My Experience so far DMing 5th Edition

[MrStabby]

So I have nearly finished my first longish 5th ed D&D campaign as DM. Whilst it may be extended it will reach its climax in a level or two and I thought I would share my experiences of the edition.

Firstly I have done a number of short adventures at chosen levels before - but being a bit more hack and slash they had different issues.

So the difficulties I have had:
1) Divination. Divination of all types. Fighter ability to appraise an enemy/potential enemy? Well you either ruin an important class ability when it actually makes a difference or you cut out a number of sessions where you work out who has been replaced with a doppelganger with different stats. Clerics, over the course of a week can play a game of 20 questions with their deity; there is a lot of plot development intended to happen over the course of an adventure that can be shortcutted. Arcane eye? Well no more mysterious darkened expanses - if you want a surprise you need to sick it behind a solid door. Surprise encounters may be a thing of the past, cutting down the tension and decreasing options for challenging fights - The ranger, set up for stealthy reconnaissance is suddenly out of a job. Zone of truth and a lack of concern about inflicting pain is both a great plot development opportunity and a major threat.

2) Specialisation - especially spells. I have found it tricky to always challenge the party in natural seeming fights. Small numbers of powerful enemies are vulnerable to being stunned or otherwise taken out of the fight, large numbers of expendable enemies eat fireballs (even if they come in waves, things like spirit guardians or ranger volley are brutal). I have found that only medium numbers of medium enemies make challenging and interesting fights. Again, as DM I feel my options are somewhat reduced (although an occasional slaughter of low level minions can be fun for a lot of people. Anything remotely boss like I tend to design with legendary saves/actions/lair actions. Other things include turn undead, a situational but exceptionally potent ability that will trivialise undead themed encounters. On a similar vein I have issue with the calling on their god for aid ability - it makes you as DM substitute your vision of their god for the player's one or turn it from an open ended ability into another spell slot (and one that will potentially screw up the character's week's most important encounter). It is particularly tough when your campaign evolves round your player's motivations such that it seems really harsh when the deity doesn't step in to prevent their temple from being defiled and to protect the cleric and his friends trying to bar the doors...

3) Building medium encounters - I have got pretty good at gauging a seriously challenging encounter or an encounter that is a bit scary. Likewise I can put easy encounters in to show the party how powerful they have become. Medium encounters designed to deplete resources rather than be a threat are much tougher, that kind of encounter that adds up towards the end of an adventuring day. Slightly too weak and they can be tanked by high AC characters with no expendable resources used. On the hard side one misjudgement from the PCs (or a lucky critical) and party damage/toughness drops and the PCs really have to draw on a lot of resources to come back.

4) Depth of FUN things to subject the party to. Actually, with reference to 3, there is a lot of scope for encounters but not all are fun for everyone. With hold or stun effects that make players miss turns you get bored players so the focus is naturally on damage or those few spells that limit rather than prohibit action (things like compelled duel or some fear effects). Adding more layers of interaction and more conditions can keep things interesting but I found myself repeating some situations a bit too much.

5) Moon druids. Better explorer than the ranger, better melee fighter than the fighter, as good a tank as a barbarian, oceans of hitpoints and rock solid wisdom saves all on top of being a full caster. Lots of abilities, a great themed class but I have felt the need to exercise a little control on the forms discovered to ensure that the druid cannot do ALL roles better than everyone else but is instead specialised (on the other hand it adds a certain extra reward to exploration and a rare creature being spotted is a great hook for a side quest.

6) Some abilities that practically do nothing. Paladin bonus to saves is one. Song of rest is another. You have better saves - you face tougher enemies - probability of failing is pretty similar. Extra hitpoints on a rest - better prepared for all fights - fights are tougher. It is a class ability that only works if the DM doesn't adjust the adventure round the players. In fairness the paladin aura does require positioning so it is a bit different but song of rest takes away an ability slot that could be used for something active involving making a decision. This is exactly the same as something like a +1 sword...

7) Difficulty. The game is pretty easy if you give out almost any magic items. Magic Weapons and armour should make you target a CR/XP budget about 2/3 greater for each that characters typically have - and that is just uncommon items. This one is at least pretty easy to fix.

On the other hand 5th edition is awesome:

1) It is easy to adjust on the fly. Without the burden of a tome of rules you can keep a fast paced game adapting to the craziest of plans. Players can always do what their characters would and most of the time you can find a way to bend the rules to make it fun and characterful.

2) Homebrew is pretty easy to do safely compared to other systems. The number of character archetypes is small but example abilities to pick and chose from to build a custom class are pretty diverse. Between switching domains, casting stats and spell lists casters have a great range. Martial classes are a bit more multiclassed focussed if there is a narrow image they want but some hombrew feats fill any conceptual gaps.

3) It is quick. Compared to every other RPG game I have played, players can cycle through their turns, making longer combats viable without being a drag. As long as your casters think ahead though.



Anyway, just my experience. How much of this matches other peoples?

[Kurt Kurageous]

Curious to know some things about your campaign.

What levels did your players start at? Where did they finish?

What was the impact they had on the world?

Was your amount of prep time justified, or was it more about improvisation?

[Gignere]

7) Difficulty. The game is pretty easy if you give out almost any magic items. Magic Weapons and armour should make you target a CR/XP budget about 2/3 greater for each that characters typically have - and that is just uncommon items. This one is at least pretty easy to fix.



I have DMed LMoP and nearly all the way through HoTDQ. I hand magic items out like candy, every character has a +1 weapon, one has two. Gauntlets of ogre power, +1 armor, both tanks has full plate, and paladin has a modified holy avenger, cleric has necklace of prayer beads. I find that I am still dropping the players like flies with freaking bullywugs and this is with a level 6 party. Not sure if it is my players or just my style of DMing or even just my lucky critical rolls. I run the monsters with no mods. The only thing I find that I agree with is that one big bad evil guy is too easy, unless it has legendary saves/actions or minions. However, this is the issue with pretty much every edition of D&D. Action economy is a bi*tch.

[PeteNutButter]

Very sound opinions in all. Pretty much exactly where I am with 5e. Having one big bag was much more effective in previous editions. I'm not even totally sure why.

I a lot of the "problems" with 5e are from the numbers crunch. 3.5 had a bit more of an MMO feel whenever you went against something that was too high for your lvl in 3.5 you would just never hit it. Now things that are 10 lvls above you might as well be pincushions.

My worst offender was when a party of 11th lvl characters defeated a kraken, CR 23. Granted they all have +1 weapons and the like, and I did manage to kill one player. But I only killed him because he messed up and didn't misty step away from the monster's tentacle and got eaten. Even that was just a quick revivify from the cleric and we move on.

Basically to be a challenge a solo big bad has to be able to one shot a player a round, and then some. And be able to live through the party's damage for at least 3 rounds.

They are level 12 now, and this week seems to likely be the end of the campaign. I feel like I'm kind of cheating the players out by not extending the campaign so they can see higher levels, but I can barely challenge them now, without insane threats that aren't fun for players that get one-shot, OR drawn out combats with a ton of enemies. I mean I still do challenge them, it just takes more thought and creativity and "cheating."

The bottom line is the MM fails to properly challenge higher level PCs. Without cheating there isn't a "deadly" encounter I could design that would really challenge them. Before people jump on to give me advice, I know I need to run more encounters per day/session but more than 3 usually bogs the game down pretty hard, and maybe I shouldn't let 11th lvl characters have magic weapons.

[INDYSTAR188]

The bottom line is the MM fails to properly challenge higher level PCs. Without cheating there isn't a "deadly" encounter I could design that would really challenge them. Before people jump on to give me advice, I know I need to run more encounters per day/session but more than 3 usually bogs the game down pretty hard, and maybe I shouldn't let 11th lvl characters have magic weapons.

This is a concern for me as well. I am running Out of the Abyss and I wonder about the sandbox-ey nature of the adventure. My players might be level 7 facing the same random encounters from level 3. I can of course change that and I probably will modify them a bit from what's in the book (I generally do), but I don't know if they'll be challenging as-written. Also the second half of the book, I worry about the difficulty as well (until the final encounter, which sounds amazing).

[Finieous]

We just finished our campaign at 18th level. In the final battle, my character was the only one conscious because I rolled a natural 20 on my death save (another was on the Elemental Plane of Water, but that's another story). Lair and environmental effects and actions are key. At lower levels, monsters and villains can be a challenge. At higher levels, the real challenges are when you have to fight the monsters and villains in Mount Doom. Combine offensive and defensive effects, design them specifically to compliment the bad guys' abilities and tactics, mix to taste. This is not "cheating" -- it's high-level D&D. It's also great fun and makes the challenges at high level feel qualitatively different, more epic, than those at low level. It's not just the BBEG you have to worry about -- his world is trying to kill you, too, and it doesn't care about your DPS novas or forcecages.

[SharkForce]

1) it changes the game somewhat, certainly. if there is an excessive amount of divination, it's probably because there's no time limit though. in any event, this is a collaborative story-telling effort. that doesn't mean there shouldn't be a cost involved (if the party takes an extra week to go deal with something, then their enemies have an extra week to prepare... if the villain is aware of them and considers them a threat, i would expect the villain is *also* gathering some information, and if nothing else should be preparing active and passive defenses. that doesn't mean you should have your villains know everything, or be prepared for everything... at some point, they are probably as prepared as they will practically speaking ever be, and maybe there just isn't a time limit that would force the players to act before they have done as much scouting as they want. it should help somewhat to make your dungeons somewhat organic though... monsters don't just sit around all day in one room, waiting for adventurers to kick in the door. wandering monsters in excessive quantities can get silly, but in reasonable numbers makes a lot of sense... a group of bugbears coming back from patrol, a bunch of mercenaries walking to wherever the alcohol is stored to sneak a few drinks, a pair of lovers that just wanted to go for a walk, patrolling sentries, or even just some lone poor monster that is just headed for the latrine. have your monsters move around. if they scout during the afternoon, that won't reflect where the monsters are in the morning or at night. but don't have the information completely change (unless the enemies have ways of knowing they're being watched and could reasonably prepare an ambush or something along those lines).

2) sounds like the benefits of having a well-rounded group of specialists. not seeing a problem. this is more or less true in any game.

3) high... AC? how high are we talking? a monster with +3 to hit can hit an AC 20 character 15% of the time. a group of 15 such monsters will be hitting quite often over the course of a fight. and AC 20 would be on the normal high end of things, especially if we're not talking about spending resources. so... just how high AC are we talking about here, because ime 5e tries pretty hard to make sure that getting such high AC that an enemy is practically speaking not a threat doesn't happen...

4) can't help you here. just remember, most save or suck effects allow repeating saves to escape.

5) moon druids are great. but they are not generally great tanks except for levels 2-4, when they can be bears and are probably legitimately threatening enough to tank. if your barbarian is not more threatening offensively than the moon druid (thereby placing the moon druid in the "why waste our time" category because the moon druid is hard to kill but little benefit is gained from doing so) by level 5 or so, that's a problem with optimizing the barbarian, not a problem with moon druid.

6) the problem here is not that the abilities aren't useful or powerful. the problem is that you're acting to specifically counter the party's abilities. you can do that with anything. the fighter got another attack? ok, time to increase the hit points of everything they fight accordingly. wizard got a new spell? ok, half of all enemies will now be immune to it. and so on, and so forth. let the players have their abilities shine. if the paladin save aura keeps the party safe from a lot of annoying status effects then that is wonderful, not a problem that needs to be fixed.

7) depends a lot on the items in question i suppose. i've found +1 weapons to be relatively minor impact unless an enemy is resistant or immune to non-magical weapons (in which case rather than having half effectiveness, the group is at regular effectiveness). +1 armour or shields in the right hands can be a bit more impressive, but you can still generally speaking be hit reasonably often. other items can be completely overbearing, but for the most part, i haven't seen huge problems personally.

[Joe the Rat]

2) Specialisation - especially spells. I have found it tricky to always challenge the party in natural seeming fights. Small numbers of powerful enemies are vulnerable to being stunned or otherwise taken out of the fight, large numbers of expendable enemies eat fireballs (even if they come in waves, things like spirit guardians or ranger volley are brutal). I have found that only medium numbers of medium enemies make challenging and interesting fights. Again, as DM I feel my options are somewhat reduced (although an occasional slaughter of low level minions can be fun for a lot of people. Anything remotely boss like I tend to design with legendary saves/actions/lair actions. Other things include turn undead, a situational but exceptionally potent ability that will trivialise undead themed encounters. On a similar vein I have issue with the calling on their god for aid ability - it makes you as DM substitute your vision of their god for the player's one or turn it from an open ended ability into another spell slot (and one that will potentially screw up the character's week's most important encounter). It is particularly tough when your campaign evolves round your player's motivations such that it seems really harsh when the deity doesn't step in to prevent their temple from being defiled and to protect the cleric and his friends trying to bar the doors...

I'm getting better mileage out of Boss-and-Minion encounters. You get the murderous action economy advantage of the mook horde, plus the hard hitters that make them debate the top-down (big disabler) or bottom-up (area effect) approach to the encounter. Being able to match modes (ranged and melee capable units) keeps the party from peppering at a distance. It doesn't necessarily translate into party take-downs, but it does force more resource expenditure.

Turn undead is an interesting one. It actually trivialized a rather serious encounter... which they promptly ran away from, since the other monster involved was an elemental (my players are chicken very cautious). After that, I tried using undead in waves. If they expend the CD to turn the skellies now, they may not have it for the ghost in the next room. If they know they will be facing a ghost (via divination or deduction), they will have to use other resources (spells, hp, time) to address the current situation.

[pwykersotz]

My worst offender was when a party of 11th lvl characters defeated a kraken, CR 23. Granted they all have +1 weapons and the like, and I did manage to kill one player. But I only killed him because he messed up and didn't misty step away from the monster's tentacle and got eaten. Even that was just a quick revivify from the cleric and we move on.

Just because this statement intrigued me, I went to check out the Kraken statblock again.

I might be meaner than you, because I would have it swim to position, use the Lightning Vulnerability Lair Action, then spam Lightning Storm as first an action then as a Legendary Action and nuke the Cleric out of the fight (even six successful DC23 Dex saves would be 132 damage, more likely it'll be closer to double that). The Krakens DO hate gods after all. :smalltongue:

[Tanarii]

3) Building medium encounters - I have got pretty good at gauging a seriously challenging encounter or an encounter that is a bit scary. Likewise I can put easy encounters in to show the party how powerful they have become. Medium encounters designed to deplete resources rather than be a threat are much tougher, that kind of encounter that adds up towards the end of an adventuring day. Slightly too weak and they can be tanked by high AC characters with no expendable resources used. On the hard side one misjudgement from the PCs (or a lucky critical) and party damage/toughness drops and the PCs really have to draw on a lot of resources to come back.

6) Some abilities that practically do nothing. Paladin bonus to saves is one. Song of rest is another. You have better saves - you face tougher enemies - probability of failing is pretty similar. Extra hitpoints on a rest - better prepared for all fights - fights are tougher. It is a class ability that only works if the DM doesn't adjust the adventure round the players. In fairness the paladin aura does require positioning so it is a bit different but song of rest takes away an ability slot that could be used for something active involving making a decision. This is exactly the same as something like a +1 sword...

7) Difficulty. The game is pretty easy if you give out almost any magic items. Magic Weapons and armour should make you target a CR/XP budget about 2/3 greater for each that characters typically have - and that is just uncommon items. This one is at least pretty easy to fix.I'm curious, did you follow the DM guidelines for Encounter difficulty & Adventuring Day? Did you use any DMG rules variants for rest or healing? Any house-rules?

[lebefrei]

Part of this is inexperienced DMing while giving the players more freedom than spells allow. Divination is up to YOU, not them. Also, an uncommon magic item is all it takes to block it. Your enemies could all have it.

You are probably not doing enough encounters per day. Not every encounter has to be a fight (social challenges, espionage, and anything else with risk and rolls are encounters) but aim for 8.

If you really feel the players still lack a challenge, try the Gritty Realism rest rules on page 267 of the DMG. It's what I run in my campaign. Players both love and hate it. I warn you that TPK increases dramatically, though. You need a mature group that accepts failure.

[Tanarii]

Part of this is inexperienced DMing while giving the players more freedom than spells allow. Divination is up to YOU, not them. Also, an uncommon magic item is all it takes to block it. Your enemies could all have it.Nah, he's on point. Divination is, and is intended, to be very powerful. Unless you're playing Combat-as-Sport (or an edition that encourages it, no names named), information has always been the most valuable commodity in D&D.

"All PC enemies have the ability to block divination" can start to get metagaming if not done carefully. Powerful and intelligent villains probably should, because it's known how powerful Divination is. But look at it this way: How often do PCs think to defend themselves from divination, even though they know how powerful it is from their own use? Knowledge of a weakness doesn't mean the capability or motivation to defend against it is going to occur universally.

[Segev]

With the problem of overlapping abilities (arcane eye or the moon druid out-scouting the ranger, for example), set things up so that you need to scout more than one place at a time, or so that having backup is a good thing even when scouting. Let the arcane eye help the wizard keep the party informed of progress, while the ranger and moon druid do actual in-depth exploration. If they get in over their heads, the wizard sees it and tells the party to rush in and help out.

Divination is a problem of information control and pacing, definitely. For the doppelganger and the fighter's assessment ability, specifically, though, what you do is just give him exactly the information it says he gets, and don't explain. I don't have the assessment ability in front of me, but some sort of roll is involved, I believe; is it opposed by anything? Can a disguise check increase the difficulty, perhaps? I'd let them be suspicious. Don't count on something remaining hidden until your pre-specified reveal point, because that's assuming PCs won't do anything to figure it out.

In general, divination falls into the category of powers which, as people level up, the DM needs to start to plan to use, rather than to try to thwart. You have plans to get relevant information to your players' characters already, surely; incorporate divination methods as ways they can do so. Make that high-level mystery so devious that playing 20 questions with your god only gets you started on finding what really happened. Count on your players having commune and other effects and using them; use it as a source of information, just as you would a mysterious quest-giver in a tavern or the like.

It can be tricky, but the key to most high-level DMing problems is "plan ways to use their abilities to enhance the story." They have them; don't try to cancel them out. Instead, design your adventures so that they could not have done it without them.

See: Legend of Zelda and the way item acquisition opens up new areas in most games.

[Segev]

Nah, he's on point. Divination is, and is intended, to be very powerful. Unless you're playing Combat-as-Sport (or an edition that encourages it, no names named), information has always been the most valuable commodity in D&D.

"All PC enemies have the ability to block divination" can start to get metagaming if not done carefully. Powerful and intelligent villains probably should, because it's known how powerful Divination is. But look at it this way: How often do PCs think to defend themselves from divination, even though they know how powerful it is from their own use? Knowledge of a weakness doesn't mean the capability or motivation to defend against it is going to occur universally.

Actually, this is a good point: use their own tricks against them. Have your BBEGs use divination the way PCs do, both in general to find out who's out to get them, and in specific to learn the PCs' plans and to generate those otherwise-contrived over-specific countermeasures. It's not DM cheating or railroading when the NPCs really should have that information.

[MrStabby]

Curious to know some things about your campaign.

What levels did your players start at? Where did they finish?

What was the impact they had on the world?

Was your amount of prep time justified, or was it more about improvisation?

They started at level 6 and have worked up to level 11 now with another couple of levels to go. The impact they have had on the world is positive and significant in thwarting plans of the BBEG but as part of a lose alliance of powerful groups.

My prep time was a few specific encounters and a LOT of world building and fleshing out factions. Whenever the players wandered off my anticipated course I could easily develop the world around them in detail. Personally I think it was worth it but then I quite enjoy that side of things. There has been a lot of improvisation but with the structure in place it has worked well.

Other aspects are that certain things need to be found to advance the plot, and certain peaople need to be met. I don't have to know where. If the PCs go to another city then they may meet the Suspicious Barbarin there instead...


We just finished our campaign at 18th level. In the final battle, my character was the only one conscious because I rolled a natural 20 on my death save (another was on the Elemental Plane of Water, but that's another story). Lair and environmental effects and actions are key. At lower levels, monsters and villains can be a challenge. At higher levels, the real challenges are when you have to fight the monsters and villains in Mount Doom. Combine offensive and defensive effects, design them specifically to compliment the bad guys' abilities and tactics, mix to taste. This is not "cheating" -- it's high-level D&D. It's also great fun and makes the challenges at high level feel qualitatively different, more epic, than those at low level. It's not just the BBEG you have to worry about -- his world is trying to kill you, too, and it doesn't care about your DPS novas or forcecages.

Yeah I agree with this. We have not quite hit that level yet but lair effects have been pretty brutal so far.




I'm curious, did you follow the DM guidelines for Encounter difficulty & Adventuring Day? Did you use any DMG rules variants for rest or healing? Any house-rules?

So I have been on the 6 to 8 encounters per day across the range from easy to deadly. Sometimes it is difficult to judge when one encounter ends and another begins. Anything less than hard is trivial, even with sound tactics from the monsters. Standard rest and healing.

A couple of days have been light - some shopping, a bit of a pub lunch then the PCs go and research at the library (yay for sage background) then they decide to pop off to the most violent pub they can find for a bit of a brawl before sleeping. At the end of the day they had one encounter but little plot or thematic reason for them to have another (given the previous descriptions of the other areas as safe).


With the problem of overlapping abilities (arcane eye or the moon druid out-scouting the ranger, for example), set things up so that you need to scout more than one place at a time, or so that having backup is a good thing even when scouting. Let the arcane eye help the wizard keep the party informed of progress, while the ranger and moon druid do actual in-depth exploration. If they get in over their heads, the wizard sees it and tells the party to rush in and help out.

Divination is a problem of information control and pacing, definitely. For the doppelganger and the fighter's assessment ability, specifically, though, what you do is just give him exactly the information it says he gets, and don't explain. I don't have the assessment ability in front of me, but some sort of roll is involved, I believe; is it opposed by anything? Can a disguise check increase the difficulty, perhaps? I'd let them be suspicious. Don't count on something remaining hidden until your pre-specified reveal point, because that's assuming PCs won't do anything to figure it out.

In general, divination falls into the category of powers which, as people level up, the DM needs to start to plan to use, rather than to try to thwart. You have plans to get relevant information to your players' characters already, surely; incorporate divination methods as ways they can do so. Make that high-level mystery so devious that playing 20 questions with your god only gets you started on finding what really happened. Count on your players having commune and other effects and using them; use it as a source of information, just as you would a mysterious quest-giver in a tavern or the like.

It can be tricky, but the key to most high-level DMing problems is "plan ways to use their abilities to enhance the story." They have them; don't try to cancel them out. Instead, design your adventures so that they could not have done it without them.

See: Legend of Zelda and the way item acquisition opens up new areas in most games.

So divination has worked well for the campaign at some points but been a disaster at other times. Revealing enemies weaknesses and giving some pretty big advantages I am ok with. It has been a bit restrictive when I cannot have a plot that requires secrecy. A successful knowledge religion check to discover that there is a cult of Vecna in the place was intended to start an investigation and be a a bit of a side path. Instead the party followed an alternative plot hook playing Happy Families with the Court with Commune at one spell per day whilst on the other quest, coming back and going straight to the cult members.


Actually, this is a good point: use their own tricks against them. Have your BBEGs use divination the way PCs do, both in general to find out who's out to get them, and in specific to learn the PCs' plans and to generate those otherwise-contrived over-specific countermeasures. It's not DM cheating or railroading when the NPCs really should have that information.

Whilst I like this it is difficult for the PCs to distinguish it from metagaming by the DM. Unless they spot an arcane eye or similar then they just consider that the encounters perfectly designed to resist their strengths are the DM out to get them (actually mine would be suspicious and go for divination as an answer but I am not always certain). If divination spells have a better chance of being detected then it might be better.



Sorry I haven't been able to respond to everyone yet - I picked the quick ones!

[Segev]

Whilst I like this it is difficult for the PCs to distinguish it from metagaming by the DM. Unless they spot an arcane eye or similar then they just consider that the encounters perfectly designed to resist their strengths are the DM out to get them (actually mine would be suspicious and go for divination as an answer but I am not always certain). If divination spells have a better chance of being detected then it might be better.A foolishly gloating foe or villain, boasting about how he knows all their plans, would probably suffice to get the idea across.

I'm not subtle enough to pull it off, but skilled use of distinct secrets that can only have come about via scrying or the like might work, too. Heck, TELL them there's a mole in the party when it's really a diviner spying on them. Or blackmail them with something they thought was hidden.

[MrStabby]

Or blackmail them with something they thought was hidden.

Oh! I like this idea. I may have to steal it.

[Tanarii]

So I have been on the 6 to 8 encounters per day across the range from easy to deadly. Sometimes it is difficult to judge when one encounter ends and another begins. Anything less than hard is trivial, even with sound tactics from the monsters. Standard rest and healing.Right on. It's good to know when someone's talking about the game being easy or hard or whatever that they're using the recommended baseline, or not. It gives me a good idea where they're coming from.

I agree that 5e is relatively easy in terms of player surviving combat encounters, especially for experienced players. IMO how well it works in terms of resource draining is really dependent on party composition & campaign suitability. Ie if they are using particularly resource dependent classes or not (besides HP which everyone has). And if they are particularly tailored in terms of classes and skills to the campaign style. Something as simple as being ranged vs melee heavy in dungeon delving, or melee vs ranged heavy in wilderness adventuring, can make things a lot easier or tougher on the party.


A couple of days have been light - some shopping, a bit of a pub lunch then the PCs go and research at the library (yay for sage background) then they decide to pop off to the most violent pub they can find for a bit of a brawl before sleeping. At the end of the day they had one encounter but little plot or thematic reason for them to have another (given the previous descriptions of the other areas as safe).Ha. Occasional random brawls in a non-combat non-adventuring day don't really count. Same with single encounters for the day while traveling. Those just spice things up a bit. ;)


Whilst I like this it is difficult for the PCs to distinguish it from metagaming by the DM. Unless they spot an arcane eye or similar then they just consider that the encounters perfectly designed to resist their strengths are the DM out to get them (actually mine would be suspicious and go for divination as an answer but I am not always certain). If divination spells have a better chance of being detected then it might be better.Agreed. My experience is players don't bother to hide things from enemies because they are subconsciously (or even consciously) aware the DM already knows everything about them. In other words, the players metagame the lack of need for divination defenses.

But yeah, just as all or even many enemies having Divination defenses will have some players crying "metagaming", all or even many enemies knowing everything about them will often get them irritated too.

Which is why I have a longstanding rule of telling players after they get their asses handed to them exactly what happened, and why they should have seen it coming, based on their own actions.

[Vogonjeltz]

So the difficulties I have had:
1) Divination. Divination of all types. Fighter ability to appraise an enemy/potential enemy? Well you either ruin an important class ability when it actually makes a difference or you cut out a number of sessions where you work out who has been replaced with a doppelganger with different stats. Clerics, over the course of a week can play a game of 20 questions with their deity; there is a lot of plot development intended to happen over the course of an adventure that can be shortcutted. Arcane eye? Well no more mysterious darkened expanses - if you want a surprise you need to sick it behind a solid door. Surprise encounters may be a thing of the past, cutting down the tension and decreasing options for challenging fights - The ranger, set up for stealthy reconnaissance is suddenly out of a job. Zone of truth and a lack of concern about inflicting pain is both a great plot development opportunity and a major threat.

Are your groups playing at very high levels only then? Arcane Eye is a 4th level spell slot so I guess I'm not seeing that as a cheap expenditure when you have to be at least 9th level to have even one. It is also pretty useless for recon in the wilderness as it only sees out to 30 feet, whereas a character's vision is limited only by obstruction.

[PeteNutButter]

Just because this statement intrigued me, I went to check out the Kraken statblock again.

I might be meaner than you, because I would have it swim to position, use the Lightning Vulnerability Lair Action, then spam Lightning Storm as first an action then as a Legendary Action and nuke the Cleric out of the fight (even six successful DC23 Dex saves would be 132 damage, more likely it'll be closer to double that). The Krakens DO hate gods after all. :smalltongue:

Despite me picking them up and tossing them around, the players kept managing to get out of the water, so it wasn't so effective. I didn't play it with kiddie gloves, although I could have eaten the cleric instead of the sorcerer who was putting out insane damage. I did eat and kill the sorcerer, and was going to eat the cleric next, but then they killed the Kraken. I had even rolled his HP so he had more than a normal Kraken. It's just not enough to be one mob against many.

[Segev]

Oh! I like this idea. I may have to steal it.

Be my guest! I'm glad to help.

Also, sorry if that post sounded curt or dismissive; I was typing it with constrained time and had to be pithier than usual.

[pwykersotz]

Despite me picking them up and tossing them around, the players kept managing to get out of the water, so it wasn't so effective. I didn't play it with kiddie gloves, although I could have eaten the cleric instead of the sorcerer who was putting out insane damage. I did eat and kill the sorcerer, and was going to eat the cleric next, but then they killed the Kraken. I had even rolled his HP so he had more than a normal Kraken. It's just not enough to be one mob against many.

Ah, yeah, that'll happen. I put a level 9 party of 4 against an Archmage and a Death Slaad and they completely trounced the encounter. They got lucky AND they capitalized on their terrain and enemy weaknesses well. Oh well. :smallsmile:

[MrStabby]

Are your groups playing at very high levels only then? Arcane Eye is a 4th level spell slot so I guess I'm not seeing that as a cheap expenditure when you have to be at least 9th level to have even one. It is also pretty useless for recon in the wilderness as it only sees out to 30 feet, whereas a character's vision is limited only by obstruction.

In a dungeon context there are a good number of spells that can compete with Arcane eye, but few that surpass it. Establishing which alleys you can be flanked from, where any ambushes are, setting your own ambushes, finding alternative paths past difficult encounters, knowing which fights will have reenforcements... it can knock a challenge rating of about half the encounters the party faces, which even without any more level 4 slots is still pretty solid.

In the wilderness it is less good though.