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Envyus
2014-07-07, 01:56 AM
They posted guidlines on how to build encounters. It's not the final version and is subject to change but it's out.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20140707

Inevitability
2014-07-07, 09:03 AM
Interesting. It is clearly visible that WOTC is keeping the power curve flat. A challenging encounter at level 5 contains more XP than an easy 20th level encounter.

SpawnOfMorbo
2014-07-07, 09:41 AM
Interesting. It is clearly visible that WOTC is keeping the power curve flat. A challenging encounter at level 5 contains more XP than an easy 20th level encounter.

I like this.

It keeps the game away from going MOAR POWER. Power gaming can still be done, but you shouldn't need to power game in order to keep up with the game... Unlike in some other editions.

TheOOB
2014-07-07, 11:54 PM
I feel like with this system you can continue using weaker monsters to challenge the players even at high levels.

Noldo
2014-07-08, 12:56 AM
Interesting. It is clearly visible that WOTC is keeping the power curve flat. A challenging encounter at level 5 contains more XP than an easy 20th level encounter.

The positive side effect of (relatively) flat power curve is that the characters should not outgrow the world. In RAW 3.5 the characters could grow in matter of weeks (of in game time) from lousy ragamuffin to forces that could realistically conquer most nations (unless those nations had equally powerful individuals, and if they do, why where our heroes ever needed?).

At least the first impression appears to support the view that in 5E the characters might reach the level of legendary heroes capable of doing legendary deeds, but they still fit into the world and the pseudo-medieval world might remain to make sense.

TheOOB
2014-07-08, 01:09 AM
The positive side effect of (relatively) flat power curve is that the characters should not outgrow the world. In RAW 3.5 the characters could grow in matter of weeks (of in game time) from lousy ragamuffin to forces that could realistically conquer most nations (unless those nations had equally powerful individuals, and if they do, why where our heroes ever needed?).

At least the first impression appears to support the view that in 5E the characters might reach the level of legendary heroes capable of doing legendary deeds, but they still fit into the world and the pseudo-medieval world might remain to make sense.

Basically then eliminated the Dynasty Warrior's Problem.

SpawnOfMorbo
2014-07-08, 12:49 PM
Basically then eliminated the Dynasty Warrior's Problem.

If you mean tying to stop players from being able to take over the world... Well it isn't about the DM saying yes or no, it is about the game assuming that you get at least X powerful to deal with things.

So if you hold back 3.5 PCs you are scrweing them over but if you don't hold them back you are screwing the in game world over.

5e seems to have fixed that problem, but hey, 5e Epic might become a thing where you start the game at level 20 and go from there.

Yorrin
2014-07-08, 12:52 PM
If you mean tying to stop players from being able to take over the world

Actually he's referring to the massive swarming of lesser opponents, which is how the fights in the Dynasty Warriors games always are. XP values that scale with how outnumbered you are are helpful.

TheOOB
2014-07-14, 03:03 AM
Actually he's referring to the massive swarming of lesser opponents, which is how the fights in the Dynasty Warriors games always are. XP values that scale with how outnumbered you are are helpful.

Right. 3.x had a problem where high level characters could basically say "You'll only hit me on a 20, and I'll only miss on a 5. I'll kill you in 1 hit, and you can't bypass my DR/Fast Healing" which literally allowed them to wade alone into groups of hundreds of foes and win handily.

da_chicken
2014-07-14, 09:47 AM
Yeah, players can definitely still take over the world. It just so happens that the most effective way to do that now is probably raising your own army.

I'm 100% fine with that.

SpawnOfMorbo
2014-07-14, 09:52 AM
Yeah, players can definitely still take over the world. It just so happens that the most effective way to do that now is probably raising your own army.

I'm 100% fine with that.

Finger of Death, literally raising your own army.

Fwiffo86
2014-07-14, 09:57 AM
Yeah, players can definitely still take over the world. It just so happens that the most effective way to do that now is probably raising your own army.

I'm 100% fine with that.

I second this.

Gone are the days of Mortal Gods, and returned are the days of Heroes.

Or something equally cheesy said in the announcer voice.

SpawnOfMorbo
2014-07-14, 10:00 AM
I second this.

Gone are the days of Mortal Gods, and returned are the days of Heroes.

Or something equally cheesy said in the announcer voice.

In all honesty I read that in Morgan Freeman's voice. Wasn't cheesy at all.

da_chicken
2014-07-14, 10:47 AM
Finger of Death, literally raising your own army.

Have you seen the stats of the humanoid zombies (the spell restricts itself to humanoids)? In Legacy of the Crystal Shard they were 9 hp, AC 8, move 20 ft., average save of -2, with a single melee attack at +2 for 1d4+2 damage. They have about a 50% chance when brought to 0 hp to instead go to 1 hp, but beyond that they're really quite awful. Attacking a fortified location would require thousands, and Finger of Death doesn't allow you to refill your ranks like Animate Dead. Making those one seventh level spell at a time is laughable. A 20th level Wizard can make a whopping five a day and they would be worth 50 XP in total to an adventuring party. To a 1st level PC all by himself at five to one odds, that would be triple XP. That's 150 XP... which is just barely enough to be a Hard encounter.

Tholomyes
2014-07-14, 10:54 AM
I'm not terribly a big fan of the way this seems to be working out. CR is basically meaningless, as far as it seems, because if you look at the XP guidelines vs the XP per CR, you slowly see CR = Level monsters go from a moderate encounter at level 1 to nearly a Hard encounter by level 8. Say what you will about 3e's CR system, at least CR = Level was always supposed to be an average encounter, even if it didn't work out that way in practice. And 4e made it really simple, in that X Level Y monsters were an average encounter for X Level Y PCs (where you could also change out a monster for a few minions, or two monsters for an elite, and alter up levels slightly, and so on, so it wasn't always a 5-on-5). With this, There's not really an easy way to build encounters, except with that table and a calculator/pad and paper.

Still, my other main gripe is that the 2-encounter per day assumption seems pretty low. I'm hoping they add suggestions for alternate rules to combat this, especially given that combat goes by so quick in 5e. It's not like higher level 3e and 4e, where you might need to cut back on fights per day, since they take so long.

SpawnOfMorbo
2014-07-14, 11:24 AM
Have you seen the stats of the humanoid zombies (the spell restricts itself to humanoids)? In Legacy of the Crystal Shard they were 9 hp, AC 8, move 20 ft., average save of -2, with a single melee attack at +2 for 1d4+2 damage. They have about a 50% chance when brought to 0 hp to instead go to 1 hp, but beyond that they're really quite awful. Attacking a fortified location would require thousands, and Finger of Death doesn't allow you to refill your ranks like Animate Dead. Making those one seventh level spell at a time is laughable. A 20th level Wizard can make a whopping five a day and they would be worth 50 XP in total to an adventuring party. To a 1st level PC all by himself at five to one odds, that would be triple XP. That's 150 XP... which is just barely enough to be a Hard encounter.

First of all, thanks for taking that seriously. And here I thought people would think I was joking.:smallwink:

da_chicken
2014-07-14, 11:42 AM
I'm not terribly a big fan of the way this seems to be working out. CR is basically meaningless, as far as it seems, because if you look at the XP guidelines vs the XP per CR, you slowly see CR = Level monsters go from a moderate encounter at level 1 to nearly a Hard encounter by level 8. Say what you will about 3e's CR system, at least CR = Level was always supposed to be an average encounter, even if it didn't work out that way in practice. And 4e made it really simple, in that X Level Y monsters were an average encounter for X Level Y PCs (where you could also change out a monster for a few minions, or two monsters for an elite, and alter up levels slightly, and so on, so it wasn't always a 5-on-5). With this, There's not really an easy way to build encounters, except with that table and a calculator/pad and paper.

Remember the table is the XP budget per PC. You have 5 level 8 PCs and want a challenging encounter. 5 * 700 = 3500 XP budget. Now you look at CR 8 and below monsters to see what's in their range, and you pick whatever you want to be there until you're in the ballpark of 3500 XP.

The only hard part, IMO, is the outnumber rules when you want a gigantic horde. If you wanted 3500 XP worth of 10 XP zombies, for example, you kind of have to work backwards. How about 25 to 1. The XP multiplier is (25 + 1) / 2 = 13. 13 * 10 = 130 XP each, so that's 130 * 5 * 25 = 13,000 XP. Way too hard. How about 6 to 1? (6 + 1) / 2 = 3.5. 3.5 * 10 = 35 XP each. That's 6 * 5 * 35 = 1050 XP. Too little. 12 to 1. (12 + 1) / 2 = 6.5 --> 65 XP. That's 12 * 5 * 65 = 3900 XP. A little too high. How about 11 to 1. (11 + 1) / 2 = 6. 6 * 10 = 60 XP. 11 * 5 * 60 = 3300. There we go. That's 55 zombies with 200 XP to spare. So we can add 3 and make it 58 zombies for 3480 XP.


Still, my other main gripe is that the 2-encounter per day assumption seems pretty low. I'm hoping they add suggestions for alternate rules to combat this, especially given that combat goes by so quick in 5e. It's not like higher level 3e and 4e, where you might need to cut back on fights per day, since they take so long.

That's two hard encounters, which are about 150% the size of a challenging encounter. Our encounter above of an army of 58 zombies was 3480 XP. The daily XP budget is 5 * 1050 * 2 = 10,500 XP. Our zombie army is a third of that, meaning you're still talking 3 challenging encounters each day, 6 moderate encounters, or nearly 18 easy encounters.

da_chicken
2014-07-14, 11:43 AM
First of all, thanks for taking that seriously. And here I thought people would think I was joking.:smallwink:

On these boards you can't be too careful. :smalltongue:

SpawnOfMorbo
2014-07-14, 11:59 AM
On these boards you can't be too careful. :smalltongue:

True true

Though I'm sure eventually there will be a way to spam Finger of Death or whatever else to make hordes of undead.

Maybe a Necromancer wizard school?

da_chicken
2014-07-14, 12:33 PM
True true

Though I'm sure eventually there will be a way to spam Finger of Death or whatever else to make hordes of undead.

Maybe a Necromancer wizard school?

Oh, I'm sure Animate Dead is still a spell. Unlimited Zombies is hardly a major concern.

Palegreenpants
2014-07-14, 12:35 PM
Yeah, players can definitely still take over the world. It just so happens that the most effective way to do that now is probably raising your own army.

I'm 100% fine with that.

That's how we do it in the real world, and I'm fine with it as well.

Tholomyes
2014-07-14, 01:28 PM
Remember the table is the XP budget per PC. You have 5 level 8 PCs and want a challenging encounter. 5 * 700 = 3500 XP budget. Now you look at CR 8 and below monsters to see what's in their range, and you pick whatever you want to be there until you're in the ballpark of 3500 XP. Except look at the starter set. A CR 1 encounter is 200 XP, aka a moderate encounter for 4 level 1 PCs, but a CR 2 encounter is 450 XP, aka somewhere between a moderate and a challenging encounter for 4 level 2 PCs, as is a CR 3 encounter for level 3 characters, at 700 XP. A CR 4 encounter, at 1100 XP is only slightly less than a Challenging encounter for 4 level 4 PCs, and (since we don't have numbers for 5-7, but we can assume they lie somewhere in between) a CR 8 encounter, at 3,900 XP, is slightly less than a Hard encounter for 4 level 8 PCs. It's not easy to just look at the CR numbers and make an encounter based on those, the same way it was in 3e and especially 4e.


That's two hard encounters, which are about 150% the size of a challenging encounter. Our encounter above of an army of 58 zombies was 3480 XP. The daily XP budget is 5 * 1050 * 2 = 10,500 XP. Our zombie army is a third of that, meaning you're still talking 3 challenging encounters each day, 6 moderate encounters, or nearly 18 easy encounters. Oh, my mistake. So that's 3 or 4 encounters per day (I'm ignoring Easy encounters, since, well, look at the XP budget; they're hardly worth even mentioning). What a huge difference.

1337 b4k4
2014-07-14, 01:39 PM
Except look at the starter set. A CR 1 encounter is 200 XP, aka a moderate encounter for 4 level 1 PCs, but a CR 2 encounter is 450 XP, aka somewhere between a moderate and a challenging encounter for 4 level 2 PCs, as is a CR 3 encounter for level 3 characters, at 700 XP. A CR 4 encounter, at 1100 XP is only slightly less than a Challenging encounter for 4 level 4 PCs, and (since we don't have numbers for 5-7, but we can assume they lie somewhere in between) a CR 8 encounter, at 3,900 XP, is slightly less than a Hard encounter for 4 level 8 PCs. It's not easy to just look at the CR numbers and make an encounter based on those, the same way it was in 3e and especially 4e.

Admittedly I don't have the starter set sitting here to see exactly where you're getting these numbers from, but I think you're a bit confused. A monster CR rating has nothing to do with how difficult or not that monster will be as a solo encounter with the party. From my understanding, CR is a relative power comparison between monsters, and relates to players only in that it's a guide suggesting that this monster is an appropriate monster to use in a challenge for a party of CR Level or better. The actual difficulty of the encounter is still determined by the amount of XP budget you spend. In other words, CR doesn't mean "use this monster as a solo against a CR level party and it's a 'X difficulty' encounter"

TheOOB
2014-07-14, 02:16 PM
Admittedly I don't have the starter set sitting here to see exactly where you're getting these numbers from, but I think you're a bit confused. A monster CR rating has nothing to do with how difficult or not that monster will be as a solo encounter with the party. From my understanding, CR is a relative power comparison between monsters, and relates to players only in that it's a guide suggesting that this monster is an appropriate monster to use in a challenge for a party of CR Level or better. The actual difficulty of the encounter is still determined by the amount of XP budget you spend. In other words, CR doesn't mean "use this monster as a solo against a CR level party and it's a 'X difficulty' encounter"

The CR of a monster is the minimum level of a character/party that can be expected to have the resources and abilities to defeat it. An Ogre is CR 2 because it can take out a level one character in one hit for example.

The monsters XP value is it's difficulty, the CR is more of a DM warning that characters under a certain level just may not be able to defeat the creature.

Tholomyes
2014-07-14, 02:51 PM
Admittedly I don't have the starter set sitting here to see exactly where you're getting these numbers from, but I think you're a bit confused. A monster CR rating has nothing to do with how difficult or not that monster will be as a solo encounter with the party. From my understanding, CR is a relative power comparison between monsters, and relates to players only in that it's a guide suggesting that this monster is an appropriate monster to use in a challenge for a party of CR Level or better. The actual difficulty of the encounter is still determined by the amount of XP budget you spend. In other words, CR doesn't mean "use this monster as a solo against a CR level party and it's a 'X difficulty' encounter" I understand that's where they're coming from, but also by that same token, How is a CR 8 monster an appropriate challenge for a Level 8 party, if it's also nearly a Hard encounter, by XP rating? If it were an appropriate challenge, shouldn't it be at least in the moderate to challenging range?

But even more than that, just because that's what CR means, doesn't mean that it's the right way of presenting encounter building. In both 3e and 4e they managed to find a system that presented numbers for CR and Level, that corresponded with party level, and could easily be scaled back or forward for easier or more challenging encounters. It was simple to just look at the book, and find an encounter that suited the environment and the party, and you could (at least in 4e) decide to add more challenging monsters at the expense of normal monsters, and add a bunch of minions, at the expense of a normal monster, and keep the total challenge of the encounter roughly balanced. The fact that they are refusing to follow a similar way of doing things for 5e, gives me cause for concern, as even people who disliked 4e generally agree it was easy to DM and design encounters for (and 3e would likely be the same way, if the CR system did a better job at accurately representing the challenge of monsters or NPCs at higher levels).


The CR of a monster is the minimum level of a character/party that can be expected to have the resources and abilities to defeat it. An Ogre is CR 2 because it can take out a level one character in one hit for example.

The monsters XP value is it's difficulty, the CR is more of a DM warning that characters under a certain level just may not be able to defeat the creature.

I'd appreciate that way of doing things, if that were actually how it seemed they were going to do things, but it seems that they're sticking to a X CR = Y XP model, where:
1/8 CR = 25 XP
1/4 CR = 50 XP
1/2 CR = 100 XP
1 CR = 200 XP
2 CR = 450 XP
3 CR = 700 XP
4 CR = 1100 XP
and (since we're given nothing from 5-7) 8 CR = 3900 XP

Though, truth be told, I'd like them just take the 4e encounter design system, but perhaps give a CR, which determines the earliest they could safely used as an enemy without being too lethal.

1337 b4k4
2014-07-14, 03:04 PM
I understand that's where they're coming from, but also by that same token, How is a CR 8 monster an appropriate challenge for a Level 8 party, if it's also nearly a Hard encounter, by XP rating? If it were an appropriate challenge, shouldn't it be at least in the moderate to challenging range?

Because it's an appropriate challenge, just a hard one. I fail to see the issue.

Tholomyes
2014-07-14, 03:23 PM
Because it's an appropriate challenge, just a hard one. I fail to see the issue.

I can't see how you're failing to understand. If something is defined as an appropriate challenge for a given level, then why does what is considered an "appropriate challenge" based on CR, and an "appropriate challenge" based on the encounter building guide vary so wildly? If the designers believe that a Bugbear is an appropriate challenge for Level 1, and a Dragon is an appropriate challenge for level 8, then why is one considered only a moderate encounter, while the other is considered a Hard encounter? They're both listed as an appropriate challenge. If what is "appropriate" is considered a moderate encounter, then the dragon should be CR 18. If what is "appropriate" is a Hard encounter, then the Bugbear should only be CR 1/3. If what is "appropriate" is a challenging encounter, then the Bugbear should be CR 1/2 and the Dragon should be CR 10 or 11. But they should be standardized. One metric shouldn't say that a monster is an appropriate challenge, where another metric says that it's not. All that does is make encounter building that much harder on the DM.

1337 b4k4
2014-07-14, 03:37 PM
I can't see how you're failing to understand. If something is defined as an appropriate challenge for a given level, then why does what is considered an "appropriate challenge" based on CR, and an "appropriate challenge" based on the encounter building guide vary so wildly? If the designers believe that a Bugbear is an appropriate challenge for Level 1, and a Dragon is an appropriate challenge for level 8, then why is one considered only a moderate encounter, while the other is considered a Hard encounter? They're both listed as an appropriate challenge. If what is "appropriate" is considered a moderate encounter, then the dragon should be CR 18. If what is "appropriate" is a Hard encounter, then the Bugbear should only be CR 1/3. If what is "appropriate" is a challenging encounter, then the Bugbear should be CR 1/2 and the Dragon should be CR 10 or 11. But they should be standardized. One metric shouldn't say that a monster is an appropriate challenge, where another metric says that it's not. All that does is make encounter building that much harder on the DM.

Because you're confusing the two tools. Appropriate challenge means "falls within the XP range for encounter building for this level". Something can be an appropriate challenge and still be difficult, or it can be easy or moderate, but it's still appropriate. CR says "when can a party be reasonably expected to be able to handle this monster", XP budget tells you how hard it will be.

da_chicken
2014-07-14, 03:49 PM
Except look at the starter set. A CR 1 encounter is 200 XP, aka a moderate encounter for 4 level 1 PCs, but a CR 2 encounter is 450 XP, aka somewhere between a moderate and a challenging encounter for 4 level 2 PCs, as is a CR 3 encounter for level 3 characters, at 700 XP. A CR 4 encounter, at 1100 XP is only slightly less than a Challenging encounter for 4 level 4 PCs, and (since we don't have numbers for 5-7, but we can assume they lie somewhere in between) a CR 8 encounter, at 3,900 XP, is slightly less than a Hard encounter for 4 level 8 PCs. It's not easy to just look at the CR numbers and make an encounter based on those, the same way it was in 3e and especially 4e.

If my reading of the Buidling Encounters article is right, encounters don't have CRs. Creatures have CRs. Encounters just have XP values. So a 1000 XP encounter is simultaneously high challenging for 4 level 3 PCs, moderate to challenging for 4 level 4 PCs, moderate for 20 level 1 PCs, moderate for 2 level 10 PCs, and easy for 4 level 14 PCs. To build an encounter, you start with the PC's average level, the number of PCs, and determine the XP value. To determine how hard a given pre-built encounter is, you start with the XP value, the PC's average level, and the number of PCs. When I run 5e, for example, all my encounters have to be built for 8 PCs, not 4.

All CR does is tell you how dangerous the creature is. A 1000xp creature might have an AC of 16, for example. A first level Fighter can hit that on an 11 or better, but a breath weapon that deals 3d6 damage in an area makes it very deadly to low level parties. So if they call that CR 4, it tells you that it was designed to challenge characters of about level 4 regardless of how much XP it's worth. Those 20 level 1 PCs might be able to gang up and kill the creature pretty easily, but the monster has a few abilities (attacks, defenses, or both potentially) that just wildly outclass level 1 PCs. It's likely to outright kill many of them, even though they should be more than a match for the creature in the end if they don't care about losses. On the other hand, the two level 10 PCs might very well have some abilities which outclass the CR 4 monster, even though it's a moderate XP value.


Oh, my mistake. So that's 3 or 4 encounters per day (I'm ignoring Easy encounters, since, well, look at the XP budget; they're hardly worth even mentioning). What a huge difference.

I'm not sure what the sarcasm blue is for. The difference between 2 encounters and 4 encounters is significant. How many encounters per day do you run? I don't even think 4e expected more than about 4.

Tholomyes
2014-07-14, 04:21 PM
If my reading of the Buidling Encounters article is right, encounters don't have CRs. Creatures have CRs. Encounters just have XP values. So a 1000 XP encounter is simultaneously high challenging for 4 level 3 PCs, moderate to challenging for 4 level 4 PCs, moderate for 20 level 1 PCs, moderate for 2 level 10 PCs, and easy for 4 level 14 PCs. To build an encounter, you start with the PC's average level, the number of PCs, and determine the XP value. To determine how hard a given pre-built encounter is, you start with the XP value, the PC's average level, and the number of PCs. When I run 5e, for example, all my encounters have to be built for 8 PCs, not 4.

All CR does is tell you how dangerous the creature is. A 1000xp creature might have an AC of 16, for example. A first level Fighter can hit that on an 11 or better, but a breath weapon that deals 3d6 damage in an area makes it very deadly to low level parties. So if they call that CR 4, it tells you that it was designed to challenge characters of about level 4 regardless of how much XP it's worth. Those 20 level 1 PCs might be able to gang up and kill the creature pretty easily, but the monster has a few abilities (attacks, defenses, or both potentially) that just wildly outclass level 1 PCs. It's likely to outright kill many of them, even though they should be more than a match for the creature in the end if they don't care about losses. On the other hand, the two level 10 PCs might very well have some abilities which outclass the CR 4 monster, even though it's a moderate XP value. I understand that much. What I'm trying (and failing, apparently) to ask is "Why is this the desirable way of presenting the information to build an encounter?" It's not that they can't do it another way; they've had the past two editions where one could, just looking at the CR value or Level of the monsters in the MM, design up encounters at varying degrees of difficulty for parties of all levels. I could accept the argument that the CR system fell apart at higher levels in 3e, but from my experience with 4e, they managed to perfect it by that point. So again I just don't see why they didn't decide to do it that way. It's not like there's the issue that XP is how dangerous it is (regardless of level) while CR is the minimum level that it's feasible to use against a party, since, based on the information we have, XP is determined by CR. So all they'd have to do is make CR be the metric to tie encounter design to (which would be supplemented by XP budgets, which, since XP is a function of CR, would be easy to make equivalent)


I'm not sure what the sarcasm blue is for. The difference between 2 encounters and 4 encounters is significant. How many encounters per day do you run? I don't even think 4e expected more than about 4. It's not necessarily about what 4e did, since, in 4e each individual fight was longer, and more impactful. So I'd probably peg 4e's combat encounters to some multiple of 5e's (for simplicity's sake, say 2-to-1). With 5e, if I'm designing a series of encounters around something that's time sensitive (such as a cultist trying to summon an elder god or what have you) the decreased impact of each individual fight leads to decreased suspense built by each fight. So 4 5e fights might measure to the impact of 2 4e fights, meaning you'd need more fights in 5e to get a certain level of suspense, which is more than a 5e adventuring day could hold.

(As an aside, having to increase the number of combat encounters in 5e to match the individual impact of each 4e fight might seem like it would come with the 4e problem of bogging down the game too much with combat, but I'd disagree here; Even assuming the 2-to-1 conversion I had above, I've found in the playtest that 5e fights generally last 5-10 minutes. It seems in the finished game they might be longer, so I'll bump that to 10-15 minutes. Even with 2-to-1 conversion, that averages around 25 minutes, versus the ~an hour for 4e, so you still have a lot more time, beyond what 4e provided, for non-combat aspects.)

Fwiffo86
2014-07-14, 05:02 PM
Just for Devil's advocate purposes....

What if they just took out all references to CR?

The 4e way sounds very complicated to me. I know... 2 creatures = 1 elite, minions (which are designed to be hit and killed instantly <<IMO the dumbest thing I have ever heard of in a TTRPG>>) to tweak the opposing sides damage output, etc. I'm sure once you understand it, its most likely far less complicated than it sounds.

Call me old-school but I still use the (PC lvl/PC)*1.25 = Hit Dice budget method.

Tholomyes
2014-07-14, 05:23 PM
If they took out all references to CR, it'd have the same issues of being a hassle for the DM to make encounters, the only difference would be there'd be one less metric to determine whether it's an 'appropriate challenge.' Really the 3e/4e way is just easier for the DMs, I don't see why they're refusing to just try to use that. It might make more sense if XP weren't tied to CR, but since it is, it's just a step backwards for no good reason.

Stubbazubba
2014-07-14, 06:05 PM
It's not necessarily about what 4e did, since, in 4e each individual fight was longer, and more impactful. So I'd probably peg 4e's combat encounters to some multiple of 5e's (for simplicity's sake, say 2-to-1). With 5e, if I'm designing a series of encounters around something that's time sensitive (such as a cultist trying to summon an elder god or what have you) the decreased impact of each individual fight leads to decreased suspense built by each fight. So 4 5e fights might measure to the impact of 2 4e fights, meaning you'd need more fights in 5e to get a certain level of suspense, which is more than a 5e adventuring day could hold.

(As an aside, having to increase the number of combat encounters in 5e to match the individual impact of each 4e fight might seem like it would come with the 4e problem of bogging down the game too much with combat, but I'd disagree here; Even assuming the 2-to-1 conversion I had above, I've found in the playtest that 5e fights generally last 5-10 minutes. It seems in the finished game they might be longer, so I'll bump that to 10-15 minutes. Even with 2-to-1 conversion, that averages around 25 minutes, versus the ~an hour for 4e, so you still have a lot more time, beyond what 4e provided, for non-combat aspects.)

I'm not sure why you think stretching out the long tail of each combat builds suspense or delivers more impact. Where does this idea come from?

da_chicken
2014-07-14, 06:12 PM
I understand that much. What I'm trying (and failing, apparently) to ask is "Why is this the desirable way of presenting the information to build an encounter?" It's not that they can't do it another way; they've had the past two editions where one could, just looking at the CR value or Level of the monsters in the MM, design up encounters at varying degrees of difficulty for parties of all levels. I could accept the argument that the CR system fell apart at higher levels in 3e, but from my experience with 4e, they managed to perfect it by that point. So again I just don't see why they didn't decide to do it that way. It's not like there's the issue that XP is how dangerous it is (regardless of level) while CR is the minimum level that it's feasible to use against a party, since, based on the information we have, XP is determined by CR. So all they'd have to do is make CR be the metric to tie encounter design to (which would be supplemented by XP budgets, which, since XP is a function of CR, would be easy to make equivalent)

Don't know. All I can think of is that this gives them the flexibility to use different XP values for creatures of the same CR. At low levels this doesn't make much sense because CRs are so grandular, but it may as levels and XP rewards increase. Maybe they think this presentation encourages a deeper mix instead of CR X +/- 2.


It's not necessarily about what 4e did, since, in 4e each individual fight was longer, and more impactful. So I'd probably peg 4e's combat encounters to some multiple of 5e's (for simplicity's sake, say 2-to-1). With 5e, if I'm designing a series of encounters around something that's time sensitive (such as a cultist trying to summon an elder god or what have you) the decreased impact of each individual fight leads to decreased suspense built by each fight. So 4 5e fights might measure to the impact of 2 4e fights, meaning you'd need more fights in 5e to get a certain level of suspense, which is more than a 5e adventuring day could hold.

Ah, see I just meant that 4e, IMX, had the most resilient PCs. When I played 4e, we routinely went to 3 encounters and sometimes 4 even if they were hard because the DM made all our items get better after milestones. (He implemented this after we kept doing 1 encounter days.) We're much more likely to stop after 1 or 2 in 3.x. And I don't think 4e's encounters had impact. I think they just had length. We play 8 hour sessions weekly, and we'd often only be able to get 1 and a half encounters in. Yes, at level ~15 we had encounters last 5 hours. Keep in mind I played before MM3 and Essentials were a thing, so a lot of our games involved stock MM1 creatures, and we had between 6 and 8 players at the table, and only three of the people at the table (including the DM) had any system mastery or interest in acquiring system mastery.


(As an aside, having to increase the number of combat encounters in 5e to match the individual impact of each 4e fight might seem like it would come with the 4e problem of bogging down the game too much with combat, but I'd disagree here; Even assuming the 2-to-1 conversion I had above, I've found in the playtest that 5e fights generally last 5-10 minutes. It seems in the finished game they might be longer, so I'll bump that to 10-15 minutes. Even with 2-to-1 conversion, that averages around 25 minutes, versus the ~an hour for 4e, so you still have a lot more time, beyond what 4e provided, for non-combat aspects.)

That seems fine by me. We have a large play group, so faster combats are almost certainly going to be a good thing. It's one reason I'm interested in 5e.

rlc
2014-07-15, 08:09 AM
If they took out all references to CR, it'd have the same issues of being a hassle for the DM to make encounters, the only difference would be there'd be one less metric to determine whether it's an 'appropriate challenge.' Really the 3e/4e way is just easier for the DMs, I don't see why they're refusing to just try to use that. It might make more sense if XP weren't tied to CR, but since it is, it's just a step backwards for no good reason.

See, I feel the opposite way. I think the 5e way makes the most sense. And is the most robust with the least amount of variables when compared to those other two (or any other previous editions). 3e says that w more monsters makes the CR of the encounter increase by x. 4e says that the levels are close, except for in y and z situations. 5e says the levels are close, but based on a party's size.
So, like a lot of things in 5e, it's a combination of things from previous editions to try and make it make the most sense and I feel like they did with this.

Doug Lampert
2014-07-15, 10:10 AM
See, I feel the opposite way. I think the 5e way makes the most sense. And is the most robust with the least amount of variables when compared to those other two (or any other previous editions). 3e says that w more monsters makes the CR of the encounter increase by x. 4e says that the levels are close, except for in y and z situations. 5e says the levels are close, but based on a party's size.
So, like a lot of things in 5e, it's a combination of things from previous editions to try and make it make the most sense and I feel like they did with this.

4th each monster has a level and XP value, you have an XP budget for each encounter based on number of characters and encounter difficulty, there is a table of XP values for different difficulties based on level and you multiply by the number of characters for an XP budget and are supposed to make up that XP value based on monsters of appropriate level.

5th each monster has a CR and XP value, you have an XP budget for each encounter based on number of characters and encounter difficulty, there is a table of XP values for different difficulties based on level and you multiply by the number of characters for an XP budget and are supposed to make up that XP value based on monsters of appropriate level. There is a complicated adjustment to monster XP values based on number of monsters if this is greater than double the party numbers.

Notice, the TOTAL differences between those two paragraphs are the edition number, replacing monster level with CR, and the fifth edition adjustment for outnumbered parties, which is non-trivial to use since you have to make up the encounter prior to figuring the XP value and the effect of adding or removing a monster is non-linear.

If I were going into detail I'd have to say that appropriate level largely means to stay within about 4 levels in 4th edition and to not use monsters with CR higher than level in 5th edition.

But other than that and the rules for being badly outnumbered in 5th the rules are IDENTICAL with a global search and replace on "monster level" for "CR".

As yet it seems we have no monsters with XP that doesn't exactly correspond to CR, so it's the fourth edition system without anything but standard monsters and with a weird adjustment, which is in fact excessively complicated, but that's minor and the play tests had various XP values for monsters of the same level so I don't expect it to last.

rlc
2014-07-15, 10:41 AM
Yeah, that's basically what I was saying (or at least trying to say), but there were some weird exceptions to some things in 4e (mostly minions) that 5e got rid of.

Tholomyes
2014-07-15, 01:42 PM
4th each monster has a level and XP value, you have an XP budget for each encounter based on number of characters and encounter difficulty, there is a table of XP values for different difficulties based on level and you multiply by the number of characters for an XP budget and are supposed to make up that XP value based on monsters of appropriate level.

5th each monster has a CR and XP value, you have an XP budget for each encounter based on number of characters and encounter difficulty, there is a table of XP values for different difficulties based on level and you multiply by the number of characters for an XP budget and are supposed to make up that XP value based on monsters of appropriate level. There is a complicated adjustment to monster XP values based on number of monsters if this is greater than double the party numbers.

Notice, the TOTAL differences between those two paragraphs are the edition number, replacing monster level with CR, and the fifth edition adjustment for outnumbered parties, which is non-trivial to use since you have to make up the encounter prior to figuring the XP value and the effect of adding or removing a monster is non-linear.

If I were going into detail I'd have to say that appropriate level largely means to stay within about 4 levels in 4th edition and to not use monsters with CR higher than level in 5th edition.

But other than that and the rules for being badly outnumbered in 5th the rules are IDENTICAL with a global search and replace on "monster level" for "CR".

As yet it seems we have no monsters with XP that doesn't exactly correspond to CR, so it's the fourth edition system without anything but standard monsters and with a weird adjustment, which is in fact excessively complicated, but that's minor and the play tests had various XP values for monsters of the same level so I don't expect it to last.The difference that I'm not sure why so many people aren't seeing, is that in 4th, X Level Y Monsters were an average challenge for X Level Y PCs. In 3rd ed, it was a bit different, in that 1 CR X monster was (in theory) an average challenge for 4 Level X PCs.

In 5e, however, there is no consistency to what XP and CR mean. The problem isn't that 5e is using CR and XP budgets, but that At level 1, a CR 1 monster is a moderate encounter for 4 PCs, where at level 8, a CR 8 monster is a Hard encounter for 4 PCs. The CR value barely means anything, since it doesn't represent the difficulty of the monster relative an equal leveled party, across all levels.

da_chicken
2014-07-15, 02:38 PM
The difference that I'm not sure why so many people aren't seeing, is that in 4th, X Level Y Monsters were an average challenge for X Level Y PCs. In 3rd ed, it was a bit different, in that 1 CR X monster was (in theory) an average challenge for 4 Level X PCs.

In 5e, however, there is no consistency to what XP and CR mean. The problem isn't that 5e is using CR and XP budgets, but that At level 1, a CR 1 monster is a moderate encounter for 4 PCs, where at level 8, a CR 8 monster is a Hard encounter for 4 PCs. The CR value barely means anything, since it doesn't represent the difficulty of the monster relative an equal leveled party, across all levels.

How many CR 8 monsters are you looking at? Is it a dragon or something? I'm picking up my Starter Kit later today, so I don't have it yet. Dragons would be a perfect creature to lowball the CR on because you always want dragon encounters to be hard, but you shouldn't be lowballing the XP on them because you should always be rewarded the amount you deserve for winning the encounter.

TheOOB
2014-07-15, 02:47 PM
I don't get why people find the 5e system so hard. You just add together the xp of the encounter so see it's difficulty. If you want a level 6 "challenging" encounter, use 500 xp worth of monsters per player, and avoid using any single monster over CR 6. There are special notes saying you might want to increase XP for huge groups, but otherwise it's super straight forward.

Human Paragon 3
2014-07-15, 02:54 PM
One thing I'll miss from 4e (note that I only played it three times) is the monster roles (soldier, artillery, etc). This made it very easy for DMs to build encounters. I like the idea of minions and elites too, even if they were badly executed. I hope 5e keeps some of those DM cues to make encounter building a little easier.

Doug Lampert
2014-07-15, 04:39 PM
Yeah, that's basically what I was saying (or at least trying to say), but there were some weird exceptions to some things in 4e (mostly minions) that 5e got rid of.

No, that's not an exception, that's why you have both a level and XP budget, without multiple monsters at the same level with different XP values one of the two numbers is redundant.

5th edition has low level monsters that will ALWAYS be killed by one hit and can still target the characters and do less damage and are worth less XP. These simply aren't called minions anymore. Big deal.

Except that the way 5th edition does it they need special XP rules for large groups that 4th edition didn't need.


The difference that I'm not sure why so many people aren't seeing, is that in 4th, X Level Y Monsters were an average challenge for X Level Y PCs. In 3rd ed, it was a bit different, in that 1 CR X monster was (in theory) an average challenge for 4 Level X PCs.

In 5e, however, there is no consistency to what XP and CR mean. The problem isn't that 5e is using CR and XP budgets, but that At level 1, a CR 1 monster is a moderate encounter for 4 PCs, where at level 8, a CR 8 monster is a Hard encounter for 4 PCs. The CR value barely means anything, since it doesn't represent the difficulty of the monster relative an equal leveled party, across all levels.

How is this inconsistent? Level and XP measure different things. Post errata a level 21+ minion in 4th edition is worth 1/30th the XP of an equal level solo, this isn't inconsistent, level is "which monsters can I use", XP is "How many should I use", the two are telling you different things and if they are identical then one is redundant.

In 5th the PC level is a ceiling on expected monster level rather than the center of a range, if you want a moderate 5 on 5 encounter at level 20, it's fairly trivial to make one using monsters of level 1-20, which is the range you're allowed.

The 5e play test documents used this difference in assigning levels and XP values, if 5e does not also use it I'll be disappointed. They'll be losing part of the flexibility their system provides.

3rd edition provides a MARVELOUS example of how insisting that EVERY monster had a single number for both "how appropriate" and "how difficult" is bad. The shadow is a near guaranteed TPK at equal CR, and an overvalued pushover at level 7. The 3rd edition shadow SHOULD have a level of 5 or so, and an XP value much lower than you'd expect, or it should be a level 8 minion. Then you could put it out alone or as part of an encounter with a Greater Shadow, and it would have worked well. What it should not be is CR 3 where it doesn't work for any level party.

TheOOB
2014-07-16, 02:50 AM
One thing I'll miss from 4e (note that I only played it three times) is the monster roles (soldier, artillery, etc). This made it very easy for DMs to build encounters. I like the idea of minions and elites too, even if they were badly executed. I hope 5e keeps some of those DM cues to make encounter building a little easier.

The problem with the monster roles, as is the problem with a lot of 4e, is they created a sort of tunnel vision. When you structure absolutely everything and put it in a framework, you start to think only in said framework. Most DM's will be able to quickly learn what monters are tough, which are powerful, ect, just by looking at them, but by not having to catagorize the monsters, there is more freedom when making monsters.

SpawnOfMorbo
2014-07-16, 07:02 AM
The problem with the monster roles, as is the problem with a lot of 4e, is they created a sort of tunnel vision. When you structure absolutely everything and put it in a framework, you start to think only in said framework. Most DM's will be able to quickly learn what monters are tough, which are powerful, ect, just by looking at them, but by not having to catagorize the monsters, there is more freedom when making monsters.

I don't think that 4e pushed this all that much more than NY other edition. Everything you said can be applied to 3.5 easily, DMs tend to get this tunnel vision based on monster reputation, CR, or how much XP they are worth.

Giving monster roles doesn't increase this tunnel vision, just gives it a new outlet.

Inevitability
2014-07-16, 08:46 AM
Regarding monster roles, I don't mind them. It's just another way of getting what monster you want.

In 4e, if I want a monster that is tough and can knock people down, I don't have to read through all the Monster Manuals / Monster Vaults. I can just take out the table in the back of the book and search for a 'level x soldier'.

Tunnel-visioned? Maybe.
Convenient? Most certainly.

da_chicken
2014-07-16, 10:48 AM
I don't think that 4e pushed this all that much more than NY other edition.

Of course it did. No other edition has published roles for monsters or defined damage as a function of role. The very act of putting a category on the monster decreases the likelihood that it will be used for anything other than the specified role. I mean, the alignment entry for Ogre says "Usually Chaotic Evil". How often is an Ogre not CE in actual play? And that's when it says "usually".

SpawnOfMorbo
2014-07-16, 11:02 AM
Of course it did. No other edition has published roles for monsters or defined damage as a function of role. The very act of putting a category on the monster decreases the likelihood that it will be used for anything other than the specified role. I mean, the alignment entry for Ogre says "Usually Chaotic Evil". How often is an Ogre not CE in actual play? And that's when it says "usually".

You disagree and then give an exact example how other editions do the same thing toward tunnelvision?

I'm not saying it isn't there, I'm just saying that the 4e tunnel vision is no worse than any other edition, and actually I think the categories help take away some tunnel vision. For years my DM would use goblins like brutes or soldiers in our 2e and 3.t games, however when 4e came out he read up on the lurker rules and applied them to goblins. I'm not even sure what their official role is. Plus many monsters don't have just 1 role to fill. Some will have a Minion, Brute, and Controller role for the same monster.

Also, Usually and Always evil in 3.5 both didn't mean "usually" and "always", in 3.5, always evil meant 90% likely and usually evil is more like sometimes evil. Yet anytime a DM used an orc... Boom evil to the bone.

da_chicken
2014-07-16, 11:28 AM
You disagree and then give an exact example how other editions do the same thing toward tunnelvision?

Yes. The point isn't that pre-4e didn't suffer from pigeonholing. It's that 4e's roles made it more severe. In pre-4e you had alignment categories. In 4e had both alignment and role. Two categories pigeonhole even more than one.

If a creature is listed as "Lawful Good," that says something about them. If they're listed as "Outsider," that says something about them. If they're listed as "Controller," that says something. There's a difference between a "Lawful Good Immortal Humanoid Soldier" and "Lawful Good Immortal Humanoid Controller" that you don't even need to read the rest of the monster block to understand. 3e would list both monsters as "Lawful Good Outsider". 1e/2e would just list them both as "Lawful Good". (And BECMI would just say "Lawful"!)


I'm not saying it isn't there, I'm just saying that the 4e tunnel vision is no worse than any other edition, and actually I think the categories help take away some tunnel vision. For years my DM would use goblins like brutes or soldiers in our 2e and 3.t games, however when 4e came out he read up on the lurker rules and applied them to goblins. I'm not even sure what their official role is. Plus many monsters don't have just 1 role to fill. Some will have a Minion, Brute, and Controller role for the same monster.

So instead of your DM doing what he thought Goblins should do, he did what the Monster Manual told him Goblins should do. This as an example of roles discouraging pigeonholing? Sure, he played them differently than he normally does, but he still followed exactly what the book told him rather than expanding into something new.


Also, Usually and Always evil in 3.5 both didn't mean "usually" and "always", in 3.5, always evil meant 90% likely and usually evil is more like sometimes evil. Yet anytime a DM used an orc... Boom evil to the bone.

I'm pretty sure that "Usually" meant "usually" and "Always" meant "always". Neither word is defined in the glossary or elsewhere, so the plain English meaning should probably be assumed. Obviously there's fudge factor built into both words (well, not "Always") but that's just table to table variance, not de jure variance.

Sartharina
2014-07-16, 11:41 AM
Also, Usually and Always evil in 3.5 both didn't mean "usually" and "always", in 3.5, always evil meant 90% likely and usually evil is more like sometimes evil. Yet anytime a DM used an orc... Boom evil to the bone."Always Evil" in 3.5 meant "One per campaign may not be evil". Not 1 out of every 10.

And Usually Evil meant you'll find nonevil groups occasionally.

SpawnOfMorbo
2014-07-16, 11:47 AM
I'm pretty sure that "Usually" meant "usually" and "Always" meant "always". Neither word is defined in the glossary or elsewhere, so the plain English meaning should probably be assumed. Obviously there's fudge factor built into both words (well, not "Always") but that's just table to table variance, not de jure variance.

No... You would think that is what it would mean but they defined what " Always Alignment" meant and it was more like 90% likely or something silly like that.

A great example of this is the LG Succubus Paladin that they put in one of the books. Succubus are always Chaotic Evil.

hawklost
2014-07-16, 12:20 PM
No... You would think that is what it would mean but they defined what " Always Alignment" meant and it was more like 90% likely or something silly like that.

A great example of this is the LG Succubus Paladin that they put in one of the books. Succubus are always Chaotic Evil.

There are pretty much only 2 times that a campaign would have something different then what was set as Always Alignment.

1) If a player created the character - This is expected and even encouraged in some cases. But in almost every edition, the book specifically make a point that PCs are NOT typical in any way (including alignment restrictions).

2) If the DM wants to throw a NAMED NPC into the mix for some reason. Most of the time this was just because the DM (like players) wanted to flout the stereotype of the race and make something different cause they loved the idea. Or in the case of a Book, because the Author loved the idea so much, but they could be considered the DM of a book in that case.

In Both cases, these are extremely rare occurrences. Even if every single PC was the Same race and all were inherently evil but all played LG characters, the percentage of that race that was Not evil would be so minuscule (as in less then .0001%). As such, always means more than 99.9999% of the time the race is what it is claimed.

Doug Lampert
2014-07-16, 01:01 PM
I'm pretty sure that "Usually" meant "usually" and "Always" meant "always". Neither word is defined in the glossary or elsewhere, so the plain English meaning should probably be assumed. Obviously there's fudge factor built into both words (well, not "Always") but that's just table to table variance, not de jure variance.
Incorrect statement is incorrect.

Both terms were defined in the MM1 for both 3.0 and 3.5 in the section cleverly labeled something like "How to read a monster entry".

The definitions changed some from 3.0 (which gave actual percentages) to 3.5 (which did not).

3.5 is basically:

Always did not mean always, it meant the overwhelming majority. (IIRC 3.0 actually said something like "unique or one in a million", but stated that there were definitely exceptions and it definitely did not mean all. 3.5 is vaguer allowing people to claim things like 1% or 10% which are not IMAO born out by the text.)

Usually meant more than half. (50-60% in 3.0, anything more than half and less than always in 3.5)

Often meant a plurality but less than half. (40-50% in 3.0, anything less than half and more than any other in 3.5)

If you want the exact wording read your monster manual, which surprisingly enough is the primary source on things like monster alignment and the logical place to find this.

da_chicken
2014-07-16, 01:02 PM
No... You would think that is what it would mean but they defined what " Always Alignment" meant and it was more like 90% likely or something silly like that.

I disagree. I think "Always" really is meant to be always, and it then gets ignored for one-off NPCs (or PCs) because subverting the status quo (http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070121062918/uncyclopedia/images/1/15/Drizzt.jpg) is a cheap literary trope.


A great example of this is the LG Succubus Paladin that they put in one of the books. Succubus are always Chaotic Evil.

On a tangent, this is something I'm glad they fixed with 5e. A demon doesn't choose to be CE any more than a Human chooses to be carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and trace elements. A Succubus is CE, and if it ever ceases to be CE it ceases to be a Succubus.

SpawnOfMorbo
2014-07-16, 01:41 PM
I disagree. I think "Always" really is meant to be always, and it then gets ignored for one-off NPCs (or PCs) because subverting the status quo (http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070121062918/uncyclopedia/images/1/15/Drizzt.jpg) is a cheap literary trope.



On a tangent, this is something I'm glad they fixed with 5e. A demon doesn't choose to be CE any more than a Human chooses to be carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and trace elements. A Succubus is CE, and if it ever ceases to be CE it ceases to be a Succubus.

Read the comment above yours to get a better explanation than I gave, I haven't read the monster manual for a long time but I remembered that usually and always were used weirdly by WotC... Which you know has always had a base case of not having an editor or proof readers -_-

See, the biggest problem with that kind of thinking is that if the succubus has no way of changing they are CE or can't help but CE then can you really punish her for any crimes committed? Morally you can not because she knows not what she does. You can stop her, but any punishment you bring down upon the succubus is unwarented because she didn't choose to do anything, her alignment made her choose to do it.

It would be like if Google made a robot and went around being a criminal, do you punish the robot or do you punish google? The robot (succubus) is running by programming by Google (Alignment) and is not responsible for its actions.

So making demons have no free will is not only silly but morally ambiguous and quite boring.

You shut off a ton options if you take the free will from demons or any other group of creatures. And by saying that a creature HAS to be X alignment you are in fact taking away free will. That succubus may be made up of CE energy but who is to say she doesn't hate the way abyss/hell/whatever is ran and she rebels against her nature?

Sartharina
2014-07-16, 01:46 PM
Read the comment above yours to get a better explanation than I gave, I haven't read the monster manual for a long time but I remembered that usually and always were used weirdly by WotC... Which you know has always had a base case of not having an editor or proof readers -_-

See, the biggest problem with that kind of thinking is that if the succubus has no way of changing they are CE or can't help but CE then can you really punish her for any crimes committed? Morally you can not because she knows not what she does. You can stop her, but any punishment you bring down upon the succubus is unwarented because she didn't choose to do anything, her alignment made her choose to do it.

It would be like if Google made a robot and went around being a criminal, do you punish the robot or do you punish google? The robot (succubus) is running by programming by Google (Alignment) and is not responsible for its actions.

So making demons have no free will is not only silly but morally ambiguous and quite boring.

You shut off a ton options if you take the free will from demons or any other group of creatures. And by saying that a creature HAS to be X alignment you are in fact taking away free will. That succubus may be made up of CE energy but who is to say she doesn't hate the way abyss/hell/whatever is ran and she rebels against her nature?
1. You shut the robot down anyway, because Google is too big for you to take on with any effect. The Succubus does know what it does - it just doesn't care, or can't help itself. It's not given immunity just because "it's wrong to destroy her for what she is". And, she has free will in how she enacts her evil nature.
2. Evil isn't fair, and forces the world to be unfair as well.
3. Outsiders are manifestations of primal forces, not people. A succubus is like a thunderstorm that's short+sexy instead of massive and puffy, and shoots soul-draining and seduction instead of hailstones and lightning bolts.
4. It doesn't say a Succubus can't stop being Evil. The other implication is it can stop being a Succubus if it's 'redeemed'. So everyone's favorite Succubus Paladin would find herself as an Archon of some sort when she converted over.

pwykersotz
2014-07-16, 02:16 PM
Read the comment above yours to get a better explanation than I gave, I haven't read the monster manual for a long time but I remembered that usually and always were used weirdly by WotC... Which you know has always had a base case of not having an editor or proof readers -_-

See, the biggest problem with that kind of thinking is that if the succubus has no way of changing they are CE or can't help but CE then can you really punish her for any crimes committed? Morally you can not because she knows not what she does. You can stop her, but any punishment you bring down upon the succubus is unwarented because she didn't choose to do anything, her alignment made her choose to do it.

It would be like if Google made a robot and went around being a criminal, do you punish the robot or do you punish google? The robot (succubus) is running by programming by Google (Alignment) and is not responsible for its actions.

So making demons have no free will is not only silly but morally ambiguous and quite boring.

You shut off a ton options if you take the free will from demons or any other group of creatures. And by saying that a creature HAS to be X alignment you are in fact taking away free will. That succubus may be made up of CE energy but who is to say she doesn't hate the way abyss/hell/whatever is ran and she rebels against her nature?

Now I want to see a campaign where moral relativism has gotten to a point that humans decide the planes themselves are responsible for all this stuff and try to destroy/subvert them to stop the production of soulless entities of so-called ideology. Save the angels and demons from their chains! :smallbiggrin:

SpawnOfMorbo
2014-07-16, 02:20 PM
Now I want to see a campaign where moral relativism has gotten to a point that humans decide the planes themselves are responsible for all this stuff and try to destroy/subvert them to stop the production of soulless entities of so-called ideology. Save the angels and demons from their chains! :smallbiggrin:

That does sound badass... Like Spell jammer on roids.

I'm guessing the players would need to be Chaotic Good for this mission...

*also I put robot in my last post, I meant sentient robots. They know they are "alive" but have to follow a programming. Think Futurama.

Sartharina
2014-07-16, 02:22 PM
I'm guessing the players would need to be Chaotic Good for this mission...
But then they'd be pumping out Eladrins!

Just because it's human-shaped doesn't mean it's a person.

SpawnOfMorbo
2014-07-16, 02:27 PM
Just because it's human-shaped doesn't mean it's a person.

How very horrible of you. That sort of thinking lead to very very horrible events in human history and I rather not repeat them in a TTRPG game*.

Edit: as a player controlling a PC.

Sartharina
2014-07-16, 02:33 PM
Welcome to fantasy, where the laws and realities of our world aren't necessarily true.

I also own mannequins. And wax sculptures. And robots.

Tholomyes
2014-07-16, 02:51 PM
How is this inconsistent? Level and XP measure different things. Post errata a level 21+ minion in 4th edition is worth 1/30th the XP of an equal level solo, this isn't inconsistent, level is "which monsters can I use", XP is "How many should I use", the two are telling you different things and if they are identical then one is redundant.

In 5th the PC level is a ceiling on expected monster level rather than the center of a range, if you want a moderate 5 on 5 encounter at level 20, it's fairly trivial to make one using monsters of level 1-20, which is the range you're allowed.

The 5e play test documents used this difference in assigning levels and XP values, if 5e does not also use it I'll be disappointed. They'll be losing part of the flexibility their system provides.

3rd edition provides a MARVELOUS example of how insisting that EVERY monster had a single number for both "how appropriate" and "how difficult" is bad. The shadow is a near guaranteed TPK at equal CR, and an overvalued pushover at level 7. The 3rd edition shadow SHOULD have a level of 5 or so, and an XP value much lower than you'd expect, or it should be a level 8 minion. Then you could put it out alone or as part of an encounter with a Greater Shadow, and it would have worked well. What it should not be is CR 3 where it doesn't work for any level party.

Take a look at the starter set. It might be a limited subset, but every monster of the same CR has the same XP value, meaning it's likely that, no, there won't be varying XP and CR values. It's not a matter of XP and CR measuring different things it's that CR measures one thing, and XP is determined by CR. Level based XP budgets scale completely differently from CR-set XP value. You can't just look at the CR of a monster, and determine how difficult of an encounter it would be, the same way you could in 3e or 4e.

It has all the problems of the 3e system, but none of the upsides that make it easier to DM. And moreover, it's completely abandoning the 4e method which could even do much of what you're talking about, in a way that's easy for a DM to build encounters for. In 4e you did have different XP values for monsters, but it was still easy to build encounters based on a standardized metric. With the chart we're given for 5e, even if they do have places where XP and CR decouple, that doesn't solve the problem, since the Base XP value for CR isn't based on any standard difficulty. I could easily accept if they pegged CR to a moderate encounter's worth of XP, but had levels of enemies which were pegged to fractions or multiples of that. That way, I could work with the 4e method of doing things, where an Elite could just take the place of two normal monsters of that level. But with CR XP not pegged to anything, even if they do vary XP (which I don't think is all that likely), it doesn't mean anything, since the base XP for a CR X encounter isn't standardized by level.

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On the other topic of Alignment for monsters, I can't say I'm pleased that they've kept this, but it's not something that really affects me. I don't care if the book says "Always Chaotic Evil" because that's not how they'll play out in my games anyway.

rlc
2014-07-16, 03:20 PM
I think the only possible solution is to build said campaign.

TheOOB
2014-07-17, 01:17 AM
Take a look at the starter set. It might be a limited subset, but every monster of the same CR has the same XP value, meaning it's likely that, no, there won't be varying XP and CR values. It's not a matter of XP and CR measuring different things it's that CR measures one thing, and XP is determined by CR. Level based XP budgets scale completely differently from CR-set XP value. You can't just look at the CR of a monster, and determine how difficult of an encounter it would be, the same way you could in 3e or 4e.

It has all the problems of the 3e system, but none of the upsides that make it easier to DM. And moreover, it's completely abandoning the 4e method which could even do much of what you're talking about, in a way that's easy for a DM to build encounters for. In 4e you did have different XP values for monsters, but it was still easy to build encounters based on a standardized metric. With the chart we're given for 5e, even if they do have places where XP and CR decouple, that doesn't solve the problem, since the Base XP value for CR isn't based on any standard difficulty. I could easily accept if they pegged CR to a moderate encounter's worth of XP, but had levels of enemies which were pegged to fractions or multiples of that. That way, I could work with the 4e method of doing things, where an Elite could just take the place of two normal monsters of that level. But with CR XP not pegged to anything, even if they do vary XP (which I don't think is all that likely), it doesn't mean anything, since the base XP for a CR X encounter isn't standardized by level.

----

On the other topic of Alignment for monsters, I can't say I'm pleased that they've kept this, but it's not something that really affects me. I don't care if the book says "Always Chaotic Evil" because that's not how they'll play out in my games anyway.

If we use the starter set to predict the final game then all D&D characters will be pre generated and only have 5 levels.

Tholomyes
2014-07-17, 02:44 AM
If we use the starter set to predict the final game then all D&D characters will be pre generated and only have 5 levels.

False equivalence. With PCs, we've had playtest packets, and the current Basic Set, to compare to the Pregen PCs in the Starter Set. With that, they appear (roughly) consistent with one another, indicating that we likely can use some of our information from those two sources (for example that, excluding any Epic-level supplements, that they will have 20 levels, and that they can be built per the rules set out by the 'Building a Character' section). With Monsters, however, the basic rules contains no information on monsters. In addition, even the latest public playtest material shows vast differences from what we see in the Starter Set, indicating that later in design, the devs fundamentally altered monster design. It is unclear what, if anything, we can gather from what was represented in the playtest.

As such, all we have to go on, with this more updated monster design, is the Starter Set. We can assume that most of the design elements hold true to the final design of monsters, as it is both marketed as a finished product in the 5e line, and because the gap between the starter set's release and the monster manual's release is fairly small, it is unlikely that they'd make large changes to monster design, barring potential alterations to individual monsters.

So what we can tell from this design is that XP appears to be set according to the CR of a creature, which appears to hold even to the non-generic NPCs we are shown. This assumption is, admittedly, not a certainty, however based on the information at hand, it holds for all cases, and based on the design goals of the system, I find it unlikely that there would be few enough exceptions (that are not bound by their own rule, such as "legendary"), as to not show up in the subset of monsters shown here.

As such, if we hold that assumption, even just for the time being, with the knowledge that we are looking only at a subset of the information, we can see somewhat of a trend between CR and XP. However this trend is not the same as the trend for XP budgets and Level of party members. In fact, the disparity of the two trends is not the result of one or two outliers, but is present in the entirety of the level/CR range that we are given any information on.

So, while, yes, it is an inference made from a limited subset of the information, it is the best possible inference we could make from the available information, and is consistent with certain design decisions found both in previous editions, and represented in the design goals of the system.

da_chicken
2014-07-17, 06:03 AM
Alright, so what's your explanation, then? You keep saying everybody else's explanations make no sense, but don't offer any explanation yourself. Assuming this article isn't just poorly describing things, they've clearly made a decision to delineate XP and CR or they would just use 4e's method. Why would they do that?

rlc
2014-07-17, 06:28 AM
Take a look at the starter set. It might be a limited subset, but every monster of the same CR has the same XP value, meaning it's likely that, no, there won't be varying XP and CR values. It's not a matter of XP and CR measuring different things it's that CR measures one thing, and XP is determined by CR. Level based XP budgets scale completely differently from CR-set XP value. You can't just look at the CR of a monster, and determine how difficult of an encounter it would be, the same way you could in 3e or 4e.

It has all the problems of the 3e system, but none of the upsides that make it easier to DM. And moreover, it's completely abandoning the 4e method which could even do much of what you're talking about, in a way that's easy for a DM to build encounters for. In 4e you did have different XP values for monsters, but it was still easy to build encounters based on a standardized metric. With the chart we're given for 5e, even if they do have places where XP and CR decouple, that doesn't solve the problem, since the Base XP value for CR isn't based on any standard difficulty. I could easily accept if they pegged CR to a moderate encounter's worth of XP, but had levels of enemies which were pegged to fractions or multiples of that. That way, I could work with the 4e method of doing things, where an Elite could just take the place of two normal monsters of that level. But with CR XP not pegged to anything, even if they do vary XP (which I don't think is all that likely), it doesn't mean anything, since the base XP for a CR X encounter isn't standardized by level.

----

On the other topic of Alignment for monsters, I can't say I'm pleased that they've kept this, but it's not something that really affects me. I don't care if the book says "Always Chaotic Evil" because that's not how they'll play out in my games anyway.
At low levels, you're expected to face lower difficulty monsters. At higher levels, higher, even in proportion. So they decided to go with a moving target.

da_chicken
2014-07-17, 06:56 AM
Read the comment above yours to get a better explanation than I gave, I haven't read the monster manual for a long time but I remembered that usually and always were used weirdly by WotC... Which you know has always had a base case of not having an editor or proof readers -_-

Yeah, I found them in 3.5. I was looking in the DMG. I assumed the glossary in the MM was just monster type and special ability descriptions. "Always" specifically says you're born with the alignment and have to change away from it to be anything else. It says such creatures would be "rare or unique". That sounds like the normal meaning of "always" to me. "Usually" means "a majority" or "at least 50%". That sounds like the normal meaning of "usually" to me, too.

In any case, it's besides the point. The point is that the categories actually function to define a status quo and an assumed default. A LG Succubus stands out because it subverts the status quo -- and I argue it's a cheap device since "being LG" isn't a very interesting character attribute, but that's neither here nor there. Monsters in 4e don't say "Usually soldier" or even "Always soldier". They just say "Soldier". Those categories don't have the wiggle room that alignments do, but instead define in the mind of the DM and the monster designer what the creature should be capable of (often in very strict terms if you use the math from the 4e DMG).


See, the biggest problem with that kind of thinking is that if the succubus has no way of changing they are CE or can't help but CE then can you really punish her for any crimes committed? Morally you can not because she knows not what she does. You can stop her, but any punishment you bring down upon the succubus is unwarented because she didn't choose to do anything, her alignment made her choose to do it.

It would be like if Google made a robot and went around being a criminal, do you punish the robot or do you punish google? The robot (succubus) is running by programming by Google (Alignment) and is not responsible for its actions.

So making demons have no free will is not only silly but morally ambiguous and quite boring.

You shut off a ton options if you take the free will from demons or any other group of creatures. And by saying that a creature HAS to be X alignment you are in fact taking away free will. That succubus may be made up of CE energy but who is to say she doesn't hate the way abyss/hell/whatever is ran and she rebels against her nature?

It's not about them having free will. It's about their form and abilities and substance being linked to their alignment. A Succubus doesn't have to be CE, but a Succubus that stops being CE ceases to be a Succubus. It doesn't die. It's immortal. It turns into something else. Perhaps it turns into a Devil, Archon, Djinni, or something else. It simply can't remain a Succubus while not being CE because that form is CE. The Succubus is the form of CE.

And "punishing" a Succubus for crimes? How? Mortal laws don't really apply to Outsiders. If you kill it, it just returns it to The Abyss. About all you can do is permanently imprison it... if you can figure out how to stop it's magical abilities and also keep it from killing itself to send itself back to The Abyss.

Tholomyes
2014-07-17, 11:48 AM
Alright, so what's your explanation, then? You keep saying everybody else's explanations make no sense, but don't offer any explanation yourself. Assuming this article isn't just poorly describing things, they've clearly made a decision to delineate XP and CR or they would just use 4e's method. Why would they do that? I don't know. The best guess I have is that the XP budget design was designed based on earlier playtests, where XP and level were not tied directly. However somewhere in the later design stages, they altered the way monsters worked, and set XP based on CR. Now, this explanation might normally give me somewhat greater hope that everything isn't quite finalized, and there's still the potential for things to return to the 3e/4e paradigm. But this is Mearls we're talking about here.


At low levels, you're expected to face lower difficulty monsters. At higher levels, higher, even in proportion. So they decided to go with a moving target. I disagree with this notion, and even assuming your reasoning is valid, it still doesn't make any sense. Ok, so say you're expected to throw proportionally higher difficulty fights at the players. Then why is that not represented in the XP-budget, the same way it is in CR? After all, if the XP budget was given as the primary way of designing encounters, as it seems to be indicated in L&L, then this would be actually doing the opposite of what you suggest. Instead of fighting monsters that are proportionally more difficult, all that it's doing is making you fight the same monsters (who are proportionally weaker, each time you gain a level) in somewhat greater numbers.