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Working on a level 10 adventure for Halloween. One thing I noticed: the lack of inflation for AC and to-hit numbers means that, in theory, large numbers of low CR monsters could potentially be a challenge for parties at higher levels. One of my bugbears about 3.Path was that one CR10 monster and 10 CR1 monsters were not equal to a party of level 10 characters. This seems to have solved it, but I won't know until I run it.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:47
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Peas and Rice posted:Working on a level 10 adventure for Halloween. One thing I noticed: the lack of inflation for AC and to-hit numbers means that, in theory, large numbers of low CR monsters could potentially be a challenge for parties at higher levels. One of my bugbears about 3.Path was that one CR10 monster and 10 CR1 monsters were not equal to a party of level 10 characters. This seems to have solved it, but I won't know until I run it. So long as they can survive one AoE, more lowbie monsters tends to be an infinitely more dangerous encounter that one strong one. PC HP scales at a glacial pace, monster damage doesn't.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:54
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IN 3.Path, my experience (at least with my group) was that for a party of 6, two CR6 monsters were WAY more difficult for the party to take down than 12 CR1 monsters, which were minor annoyances at best. I'm happy that a horde of zombies or a small pack of werewolves might still be a challenge at 10th level.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:58
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Transient People posted:You want the actual quote where they tell you that Levels 1 and 2 are supposed to be the tutorial and the real game where you play for keeps and get your true class stuff starts at 3, or the actual analysis that points at how ridiculously lethal 5e is and how it plays like Shitfarmer Fantasy Vietnam until you have a massive HP buffer and enough wizard bullshit to obviate all of your encounters per day? I want the quote that says that the journey out of first or second or whatever level bracket is supposed to be like the baton death march. If they actually say "hey don't get too attached to this character because there's a good chance a centaur or bugbear will literally kill them in one hit" then maybe a lot of these lethality complaints are uncalled for.
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Oct 15, 2014 18:00
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I'm thinking of tweaking the Eldritch Knight (and maybe Arcane Trickster) to be a bit more flexible; instead of locking them into the two schools in the class description (evocation/abjuration, I think...don't have my PHB on me), I think I'm going to hold one of those two schools static and let the player choose the other. So they're always going to have magic as an attack or as a defense, but they could do something a bit more unique with the other...an enchanter or necromancer knight seems cool. I'm not sure which of the two listed schools to lock down, though. Requiring abjuration seems to be more mechanically beneficial, since they can already deal damage decently enough with their fighter abilities, but a lot of the build powers deal with magical attacks. Or (and I'm probably going to go this way), should it just be that you get two schools, one of which has to be evocation or abjuration?
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Oct 15, 2014 18:07
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Rannos22 posted:I want the quote that says that the journey out of first or second or whatever level bracket is supposed to be like the baton death march. If they actually say "hey don't get too attached to this character because there's a good chance a centaur or bugbear will literally kill them in one hit" then maybe a lot of these lethality complaints are uncalled for. No, they don't say that. What they say is that the game is a tutorial for beginners at levels 1 and 2, meant to be simple and easy to play. The lethality is just an artifact of lovely game design and sacred cows. I'll see if I can find it. Peas and Rice posted:IN 3.Path, my experience (at least with my group) was that for a party of 6, two CR6 monsters were WAY more difficult for the party to take down than 12 CR1 monsters, which were minor annoyances at best. Correct. This is because of math scaling. It's actually kind of very lovely that monsters that are fair challenges at low levels remain competitive at high ones because it means you can actually never pull off what Aragorn or Boromir or Gimli or Legolas do in Lord of the Rings, but that's just my opinion. I like it when characters truly begin to take on a mythical tone and being zerged almost literally by twenty rust monsters means that's almost impossible.
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Oct 15, 2014 18:12
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Transient People posted:You want the actual quote where they tell you that Levels 1 and 2 are supposed to be the tutorial and the real game where you play for keeps and get your true class stuff starts at 3, or the actual analysis that points at how ridiculously lethal 5e is and how it plays like Shitfarmer Fantasy Vietnam until you have a massive HP buffer and enough wizard bullshit to obviate all of your encounters per day? I think my plan for dealing with this is going to be that levels 1-2 are going to mainly feature groups of 1/8 - 1/2 CR enemies. Once they hit 3, I'm going to feel a lot better about having equal CR adversaries. The tendency of everything to be linear when a curve would suffice is a bit of a drag; this feels like something that you'd put in the DMG, though who knows.
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Oct 15, 2014 18:12
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Transient People posted:You want the actual quote where they tell you that Levels 1 and 2 are supposed to be the tutorial and the real game where you play for keeps and get your true class stuff starts at 3, or the actual analysis that points at how ridiculously lethal 5e is and how it plays like Shitfarmer Fantasy Vietnam until you have a massive HP buffer and enough wizard bullshit to obviate all of your encounters per day? To be fair, fantasy Vietnam (or at least Cambodia) makes for a pretty nice setting.
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Oct 15, 2014 18:17
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Remember, after the three years of open playtests, NEXT went through the math wringer before being released so you know everything is probably as it should be
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Oct 15, 2014 18:20
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Transient People posted:Correct. This is because of math scaling. It's actually kind of very lovely that monsters that are fair challenges at low levels remain competitive at high ones because it means you can actually never pull off what Aragorn or Boromir or Gimli or Legolas do in Lord of the Rings, but that's just my opinion. I like it when characters truly begin to take on a mythical tone and being zerged almost literally by twenty rust monsters means that's almost impossible. I always assumed Aragon was like level 20. The opposite I guess is what you get in the Hobbit, where the dwarves literally carve their way through hundreds of orcs such that you're finally just rolling your eyes and thinking "goddamn it, the players and the GM are fudging their natural 20s here." quote:To be fair, fantasy Vietnam (or at least Cambodia) makes for a pretty nice setting. Delta Green motherfuckers!
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Oct 15, 2014 18:22
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I actually assume he is, too. And he still gets pretty much bopped by an appropriate orcmass. I should just do an encounter mockup and put into perspective how silly Next can be about PC fragility when the Big Strong Wizard Man isn't babying you.
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Oct 15, 2014 18:24
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Extra damage? Advantage on saves? More things to do with your special dice and more opportunities to use them? Even harder to kill than everyone else in the party? D&D fighters never had anything like that before, we better give this stuff out to other classes, for, uh, balance reasons.
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Oct 15, 2014 18:30
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Y'know, I'm kinda down with the idea of "flat math" and all that. But...quote:Beowulf slew Grendel by tearing his arm off. He later killed a dragon almost singlehandedly. Roland slew or gravely injured four hundred Saracens in a single battle. In the world of D&D, a skilled fighter is a one-person army. You can expect fighters to do fairly mundane things with weapons, but with such overwhelming skill that none can hope to stand against them. ... it makes the stated design goals for the poor fightingman a little hard to reach.
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Oct 15, 2014 18:32
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Peas and Rice posted:I always assumed Aragon was like level 20.
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Oct 15, 2014 18:32
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Peas and Rice posted:
I know this is a joke, but I've actually known people who are seemingly unable to engage with other forms of media without filtering it through the lens of D&D rules and it's the saddest loving thing.
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Oct 15, 2014 18:33
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I think the martial dice were bland. It seems like a klunky ability that is derived from the system rather than from trying to think of something cool for fighters to do. Sort of how I feel about action points (or any number of other mechanics that are included). I wish there was something cooler.
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Oct 15, 2014 18:37
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Transient People posted:Correct. This is because of math scaling. It's actually kind of very lovely that monsters that are fair challenges at low levels remain competitive at high ones because it means you can actually never pull off what Aragorn or Boromir or Gimli or Legolas do in Lord of the Rings, but that's just my opinion. I like it when characters truly begin to take on a mythical tone and being zerged almost literally by twenty rust monsters means that's almost impossible. For 3, say, 12th level characters, fighting 20 orcs would still be an interesting combat in 5E. Even with a Fireball tagging 4-5 of them per cast, some will make their saves and probably live, and even with a caster having very effective AoE spells prepared, some of them are still going to survive long enough to make it an contest. The orcs are at a slight disadvantage in hitting the characters whose ACs are likely in the 19-20 range, but they will connect and do damage.
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Oct 15, 2014 18:37
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The Crotch posted:Y'know, I'm kinda down with the idea of "flat math" and all that. But... Note: That number is hilariously, ludicrously off to the point it makes it clear that nobody in the design team ever read the Matter of France. The number of Saracens Roland fought wasn't four hundred, it was four hundred thousand. And he cleaved a mountain open with Durandal. If he's the model for a high level Fighter, Next is a miserable failure. quote:If anything, bounded math makes 5E better able to make those fights interesting. If Aragorn/Gimli/Legolas were 3.X characters, they would only get hit by 1/20 attacks from those mooks. They pretty much automatically hit and automatically kill an orc with every attack they make. It's impressive, but not much fun, and the players would know that they aren't in any danger from the infinity orcs in Sauron's army. Notice how you have a Big Wizard Man babying the poor stupid martials to make that fight interesting and not a total TPK. That, right there, is the problem. Try running an all martial party and come back to me with the results, we'll if a 20 dude fight is interesting instead of lethal then.
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Oct 15, 2014 18:38
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OctoberCountry posted:I know this is a joke, but I've actually known people who are seemingly unable to engage with other forms of media without filtering it through the lens of D&D rules and it's the saddest loving thing. I absolutely agree. It didn't even occur to me until the chase down the river scene in the most recent Hobbit movie, when I though, "christ, this is what would happen when the players and the GM are just cheating their socks off and no one's calling them on it." Which probably says more about the mediocrity of the Hobbit movies more than anything.
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Oct 15, 2014 18:39
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Wow, one of the moves for the Knight in the playtest is that there's an ability named "Defender" that functioned similarly to how the fighting style Protection works, except that if the melee attacker chose to attack YOU instead of what you gave disadvantage to, you kept your reaction. That would have helped with stickiness for fighters/paladins. Edit: And what would become Sweeping Attack let you add your strength modifier onto the attack instead of just being your expertise dice. Power Player fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Oct 15, 2014 |
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Oct 15, 2014 18:50
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friendlyfire posted:I think the martial dice were bland. It seems like a klunky ability that is derived from the system rather than from trying to think of something cool for fighters to do. Sort of how I feel about action points (or any number of other mechanics that are included). I wish there was something cooler. I don't think the dice were bland, as they were just the resource by which the mechanics were activated, but a number of the effects were certainly unexciting. Perhaps that's what could've been changed? At the very least I think the fighter should've been able to spend additional dice in order to turn the dice abilities into a more powerful versions. Peas and Rice posted:I absolutely agree. It didn't even occur to me until the chase down the river scene in the most recent Hobbit movie, when I though, "christ, this is what would happen when the players and the GM are just cheating their socks off and no one's calling them on it." I almost fell asleep in the theater during that scene 
S.J. fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Oct 15, 2014 |
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Oct 15, 2014 18:52
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Transient People posted:Notice how you have a Big Wizard Man babying the poor stupid martials to make that fight interesting and not a total TPK. That, right there, is the problem. Try running an all martial party and come back to me with the results, we'll if a 20 dude fight is interesting instead of lethal then. I didn't do the encounter budget math, maybe 14 is the right loving number, I don't know. Each martial can probably kill about 2 orcs every round, and every third orc hits for 9 damage. That's about 50 damage the first round, divided among the martials, 35 the second round, 20 the third, and less than 10 the fourth. It's enough to have seriously worn down each party member, probably not knock any of them out. Whatever the results are, there is some reasonable number of orcs that is an appropriate challenge for high level characters.
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Oct 15, 2014 19:10
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S.J. posted:I don't think the dice were bland, as they were just the resource by which the mechanics were activated, but a number of the effects were certainly unexciting. Perhaps that's what could've been changed? At the very least I think the fighter should've been able to spend additional dice in order to turn the dice abilities into a more powerful versions. Drop one of the dice to trip, drop another die to push the guy they just hit 3 spaces, drop a die to retroactively have +2 to hit, drop a die to make their attack bypass resistance. These aren't really thrilling, but at least they add flexibility. Though that does run contrary to the implicit design goal of "this guy is just a jerk with a sword".
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Oct 15, 2014 19:13
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Those effects certainly run contrary to the idea of a one man army at least. Relatively marginal benefits for what is, in context, a serious expenditure of resources for a fighter. Ugh.
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Oct 15, 2014 19:16
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I sort of like the idea of treating fighters as sort of mobile terrain. Like, give them something like: "Any time an enemy enters an adjacent space, their movement ends." That's super-sticky, not MMO-seeming (I hope), and probably not a huge power bump. It just lets them do their job a bit better.
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Oct 15, 2014 19:20
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IIRC from earlier in the thread, Relentless used to give you back 1 superiority die every turn, rather than every encounter. And that Next briefly flirted with damage-on-a-miss
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Oct 15, 2014 19:28
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gradenko_2000 posted:IIRC from earlier in the thread, Relentless used to give you back 1 superiority die every turn, rather than every encounter. And that Next briefly flirted with damage-on-a-miss And then whole subforums were devoted to this topic
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Oct 15, 2014 19:29
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friendlyfire posted:I sort of like the idea of treating fighters as sort of mobile terrain. Like, give them something like: "Any time an enemy enters an adjacent space, their movement ends." That's super-sticky, not MMO-seeming (I hope), and probably not a huge power bump. It just lets them do their job a bit better. You really shouldn't include how "MMO-seeming" a mechanic is as a serious criteria when you're designing it. MMOs, computer games and RPGs share so many elements that you'd be left with nothing to use if you tried to exclude it, not to mention that "MMO-seeming" is basically a meaningless term.
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Oct 15, 2014 19:36
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friendlyfire posted:Says a lot of stuff I agree with. It seems like this thread is dogpiling on you, and I just wanted to pipe up saying that you've brought up a lot of what I consider to be fair points. The amount of grogginess in this thread is overboard. As someone who's played 5e for close to 20 hours (with a cool group of people including my wife -- so this may have colored my experience), most of the complaints in this thread (e.g. the save system sucks, fighters suck, opportunity attacks are worthless, the unconscious/death system sucks, etc.) conflict with my personal experience playing Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Based on my last few play sessions, I actually think 5e is a more progressive system than 13th Age (note, my only experience playing 13th Age was near the end of "beta" at a couple of Conventions). 5e also feels vastly better than Pathfinder/3.x, which is key for me. So Centaurs, Intellect Devourers (or whatever they're called), along with some other monsters are out of whack for their difficulty rating. This honestly just seems like a minor thing and easily fixed "on-the-fly" by a GM. I do think that 5e combat can be more deadly than the other systems. This means you just have to play smart and have a fair GM. But as someone who enjoys more challenging combat scenarios (e.g. in PFS I killed Runelord Krune on "hard mode," surviving a GM that was trying his best to kill us, and attempted to Wish our level 11-12 party into the sun), I don't mind this.
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Oct 15, 2014 19:39
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Dahbadu posted:I actually think 5e is a more progressive system than 13th Age 
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Oct 15, 2014 19:50
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Dahbadu posted:easily fixed "on-the-fly" by a GM. We're arguing that *we shouldn't have to*.
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Oct 15, 2014 19:53
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Well, it's not like 13th age is a paragon of progressiveness either.
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Oct 15, 2014 19:58
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Wait, people dislike the death saving throws thing? I thought that had basically unanimous approval here. The closest thing to a complaint about it that I've seen is that it's easy for enemies to accidentally bypass it entirely by bringing someone straight to dead at low levels.
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Oct 15, 2014 20:00
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Andrast posted:Well, it's not like 13th age is a paragon of progressiveness either. They dumped alignments at least 
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Oct 15, 2014 20:00
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Andrast posted:Well, it's not like 13th age is a paragon of progressiveness either. It sure isn't. At least it isn't aggressively retrograde as Next. Encounter math works, the system actually supports TotM combat — it's like an intellectually honest version of Next made by non-poo poo designers.
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Oct 15, 2014 20:02
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The Crotch posted:Wait, people dislike the death saving throws thing? I thought that had basically unanimous approval here. The closest thing to a complaint about it that I've seen is that it's easy for enemies to accidentally bypass it entirely by bringing someone straight to dead at low levels. I don't think I've seen any posts disliking it here, but that's not to say no-one does.
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Oct 15, 2014 20:03
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The Crotch posted:Wait, people dislike the death saving throws thing? I thought that had basically unanimous approval here. The closest thing to a complaint about it that I've seen is that it's easy for enemies to accidentally bypass it entirely by bringing someone straight to dead at low levels. Yeah, that's the complaint I'm talking about. Based on my experience, I disagree with it. I've falling unconscious like 3-4 times during play (I'm the tank in our group), from levels 1-3, so I have some experience being near death in 5e. I've felt "safer" compared to a near death state in Pathfinder/3.5.
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Oct 15, 2014 20:05
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I don't think much of 5e, but I have no complaints with the death-and-dying rules, they're pretty similar to 4e's, and a billion times better than 3e's "you die at -10" which was reasonable at 1st level but got ridiculous later on.Dahbadu posted:Yeah, that's the complaint I'm talking about. Based on my experience, I disagree with it. I've falling unconscious like 3-4 times during play (I'm the tank in our group), from levels 1-3, so I have some experience being near death in 5e. I've felt "safer" compared to a near death state in Pathfinder/3.5. That's not a complaint about the death rules, that's a complaint about monsters that can take you from full HP to dead before your turn even comes up.
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Oct 15, 2014 20:08
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This is the first time I've heard that some people don't like the death rules. Edit: Gort posted:That's not a complaint about the death rules, that's a complaint about monsters that can take you from full HP to dead before your turn even comes up.
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Oct 15, 2014 20:12
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Dahbadu posted:5e also feels vastly better than Pathfinder/3.x, which is key for me. I think this is the heart of it for me. Since I pretty much skipped 4e entirely and no one in our group wants to run it, we're fine going straight to 5e, and the 5e rules are what I wanted 3.P to be. E: There aren't any online character creators yet, are there. Sigh. Peas and Rice fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Oct 15, 2014 |
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Oct 15, 2014 20:26
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