Albions_Angel
2017-11-14, 06:57 AM
So I have/had this gaming group. And there are Ok, so I dont like 5th. This is my 8th game of 5th. I have DM'd 5th. I have theory crafted 5th. Nothing works the way I like it to. Thats fine, I am calling an end to it now, no more 5th for me. Sorry, just not my thing. Nothing against it for the sake of being 5th, but lots of rules and rulings that I just dont agree with. I dont like FPS games, I dont like most types of nuts, I dont like reality TV, and now 5th is going on that pile.
With that out the way, this group, and this game, and this DM, drive me up the wall. Lovely people, good friends in their own rights, AND they are my SO's housemates, but they are not my type of gamers. When I sit down to a D&D game, its to play D&D. Character goes on, several hours later (and a few OOC comments/jokes if its appropriate), character comes off. I dont play often, so when I do, I want to play. I am logged into roll20 10 minutes early to double check my character sheet and last session notes, or at the table doing the same. They are.... not at all like that. D&D for them is like any other group activity. Turn up time is flexi, chatter constantly, never ready with character sheets, talking out of turn in combat, on their phones/playing other games. If they didnt all do it, and wernt all happy with it, I would say they were being very rude, but whatever. I know this is what its like, and its basically them or nothing right now.
Then there is actual play style. I like numbers. I like strategy. I like power. Yeah, ok, I like 3rd. Sorry, I know 5th isnt 3rd, but they wont even try 3rd so 5th was all I had. They had a bad experience with 4th and now they "wont go backwards" and "dont want to play the beta version of 5th" whatever that means. Personally, I think thats a little off, considering I am willing to play a system I have tried and dont like, but whatever. Majority rules, right? Their characters are... all over the place. I have to fight tooth and nail for a sensible point buy or array, but even if they get good stats and build a semi-optimized character, they will play it both contra to their stats AND contra to their own backstories, but woe-be-tide anyone else who gets their back story wrong. Or their name. But everyone else gets "humorous" nicknames.
Session 0s are useless. The DM says "Right, its combat focused, but low lethality. I will be leading you. You wont go wrong, dont worry about ending up somewhere too high level. Also, lets make this serious." Everyone agrees heartily. Next thing I know, half of us are dead with the DM going "Well, you shouldnt have gone that way. If you had asked this specific NPC or rolled this specific number this wouldnt have happened." Meanwhile Im not allowed to have a back story I write, because they think its funny if my character rides in on a giant snail. Thanks guys.
While we are here, lets talk about lethality. Does everyone agree that at low levels, 5th has you dancing on a knife edge compared to some other systems? Not a bad thing, but just a thing. Well thats all fine if your DM can A) count and B) knows that just adding the raw challenge ratings is only half the job. You have to take numbers, strategy, placement, surprise, terrain, all into account. They can al change the CR and thus the XP and rewards. Oh yeah, rewards. Would be nice to have some. Shame we havnt in 5 sessions. Oh well.
Lets talk about this campaign in particular. Home setting, nothing out of the ordinary. Combat focused game. Despite session zero, its high lethality and open world. We can (and always seem to) make mistakes. So, my first char was a Soul Blade Mystic, back when front line was a paladin and a 2WF ranger. My job was dart in, deal a ton of damage, dart out. That is until the DM revoked my array he had given me at the last moment because everyone else took the dice rolls. My character sucked. Died. Was DM fieted back to life. Died again. Session 1 everybody. Half the party also died. Yay. The paladin is mount focused with a lance. We fight in tunnels a lot and its her only weapon. The ranger died and came back as ranged. The 2 wizards (one div, one abj) went utility. "Cast something AOE!" we would cry. "Will mend do?" was often the reply. So my second char I rolled up a War Cleric. Guy bristled with weaponry. Fell over a lot too when shield of faith went down, which it does a lot because Con isnt a cleric save and yet is needed for 90% of their buff spells. And before you ask, the group thinks rogues are OP and bans them. I know, I know, but we are talking about wizards that take mend for combat games and frown on Barbarians.
With the party comp set up, lets examine yesterdays battle. We had the surprise, burst into a room of low level kobolds. Just regular kobolds that had kidnapped 30 children, turned them undead and then sent them back to the town they were from. You know, EVIL kobolds. The paladin then refused to fight, prevented the rest of us from fighting, and lost our surprise. And then let half the kobolds leave the nice open room and head into the tight tunnels for backup. Well screw that, I leaped into combat, and did some damage. Then the door behind us starts banging, so the paladin bars that. Then kobolds come in from the other way, so I go and deal with that. Yay, party split across large room. Oh well, what can you do.
Now, kobolds are minions. You hack them to bits while they wiff on you until you can get to the big bad and kill them. Only the big bad(s) were in front. 2 Kobold dragonshields. Vs me. Not good. Oh, and (wait for it) TEN regular kobolds 30 ft behind them with slings. And 2 inventors. Also ranged. The dragonshields were blocking the way to the ranged guys.
What happened next is... well, I died, the door broke, because WOLVES did piercing damage to it (more or less directly against what the compendium says about objects, the door ended up with AC1, 10 HP and no resistance because "thats a stupid rule"), before I fell over I found out that Spectral Weapon doesnt count as a flanking buddy (using the flanking rules, and I know Spectral Weapon doesnt count for Sneak Attack, but having an opponant "distracted" by an inanimate object so you can slip in a knife is different to being distracted by the PLAYER while the "inanimate" object takes a swipe at your back. But optional rule and im not the DM. Shame I planned my action and executed it assuming it would work, then wasnt allowed to take it back...), the wizards ran off, the ranger fell over shortly after I did, and the paladin got boxed into a corner by, then 3 dragonshields, 2 inventors, 10 slingers and a bunch of wolves. Some enemies were bloody at this point. The wizards escaped, tried to rest, were told that despite being in the dungeon for a grand total of 5 minutes, and it being mid morning and summer when we went in, it was now approaching night and if they tried to long rest, they would be ambushed.
With me dead, I left the skype call at this point.
Honestly, they are good friends and arnt just trolling me. And apparently the DM is a good DM... sometimes. But this is the second game of his I have been in where he has failed to take numbers and environmental factors into account for the CR. The other was a 5th ed LOTR game where we wernt allowed to have a long rest except in large towns, short rests dont recover HP and we dont have spells or healing, yet are expected to travel several days at a time and have 2 encounters a day.
Its not like he even likes killing us. I could understand a good powertrip. We have all done it to a greater or lesser extent at some point. But he acts all upset that we keep dying, or end up in the "wrong" place after no direction, a series of easily winnable encounters (one lone kobold looking the other way sort of thing), "locked" doors that are either destroyed by a single arrow or give with a DC 5 straight check, and a chase into an ambush that frankly they wouldnt know about either.
Every session is either a pointless exercise of talking to NPCs randomly, while it becomes increasingly obvious that we are supposed to go out and hunt something down (for no reward not even loot), or a series of pointless cr 1/8 encounters like a trail of breadcrumbs to a fight that either looks winnable right up until the kobolds take off their disguises and they are all higher cr variants, or until we are in a position we cant escape from. Session one we happily explored a seemingly empty dungeon right up until there were multiple paths and going down any one of them could let enemies come in behind us, then all of a sudden have a fight that burns all our resources, chase the 1 bloodied survivor down a tunnel, and end up somehow surrounded with our backs to the walls.
Oh, and good luck getting NPC help. Their kids have been kidnapped, but the guards dont give a damn and are openly hostile to our advances for them to help. And sometimes the paladin wont help because the icon for kobolds on roll20 looks cute and she doesnt want the tokens removed from play. Gotta love Lawful Good Paladins that actually WONT attack evil creatures that kidnap, pillage, rape, burn, create undead and bring world ended snowstorms.
They are the only group around that I can feasibly play with regularly, but unfortunately I cant play under this DM, I cant play with this group and I cant play with this system (which is actually not the systems fault, that one is on me). So looks like I am retiring from D&D for a while, both DMing and playing. Even the local gaming groups have all gone 5th, dont want to touch 3rd or pathfinder, and play rule of cool and rule of silly rather than wanting to play a serious game. Which is fine, but I dont have that sense of humor..
The short version is, after 5 sessions, there have been 6 deaths, party comp is totally wrong, and the fights we are getting into are massively incorrectly CR'd as a whole. But one constant theme is that Kobold Dragonshields are way tougher than I would expect.
Appearing as typically 2 members in a group of 7-10 kobolds, Kobold Dragonshields have AC 15, can multi-attack, and get advantage when there is an ally within 5 ft of the target. Or, in our case, literally all the time. We are/were level 3, and we just get annihilated by them. I think half the problem is in our party of 5, there are only 2 melee characters, but even so, I was a War Domain Aasimar Cleric, AC 18 with shield of faith up, +6 to hit, with a great sword and a Spectral Weapon at +5, and it was just swing and miss (ill admit, I rolled bad, but still), and then all of a sudden I had 4 attacks at advantage on me. First one took out my shield of faith, so I am down to 16 AC and then its lights out. They then battered down our Paladin, slaughtered our Ranger and would have killed our 2 utility wizards (combat focused campaign, 2 util wiz, see spoiler for more info) if they hadnt legged it.
Regardless of why we were there, what CR the entire encounter was, the terrain, we should have downed ONE of them at least. CR 1 seems a little cheap. Sure, on their own they lose out on advantage, but put 2 of them together and it isnt just "slightly more than CR2", it pumps them WAY up.
Anyone else feel that they are a little... over the top?
With that out the way, this group, and this game, and this DM, drive me up the wall. Lovely people, good friends in their own rights, AND they are my SO's housemates, but they are not my type of gamers. When I sit down to a D&D game, its to play D&D. Character goes on, several hours later (and a few OOC comments/jokes if its appropriate), character comes off. I dont play often, so when I do, I want to play. I am logged into roll20 10 minutes early to double check my character sheet and last session notes, or at the table doing the same. They are.... not at all like that. D&D for them is like any other group activity. Turn up time is flexi, chatter constantly, never ready with character sheets, talking out of turn in combat, on their phones/playing other games. If they didnt all do it, and wernt all happy with it, I would say they were being very rude, but whatever. I know this is what its like, and its basically them or nothing right now.
Then there is actual play style. I like numbers. I like strategy. I like power. Yeah, ok, I like 3rd. Sorry, I know 5th isnt 3rd, but they wont even try 3rd so 5th was all I had. They had a bad experience with 4th and now they "wont go backwards" and "dont want to play the beta version of 5th" whatever that means. Personally, I think thats a little off, considering I am willing to play a system I have tried and dont like, but whatever. Majority rules, right? Their characters are... all over the place. I have to fight tooth and nail for a sensible point buy or array, but even if they get good stats and build a semi-optimized character, they will play it both contra to their stats AND contra to their own backstories, but woe-be-tide anyone else who gets their back story wrong. Or their name. But everyone else gets "humorous" nicknames.
Session 0s are useless. The DM says "Right, its combat focused, but low lethality. I will be leading you. You wont go wrong, dont worry about ending up somewhere too high level. Also, lets make this serious." Everyone agrees heartily. Next thing I know, half of us are dead with the DM going "Well, you shouldnt have gone that way. If you had asked this specific NPC or rolled this specific number this wouldnt have happened." Meanwhile Im not allowed to have a back story I write, because they think its funny if my character rides in on a giant snail. Thanks guys.
While we are here, lets talk about lethality. Does everyone agree that at low levels, 5th has you dancing on a knife edge compared to some other systems? Not a bad thing, but just a thing. Well thats all fine if your DM can A) count and B) knows that just adding the raw challenge ratings is only half the job. You have to take numbers, strategy, placement, surprise, terrain, all into account. They can al change the CR and thus the XP and rewards. Oh yeah, rewards. Would be nice to have some. Shame we havnt in 5 sessions. Oh well.
Lets talk about this campaign in particular. Home setting, nothing out of the ordinary. Combat focused game. Despite session zero, its high lethality and open world. We can (and always seem to) make mistakes. So, my first char was a Soul Blade Mystic, back when front line was a paladin and a 2WF ranger. My job was dart in, deal a ton of damage, dart out. That is until the DM revoked my array he had given me at the last moment because everyone else took the dice rolls. My character sucked. Died. Was DM fieted back to life. Died again. Session 1 everybody. Half the party also died. Yay. The paladin is mount focused with a lance. We fight in tunnels a lot and its her only weapon. The ranger died and came back as ranged. The 2 wizards (one div, one abj) went utility. "Cast something AOE!" we would cry. "Will mend do?" was often the reply. So my second char I rolled up a War Cleric. Guy bristled with weaponry. Fell over a lot too when shield of faith went down, which it does a lot because Con isnt a cleric save and yet is needed for 90% of their buff spells. And before you ask, the group thinks rogues are OP and bans them. I know, I know, but we are talking about wizards that take mend for combat games and frown on Barbarians.
With the party comp set up, lets examine yesterdays battle. We had the surprise, burst into a room of low level kobolds. Just regular kobolds that had kidnapped 30 children, turned them undead and then sent them back to the town they were from. You know, EVIL kobolds. The paladin then refused to fight, prevented the rest of us from fighting, and lost our surprise. And then let half the kobolds leave the nice open room and head into the tight tunnels for backup. Well screw that, I leaped into combat, and did some damage. Then the door behind us starts banging, so the paladin bars that. Then kobolds come in from the other way, so I go and deal with that. Yay, party split across large room. Oh well, what can you do.
Now, kobolds are minions. You hack them to bits while they wiff on you until you can get to the big bad and kill them. Only the big bad(s) were in front. 2 Kobold dragonshields. Vs me. Not good. Oh, and (wait for it) TEN regular kobolds 30 ft behind them with slings. And 2 inventors. Also ranged. The dragonshields were blocking the way to the ranged guys.
What happened next is... well, I died, the door broke, because WOLVES did piercing damage to it (more or less directly against what the compendium says about objects, the door ended up with AC1, 10 HP and no resistance because "thats a stupid rule"), before I fell over I found out that Spectral Weapon doesnt count as a flanking buddy (using the flanking rules, and I know Spectral Weapon doesnt count for Sneak Attack, but having an opponant "distracted" by an inanimate object so you can slip in a knife is different to being distracted by the PLAYER while the "inanimate" object takes a swipe at your back. But optional rule and im not the DM. Shame I planned my action and executed it assuming it would work, then wasnt allowed to take it back...), the wizards ran off, the ranger fell over shortly after I did, and the paladin got boxed into a corner by, then 3 dragonshields, 2 inventors, 10 slingers and a bunch of wolves. Some enemies were bloody at this point. The wizards escaped, tried to rest, were told that despite being in the dungeon for a grand total of 5 minutes, and it being mid morning and summer when we went in, it was now approaching night and if they tried to long rest, they would be ambushed.
With me dead, I left the skype call at this point.
Honestly, they are good friends and arnt just trolling me. And apparently the DM is a good DM... sometimes. But this is the second game of his I have been in where he has failed to take numbers and environmental factors into account for the CR. The other was a 5th ed LOTR game where we wernt allowed to have a long rest except in large towns, short rests dont recover HP and we dont have spells or healing, yet are expected to travel several days at a time and have 2 encounters a day.
Its not like he even likes killing us. I could understand a good powertrip. We have all done it to a greater or lesser extent at some point. But he acts all upset that we keep dying, or end up in the "wrong" place after no direction, a series of easily winnable encounters (one lone kobold looking the other way sort of thing), "locked" doors that are either destroyed by a single arrow or give with a DC 5 straight check, and a chase into an ambush that frankly they wouldnt know about either.
Every session is either a pointless exercise of talking to NPCs randomly, while it becomes increasingly obvious that we are supposed to go out and hunt something down (for no reward not even loot), or a series of pointless cr 1/8 encounters like a trail of breadcrumbs to a fight that either looks winnable right up until the kobolds take off their disguises and they are all higher cr variants, or until we are in a position we cant escape from. Session one we happily explored a seemingly empty dungeon right up until there were multiple paths and going down any one of them could let enemies come in behind us, then all of a sudden have a fight that burns all our resources, chase the 1 bloodied survivor down a tunnel, and end up somehow surrounded with our backs to the walls.
Oh, and good luck getting NPC help. Their kids have been kidnapped, but the guards dont give a damn and are openly hostile to our advances for them to help. And sometimes the paladin wont help because the icon for kobolds on roll20 looks cute and she doesnt want the tokens removed from play. Gotta love Lawful Good Paladins that actually WONT attack evil creatures that kidnap, pillage, rape, burn, create undead and bring world ended snowstorms.
They are the only group around that I can feasibly play with regularly, but unfortunately I cant play under this DM, I cant play with this group and I cant play with this system (which is actually not the systems fault, that one is on me). So looks like I am retiring from D&D for a while, both DMing and playing. Even the local gaming groups have all gone 5th, dont want to touch 3rd or pathfinder, and play rule of cool and rule of silly rather than wanting to play a serious game. Which is fine, but I dont have that sense of humor..
The short version is, after 5 sessions, there have been 6 deaths, party comp is totally wrong, and the fights we are getting into are massively incorrectly CR'd as a whole. But one constant theme is that Kobold Dragonshields are way tougher than I would expect.
Appearing as typically 2 members in a group of 7-10 kobolds, Kobold Dragonshields have AC 15, can multi-attack, and get advantage when there is an ally within 5 ft of the target. Or, in our case, literally all the time. We are/were level 3, and we just get annihilated by them. I think half the problem is in our party of 5, there are only 2 melee characters, but even so, I was a War Domain Aasimar Cleric, AC 18 with shield of faith up, +6 to hit, with a great sword and a Spectral Weapon at +5, and it was just swing and miss (ill admit, I rolled bad, but still), and then all of a sudden I had 4 attacks at advantage on me. First one took out my shield of faith, so I am down to 16 AC and then its lights out. They then battered down our Paladin, slaughtered our Ranger and would have killed our 2 utility wizards (combat focused campaign, 2 util wiz, see spoiler for more info) if they hadnt legged it.
Regardless of why we were there, what CR the entire encounter was, the terrain, we should have downed ONE of them at least. CR 1 seems a little cheap. Sure, on their own they lose out on advantage, but put 2 of them together and it isnt just "slightly more than CR2", it pumps them WAY up.
Anyone else feel that they are a little... over the top?