power, however, would make such a situation (accidental party wipe) much less likely.

I mean like if monster HP ranged from like, I don't know, 5 to 100, AND PCs didn't get health from leveling up and a whole bunch of other stuff to facilitate this "Bounded Accuracy" (do not steal!) system then maybe CR would work in the way you are describing.

Laphroaig
Feb 6, 2004

Drinking Smoke
Dinosaur Gum

Gort posted:

I guess the most basic would be getting a +1 sword at level 2, +2 at 6th, +3 at 10th, +4 at 14th and +5 at 18th. Let's say d6 elemental damage at level 6, increasing to 2d6 at 14th?

Someone who has the starter set or latest playtest might have better suggestions.

So has anyone noticed that magic weapons scaling with to-hit defeats the entire purpose of bounded accuracy...?

Hubis
May 18, 2003

Boy, I wish we had one of those doomsday machines...

copy posted:

I am not seeing how you can make something like this work in a system where monster HP ranges from like 5 to 500. Obviously no matter how bounded the accuracy is there are some challenges that are just functionally impossible for a low level party and pointlessly trivial for a high level party, so monsters are already not level-independent challenges ranked exclusively their CR. It just seems like it's something for the GM to fall back on when they accidentally make a fight that TPKs the party ("I mean they were all CR1 wizards I don't know why you guys couldn't fight your way out of that one!"). A system that actually endeavored to rank monsters based on PC power, however, would make such a situation (accidental party wipe) much less likely.

Obviously challenge is still relative to the party level, but that doesn't mean they have to be pegged 1-to-1.

I also think that saying "monsters should be balanced for a given party level" really over-simplifies the issue. Certainly not all parties are not of equal effectiveness, so you've got one problem right there. But beyond that, just as not all PCs are of equal effectiveness, monsters could have widely varying degrees of difficulty depending on circumstances, combinations of powers, and other factors. I agree that the 5e system seems a bit more variable in terms of the difficulty of what you put together for a different CR, but I think just saying that monsters should be directly mapped to a progression based on average PCs of a given level over-states the difficulty.

copy posted:

I mean like if monster HP ranged from like, I don't know, 5 to 100, AND PCs didn't get health from leveling up and a whole bunch of other stuff to facilitate this "Bounded Accuracy" (do not steal!) system then maybe CR would work in the way you are describing.

This is true, and I'd argue that HP is generally a not great as the only way to do this -- you only have to look at pre-MM3 DND4e to see why. Combat ends up dragging on forever. That being said, extrapolating HP like that seems like a bad idea for those very reasons (there's nothing to say what a CR20 monster's HD will look like). Hit points ARE useful in that they scale well across levels: more HD means that a monster will take longer for a party to kill, rather than just making it frustrating/impossible (like higher Defenses would). You'd definitely need to balance more HP with greater Deadliness, or replace some HD with specific resistances or vulnerabilities that a higher level party would be more able to overcome.

If we look at what's listed, the HP breakdown versus a Level 1 Fighter is roughly:

CR < 1: Likely kill in 1-2 Hits
CR 1: Likely kill in 3-4 Hits
CR 2: Likely kill in 4-6 Hits
CR 3-4: Likely kill in 5-8 Hits
...
CR 8: Likely kill in 20 hits

For a Level 5 fighter that becomes something more like:

CR < 1: Likely kill in 1 Hits
CR 1: Likely kill in 1-2 Hits
CR 2: Likely kill in 2-3 Hits
CR 3-4: Likely kill in 2-3 Hits
...
CR 8: Likely kill in 6-7 hits

Which doesn't seem THAT unreasonable to me.

copy
Jul 26, 2007

To your first point I would assume that while there will be some variance in party effectiveness based on the classes/builds composing it, it would ideally not be so great that monsters just simply couldn't realistically be measured against party level. Likewise monster groupings shouldn't have unexpected gently caress-you synergies that the devs didn't consider when building them. Although that second point is more an argument for a smaller, perhaps reskinnable monster list than anything else because each monster added is just going to geometrically increase the amount of combos they would need to check. Maybe an easier way to handle it would be providing the DM with example monster combos and how to adjust the challenge rating of the encounter based on those synergies.

Yeah I agree on your second point that increasing hp to a point works as a decent way to make it clear to players/dms that a specific monster might be out of the party's range at the moment. I guess we will have to wait to get data on higher challenge rating monsters like you suggest, but if the extrapolated chart is correct then it looks like monster HP will just blow right the gently caress up around CR 12-14, at which point it looks like we might be back to the rocket tag days of yore. Again that hasn't been shown yet but then again neither has the existence of the mythical math team who would ostensibly prevent that from happening. I guess at this point though I'm just jumping at shadows, but gently caress if these guys aren't doing their damndest to encourage that behavior.

Quinn2win
Nov 9, 2011

Foolish child of man...
After reading all this,
do you still not understand?
So is all this math about monsters being too tough, or fighters being too weak? Like, does Rogue/Wizard damage scale correctly to monster HP?

Cyclomatic
May 29, 2012

"I'm past caring about what might be lost by letting alphabet soups monitor every last piece of communication between every human being on the planet."

I unironically love Big Brother.
Not seeing the point to applying any sort of "challenge" stat to monsters if the GM can't look at that stat and have it do the majority of the informing as to whether the fight is easy/average/hard for their players based on the level of the players.

Maybe that might not be "realistic", since that seems like video games (these monsters are too hard, don't fight them ever. These monsters are too easy, don't bother fighting them. These monsters are just right).

Although if we want to deal with realism, the reality of a random TPK is that it either pisses players off severely, or makes them all lose interest in the game because they know they are just sitting there like bumps on a log waiting for the GM to handwave the hopeless situation to make it go away.

Now, I'm sure "elite" GMs can memorize the entire rule system, the sheets of their characters, and the entries in the monster manual and have an accurate appreciation of what their party can and can't handle. Then again, "elite" GMs don't need books and could (and likely will) homebrew their own rules. So why make "elite" books/rules for people that don't need books?

Now, I'm also sure "elite" players can deftly roleplay their way through the cacophony of tortured screeching sounds given off by the system mechanics when a new or time strapped GM makes a mistake with difficult to understand rules (holy poo poo this encounter is murder, please save me by picking up the fumble and use clever use of the environment to kill it, or stop fighting it and turn it into a chase scene). Although, you would think that those selfsame "elite" roleplayers could deftly use roleplay to spice up any "gamey" elements like balanced encounters that less elite roleplayers can handle without running into issues. Good roleplayers don't need books either, because if one of them wants to play an ice mage and the system doesn't really support that yet, then they can usually glance at the system and suggest something pretty darn reasonable that won't cause problems.


I still don't understand who 5E is for.

neonchameleon
Nov 14, 2012



Cyclomatic posted:

I still don't understand who 5E is for.

People who did the majority of their DMing using AD&D 2E (or 1E using the Dragonlance aesthetic) but realises THAC0 is terrible and lots of AD&D are confusing, badly written, and mathematically counter-intuitive - but that 3.X is far, far more trouble than it's worth. There are a surprising number of these people (including a few at my table).

Underwhelmed
Mar 7, 2004


Nap Ghost
I've always ignored the CR crap, which isn't all that different from the older Hit Dice as an analog to monster level system from the good old days, and I have never had a problem with party wipes or players steam rolling my games. I tend to adjust stuff on the fly a lot though. If an encounter is going too easy, I may throw in a complication or two to make it more interesting, or if an encounter is going really terribly, I will at the very least give the party some means of escape or maybe encourage them to come up with a creative solution.

I realize that a fair amount of the discontent over the current CR system, is that it looks pretty busted, and the whole idea of buying a game system is that it is supposed to make internal sense and "work". But this got me thinking, is this really something that derails a lot of games? I always assumed that most people ignored poo poo about as often as I did, but maybe not. The CR system being poo poo is actually one of my lowest concerns for the new edition.


neonchameleon posted:

People who did the majority of their DMing using AD&D 2E (or 1E using the Dragonlance aesthetic) but realises THAC0 is terrible and lots of AD&D are confusing, badly written, and mathematically counter-intuitive - but that 3.X is far, far more trouble than it's worth. There are a surprising number of these people (including a few at my table).

This is sort of me. I really like 3.x, but it has a lot of garbage in it (and Pathfinder which is what I am stuck with these days is like playing D&D fan-fic) and I am kind of glad to see things trim down into something that plays quicker. I still want to see how the feats, classes and so on play out because I am still a bit weary of the game drifting back into the old "standard attack every time" kind of combat it used to be. I actually liked a lot about 4e, but most of that is in theory since I have barely gotten to play it (it was detested among everyone I regularly play with)

Hubis
May 18, 2003

Boy, I wish we had one of those doomsday machines...

copy posted:

To your first point I would assume that while there will be some variance in party effectiveness based on the classes/builds composing it, it would ideally not be so great that monsters just simply couldn't realistically be measured against party level. Likewise monster groupings shouldn't have unexpected gently caress-you synergies that the devs didn't consider when building them. Although that second point is more an argument for a smaller, perhaps reskinnable monster list than anything else because each monster added is just going to geometrically increase the amount of combos they would need to check. Maybe an easier way to handle it would be providing the DM with example monster combos and how to adjust the challenge rating of the encounter based on those synergies.

I mean, "Player Skill" is (or should) also be a factor. What if I've got a party of "Level 5 characters" with "Level 1 players"" who can't be bothered to even read the basic combat section of the book? :suicide:
The value of numbers aside, my point is mostly that "challenge rating as level" can be misleading as often as it can be useful, and I think just disconnecting the two somewhat, even psychologically, might actually be more beneficial in the sense that it forces you to be aware of the Party and the Encounter as being the two separate, abstract entities that they are. In 4e I think the "Monster Level" approach was largely useless because it ended up just over-rating challenges -- an even-level encounter was generally a cakewalk for any competent party, precisely because of the mentality that an at-level fight should be "evenly matched" and yet that the PCs winning without any player losses (let alone there being a remote risk of TPK) would be a foregone conclusion.

copy posted:

Yeah I agree on your second point that increasing hp to a point works as a decent way to make it clear to players/dms that a specific monster might be out of the party's range at the moment. I guess we will have to wait to get data on higher challenge rating monsters like you suggest, but if the extrapolated chart is correct then it looks like monster HP will just blow right the gently caress up around CR 12-14, at which point it looks like we might be back to the rocket tag days of yore. Again that hasn't been shown yet but then again neither has the existence of the mythical math team who would ostensibly prevent that from happening. I guess at this point though I'm just jumping at shadows, but gently caress if these guys aren't doing their damndest to encourage that behavior.

Yes, I agree that would be bad and broken. We'll have to see how the rest of the system bears out and just hope for the best.

Cyclomatic posted:

Not seeing the point to applying any sort of "challenge" stat to monsters if the GM can't look at that stat and have it do the majority of the informing as to whether the fight is easy/average/hard for their players based on the level of the players.

I think CR is supposed to do exactly that. I think expecting it to be more specific than "Easy/Average/Hard" or expecting the margin of variance to be particularly tight isn't really a realistic expectation. You can make Rules of Thumb based on the CRs as related to part level, but at best they're just going to be Rules of Thumb (which in reality is still no better than how 4e monsters were designed, it just doesn't make any pretenses otherwise).

Cyclomatic posted:

Maybe that might not be "realistic", since that seems like video games (these monsters are too hard, don't fight them ever. These monsters are too easy, don't bother fighting them. These monsters are just right).

Although if we want to deal with realism, the reality of a random TPK is that it either pisses players off severely, or makes them all lose interest in the game because they know they are just sitting there like bumps on a log waiting for the GM to handwave the hopeless situation to make it go away.

Now, I'm sure "elite" GMs can memorize the entire rule system, the sheets of their characters, and the entries in the monster manual and have an accurate appreciation of what their party can and can't handle. Then again, "elite" GMs don't need books and could (and likely will) homebrew their own rules. So why make "elite" books/rules for people that don't need books?

Now, I'm also sure "elite" players can deftly roleplay their way through the cacophony of tortured screeching sounds given off by the system mechanics when a new or time strapped GM makes a mistake with difficult to understand rules (holy poo poo this encounter is murder, please save me by picking up the fumble and use clever use of the environment to kill it, or stop fighting it and turn it into a chase scene). Although, you would think that those selfsame "elite" roleplayers could deftly use roleplay to spice up any "gamey" elements like balanced encounters that less elite roleplayers can handle without running into issues. Good roleplayers don't need books either, because if one of them wants to play an ice mage and the system doesn't really support that yet, then they can usually glance at the system and suggest something pretty darn reasonable that won't cause problems.


I still don't understand who 5E is for.

If you don't want to remotely risk a TPK, don't throw high-CR monsters at your party?

Rigged Death Trap
Feb 13, 2012

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Then there is no challenge and no excitement that this might the fight where you lose.

Jack the Lad
Jan 20, 2009

Feed the Pubs

Mearls wrote a whole thing on encounter design and managed to say, in essence "I dunno, make it up. Or don't, that's good too."

quote:

Challenge Rating: A monster's challenge rating is a guide to its overall power. As a general rule, monsters with a CR higher than a party's level pose a significant threat. They might have abilities that easily outclass the characters, or so many hit points that they can wear the characters down even in a straightforward battle.

Unless you're looking to create an intentionally difficult—or even deadly—encounter, it's best to focus on creatures with a challenge rating less than or equal to the average level of the characters in the party.

Also, I think anyone saying that a system shouldn't be expected to provide a DM with the tools to design an encounter appropriate to a party of a given level is completely and utterly wrong.

That seems like a very blinkered point of view to me. There has to be provision for people who have never DMed before.

Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Jul 14, 2014

Cyclomatic
May 29, 2012

"I'm past caring about what might be lost by letting alphabet soups monitor every last piece of communication between every human being on the planet."

I unironically love Big Brother.

Hubis posted:

If you don't want to remotely risk a TPK, don't throw high-CR monsters at your party?

So which CR are high in relation to my party?

IT BEGINS
Jan 15, 2009

I don't know how to make analogies

Hubis posted:

If you don't want to remotely risk a TPK, don't throw high-CR monsters at your party?

Then why list CR at all? Just pick the monster you want, then read it and see if it's fitting for your party and players.

The point of CR is that in a good CR system, a monster of X CR will provide players of level X some equal level of challenge at all levels. It doesn't mean a CR 10 has to provide a level 10 party with an extremely challenging encounter', just that it provide a similar level of challenge as a CR 14 provides a level 14 party.

Edit: I just don't think it's too much to ask that the Giant Crabs situation doesn't happen again.

IT BEGINS fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Jul 14, 2014

treeboy
Nov 13, 2004

James T. Kirk was a great man, but that was another life.
So i take it you're supposed to average the player levels to get the party level rather than add them together? But to create the encounter you need to add the CR of all the creatures for the total challenge of the encounter and compare that to the average level of the party?

yeah that makes sense

MonsterEnvy
Feb 4, 2012

Shocked I tell you

Jack the Lad posted:

Mearls wrote a whole thing on encounter design and managed to say, in essence "I dunno, make it up. Or don't, that's good too."


Also, I think anyone saying that a system shouldn't be expected to provide a DM with the tools to design an encounter appropriate to a party of a given level is completely and utterly wrong.

That seems like a very blinkered point of view to me. There has to be provision for people who have never DMed before.

Not really he just said these are guidlines and you don't have to use them if you don't want to. They are also not final and the DMG version will likely be different.

MonsterEnvy
Feb 4, 2012

Shocked I tell you
CR in this edition is a you must be this tall to ride sign. If the party is not the level of the CR then the Monster will likely easily kill or maim at least one member of the party.

The Party level is the same level as all members of the party a party of level 2s would be a level 2 party. So throw monsters that are CR 2 or less at them.

PeterWeller
Apr 21, 2003

I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

neonchameleon posted:

People who did the majority of their DMing using AD&D 2E (or 1E using the Dragonlance aesthetic) but realises THAC0 is terrible and lots of AD&D are confusing, badly written, and mathematically counter-intuitive - but that 3.X is far, far more trouble than it's worth. There are a surprising number of these people (including a few at my table).

This is a very good summation of why I am excited about 5E despite its clear regression from 4E. It sounds like it's going to hit a sweet spot for me between 2E and 4E that 3E ironically missed.

MonsterEnvy
Feb 4, 2012

Shocked I tell you

treeboy posted:

So i take it you're supposed to average the player levels to get the party level rather than add them together? But to create the encounter you need to add the CR of all the creatures for the total challenge of the encounter and compare that to the average level of the party?

yeah that makes sense

No read the article it has a handy little chart. The XP value is for balancing encounters not the CR.

treeboy
Nov 13, 2004

James T. Kirk was a great man, but that was another life.

MonsterEnvy posted:

No read the article it has a handy little chart. The XP value is for balancing encounters not the CR.

ok, he actually does a decent job of explaining the setup. it still feels a bit convoluted between figuring out xp budget then using CR to judge whether a monster "fits" with the group or not, but i get it and I suppose it could be a lot harder to work with.

Misandu
Feb 28, 2008

STOP.
Hammer Time.

Hubis posted:

Obviously challenge is still relative to the party level, but that doesn't mean they have to be pegged 1-to-1.

I also think that saying "monsters should be balanced for a given party level" really over-simplifies the issue. Certainly not all parties are not of equal effectiveness, so you've got one problem right there. But beyond that, just as not all PCs are of equal effectiveness, monsters could have widely varying degrees of difficulty depending on circumstances, combinations of powers, and other factors. I agree that the 5e system seems a bit more variable in terms of the difficulty of what you put together for a different CR, but I think just saying that monsters should be directly mapped to a progression based on average PCs of a given level over-states the difficulty.


This is true, and I'd argue that HP is generally a not great as the only way to do this -- you only have to look at pre-MM3 DND4e to see why. Combat ends up dragging on forever. That being said, extrapolating HP like that seems like a bad idea for those very reasons (there's nothing to say what a CR20 monster's HD will look like). Hit points ARE useful in that they scale well across levels: more HD means that a monster will take longer for a party to kill, rather than just making it frustrating/impossible (like higher Defenses would). You'd definitely need to balance more HP with greater Deadliness, or replace some HD with specific resistances or vulnerabilities that a higher level party would be more able to overcome.

If we look at what's listed, the HP breakdown versus a Level 1 Fighter is roughly:

CR < 1: Likely kill in 1-2 Hits
CR 1: Likely kill in 3-4 Hits
CR 2: Likely kill in 4-6 Hits
CR 3-4: Likely kill in 5-8 Hits
...
CR 8: Likely kill in 20 hits

For a Level 5 fighter that becomes something more like:

CR < 1: Likely kill in 1 Hits
CR 1: Likely kill in 1-2 Hits
CR 2: Likely kill in 2-3 Hits
CR 3-4: Likely kill in 2-3 Hits
...
CR 8: Likely kill in 6-7 hits

Which doesn't seem THAT unreasonable to me.

Where this breaks down IMMEDIATELY is when you remember the Fighter we've seen so far has 0 tools for dealing with multiple enemies besides his additional attacks. What really happens here is that lower level/"CR" enemies HP is so low compared to your damage output that the spell caster just blows a single spell slot on ending the encounter. It'll be a little better than in 3.X/Pathfinder because spells don't scale, except woops no wait they do from Wizard class features. Take something like Burning Hands. At level 1 when you're fighting Goblins it does about enough to kill them in a single hit. At higher levels you can either prepare it in a higher spell slot to insure it still does that, use a more efficient/wider area spell to end the encounter in one spell, or have it get boosted through class features like Empowered Evocation to make sure that it still kills all those creatures in a single turn.

In order for lower level enemies to pose a threat to higher level PCs you have to have a Fire Emblem type system where power increases at a much slower rate. Enemy HP nearly doubling every level makes it very clear that despite what they've claimed lower level enemies aren't actually a threat to higher level PCs even if they can actually land hits.

treeboy posted:

ok, he actually does a decent job of explaining the setup. it still feels a bit convoluted between figuring out xp budget then using CR to judge whether a monster "fits" with the group or not, but i get it and I suppose it could be a lot harder to work with.

He outs that they did a bad job when he describes the Ogre though. So at level 1 a CR 2 enemy will wipe the party, but by level 6 I'd wager a CR 7 enemy will be trivial for anything resembling your average party. That's even assuming that enemies of the same CR are even as threatening as each other. Really I think CR is just going to end up being ported directly from 3.5 where it didn't really mean anything.

MonsterEnvy
Feb 4, 2012

Shocked I tell you

treeboy posted:

it still feels a bit convoluted between figuring out xp budget then using CR to judge whether a monster "fits" with the group or not

Opposite I think. Use CR to figure out what you can use then use XP budget to balance the encounter.

MonsterEnvy
Feb 4, 2012

Shocked I tell you

Misandu posted:


He outs that they did a bad job when he describes the Ogre though. So at level 1 a CR 2 enemy will wipe the party, but by level 6 I'd wager a CR 7 enemy will be trivial for anything resembling your average party. That's even assuming that enemies of the same CR are even as threatening as each other. Really I think CR is just going to end up being ported directly from 3.5 where it didn't really mean anything.

He does not say it will wipe the party just that it has a high chance of killing a party member easily. From the look of the CR 8 Dragon compared to the Orge they get more deadly at a good rate.

dwarf74
Sep 2, 2012



Buglord
This may sound weird coming from a dude who's not that into 5e, but this is seriously the most negative +thread I've ever seen on SA and I can't tell if I'm in TG or DDRD when I read it. :eng99:

Father Wendigo
Sep 28, 2005
This is, sadly, more important to me than bettering myself.

dwarf74 posted:

This may sound weird coming from a dude who's not that into 5e, but this is seriously the most negative +thread I've ever seen on SA and I can't tell if I'm in TG or DDRD when I read it. :eng99:

Some of us still have a really foul taste left in out mouth from the playtests, and not much of what we've seen so far indicates it's going to be drastically changed. Since they're pulling the bullshit cheeky strategy of saying the product's entire lifespan is essentially a beta test (We're using build 0.1 according to Basic), we might as well pinpoint what breaks down and doesn't work.

Squeaky wheel gets the oil, right?

ritorix
Jul 22, 2007

Vancian Roulette

dwarf74 posted:

This may sound weird coming from a dude who's not that into 5e, but this is seriously the most negative +thread I've ever seen on SA and I can't tell if I'm in TG or DDRD when I read it. :eng99:

That is literally every Next thread we've ever had in TG.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

PeterWeller
Apr 21, 2003

I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

dwarf74 posted:

This may sound weird coming from a dude who's not that into 5e, but this is seriously the most negative +thread I've ever seen on SA and I can't tell if I'm in TG or DDRD when I read it. :eng99:

Look at this naive soul who has apparently never seen the depths to which the 40K thread can sink. :v:

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply