My experience of levels 1-15 as a DM

[BoutsofInsanity]

Ladies and Gentlemen, I did it. I finished a campaign and got players from levels 1-15. I just want to share my thoughts and feelings on how everything worked out. From house rules to classes, this is my review of 5th edition.

Bounded Accuracy
By all that is holy I love this feature. I finally could make my nitty gritty campaign. Within this system, I don't need to worry about wealth by level or throwing loot at the party to make sure they can fight the enemies of the monster manual. I can now tailor my loot to the world. Instead of lots of magical gear around, there are a few powerful artifacts in the ecosystem and having a sword like Excalibur made my players feel amazing and unique.

Speaking of to hit bonuses...
I love the monster design. Rather then making monsters hard to hit and stacking tons of AC, monsters now have an array of features that make them difficult. By following this design philosophy, creatures have weaknesses and resistances, as such, encouraging players to nail those knowledge rolls to combat these creatures.

House rules:
I follow a few special ones. Enemies always have to confirm critical hits and always auto fail on natural ones. The players follow the opposite effect.
Players every long rest gain 1 fate point to grant an extra action and one fate point to reroll anything. This always resets to 1 after a long rest.
Everyone gains a feat at first level and at 8th level in addition to the stat bonus.
Typically, if you can describe why an action would give you advantage, ill let you roll for it using a skill. For example: Flip off a wall behind an enemy. Roll acrobatics, if you succeed vs. enemies perception you gain advantage. If you fail, the enemy gets a free opportunity attack or whatever is appropriate at the time.
No long range teleport spells.

Saves:
It took getting used to having multiple saves. Ill not lie, Separating Charisma, Strength, Constitution, and Dexterity was easy. Those are all easily identifiable for what they save against. But Wisdom is no longer will power, nor is Intelligence. Charisma, (Force of Personality) denotes willpower. So what were Intelligence and Wisdom for? How do they differ from each other?
I still don't have an answer I like and am working on it. Comment below if you have a good idea.

Monster Manual and Players Handbook
Not going to lie, I feel there are some charts missing from both of these books. Having to search for spells a lot became a little irritating. Furthermore, the Monster Manual not having an index by CR in the back frustrated me the most.
However, when I located a monster I wanted to use, it was easy to read, no complicated CR calculations, and they always had interesting abilities or effects.

Classes and Balance
We finally get to the exciting part. Guys, I love every class in the book except for the ranger. But I haven't had that played yet, so I'm withholding judgement. Let me tell you about effectiveness.

I became familiar with the following classes. Two groups, one world, one DM.
Paladin, Barbarian, Wizard, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock, Monk, Fighter. And my favorite, Warlock 12/ Monk 3

Wizards:
The archetypes feel lackluster. There are some neat ones, but for the most part they don't feel as unique as they could be. The Wizarding memorization system is fantastic to grasp, and the spell selection was really neat. By the fact that they cast spells, Wizards were effective.

Sorcerer:
If you have a player who wants to cast spells and is new to the game. Point them here. Easy resource mechanic, visible burst damage and rewarding character backstory. If you want to watch someone light up, watch them roll a twinned maximized lightning bolt or something. One of my favorite classes to DM "against" .

Warlock:
Meh./Awesome. The Warlock, is not an easy class to play effectively. I feel like, poor in-game choices are more punishing on the warlock. It's important if you don't have a strategic player, to warn the potential player that this class is all about choice. When to go nova or not. However, if played by a strategic player, it does very well. A very interesting class with lots of Role Play Opportunities.

Monk:
There is nothing in this game not to like about the Shadow Monk or the Physical monk. I did house rule that if Ki is in the pool, the monk may use wisdom to hit and damage and in place of str checks if he so chose. But even without that rule, they rock. Nothing not to like here.

Barbarians:
****. Barbarians. The single most difficult for my story style to DM against. In terms of the game I was running, the Barbarian ruled. Great damage output, fantastic tanking abilities that if I don't want to cheese them I can't get around. A wonderful class. Contributed, Tanked, Did damage and still had time for ale.

Side Note: I didn't throw tons of fights at the players, more narrative in nature, lots of dialogue and conversation. One or Two big fights a session.

Paladins:
But as bad as Barbarians were... Paladins were worse. Tried to Charm a player? Nope, Redemption Pally spends his turn double moving next to the character. Low on Hp? Nah, take some heals. Sickened or Poisoned? Nah remove that debuff. Take a smite crit to the face, see how your monster is doing after that. Oh is that magic damage coming the parties way? Better hope a Pally of Ancients isn't within 10 feet of them. This and the Barbarian are one of the best designed classes in my opinion. In doing what they are supposed to do, they do it very well.

Fighters:
Scary as hell. Lots of attacks, good AC, HP, feats, and Stats. This mother is gonna ruin your day. May not be as bursty or as dynamic as the other classes. But he was the most reliable member of the party. He was always good. Not always great, but never once was he bad.

Finally... The Warlock Monk. Or the Jedi Knight

Homebrewed one feat, increase wisdom by 1, add your wisdom modifier to your ki pool.
Talk about dangerous, Bladelock, with the ability with Flurry to attack four times. Dexterity to Damage. A long range cantrip. Spells to augment. Wisdom to Defense with Dexterity. Given we were running good stats this was strong. This guy would run up, flurry of blows, use the Physical Monk ability to knock the dude prone and back fifteen feet, then action point and witch bolt his ass. Dude force pushed and force lightninged a guy, while holding an eldritch blade. I wet myself the first time it happened. Good defenses, decent in melee and range. And Spell control. Nothing not to like in this build. Note, it sucks till level 7 or so.

All in all, given my story style and world building, this system was by far my favorite ever put out. For me, this was an fantastic system to run, a few problems here and there, but overall my favorite so far. Ranked in order
5e, pathfinder, 4e, 1st, 3.5. Guys, I hope you enjoyed my rambling, not meant to be an essay, have an awesome time, and my your rolls be diverse and interesting. Any questions or anything let me know.

[strangebloke]

I'm glad you had (apparently) such a good experience!

From my limited experience I agree with your class evaluation. I found palladin to be incredibly fun and versatile.

That 'fate' houserule, though.... eesh, it seems like that REALLy minimizes risk.

[BoutsofInsanity]

Kind of, it really depends on what kind of game you are playing and what kind of dm you are. What it allows for is awesome moments of badassitude. It gives players the ability to make "Lair Actions". This allows them to break the rules. They are heroes, they are cut above the rest of the rabble. They are the main characters of the story. If I don't give them plot armor, this is what functions as plot armor. That's just my thought though.

[PoeticDwarf]

No long teleport spell, I agree with that one. I also agree that monks are rocking, but that's another story.
I really like this all:smallbiggrin:

[WickerNipple]

One note: you can't twin Lightning Bolt.

[JAL_1138]

I usually add "no easy resurrection" to "no long-range teleportation" so that death is something to fear, both for PCs and for NPCs and villains with money and access to clerics.

I tend not to like plot armor. I played too many low-level AD&D characters who died like flies, sometimes in one hit in their first combat. Or sometimes not even making it as far as combat.
Character death needs to be a serious risk at nearly all times, to me. Yeah, sometimes they'll face opponents with no chance due to relative individual strength and numbers; I'm not making every single fight completely brutal--but when I've played in games where the DM was somewhat opposed to killing PCs I got bored with combat quickly because of the sense that victory was a foregone conclusion and the fights, even "boss" fights, were a waste of time since we were going to win anyway. When I felt like I could easily get myself killed with a mistake or just bad luck, I felt like there was a point to it. So when I DM I don't give the PCs any protection. I'm not out to kill them, but if they die, they die.

[BoutsofInsanity]

That's something I have always struggled with as a DM and a player. I want there to be death in the cards, but I also don't want your characters story to end because I made an encounter too hard. I've always struggled to punish players when they do something silly. That's one of the things I work on to improve.

It's hard, you want to balance a campaign so that when a character dies, it's of the players own accord. That, they as the storyteller of their character agrees that this is where the character's arc ends. No one wants their characters to die in a whimper, or wiped out by a trap with no dramatic tension. Heroes in narratives die in last stands, at betrayal, in sacrifice for others. The death should be tragic and powerful ideally. Dying to a goblin? Blarg. Dying to a Blackgaurd as stand over your unconscious allies, that's awesome.

It depends on what kind of game you are running I feel. I typically run high narrative with plot and stories, driven by the characters the players have, so for them to die like a bitch is something I don't aim for. But I have to balance that with difficulty and actual challenges with consequence. If a player leaves my table unsatisfied with how their character died, I feel I failed at my job as a DM. Just my personal belief.

[Tenmujiin]

With regard to mental saves, my interpretation is that each roughly matches one of the physical stats:

Wisdom (dexterity): Anything that requires quick thinking or an "agile" mind such as breaking spell effects (for example hold person).
Intelligence (strength): Anything that requires close study or a "powerful" mind particularly Illusions, most psionics.
Charisma (constitution): Anything that effects or changes your mind, essentially how resilient your mind is.

[jkat718]

@Tenmujiin: That's…an interesting way to look at that. I like it!

@all: I've had a similar difficulty with my characters, re: the role of difficulty versus drama in character death. Going back to BoutsofInsanity's points on the Bar-Bar's tankiness and the Paladin's crazy damage, the two characters whose deaths would most likely advance the plot/lead to character development are a Barbarian and a Paladin, and they're always the ones who come out of difficult fights nearly unscathed.

[Psikerlord]

That's something I have always struggled with as a DM and a player. I want there to be death in the cards, but I also don't want your characters story to end because I made an encounter too hard. I've always struggled to punish players when they do something silly. That's one of the things I work on to improve.

It's hard, you want to balance a campaign so that when a character dies, it's of the players own accord. That, they as the storyteller of their character agrees that this is where the character's arc ends. No one wants their characters to die in a whimper, or wiped out by a trap with no dramatic tension. Heroes in narratives die in last stands, at betrayal, in sacrifice for others. The death should be tragic and powerful ideally. Dying to a goblin? Blarg. Dying to a Blackgaurd as stand over your unconscious allies, that's awesome.

It depends on what kind of game you are running I feel. I typically run high narrative with plot and stories, driven by the characters the players have, so for them to die like a bitch is something I don't aim for. But I have to balance that with difficulty and actual challenges with consequence. If a player leaves my table unsatisfied with how their character died, I feel I failed at my job as a DM. Just my personal belief.

I have found using a custom injuries and setbacks table gives me that dangerous feeling for combat, without risking TPKs all over the place. Also, slow healing optional rule.

[b4ndito]

That list of monsters by CR is in the back of the DMG. Not convenient, but it does exist.

[ZenBear]

With regard to mental saves, my interpretation is that each roughly matches one of the physical stats:

Wisdom (dexterity): Anything that requires quick thinking or an "agile" mind such as breaking spell effects (for example hold person).
Intelligence (strength): Anything that requires close study or a "powerful" mind particularly Illusions, most psionics.
Charisma (constitution): Anything that effects or changes your mind, essentially how resilient your mind is.

Strange. I also correlate mental and physical saves, but I see them differently.

Int(Dex): mental swiftness and flexibility.

Wis(Con): mental fortitude and discipline.

Cha(Str): force of will and capacity for external influence.

[Gnomes2169]

Ah excellent, someone else who hates barbarians and paladins as much as I. Though I had no problem taking down the paladin with just raw damage... I just hated that one because of all that smitey burstiness. >_<

[Tenmujiin]

Strange. I also correlate mental and physical saves, but I see them differently.

Int(Dex): mental swiftness and flexibility.

Wis(Con): mental fortitude and discipline.

Cha(Str): force of will and capacity for external influence.

While charisma matches strength for affecting the people and objects around you, defensively I feel it matches con more as both are about preventing things from directly effecting your body/mind

Wisdom is the weakest of my equivelencies and is in previous editions it would definately match to con. Wisdom in 5e is about your intuition and instincts rather than force of will (which is jow charisma). I also have wisdom as anything that isn't an int or charisma save since it is treated as a 'strong' save by WotC.

Int doesn't mean tou have a quick mond to me, it represents the ability to learn and store massive amounts of information. Just look at the classes that use each stat: wizards are about knowing a lot while druids and monks are about empathy and quick thinking.

[GWJ_DanyBoy]

Thanks for the perspective OP.

[ThermalSlapShot]

I've found that using the Final Fantasy method works quite well for D&D and people who are into roleplaying.

Physical Attack
Physical Defense
Mental Attack
Mental Defense

Separate the crunch and the fluff. Then you can put whatever fluff you want with your crunch.

Add in skills and stuff to really show your character off. Want to have a dexterous character? You better have a skill from Stealth, Sleight of Hand, or Acrobatics or else you aren't dexterous.

[BoutsofInsanity]

I never thought to align the saves that way gentlemen or ladies. Thank you. The personal injuries idea is something I've toyed with, but I don't want to get bogged down with the specifics. I think I might implament it however by vote. I run with a close group of people, so we typically don't have power gaming going on.

At the end of a combat, if someone dropped below 50% the party can come together and decide if a character got injured, what the injury is, and what it does mechanically. Then try and align it with the story that player is trying to tell with their character. I think that's where ill go with it for now.

Do you think people might be interested in a world building post? Like, here is how I made a gritty game and the things involved in it?

[jkat718]

@BoutsofInsanity: I, for one, would absolutely love a worldbuilding post! :smallsmile: