Two Sets of Rules, the Good and Bad? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

anthon

2021-04-05, 01:49 AM

So something irked me about 5e. There's two sets of rules. One for DMs and one for players. They aren't the same. Just run a creature with lair and legendary actions for instance.

in some sense, this is a bad thing, it produces a weird offputtish JRPG effect where the player character who you just did 9999 damage to defeat and join your side now has 320 hp. wtf.

in another sense, it's something i kinda crave in the way play styles unfold through out the game with regard to benedictions and maledictions.

There's a distinct dumbing down in 5e compared with prior editions in terms of healing and conditions. Poison, Blindness, etc.,

they are all optimized around some kind of instance based video game durations, and not at all like the old story based immersion durations of "permanent" that a lot of old editions had. Thus a healer is weirdly more like a novelty than a miraculous shaper of destiny. Not even the NPCs.

And yet, i get the distinction that even in new editions, there's this sort of fleeting value to combat only events, which are not shared by players. The balance of spell effects, penalties, buffs and debuffs are not equal, not exploited the same. Take an ability to have multiple attacks to 4. For a player, this means up to 4 attacks to divide among a horde of goblins or whatever,

so its DPS/4 targets, possibly in a swarm of 8+ targets.

Now flip this 4 attack thing to the swarm itself, and have them surround your dude.

its now DPS x 4 x 8 = 32 x DPS vs. your one character. Do you see what I did there?
even adjusted to +dps,

your dps is still being divided by multiple targets most of the time, (and DMs will increase monsters according to your combat prowess)
but flat out you got a max of +300% on +3 attacks,
but the DM is applying that +300 to 8 monsters, now its +2400%

I showed how player vs. the world in reverse can be grossly imbalanced.

Same thing can be operational with blinding or paralysis, poison, disease, lingering curses etc. If you curse a monster in battle, they might have a -2 or disadvantage for all of 30 seconds, maybe less. Maybe you kill them, maybe they run away, but your experience of their suffering, and its relevance, is minimal. It's advantage to you is minor, possibly 0. They might have heightened senses, tremor sense etc.

But you don't. When you go blind permanently, it screws up not just that one fight, that one experience, but all the future fights to come. It lingers, it ruins your day. It causes you to stumble where the monsters would not. You have to live to see the scene after this one, and so cursed, experience every moment of it.

This may be 3rd person equal, but experientially, it's not equal at all. The narrative flow of the DM with infinite encounters to hurl at the players, vs. the players having to live with the long term consequences of every little thing, it seems like some aspect of this could be mediated.

One possible way is to evaluate this two system mechanic of lair/legendary, and expand it to some notion of "player experience vs. NPC validity". Like spell level. A player character casting blind on some monster should be much easier than a monster casting blind on a player, not because it makes sense 3rd person objective - it doesn't - but because it means so much more and so much less, depending on who has it.

Concentration buffs can be the same way. Metaplot conditions as well.

This isn't something you can easily justify, but if you think on it, you'll get what im saying. Something does feel off when you can say

"when YOU use this power, its crap against your enemies... but
when THEY use the same power on you, it wrecks your whole world"
what the heck? Why is this?

And how do we fix it?

Avonar

2021-04-05, 02:17 AM

I'll be honest, I'm struggling to see your point here.

So something irked me about 5e. There's two sets of rules. One for DMs and one for players. They aren't the same. Just run a creature with lair and legendary actions for instance.

in some sense, this is a bad thing, it produces a weird offputtish JRPG effect where the player character who you just did 9999 damage to defeat and join your side now has 320 hp. wtf.

Are you getting many cases of monsters joining you after a fight? And is the DM using different stats for them? Sure, that would be weird but it's a thing I've never, ever seen happen.

Also: You are humanoid people. Most creatures with legendary actions and the like are very much not. Granted, monsters tend to have highter HP pools that PCs but that's mainly to make sure fights actually last a few rounds.

in another sense, it's something i kinda crave in the way play styles unfold through out the game with regard to benedictions and maledictions.

There's a distinct dumbing down in 5e compared with prior editions in terms of healing and conditions. Poison, Blindness, etc.,

they are all optimized around some kind of instance based video game durations, and not at all like the old story based immersion durations of "permanent" that a lot of old editions had. Thus a healer is weirdly more like a novelty than a miraculous shaper of destiny. Not even the NPCs.

Well, there are creatures that can leave permanent effects on a person, or at least effects that go beyond a battle. These are usually curses and diseases, and while there may not be many, they do exist. Their prevalence is a DM decision. I definitely would not like to see every other fight leaving permanent conditions on characters. I don't want the healer to have to save up every spell slot because half the party gets permanently blinded each fight.

And yet, i get the distinction that even in new editions, there's this sort of fleeting value to combat only events, which are not shared by players. The balance of spell effects, penalties, buffs and debuffs are not equal, not exploited the same. Take an ability to have multiple attacks to 4. For a player, this means up to 4 attacks to divide among a horde of goblins or whatever,

so its DPS/4 targets, possibly in a swarm of 8+ targets.

Now flip this 4 attack thing to the swarm itself, and have them surround your dude.

its now DPS x 4 x 8 = 32 x DPS vs. your one character. Do you see what I did there?
even adjusted to +dps,

your dps is still being divided by multiple targets most of the time, (and DMs will increase monsters according to your combat prowess)
but flat out you got a max of +300% on +3 attacks,
but the DM is applying that +300 to 8 monsters, now its +2400%

I showed how player vs. the world in reverse can be grossly imbalanced.

Again, these are DM issues, not game issues. If the DM throws you up against 8 creatures all with 4 attacks, that's entirely on them, unless those attacks are very low damage. The solution here is simple: Don't throw your players against encounters that deal way too much damage for them.

Same thing can be operational with blinding or paralysis, poison, disease, lingering curses etc. If you curse a monster in battle, they might have a -2 or disadvantage for all of 30 seconds, maybe less. Maybe you kill them, maybe they run away, but your experience of their suffering, and its relevance, is minimal. It's advantage to you is minor, possibly 0. They might have heightened senses, tremor sense etc.

But you don't. When you go blind permanently, it screws up not just that one fight, that one experience, but all the future fights to come. It lingers, it ruins your day. It causes you to stumble where the monsters would not. You have to live to see the scene after this one, and so cursed, experience every moment of it.

I mean you are right that cursing or blinding a creature has no permanent effects, but that is the point. They are utility spells for combat purposes and as such have a short duration. However there are long-term effects that PCs can employ. An 8 hours long suggestion, a 30 day geas, 7 day contagion. I am glad to see that 5e has very few "save or your character is basically ruined" abilities, that would be the worst. And let's not forget that making an enemy miss 1-3 attacks during a fight can mean the difference between character dead.

This may be 3rd person equal, but experientially, it's not equal at all. The narrative flow of the DM with infinite encounters to hurl at the players, vs. the players having to live with the long term consequences of every little thing, it seems like some aspect of this could be mediated.

It seems like this might be where the problem lies. The players are not playing against the DM, the DM is not the antagonist, the DM should not be trying to just kill the characters they should be helping tell a story. And the story is about the PCs, not the monsters. We focus on the consequences for the PCs. We don't focus on the fate of the rest of the goblin clan that the raiders you all just killed were from.

One possible way is to evaluate this two system mechanic of lair/legendary, and expand it to some notion of "player experience vs. NPC validity". Like spell level. A player character casting blind on some monster should be much easier than a monster casting blind on a player, not because it makes sense 3rd person objective - it doesn't - but because it means so much more and so much less, depending on who has it.

Why? Blindness lasts 1 minute with a save every turn to end it. Why should it be so much more powerful in the hands of the PCs? It has the same mechanical effect for the same length of time.

This isn't something you can easily justify, but if you think on it, you'll get what im saying. Something does feel off when you can say

"when YOU use this power, its crap against your enemies... but
when THEY use the same power on you, it wrecks your whole world"
what the heck? Why is this?

And how do we fix it?

I'm afraid I absolutely do not get what you're saying. You seem to be equating D&D to a video game and that doesn't track for me. You've listed issues which are so easily fixed by the DM. You can choose to put in more creatures with debilitating conditions. You can choose to make the creatures save bonuses that much lower. You can choose what creatures to put into a fight. This isn't a video game where everything is set encounters.

And furthermore, you can't just reload your last save. A fight goes bad and your character dies? That character is dead. Maybe they can be brought back, maybe not.

Jerrykhor

2021-04-05, 03:24 AM

I think you seem to be worried that just because the DM has unlimited Dragons, they will throw all of them at you. Yes, the quality of your game is highly dependent on the DM, so find a good one to play with. Problem solved.

Ashe

2021-04-05, 03:35 AM

Totally agree with the existing replies. If you are having problems from your DM not knowing what the word 'fun' means, you find another game.

Unoriginal

2021-04-05, 05:16 AM

If a Game Master wants to win a fight, they just win.

This isn't a 5e thing. ALL of tabletop RPGs inherently make the game master the master if the game.

A GM can throw 29 dragons at you. Each of those dragons can be immune to all damage and all conditions.

The RPGs that pretends the GM isn't all powerful and have to do X or are forbidden from doing Y are just wrong or lying to your face.

Now, because TTRPGs are a social activity meant for fun, a GM will usually have the brainpower to not deliberately be a jerk. A lucid GM does not try to "win", they try to offer the players an enjoyable experience (what that means depends on the people at the table, of course).

And if the GM does something the player find unacceptable, of if the player no longer has fun, and the GM refuses to change it, then the player should just leave.

MoiMagnus

2021-04-05, 06:30 AM

OldTrees1

2021-04-05, 08:04 AM

Gameplay asymmetry has downsides. Especially when it breaks verisimilitude. As a DM I don't like Lair actions or Legendary actions. However with the power growth curve being so rough (4->5 is bigger than 6->7) and bounded accuracy existing, there is insufficient grounding for designing enemies that don't break the action economy in enemy exclusive ways.

diplomancer

2021-04-05, 08:09 AM

Eldariel

2021-04-05, 08:14 AM

I definitely concur and this is why I as a DM use the same rules for NPCs and PCs. This largely works (though Diviner specifically is a really annoying enemy). It incidentally fixes stuff like Magic Jar and some Polymorph-type effects and I find it makes the game feel more believable. I never found the need for separate rules as a DM - it might be my extensive 3e background but I find I can tinker most of what I want with rules and the rest I should just make as homebrew that's available to PCs and NPCs alike (of course, not everything is available to normal PCs by virtue of world building but there's theoretically nothing stopping players from doing anything the NPCs are doing).

One of the major things I find that makes things more believable is enemies escaping and suffering of the long-term conditions afterwards too. I also find having "backup PCs" (retainers, minions, etc.) available to alleviate the problem of your main PC getting hit by something that makes them unavailable for an extended period of time. I definitely prefer stuff like Blindness and powerful Curses being permanent rather than "few rounds and it's okay" - that's very gamist and it doesn't actually do that much of importance for combat balance either. All it does is ensures that the PCs and NPCs are largely undisturbed by the aftermath of combat, which is the very opposite of what makes those encounters (that end in stalemates) meaningful. In my games, enemies often escape rather than fight a clearly disadvantageous fight simply because they place their survival above trying to kill the PCs aside from obvious exceptions (undead/golems/etc. and Outsiders & Fey with their own, very different sets of priorities). Of course, the system doesn't cater to escaping but simultaneous action declaration solves that nicely.

In what way do Lair Actions and Legendary Actions break verisimilitude? I don't get it.

Available to NPCs but not PCs and functions depending on party size and such. They feel very much like patchwork fixes to issues in the system, Legendary Actions more-so than Lair Actions (which are largely just thematic but it's weird that a Wizard PC in their own magical tower or a Cleric in their hallowed temple lacks access to similar mechanics).

Amnestic

2021-04-05, 08:30 AM

diplomancer

2021-04-05, 08:37 AM

Available to NPCs but not PCs and functions depending on party size and such. They feel very much like patchwork fixes to issues in the system, Legendary Actions more-so than Lair Actions (which are largely just thematic but it's weird that a Wizard PC in their own magical tower or a Cleric in their hallowed temple lacks access to similar mechanics).

It's available to PCs through True Polymorph though, isn't it? As long as you really ARE that creature, and not just shapechanged into it, you have access. I also don't see how being dependent on party size is that much of an issue; to begin with, it's not THAT dependent, unless you either have a very small party, with no minions with their own initiative to boot, or a creature with A LOT of legendary actions. Secondly, even when that's the case, my verisimilitude is definitely not stretched by a creature of legend being more and more dangerous the more foes it faces.

Eldariel

2021-04-05, 09:24 AM

Players can't play as a tarrasque or an ancient red dragon either, is that a problem?

Depends. They kinda can but it's a bit of a different ballgame at that point. Well, playing Tarrasque would probably not be very gratifying except as a one-shot but a game of Ancient Dragons could make for a very engaging Tier 4ish campaign.

Amnestic

2021-04-05, 09:39 AM

Depends. They kinda can but it's a bit of a different ballgame at that point. Well, playing Tarrasque would probably not be very gratifying except as a one-shot but a game of Ancient Dragons could make for a very engaging Tier 4ish campaign.

Dunno why you'd think it'd be engaging any moreso than a fighter. Every turn would play out the same. It uses its frightful presence, then it tries to hit stuff. Maybe it uses its breath once or twice a fight? They're just big balls of HP.

Eldariel

2021-04-05, 09:43 AM

Dunno why you'd think it'd be engaging any moreso than a fighter. Every turn would play out the same. It uses its frightful presence, then it tries to hit stuff. Maybe it uses its breath once or twice a fight? They're just big balls of HP.

Because it's an ancient dragon with a lair, a hoard, enemies, allies, thousands of years of experience, likely offspring, etc. Probably magic items and no real reason why they wouldn't have some spells too, as per spellcasting Dragons. That said, it's not the tactics that's necessarily interesting (indeed, 5e kinda sucks at making tactical combat interesting except for full casters, much like many of its predecessors) but the strategy: dragons as movers in multiversal politics and the direction of the world have a carved place of their own and how they go about using their vast resources to influence things - that part is interesting.

Amnestic

2021-04-05, 10:07 AM

Because it's an ancient dragon with a lair

So what? If it's a campaign you're playing in their lair is over there somewhere and irrelevant. Which is probably why there aren't any rules for giving a PC lair actions, you know. Because PCs are meant to be doing adventures, not sat at home.

, a hoard, enemies, allies, thousands of years of experience, likely offspring, etc. Probably magic items and no real reason why they wouldn't have some spells too, as per spellcasting Dragons. That said, it's not the tactics that's necessarily interesting (indeed, 5e kinda sucks at making tactical combat interesting except for full casters, much like many of its predecessors) but the strategy: dragons as movers in multiversal politics and the direction of the world have a carved place of their own and how they go about using their vast resources to influence things - that part is interesting.

Except for the "thousands of years of experience" (which even then might be covered depending on your race) all of those apply to any T4 character. They'll have a huge amount of wealth, be world famous, have made tons of enemies+allies and a bunch of magic items.

All of the engaging stuff you mentioned is just 'being a high level'.

Eldariel

2021-04-05, 10:15 AM

So what? If it's a campaign you're playing in their lair is over there somewhere and irrelevant. Which is probably why there aren't any rules for giving a PC lair actions, you know. Because PCs are meant to be doing adventures, not sat at home.

On Tier 4, there's precious little separating the two. You can be in your lairs "adventuring" and moving your pieces and you can use magic or whatever to be wherever you want to be the next moment. This goes for more standard PCs too; travel times and adventuring in general aren't really a thing you do on Tier 4 since Teleport-degree effects mostly make travel times irrelevant. It becomes more location-based.

Except for the "thousands of years of experience" (which even then might be covered depending on your race) all of those apply to any T4 character. They'll have a huge amount of wealth, be world famous, have made tons of enemies+allies and a bunch of magic items.

All of the engaging stuff you mentioned is just 'being a high level'.

Dragons kinda up the ante because of the sheer scope of their existence. High level PCs are of course cool but few of them have had that many brushes with primordial evils or far realms or whatever simply because their high level hood is so young. PCs level stupid fast and randomly go from zero to hero, making a bunch of powerful enemies and allies over their few relevant years of experience. Meanwhile, for a being of actual ancient power, we're talking about thousands of years of build-up and tension and probably a very delicate homeostasis between other movers of similar power. PCs are kinda like young usurpers but occasionally it's fun to step into the shoes of some established world shapers instead of trying to make new ones up. Dragons work quite well in that regard.

Amnestic

2021-04-05, 10:46 AM

On Tier 4, there's precious little separating the two. You can be in your lairs "adventuring" and moving your pieces and you can use magic or whatever to be wherever you want to be the next moment.

Even if you've got access to teleport there's a solid chance you won't end up where you want to go unless you've got a linked teleport circle or an associated object - neither of which are likely if it's an adventure. You're more likely to be in the "seen casually" or "seen once" options, which have a 50-75% miss chance (including a not insignificant 'mishap' chance) and the moment you step(/teleport) out of your lair, you lose your lair actions.

Eldariel

2021-04-05, 10:50 AM

Even if you've got access to teleport there's a solid chance you won't end up where you want to go unless you've got a linked teleport circle or an associated object - neither of which are likely if it's an adventure. You're more likely to be in the "seen casually" or "seen once" options, which have a 50-75% miss chance (including a not insignificant 'mishap' chance) and the moment you step(/teleport) out of your lair, you lose your lair actions.

If you're playing Dragons, you can bet your ass you'll have to defend your hoard though so you should be fine in that regard - you'll get to use your lair actions and defenses (one fun minigame). And distant viewing spells enable you to build up familiarity as necessary. Plus you're only ever a Word of Recall or a similar effect away from your lair for when it gets attacked.

OldTrees1

2021-04-05, 11:14 AM

In what way do Lair Actions and Legendary Actions break verisimilitude? I don't get it.

Why do creatures have Legendary Actions? Are they quicker? Or did the authors just need to rebalance the action economy? In 5E it is the latter and that breaks verisimilitude for me. A Choker having extra reactions (or Aberrant Quickness) makes sense. A Dragon being super fast and scale with party size because the game needs to counter the party action economy? I don't like that.

Lair Actions are a bit weirder. If they are part of the creature, then see Legendary actions. Else, since they are not part of the creature, then it would make sense to have them separate from the creature with rules for how to create your own Lair Actions and passive Lair effects. With information on how those would effect the difficulty of the encounter. However 5E balance and power is so wonky that they avoided that headache by making them just a new type of out of turn extra action that creatures get for metagame considerations.

You can see how I dislike Legendary Actions more than Lair Actions on this issue.

There are pros and cons to asymmetry. As a DM I feel 5E went too far into asymmetry.

Players can't play as a tarrasque or an ancient red dragon either, is that a problem?

Savage Species was my favorite 3E book from both a PC and a DM perspective.

Oh and having Lair Action rules based on the lair rather than on the species would be a neat edition for whenever the PC's home base is attacked.

Or when two sides are fighting in someone else's lair. Maybe the PCs are fighting a Lich deep in the heart of a dead red dragon's volcano lair.

Sorinth

2021-04-05, 11:22 AM

OldTrees1

2021-04-05, 11:28 AM

In terms of the asymmetry between PC class abilities and NPC abilities I think this is actually a good thing. I personally find building NPCs in 5e to be much faster and creates more engaging NPCs.

I do understand the lament of the PC who sees a cool NPC ability and wonders why they can't do the same. For example the Gladiator's Shield Bash ability, I can see a why a Fighter PC might think it sucks to not be able to Shield Bash. But keep in mind the simple truth is that with NPCs using player classes then that ability simply wouldn't exist so the PC fighter who wants to shield bash hasn't gained anything by having that symmetry.

This is the main positive to asymmetry. Being able to create NPCs faster due to simplified rules. Done well it even makes it easier to innovate new homebrew enemy abilities.

The PC lament over seeing a cool NPC ability can be addressed by creating more PC content. We could make a homebrew feat with a Shield Bash ability and some other neat things they saw.

So I can appreciate the merits of asymmetry, even as I criticize its downsides or when it goes further than optimal.

stoutstien

2021-04-05, 11:33 AM

NPC generally follow the same rules as Players do. That's why they need LA and different ratios of defense and offense power. Without them 5e would be even more of a rocket tag game then it is now. In order NPCs to feel like a threat they would need to be able to dish out enough damage and effects to be scary before they have to retreat or die. If you build NPCs using purely PC options you will make it a game of chance to see who acts first and that would pretty much decide every encounter. Doesn't sound fair or fun to me.

Sorinth

2021-04-05, 11:49 AM

This is the main positive to asymmetry. Being able to create NPCs faster due to simplified rules. Done well it even makes it easier to innovate new homebrew enemy abilities.

The PC lament over seeing a cool NPC ability can be addressed by creating more PC content. We could make a homebrew feat with a Shield Bash ability and some other neat things they saw.

So I can appreciate the merits of asymmetry, even as I criticize its downsides or when it goes further than optimal.

Is having the DM homebrew some sort of Shield Bash feat/ability a downside though?

Because I'm pretty sure somewhere along the way when making 5e they made the decision to encourage homebrewing. And having these non-PC abilities that should be learnable by the PCs is a great way of showing that off, whereas having more PC content would do the opposite, it would discourage that homebrewing element since the "feature" already exists.

OldTrees1

2021-04-05, 11:57 AM

Is having the DM homebrew some sort of Shield Bash feat/ability a downside though?

Because I'm pretty sure somewhere along the way when making 5e they made the decision to encourage homebrewing. And having these non-PC abilities that should be learnable by the PCs is a great way of showing that off, whereas having more PC content would do the opposite, it would discourage that homebrewing element since the "feature" already exists.

I did not list it as a downside, I listed it as the path forward for that lament.

However relying on DMs homebrewing does have a downside. As a DM I am very open to homebrewing, however it is still more work on the Player and DM's part. So someone that wants a Shield Bash ability might not consider it worth the work of homebrewing.

So while there is a downside element here, I do not consider it as one of the top downsides for asymmetry. And I do consider faster NPC generation and innovation (homebrewing new NPC features) is the top upside for asymmetry.

Grey Watcher

2021-04-05, 11:57 AM

As for magic in particular, it's not that permanent spells are GONE, they've just been made harder (you have to cast the same spell on the same area/object for a year, you have to spend a 9th level slot, etc.). To my mind, this makes it feel MORE magical, because it takes a lot of effort or superlative skill (as in only a few people in the world can do it) to pull off. It's rare and wondrous.

And the non-permanent durations don't feel any more arbitrary and video-gamey than previous editions have. If anything, I feel like concentration again makes committing to a spell more of a... commitment, as opposed to just loading up on (de)buffs like they're food at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Sorinth

2021-04-05, 12:22 PM

I did not list it as a downside, I listed it as the path forward for that lament.

However relying on DMs homebrewing does have a downside. As a DM I am very open to homebrewing, however it is still more work on the Player and DM's part. So someone that wants a Shield Bash ability might not consider it worth the work of homebrewing.

So while there is a downside element here, I do not consider it as one of the top downsides for asymmetry. And I do consider faster NPC generation and innovation (homebrewing new NPC features) is the top upside for asymmetry.

Honestly I didn't see you list any downsides (Though I may have missed some posts earlier in the thread). I also don't agree that requiring work to homebrew abilities as a downside. I can't speak for anyone else, but that's actually an upside for me since I like working on that kind of stuff. So having a game that expects and encourages homebrewing is way more fun/interesting to me. Though I suppose it does is exacerbate the problem of some players not meshing with their DM and not having much choice in who the DM is.

So what are the downsides of having NPCs have features that the PCs don't have access to?

monkey3

2021-04-05, 12:30 PM

JNAProductions

2021-04-05, 12:35 PM

I agree with the OP. There are two sets of rules and it is annoying. Heck, take that same fiend with Legendary and Lair actions and Planar Bind it, and it loses them while in your service.

But it doesn't stop there. A Lich is an evil Wizard who has forgone his humanity and traded it in for more power and immortality as an undead. Oh, so can my wizard do that? No. For NPC only; no such option for you. Can I True Polymorph myself into one then? Haha, no Liches are CR21 and you will never be above 20.

Fine, lower level then. In dungeon of the Mad Mage there is a necromancer with a bunch of Zombie Minotaurs. Can I make them, or zombie beholder or skeletal warhorse like in the monster manual? No, NPC only.

You can-just because there's no RAW way of doing it doesn't mean that your DM can't work with you to let you become a lich.

I was in a campaign where someone did, in fact, become a lich.

Which is not to say there's no room for an official Libris Mortis style book in 5E, but if that's a goal your character has, a good DM will either work with you on how to achieve it, or let you know that that's not the type of game they want to DM.

Amnestic

2021-04-05, 12:38 PM

Heck, take that same fiend with Legendary and Lair actions and Planar Bind it, and it loses them while in your service.

Pretty sure it does keep them when planar bound actually.

MoiMagnus

2021-04-05, 12:40 PM

(which are largely just thematic but it's weird that a Wizard PC in their own magical tower or a Cleric in their hallowed temple lacks access to similar mechanics).

That's just because the game doesn't assume that the PCs will have a home base at all, there is no rule for it. But if there was rules for PC head quarters, lair actions would be a pretty reasonable feature to buy.

Lair actions are more "asymmetry by incompleteness" (the rule doesn't exist yet for one side) than a true asymmetry.

The legendary resistances are an equivalent to the Warlock's devil's luck (or any class features the PCs accumulate that protect them against spells), which are instead replaced by a bland effect for simplicity's sake (and/or designer laziness).

The legendary actions are indeed a patchwork, because as most RPGs D&D rely too much on action economy so an unbalance in number of actions per rounds and how they are spread through the round can turn the fight into something unbalanced. Verisimilitude-wise, I find it quite reasonable that peoples spread their actions through the whole round, rather than in one big chunk. The farther away you are from turn-base, the nearest you are from verisimilitude. [That's why readying an action should not cost a reaction, but that's another subject]
Though I get that it is kind of gamey to be synchronised with player's turn. A more rational approach would be to have one legendary action every 5 point of initiative or something like that, but that's would be annoying to deal with in practice.

OldTrees1

2021-04-05, 12:42 PM

Honestly I didn't see you list any downsides (Though I may have missed some posts earlier in the thread). I also don't agree that requiring work to homebrew abilities as a downside. I can't speak for anyone else, but that's actually an upside for me since I like working on that kind of stuff. So having a game that expects and encourages homebrewing is way more fun/interesting to me. Though I suppose it does is exacerbate the problem of some players not meshing with their DM and not having much choice in who the DM is.

So what are the downsides of having NPCs have features that the PCs don't have access to?

... I did not include any downsides in my reply (quoted below in the spoiler for convenience) to you because I was highlighting the upsides to that aspect of asymmetry. Despite preferring less asymmetry, I agree with the upside your were elaborating on.

I also like homebrewing, but we both can recognize that it is work and that higher barrier to entry can discourage players from asking for it. However in general the specific aspect of asymmetry you are focusing on is the main Positive for asymmetry and its only downside is not one of main criticism with asymmetry.

This is the main positive to asymmetry. Being able to create NPCs faster due to simplified rules. Done well it even makes it easier to innovate new homebrew enemy abilities.

The PC lament over seeing a cool NPC ability can be addressed by creating more PC content. We could make a homebrew feat with a Shield Bash ability and some other neat things they saw.

So I can appreciate the merits of asymmetry, even as I criticize its downsides or when it goes further than optimal.

The main downsides for asymmetry happen in other areas. In another post I did mention Legendary Actions. This is not really NPCs having a new ability. This is the structure of enemies vs PCs being made asymmetrical for metagame concerns. Lots of structural asymmetry has stronger criticisms.

Another main criticism of asymmetry is being unable to play certain characters. Imagine you wanted to play a Hill Giant PC and found out PC Hill Giants are medium size instead of their normal size. You might feel like the game banned Hill Giant PCs and lied about it. 5E did not do this with Giants, but I still can't play a Giant. Conversions that break the characterization or characters not being possible is a downside of asymmetry.

Again, you might notice neither of those criticisms is related to the positive of asymmetry that you and I were agreeing about and elaborating about.

monkey3

2021-04-05, 12:42 PM

You can-just because there's no RAW way of doing it doesn't mean that your DM can't work with you...

I knew someone would reply with this (imo a cop-out of an answer). Rule Zero is no excuse for the writers to get lazy. They pretty much say such and such a thing is not possible for a pc (zombie must be humanoid only) then go ahead and make non-humanoid zombies. The is lazy or inconsistent as best. If I have a contractor build me a house, "I left the windows for you to install" is not acceptable.

Why do you folks let WoTC off so easily? As much as we pay for their stuff, it is not unreasonable that after many years, they should go ahead and fill in some of these rule holes.

anthon

2021-04-05, 01:57 PM

You seems to be touching a lot of different points:

(1) Gameplay asymmetry. I am personally very fan of asymmetry. I have to admit that symmetry is a very potent way to reach fairness (since everybody plays with the same rules), but that's not the only one, and symmetry also comes with a lot a restrictions to the rules, making harder to reach the intended balance point and player experience.
Note: On of the major gameplay asymmetry of 5e is the fact that NPCs then to have higher HP but lower AC than PCs. This is because missing attacks is much more frustrating for a player (which see his entire turn reduced to nothing) than for a GM (which is piloting multiple other creatures), and on the other hand PC needing to heal mean that having a mountain of HP would be impractical on the long run, while monsters don't have this issue.

(2) Permanent injuries on PCs vs NPCs. That's unavoidable in lethal systems like D&D. But in a setting where killing your enemies is a big NO-NO (you have to bring them alive, and if possible unharmed, to the justice), you can bring balance to this: since both PCs and NPCs will be recurrent in the game, a permanent injuries inflicted to a NPC is permanently reducing their power for the remaining of the campaign.

(3) Healing & permanent injuries. One of the goal of 5e design is to ensure that the gameplay is not significantly different whatever class is chosen by the players. In particular, a team with absolutely zero healers should not suffer from permanent injuries more than a team with one. This let 3 options:
(a) Nobody every have permanent injuries, which is the simplest choice, hence the choice of 5e.
(b) Nobody ever heal permanent injuries, including magical healers. This choice would go against power-fantasy.
(c) Access to healing permanent injuries is common enough in the universe (through NPCs) that not having a healer in the team is not that much a problem. This choice would constraint settings to be high-magic.
=> As a positive consequence of choice (a), the potential healer of the group is not forced onto the role of heal-bot. If you ever design a RPG in which healer classes are expected to have a significant healing role, please take inspiration on 5e paladin (healing is separated from other resources like spells) rather than on 5e cleric (healing compete with other spells as they use the same spell slots).

i greatly appreciate this breakdown of my thoughts (i work before sunrise so i was half asleep when i started writing it)

The healing vs. Permanent injuries really vexed me while i was looking over the 5e conditions and so forth, comparing durations, etc. Like, in ancient editions your cleric could be set up like a doctor (if you ever got a medical bill you know what i mean) during downtime. But in 5e some lifelong tragic conditions worth paying to fix, are super limited, and then i wonder whether a guy who had his eyes torn out, will cure blindness work on him? Maybe not. Maybe there's "two systems" at work, the "video game play style" spells, and then the NPC only/Artifact plot device spells which are off the table and assymetrical - like Zombie Minotaurs or whatever.

And the idea of permanent injury as a "higher level spell" that a high spell slot is spent for,

has a disproprotionately weak payout for players, while for villains/NPCs, like a curse of deafness or the plague etc., that sort of malady follows the player everywhere. So its weird to think we can justify stuff like liar actions and NPC only undead spells,

but not by the same measure, rebalance level/spell acquisition for PC vs. NPC abilities. After all, when you fight some random orc, your blindness spell is only useful for about 1 minute or less. So you should be spending 1 minute or less spell slots...

but what if the enemy is attacking you with the same blindness spell, and it defaults to permanent? Then making it level 1-2 or whatever is grossly potent for the monsters, but useless to you.

A scaling mechanism perhaps should be more frequent than it is. Not just damage dice, but more duration modifiers. 5e is heavy on concentration for 1 hour = permanent,

but not enough up-level duration modifiers. I could handle blindness being upcast to 5th-7th for permanence, maybe 8th-9th for some cruel version like "your eyeballs are burned out, requires a wish or high level regenerate spell to fix".

apologies if it seems im fixated on this example of Assymetry.

...

Playing Tarrasques would not be dissimilar from playing Hulk on Hulk mode, as long as you skip the bruce banner phase. Personality wise perhaps a lycanthrope on rampage.

Playing Ancient Red Dragons was possible in older editions like Council of Wyrms, and i think 3.5 had Encounter level modifiers for half dragons, but Council of Wyrms literally had lairs, levels, age categories, XP, treasure hoards, and cultures with offspring. Grim Harvest let you play a Lich or Vampire.

Makes me agree more readily with people who dislike Legendary Actions.

Unoriginal

2021-04-05, 03:27 PM

Why do creatures have Legendary Actions?

Because they are legendary.

Avonar

2021-04-05, 03:37 PM

I knew someone would reply with this (imo a cop-out of an answer). Rule Zero is no excuse for the writers to get lazy. They pretty much say such and such a thing is not possible for a pc (zombie must be humanoid only) then go ahead and make non-humanoid zombies. The is lazy or inconsistent as best. If I have a contractor build me a house, "I left the windows for you to install" is not acceptable.

Why do you folks let WoTC off so easily? As much as we pay for their stuff, it is not unreasonable that after many years, they should go ahead and fill in some of these rule holes.

This is a game where players can choose to do almost anything. If you wanted to make rules to cover home bases including every type of building and every conceivable thing that could be in it, you'd have an entire book just for that. And if you shrink it down, the new complaint becomes "well why isn't X included in the rules?"

Expecting every possible action and situation to have official rules is a little silly.

That being said, in some cases where a base of sorts is part of a campaign, they have put in rules for it. See Trollskull Manor from Dragon Heist.

OldTrees1

2021-04-05, 04:30 PM

Because they are legendary.

I assume this was a joke answer because you missed the question by removing the context.

Why do creatures have Legendary Actions? Are they quicker? Or did the authors just need to rebalance the action economy?

The metagame bodge breaks verisimilitude for me. I would rather have legendary creatures rather than an ugly bodge.

Sorinth

2021-04-05, 05:02 PM

I assume this was a joke answer because you missed the question by removing the context.

Why do creatures have Legendary Actions? Are they quicker? Or did the authors just need to rebalance the action economy?

The metagame bodge breaks verisimilitude for me. I would rather have legendary creatures rather than an ugly bodge.

Is the Dex 8 Fighter with Action Surge and 4 attacks per round quicker then the Dex 20 Ranger with his measly 2 attacks per round?

Sorinth

2021-04-05, 05:19 PM

... I did not include any downsides in my reply (quoted below in the spoiler for convenience) to you because I was highlighting the upsides to that aspect of asymmetry. Despite preferring less asymmetry, I agree with the upside your were elaborating on.

I also like homebrewing, but we both can recognize that it is work and that higher barrier to entry can discourage players from asking for it. However in general the specific aspect of asymmetry you are focusing on is the main Positive for asymmetry and its only downside is not one of main criticism with asymmetry.

The main downsides for asymmetry happen in other areas. In another post I did mention Legendary Actions. This is not really NPCs having a new ability. This is the structure of enemies vs PCs being made asymmetrical for metagame concerns. Lots of structural asymmetry has stronger criticisms.

Another main criticism of asymmetry is being unable to play certain characters. Imagine you wanted to play a Hill Giant PC and found out PC Hill Giants are medium size instead of their normal size. You might feel like the game banned Hill Giant PCs and lied about it. 5E did not do this with Giants, but I still can't play a Giant. Conversions that break the characterization or characters not being possible is a downside of asymmetry.

Again, you might notice neither of those criticisms is related to the positive of asymmetry that you and I were agreeing about and elaborating about.

Yes there's a higher barrier to entry when talking homebrewing, but I think 5e very intentionally decided that they wanted to be a toolbox with the expectation that players/dms would create their own tools when they wanted too.

But regardless I'm not seeing how this relates to asymmetry, if in 5e they built NPC using player classes and suggested DMs use class levels in the NPC section of the DMG then Shield Bash wouldn't exist as a possible feature and so as a player I still couldn't use it. And if I wanted to play a Hill Giant PC, well I'm still stuck asking the DM for homebrew options.

OldTrees1

2021-04-05, 05:44 PM

Yes there's a higher barrier to entry when talking homebrewing, but I think 5e very intentionally decided that they wanted to be a toolbox with the expectation that players/dms would create their own tools when they wanted too.

But regardless I'm not seeing how this relates to asymmetry, if in 5e they built NPC using player classes and suggested DMs use class levels in the NPC section of the DMG then Shield Bash wouldn't exist as a possible feature and so as a player I still couldn't use it. And if I wanted to play a Hill Giant PC, well I'm still stuck asking the DM for homebrew options.

...

You do realize that my first reply to you was agreeing with you, right? Asymmetry has the benefit of making it faster to create NPCs and easier to innovate new NPC features. If a Player laments not having access to an NPC feature, that can be addressed with homebrewing a feat/ability. That is technically a higher barrier to entry than if the feat/ability had already been available, but that is a tiny downside for the overall upside of faster NPC creation and ability innovation. We agree about this. How can I be clearer?

But rather than hear my agreement you asked for what my unrelated criticisms were. So I mentioned 2 of them and prefaced it by saying:
"The main downsides for asymmetry happen in other areas."

Now if there was less asymmetry, then a large Hill Giant would be a possible PC species in 5E. Unfortunately due to some of the 5E structural asymmetry, a 5E PC Hill Giant would be medium sized instead of large sized (see 5E Minotaurs). That would feel like a bait and switch to the player.

You felt this criticism was unrelated to what you were talking about. Which is exactly why I said that in my preface.

Is the Dex 8 Fighter with Action Surge and 4 attacks per round quicker then the Dex 20 Ranger with his measly 2 attacks per round?

Fighters have a reason to be faster. Chokers have a reason to be faster. When there is a reason, it can make sense.

Legendary Actions scale with the number of opponents as a obvious metagame bodge with no reason related to the creature that has them. That breaks verisimilitude for me. That is why I don't like Legendary Actions.

Most structural asymmetry is unnecessary artificial restrictions, or metagame bodges. So it behooves me to call out and draw attention to the positive forms of asymmetry.

Sorinth

2021-04-05, 06:46 PM

...

You do realize that my first reply to you was agreeing with you, right? Asymmetry has the benefit of making it faster to create NPCs and easier to innovate new NPC features. If a Player laments not having access to an NPC feature, that can be addressed with homebrewing a feat/ability. That is technically a higher barrier to entry than if the feat/ability had already been available, but that is a tiny downside for the overall upside of faster NPC creation and ability innovation. We agree about this. How can I be clearer?

But rather than hear my agreement you asked for what my unrelated criticisms were. So I mentioned 2 of them and prefaced it by saying:
"The main downsides for asymmetry happen in other areas."

Now if there was less asymmetry, then a large Hill Giant would be a possible PC species in 5E. Unfortunately due to some of the 5E structural asymmetry, a 5E PC Hill Giant would be medium sized instead of large sized (see 5E Minotaurs). That would feel like a bait and switch to the player.

You felt this criticism was unrelated to what you were talking about. Which is exactly why I said that in my preface.

Yes I'm aware you agreed with the upside, which is why I didn't bring up the upside again and instead asked you to elaborate on your criticisms of asymmetry. You seem to be taking offence to that for some reason. I asked to elaborate since I'm not sure how your critisims are actually related to asymmetry at all. Even now, you mention structural asymmetry in 5e that prevents you from having a Hill Giant PC but I have no idea what structural asymmetry you are talking about. If I had to guess I assume it relates to grapple rules but I'm not sure because I don't see how it relates to asymmetry

Fighters have a reason to be faster. Chokers have a reason to be faster. When there is a reason, it can make sense.

Legendary Actions scale with the number of opponents as a obvious metagame bodge with no reason related to the creature that has them. That breaks verisimilitude for me. That is why I don't like Legendary Actions.

Most structural asymmetry is unnecessary artificial restrictions, or metagame bodges. So it behooves me to call out and draw attention to the positive forms of asymmetry.

Doesn't it also break verisimilitude when the slow fighter has more attacks then a Hasted dex based Ranger?

EDIT: And if PCs were given Legendary Actions at some point then things would no longer be asymmetrical, yet the verisimilitude would still be broken.

PhoenixPhyre

2021-04-05, 07:00 PM

Legendary Actions are a great solution to an important problem. As is most asymmetry.

If you don't have legendary actions, then your only other option is to boost the power of actions the solo monsters have. Which makes taking them out before they go even more important, because the only balance point is "one action can wipe out one or more party members entirely". Which makes it even more rocket tag. Go first or die. Which is horrible design on both sides of the table--the monster never gets to do its signature moves or the players spend the entire combat out of things due to one bad roll at the beginning. That sucks. Legendary actions (and lair actions) let solo fights play out more cinematic. Remember, 5e is not a simulator. It's not trying to use monster (or PC) parameters as dials into the physical reality. It's a game UI trying to allow the creation of certain types of scenarios, often drawn from movie-analogues (heavily translated into the very different setup). The brave heroes fight against something that overmatches them and "breaks all the rules".

The bigger issue is that the narrative roles of monsters and players are not symmetric. Because the game isn't about playing monsters--that's not a design goal. Monsters (and NPCs generally) have completely different mechanical needs than PCs do. Especially when it comes to resources. Monsters are pretty much always at full design resources--if they weren't, they'd be designed with fewer resources. And rarely have to really deal with resource constraints. They're (in the main) designed to last 3-5 rounds under pressure from the PCs and then die/flee. PCs are designed to have a full day of adventuring, going through multiple encounters. If you give monsters the full resource set of a PC, the vast majority of those resources will go unused because they simply don't have enough "on-screen" actions to use them up. But to balance that, the actions they do take have to be more important and impressive. But if you give those to a PC, the PC is now horribly out of balance for both the rest of the party and the game as a whole.

LA (3e-style) didn't work. CF all the threads about it. And a hill giant? That's a level 10 PC (using my very rough rule-of-thumb 2:1 CR-level mapping). Except not, because really he's only got the HP and raw damage output of that kind of PC, not any of the other pieces. And shouldn't have those other pieces, because they'd just be bloat. So he doesn't fit into either a level 10 party or a level 5 party. Or anywhere in between. And can't, meaningfully, because the design must be different if he's to do his main job (being a monster) well.

The statblocks are not the character any more. They're merely a quick-reference guide for making combat work well. They're a starting point for further modifications for important NPCs, or can be used straight for the run-of-the-mill fodder. Requiring a full PC build for every single character out there, including the 15 commoners in the bar would be an enormous time-sink.

Heck, with 5e's system I can make up monsters and NPCs on the fly, with only a basic stat block to reference and doing the transformation in my head. And get it right 99.999% of the time. And even 5e stat blocks are too detailed (especially around spell-casting[1] for my tastes).

[1] That caster's going to last a grand total of 3 rounds. Why give them all the full spell slots and spells-prepared? Give me the top three action items, 4e-style. And then a brief list of "other things you could do instead" to cover the bases.

OldTrees1

2021-04-05, 07:22 PM

Yes I'm aware you agreed with the upside, which is why I didn't bring up the upside again and instead asked you to elaborate on your criticisms of asymmetry. You seem to be taking offence to that for some reason.

Your replies to a post agreeing with you were to hyperfocus on an unrelated disagreement. It gave the impression of a frustrating communication barrier. It took until this post here for me to know you even recognized the initial agreement. I still don't know if you recognize the scope of the agreement because why hyperfocus on an insignificant part of a post instead of the vast majority of the post?

Oh and the thing you are nitpicking about? You are telling me there is another communication barrier and placing the burden on me to overcome it despite you forcing the change of topic.

And I have demonstrated being interested in talking about the agreement and disinterested in talking about the part irrelevant to the initial reply in the reply chain from that initial reply. But you are badgering me on it.

Does that explain my irritation?

Even now, you mention structural asymmetry in 5e that prevents you from having a Hill Giant PC but I have no idea what structural asymmetry you are talking about. If I had to guess I assume it relates to grapple rules but I'm not sure because I don't see how it relates to asymmetry
As for PC size, look up 5E Minotaurs. For some reason PC Minotaurs shrink when they become PCs. WotC has decided PCs must be Small/Medium size. That unnecessary restriction creates unnecessary asymmetry. A type of asymmetry you were not talking about and thus don't see how it relates.

Doesn't it also break verisimilitude when the slow fighter has more attacks then a Hasted dex based Ranger?

No. It does not break verisimilitude for me for a warrior trained in many attacks despite their low dex would have more attacks than a warrior trained in fewer more accurate attacks despite their high dex. Does that strain the verisimilitude for you? Different people have difference preferences and tolerances. I could understand if you wanted dex to have a stronger role in the attack speed.

EDIT: And if PCs were given Legendary Actions at some point then things would no longer be asymmetrical, yet the verisimilitude would still be broken.

WotC decided to create Legendary Actions for monsters (an asymmetry) as a metagame balance bodge. Rather than a good solution that sustained verisimilitude while addressing the metagame balance too, it is a sore thumb. Some asymmetry is ugly like this. A type of asymmetry you were not talking about and thus don't see how it relates.

Legendary Actions are a great solution to an important problem. As is most asymmetry.

If you don't have legendary actions, then your only other option is to boost the power of actions the solo monsters have.

There are other options as well, however some really only work if the power curve is smooth instead of 5E's Tiered curve.

Boosting the power of actions is a useful answer.
Minions can work (although works better with a smooth and steeper power curve)
Passive effects are useful.

Legendary Actions are a solution to an important problem. As is most asymmetry (see ease and speed of generating NPCs). However not all solutions are good ones. I find Legendary Actions break verisimilitude for me. In contrast I appreciate the ease and speed of generating NPCs.

PS: The part of Hill Giant was not about ECL or symmetric stat blocks. It was about when the conversion from NPC to PC does a bait and switch on something important to the characterization.

PhoenixPhyre

2021-04-05, 08:23 PM

As for PC size, look up 5E Minotaurs. For some reason PC Minotaurs shrink when they become PCs. WotC has decided PCs must be Small/Medium size. That unnecessary restriction creates unnecessary asymmetry. A type of asymmetry you were not talking about and thus don't see how it relates.

Or maybe the setting in which minotaurs are playable either
a) has only one, smaller variety of minotaurs
b) has two varieties, of which only one is PC-available

WotC decided to create Legendary Actions for monsters (an asymmetry) as a metagame balance bodge. Rather than a good solution that sustained verisimilitude while addressing the metagame balance too, it is a sore thumb. Some asymmetry is ugly like this. A type of asymmetry you were not talking about and thus don't see how it relates.

I disagree about its ugliness. It solves the designated problem with elegance and in a reusable, systematic fashion. Combat is an abstraction, including number of attacks and the whole turn order thing. You can't get more metagame than that. In fact, a solution that tried to pierce that abstraction would be worse IMO.

There are other options as well, however some really only work if the power curve is smooth instead of 5E's Tiered curve.

Boosting the power of actions is a useful answer.
Minions can work (although works better with a smooth and steeper power curve)
Passive effects are useful.

Legendary Actions are a solution to an important problem. As is most asymmetry (see ease and speed of generating NPCs). However not all solutions are good ones. I find Legendary Actions break verisimilitude for me. In contrast I appreciate the ease and speed of generating NPCs.

PS: The part of Hill Giant was not about ECL or symmetric stat blocks. It was about when the conversion from NPC to PC does a bait and switch on something important to the characterization.

Of these options, only minions work...but they solve a different problem. Legendary actions are for solo encounters. Bosses that, by the fictional parameters, should generally be faced alone. Where minions don't make as much sense. You can always add minions and remove legendary actions--that works just fine. But you can't have a solo monster without some accounting for the action economy. No passive bonus can make up for being down 4+ to 1 on actions. And boosting action strength just makes for rocket tag, which everyone (I hope) realizes is a bad idea for fun. Being the only character to get to go...or dying without being able to do anything, entirely decided by who wins the d20 roll off at the beginning? That's horrible horrible horrible design. And wastes everyone's turn. And that's the only point at which you can balance the action strengths, when you can take characters out entirely (usually 2+) in a single action.

And there are no playable hill giants. Nor should there be--the whole idea is ludicrous. It doesn't work with the vast majority of adventure designs--that whole "can't fit in buildings" thing kinda wrecks everything but "we're outside and never go into a house or even a cave" campaigns. Even being large-sized puts a serious crimp on things...which is one reason (among many) why playable minotaurs weren't large. When your bane is the standard 5' hallway (squeezing penalties are severe)...

Plus, remember that 5e put no emphasis on being a general character simulator. It doesn't intend to let you play monster races. That's not in the design specs. So your complaint really boils down to "I don't like the design goals and wish they'd made a different game entirely." Which is fine, but is entirely subjective.

Eldariel

2021-04-05, 10:57 PM

I kinda like Legendary Actions in that they give e.g. Dragon wing attacks and such a place to occur at. I like how they mesh with combat. I just don't like how they're exclusive to solo monsters. There's no real reason to that. Everyone should get to play around with stuff out-of-turn; it wouldn't have to be strong (or strength could be scaled to desired effect) but the fact that they only occur in a cinematic fashion as a balance patch sucks. A lot of wasted potential there. Then again, I don't think turn-based initiative systems are really functional to start with: simultaneous initiative makes 5e much, much smoother and fixes a lot of the silliness of turn-based movement and lack of ability to get away and such. Ultimately, this is just one of those many things where the design never even attempted to create something optimised to do the given task as well as possible but went with the "I guess this is good enough" and splattered it on the wall. Turn structure should be altered as a whole, and that would then open up what now amounts to Legendary Actions to get more interactivity and options inside the turn for everyone.

Then again, given how terribly 5e monsters are written far as bonus actions and reactions go, I guess that's only to be expected. If you want for engaging fights that are more than "I hit the giant until it dies", you basically just have to rewrite the monster manual entirely. I don't think there's more than like 10 interesting, interactive entries in the whole book, and the auxiliary monster books are sadly the same. Overall, monster/NPC writing and their related rules are easily one of the weakest parts of 5e; 4e did it better as did PF2e and even PF1e. Legendary Actions are just the peak of the iceberg here, though definitely the ugliest part.

I disagree about its ugliness. It solves the designated problem with elegance and in a reusable, systematic fashion. Combat is an abstraction, including number of attacks and the whole turn order thing. You can't get more metagame than that. In fact, a solution that tried to pierce that abstraction would be worse IMO.

What, so your argument is that "combat is an abstraction and therefore it doesn't matter what they do, it's fine"? Doesn't sound very convincing to me...

Morty

2021-04-06, 06:10 AM

Eldariel

2021-04-06, 06:26 AM

I can't speak for its execution in 5E specifically, but in general I don't place much value on PC/NPC asymmetry. Rules are abstractions and I don't see why everyone in the world should use the same abilities in the same way. Especially in D&D, where character creation is laser-focused on a very specific type of character. Using PC classes and levels for non-adventurers gets silly pretty quickly.

Legendary actions seem like one of 4E elements that made it to 5E but were cut up and diminished to make them acceptable. Still, they're a necessity for running proper boss fights, one way or the other.

In 3e, they were mostly an emergent property of spellcasting: with contingencies and immediate action spells it was fully possible to run a boss fight with just the level of action interaction and difficulty desired. The cool part was that everyone could do it and that it didn't magically scale up to size. Of course, that made it hard to run mundane boss type enemies, but then again neither system really gives you much to work with far as martial bosses go.

heavyfuel

2021-04-06, 08:17 AM

GooeyChewie

2021-04-06, 08:47 AM

WotC decided to create Legendary Actions for monsters (an asymmetry) as a metagame balance bodge. Rather than a good solution that sustained verisimilitude while addressing the metagame balance too, it is a sore thumb. Some asymmetry is ugly like this. A type of asymmetry you were not talking about and thus don't see how it relates.
I acknowledge that Legendary Actions were created for metagame balance purposes. I do not agree that this asymmetry is ugly. I find it useful and necessary for the game.

From the monster's perspective, the players also have a metagame balance bodge. They can bring more players! That final boss the DM was planning might have been fine for four players. But when Joe brings his co-worker and Suzy brings a friend and suddenly you have a party of six set to take on that solo enemy, that same encounter will be a cakewalk instead of an epic battle. So the DM needs a way to make up for the party's asymmetrical ability to add more actions via adding more party members.

What, so your argument is that "combat is an abstraction and therefore it doesn't matter what they do, it's fine"? Doesn't sound very convincing to me...
I think the argument is more that all of combat is an abstraction, so criticizing one specific element of it for being an abstraction doesn't make sense. Any particular mechanic in combat should be evaluated on the basis of how well that mechanic accomplishes its goals. Legendary Actions may be abstract, but they accomplish the goal of helping balance single-enemy encounters against party size due to the party-size dependent action-economy advantage the party will have in such encounters.

Giving Legendary Actions to players might sound fun. As a one-time thing it might even be fun, as a way for the players to take down something that would clearly outmatch them otherwise. If it were a standard mechanic, it would just add to the party's action economy, which in turn means the DM would need to account for that action economy by using more enemies or more Legendary Actions for single-enemy encounters. Ultimately adding Legendary Actions to players would only serve to add more actions into each round on both sides rather than to make combat better or more balanced.

Eldariel

2021-04-06, 08:57 AM

Giving Legendary Actions to players might sound fun. As a one-time thing it might even be fun, as a way for the players to take down something that would clearly outmatch them otherwise. If it were a standard mechanic, it would just add to the party's action economy, which in turn means the DM would need to account for that action economy by using more enemies or more Legendary Actions for single-enemy encounters. Ultimately adding Legendary Actions to players would only serve to add more actions into each round on both sides rather than to make combat better or more balanced.

There's more to actions than number. Quality matters more: if PC legendaries don't contribute to e.g. decreasing enemy to 0 or making them unable to fight, it wouldn't really contribute to the problem. Stuff like active Perception checks and some item interactions could work great in the legendary framework for instance. Overall, it seems like a more functional out-of-turn action framework than the current Reaction framework.

DwarfFighter

2021-04-06, 09:03 AM

In what way do Lair Actions and Legendary Actions break verisimilitude? I don't get it.

You kind of need to subscribe to the Ninja power theory to also accept Legendary actions:

1. All ninjas are equally bad-ass.
2. A swarm of ninjas are push-overs and katana-fodder.
3. The last surviving ninja is an unkillable death-machine.

If you think that is weird and unrealistic, Legendary actions are not for you.

-DF

PhoenixPhyre

2021-04-06, 09:58 AM

You kind of need to subscribe to the Ninja power theory to also accept Legendary actions:

1. All ninjas are equally bad-ass.
2. A swarm of ninjas are push-overs and katana-fodder.
3. The last surviving ninja is an unkillable death-machine.

If you think that is weird and unrealistic, Legendary actions are not for you.

-DF

Wait...what? None of those apply. Legendary monsters aren't all equal, you don't fight them in swarms, and they don't change as they die (if they were fought in swarms).

Legendary monsters are
a) high CR. The MM has one below CR 10 (the unicorn). Most are in the 11-20 range.
b) designed to operate solo. The Pit Fiend, despite being a classic boss monster, isn't legendary. Why? Because he's normally faced with goons.
c) designed to be rare. Like "final boss of a T2 campaign" or "fought 2-3 times total over an entire 1-20 campaign". This is not 3e or 4e where CR ~ Level is a good guess. The median CR of creatures you'll fight (going by the DMG's standard) caps out at about CR 10.

Legendary monsters are designed to provide a cinematic feeling to a fight, feeling like a fight against something bigger and meaner. Something that inherently breaks the rules. Remember, 5e is not a simulation. The abstractions are tuned to provide particular aesthetics of fights, not to simulate what would actually happen in any kind of a blow-by-blow thing.

I'd say that if you're worried about legendary actions, you'd also have to dislike all the rest of the turn-based, resolved-on-the-spot combat abstraction, including HP, AC, saves, attack rolls, etc. Because they're really no different than giving the creature extra Reactions that they can spend on specific things (to provide the DM with extra guidelines to simplify their lives).

Morty

2021-04-06, 10:32 AM

In 3e, they were mostly an emergent property of spellcasting: with contingencies and immediate action spells it was fully possible to run a boss fight with just the level of action interaction and difficulty desired. The cool part was that everyone could do it and that it didn't magically scale up to size. Of course, that made it hard to run mundane boss type enemies, but then again neither system really gives you much to work with far as martial bosses go.

Yeah, so it was enabled by the utterly dysfunctional and broken state of magic in 3E. Not really something worth preserving or replicating. 5E certainly leans even harder on "if you want to do anything cool you must cast spells", for PCs and monsters alike, but 3E's way of doing that isn't a particularly compelling alternative.

You kind of need to subscribe to the Ninja power theory to also accept Legendary actions:

1. All ninjas are equally bad-ass.
2. A swarm of ninjas are push-overs and katana-fodder.
3. The last surviving ninja is an unkillable death-machine.

If you think that is weird and unrealistic, Legendary actions are not for you.

-DF

This analogy would work if an enemy with legendary actions suddenly lost them before the PCs' eyes when another one came along.

MaxWilson

2021-04-06, 11:12 AM

In what way do Lair Actions and Legendary Actions break verisimilitude? I don't get it.

It's absolutely bizarre that an Empyrean fighting a dragon attacks less often than an Empyrean fighting a dragon and two zombies, purely because of Legendary Actions. That degrades verisimilitude.

It's available to PCs through True Polymorph though, isn't it? As long as you really ARE that creature, and not just shapechanged into it, you have access. I also don't see how being dependent on party size is that much of an issue; to begin with, it's not THAT dependent, unless you either have a very small party, with no minions with their own initiative to boot, or a creature with A LOT of legendary actions. Secondly, even when that's the case, my verisimilitude is definitely not stretched by a creature of legend being more and more dangerous the more foes it faces.

True Polymorph does not grant legendary actions or lair actions, only legendary resistances.

As for magic in particular, it's not that permanent spells are GONE, they've just been made harder (you have to cast the same spell on the same area/object for a year, you have to spend a 9th level slot, etc.). To my mind, this makes it feel MORE magical, because it takes a lot of effort or superlative skill (as in only a few people in the world can do it) to pull off. It's rare and wondrous.

And the non-permanent durations don't feel any more arbitrary and video-gamey than previous editions have. If anything, I feel like concentration again makes committing to a spell more of a... commitment, as opposed to just loading up on (de)buffs like they're food at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

IMO the duration thing isn't really a magic problem, it's a systemic problem. It's bothersome that almost everything bad that can happen to a character ends in seconds, whether it's poisoning or blinding (with a knife) or hamstringing (by a monster). There are exceptions (poisoning that lasts for days from Contagion, petrification by Medusasa, or third-party effects like Dread levels from Cthulhu) but they are exceptional, which makes them feel arbitrary unless the DM uses them a lot.

Legendary monsters are
a) high CR. The MM has one below CR 10 (the unicorn). Most are in the 11-20 range.
b) designed to operate solo. The Pit Fiend, despite being a classic boss monster, isn't legendary. Why? Because he's normally faced with goons.

And yet Hutijin the Pit Fiend (CR 21) has legendary actions. You might say "that's because he's designed to operate solo" but that would be assuming your own conclusion. All we really know is that normal Pit Fiends have more HP and no legendary actions, and Hutijin has fewer HP, more abilities, and Legendary Actions. Canonically both of them have lots and lots of minions.

Eldariel

2021-04-06, 11:26 AM

Yeah, so it was enabled by the utterly dysfunctional and broken state of magic in 3E. Not really something worth preserving or replicating. 5E certainly leans even harder on "if you want to do anything cool you must cast spells", for PCs and monsters alike, but 3E's way of doing that isn't a particularly compelling alternative.

No, I agree. I personally think the reaction system needs extrapolation if we're gonna try and **** around with a turn-based cluster****. Simply because the amount of stuff that happens gets pretty big so things need ways to drop in more than 1/round. Honestly, the whole action system could use a rehash in that regard. Though luckily enough 5e system converts fairly simply to simultaneous turns, which actually addresses things to a degree (at least in the sense that "active defense" is a thing you can kinda write into the system without ****ing the active defender totally over).

MoiMagnus

2021-04-06, 11:37 AM

It's absolutely bizarre that an Empyrean fighting a dragon attacks less often than an Empyrean fighting a dragon and two zombies, purely because of Legendary Actions. That degrades verisimilitude.

Yes, this part of the rule is stupid. But it's kind of a corner case. In 99% of the fights played, there is always at least 3 enemies, so a legendary creature gets its 3 actions per turn, and is forced to spread them through the round, which is the intended effect.

In the 1% chance in which the legendary creature is against less than 3 enemies, the designer probably though:
(1) It might be a monster VS monster fight. We expect the GM to just use GM fiat to determine the result, not actually roll the attacks, so we're not gonna add a special exception for that.
(2) It might also be a monster VS very few PCs. The players probably have a rough time already. Moreover, we only added legendary actions to deal with the balance problem of "lot of heroes VS one monster", if there is not "lot of heroes", there is no need for the legendary actions any more. Let's not bother with adding an exception either.
(3) In both cases, if this bother the GM, that's why there have rule 0: to deal with corner cases and weird 1% situations which we willingly chose to not cover properly.

cookieface

2021-04-06, 11:47 AM

If you want verisimilitude when fighting a dragon, then I suggest you walk outside and try to find a dragon to fight.

Literally this entire game is fiction, and this entire fiction is a game. That means there are two sets of rules it needs to conform to:
1) Rules that maintain some sense of fictional realism, as in, a more experienced wizard is stronger than a novice wizard, or a barbarian hits harder than a sorcerer when they punch.
2) Rules that maintain a fun game environment, as in, game balance so that a single random occurrence (such as a dice roll) does not have outsized affects on outcome.

It is impossible to satisfy both rulesets at all times. Combat already breaks the first set of rules in order to satisfy the second (forcing characters to act in a uniform order each and every round, forcing things like movement to be broken up in-game based on turns -- ie a character "stops" at the end of their turn despite combat supposedly being a continuous time period). Picking out some problems while ignoring others is obtuse.

Legendary Actions are necessary to balance these fights. Especially when claiming things like allowing multiple reactions is OK, because Legendary Actions are essentially extra reactions with no specific trigger. Lair Actions especially seems silly to criticize -- your DM can choose to add Lair Actions to ANYTHING and they aren't necessarily based on creatures involved. (For example, just being creative with environmental effects like a strong wind blowing through once per round to knock players prone can be done even if you are fighting Kobolds.) Sure, there are creatures that have specific rules associated with their lairs, but that doesn't mean Lair Actions must be limited to those creatures, or NPC creatures in general.

That said, if you are fighting at your own home base often, seems like adventuring maybe isn't what you're cut out for. Adventuring tends to require leaving home.

GooeyChewie

2021-04-06, 11:48 AM

There's more to actions than number. Quality matters more: if PC legendaries don't contribute to e.g. decreasing enemy to 0 or making them unable to fight, it wouldn't really contribute to the problem. Stuff like active Perception checks and some item interactions could work great in the legendary framework for instance. Overall, it seems like a more functional out-of-turn action framework than the current Reaction framework.
Sure, quality matters. So does quantity. And sometimes sheer quantity begets quality.

Take the active Perception check, for example. If the DM builds an encounter where making an active Perception check does something important, then the Legendary Action allows the player to attempt that check while also doing whatever they want with their regular action. In this case, the quality of the Legendary Action isn't simply an active Perception check, but rather the quality of the other action the player took because they didn't have to use their regular action on the check. The Legendary Action takes away opportunity costs, which in turn means the players don't have to make as many meaningful choices.

On the other hand, if making an active Perception check doesn't do anything important, then the Legendary Action simply wastes time on a pointless roll. Either way, I don't see how Legendary Actions for players makes the experience better.

Wait...what? None of those apply. Legendary monsters aren't all equal, you don't fight them in swarms, and they don't change as they die (if they were fought in swarms).

I think the point is, if the DM were to build an encounter where you faced a swarm of faceless ninjas, none of them would have Legendary Actions. If the DM built an encounter where you faced one epic boss ninja (the last surviving ninja), that ninja would have Legendary Actions, even if they were ostensibly equally bad-ass as the rest of the ninjas.

MaxWilson

2021-04-06, 11:54 AM

Yes, this part of the rule is stupid. But it's kind of a corner case. In 99% of the fights played, there is always at least 3 enemies, so a legendary creature gets its 3 actions per turn, and is forced to spread them through the round, which is the intended effect.

In the 1% chance in which the legendary creature is against less than 3 enemies, the designer probably though:
(1) It might be a monster VS monster fight. We expect the GM to just use GM fiat to determine the result, not actually roll the attacks, so we're not gonna add a special exception for that.
(2) It might also be a monster VS very few PCs. The players probably have a rough time already. Moreover, we only added legendary actions to deal with the balance problem of "lot of heroes VS one monster", if there is not "lot of heroes", there is no need for the legendary actions any more. Let's not bother with adding an exception either.
(3) In both cases, if this bother the GM, that's why there have rule 0: to deal with corner cases and weird 1% situations which we willingly chose to not cover properly.

Legendary Actions are an awkward solution to a problem created by 5E's initiative system. They're not a balance fix at all, since legendary actions are factored into CR exactly the same as Multiattack actions.

Fortunately, as you say, a DM can simply rewrite the legendary action rules completely (100% of the time, not just 1%). I just have monsters take legendary actions at 5, 10, and 15 points slower on initiative than their regular action. This eliminates Schrodinger effects and removes the verisimilitude issue.

Sorinth

2021-04-06, 12:01 PM

It's absolutely bizarre that an Empyrean fighting a dragon attacks less often than an Empyrean fighting a dragon and two zombies, purely because of Legendary Actions. That degrades verisimilitude.

Doesn't the same apply to opportunity attacks? Why does a character get more attacks when fighting against a target that is constantly moving in/out of it's threat range?

Or how about GWM. If killing a creature is supposed to provide some sort of "morale" boost that allows for an extra attack, why wouldn't the Empyrean being outnumbered not also give them a "morale" extra attack(s).

Eldariel

2021-04-06, 12:10 PM

Sure, quality matters. So does quantity. And sometimes sheer quantity begets quality.

Take the active Perception check, for example. If the DM builds an encounter where making an active Perception check does something important, then the Legendary Action allows the player to attempt that check while also doing whatever they want with their regular action. In this case, the quality of the Legendary Action isn't simply an active Perception check, but rather the quality of the other action the player took because they didn't have to use their regular action on the check. The Legendary Action takes away opportunity costs, which in turn means the players don't have to make as many meaningful choices.

On the other hand, if making an active Perception check doesn't do anything important, then the Legendary Action simply wastes time on a pointless roll. Either way, I don't see how Legendary Actions for players makes the experience better.

Sure, that's one way to look at it: but it can easily get you scaling improved information - and it could cost you a lot. This would allow modulating the effect: as it stands you won't be using your active Perception ever unless you literally have no productive actions left, which is at least as bad.

This system would allow moving stuff that isn't generally worth an action outside the turn as a reactive system (an active Perception check could easily be your entire "off-turn activity" at the cost of other options that could easily be written into it; stuff like blocking movement through adjacent squares or such). One reaction is just too little for interaction: legendary framework with different amounts of actions costing different amounts of action points and having a pool to draw from for each turn would make for much more fluid and varied interaction design.

Unoriginal

2021-04-06, 12:13 PM

Legendary Actions are both a way to help the action economy AND a thematic tool to show that the creature in question is legendary.

It's not one or the other. An Unicorn isn't an exceptionally tough combatant overall, but each of them is an exceptional being.

And yet Hutijin the Pit Fiend (CR 21) has legendary actions. You might say "that's because he's designed to operate solo" but that would be assuming your own conclusion. All we really know is that normal Pit Fiends have more HP and no legendary actions, and Hutijin has fewer HP, more abilities, and Legendary Actions. Canonically both of them have lots and lots of minions.

Hutijin isn't a Pit Fiend, he is a duke of Hell, which grants him greater individuality in his shape and capacities.

It is true that canonically, both Hutijin and the Pit Fiend has lots and lots of minions. In fact, he is the leader of two companies of Pit Fiends.

It is unlikely Hutijin would fight without any minions if he can help it. What is the purpose of the Legendary actions, then?

Well, it is to show that he is a cut above the rest of Devilkind. He's not just a Big Devil, he's the one who's keeping Cania undefeated.

Hutijin has identity, which is what makes him legendary.

OldTrees1

2021-04-06, 12:16 PM

If you want verisimilitude when fighting a dragon, then I suggest you walk outside and try to find a dragon to fight.

Do you know the difference between verisimilitude and realism? It sounds like you have them confused. Verisimilitude does not expect me to find dragons realistic. So please don't pull the "You expect realism in fantasy? Go try to fight a dragon IRL. Ha Ha Ha." strawman.

Now you are right that the rules have 2 objectives to fulfill. However those objectives are not opposites. You can have rules that satisfy both objectives and you can have rules that fail both objectives.

I find Legendary Actions in general, specifically the part where it factors in the number of opponents, breaks one objective worse than it addresses the other. Hence why I dislike them. Your mileage may vary.

Legendary Actions are both a way to help the action economy AND a thematic tool to show that the creature in question is legendary.

Hutijin has identity, which is what makes him legendary.

Your argument here is that it makes sense for legendary creatures to have some mechanical representation of them being legendary. I don't disagree.

However Legendary Actions break verisimilitude for me in a way unrelated to your argument.

If there was a legendary Choker known for their speed that got 3 reactions per round or maybe a 2nd initiative count on top of the normal Choker action surge, that would make sense. They are faster not because they are legendary, but because their legend is that they are faster and their speed is based on their legend rather than on the number of opponents.

In contrast, Legendary Actions as a metagame bandaid does not feel like it does a good job as a thematic tool and is a bit too obvious of a metagame bandaid. Those imperfections are related.

Amnestic

2021-04-06, 12:29 PM

I find Legendary Actions in general, specifically the part where it factors in the number of opponents, breaks one objective worse than it addresses the other. Hence why I dislike them. Your mileage may vary.

Has this ever come up in a game for you?

OldTrees1

2021-04-06, 12:37 PM

Has this ever come up in a game for you?

Yes. Not every possible case, but yes.

I am a DM.

I have run creatures with Legendary Actions against a large party.
I have run creatures with Legendary Actions against a normal sized fraction of that party.
I have run creatures with Legendary Actions against a party that grew / shrunk over the course of the encounter (even down to 1-2).
I have run Legendary creatures with alternative solutions to party size.
I have created stats for Legendary creatures and chose to use a different alternative solution (trying to match the solution to the creature's themes).

Oh, and I faced them as a PC too.

What I learned was that having a solo enemy against a party is best solved by some asymmetry, but a blanket solution risks breaking verisimilitude (by ignoring the creature's lore) and Legendary Actions in specific break verisimilitude for me. Not all asymmetry is equally positive.

MaxWilson

2021-04-06, 12:38 PM

Doesn't the same apply to opportunity attacks? Why does a character get more attacks when fighting against a target that is constantly moving in/out of it's threat range?

Or how about GWM. If killing a creature is supposed to provide some sort of "morale" boost that allows for an extra attack, why wouldn't the Empyrean being outnumbered not also give them a "morale" extra attack(s).

I don't get your point about GWM but yes, the RAW on opportunity attacks is absolutely backwards. Retreating slightly is a defensive maneuver in fencing, not a risky maneuver that opens you up to attack. By RAW, stepping backwards three feet triggers an opportunity attack, but being literally paralyzed does not.

Needless to say, I don't use the RAW in this case. Instead, opportunity attacks are triggered by turning your back on an opponent (i.e. moving at full speed instead of half speed for the round), or by being incapacitated, or by casting spells with your action without the Warcaster feat. (Bonus action spells don't count though.)

If you're trying to say that 5E has a lot of bad rules, I say yes but that's no excuse for using them instead of fixing them.

diplomancer

2021-04-06, 01:01 PM

It's absolutely bizarre that an Empyrean fighting a dragon attacks less often than an Empyrean fighting a dragon and two zombies, purely because of Legendary Actions. That degrades verisimilitude.

I think our definition of verisimilitude differs. To me, verisimilitude is about what actuallyhappens during the game/movie/book, etc, not hypothetical corner cases that, in fact, woud, in all likelyhood, NOT happen- because, in this case, having the zombies fighting at its side hinders the dragon, and the dragon knows it, so it would not bring zombies into that fight. Legendary actions, in practice, would only occur when the "extra" opponents that DO trigger them are something of a threat; and, in that case, it actually does not degrade my verisimilitude to have the Legendary being become more dangerous when its life is more threatened. I may be misremembering my Beowulf here, but isn't it somewhat implied that one of the reasons for his success in his fights against Grendel and its mother came from the fact that he faced them alone?

True Polymorph does not grant legendary actions or lair actions, only llegendary resistances.

True; my version of the Monster Manual is quite old, so I'd missed that errata on my first read; then the fact that the Shapechange spell mentions this limitation but True Polymorph doesn't made me think that this was the case.

I don't get your point about GWM but yes, the RAW on opportunity attacks is absolutely backwards. Retreating slightly is a defensive maneuver in fencing, not a risky maneuver that opens you up to attack. By RAW, stepping backwards three feet triggers an opportunity attack, but being literally paralyzed does not.

Needless to say, I don't use the RAW in this case. Instead, opportunity attacks are triggered by turning your back on an opponent (i.e. moving at full speed instead of half speed for the round), or by being incapacitated, or by casting spells with your action without the Warcaster feat. (Bonus action spells don't count though.)

You do know that what you are modelling with your houserule is the disengage action, right? It's an interesting houserule, but it's a considerable boost to ranged builds, that can now "soft disengage" for the cost of half movement (instead of a full action) and then fire away with their action without disadvantage. I hope a Rogue could not walk 15' back, fire away, and then Bonus Action Dash 30' further away, cause that would be crazy. It also makes PAM a lot more powerful (Attack with your action and Bonus action, move 15' back, smile at the creature who is now going to have to take a reaction attack to close distance with you).

Also, both the advantage AND the automatic crit is how the game chose to model the "being paralyzed in melee" bad situation. Do you by any chance take away any of these advantages in return for the free attack of opportunity?

x3n0n

2021-04-06, 01:07 PM

Needless to say, I don't use the RAW in this case.

Aside: do you have a compendium somewhere of your table's player-visible deviations from RAW (optionally including DMG suggestions)? It seems like they would make for interesting reading.

Things that I can remember: "Hemlock" initiative, Wizard spell research (and no free spells at level?), Readying a full Attack action, and things mentioned in this post (different triggers to allow an opportunity attack). (Also DMG Disarm, IIRC.)

OldTrees1

2021-04-06, 01:11 PM

I think our definition of verisimilitude differs.

It might not be the definition, it might be the scope, or the perspective something is looked at. However that variation does explain the variation in conclusions.

Just because it breaks verisimilitude for me, does not mean it breaks it for you.

PhoenixPhyre

2021-04-06, 01:13 PM

It might not be the definition, it might be the scope, or the perspective something is looked at.

Just because it breaks verisimilitude for me, does not mean it breaks it for you.

Which means the entire complaint boils down to "I don't like it." Which is fine and all, but entirely subjective. There's lots of things I don't like, both about 5e and other games. And life in general. That doesn't mean those things are bad. Just not to my taste.

OldTrees1

2021-04-06, 01:15 PM

Which means the entire complaint boils down to "I don't like it." Which is fine and all, but entirely subjective. There's lots of things I don't like, both about 5e and other games. And life in general. That doesn't mean those things are bad. Just not to my taste.

https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24995475&postcount=7

Funny that it took 2 pages to communicate. It is a more detailed answer because it elaborates with "I don't like it because it does ___ in my context". But technically correct.

However people did ask questions like "how" and then started to argue about it.

MaxWilson

2021-04-06, 01:17 PM

I think our definition of verisimilitude differs. To me, verisimilitude is about what actuallyhappens during the game/movie/book, etc, not hypothetical corner cases that, in fact, woud, in all likelyhood, NOT happen- because, in this case, having the zombies fighting at its side hinders the dragon, and the dragon knows it, so it would not bring zombies into that fight.

Huh. For me it's about the rules of the gameworld, and that also includes planning activities, such as a PC trying to determine whether to enlist the aid of an Empyrean to fight a dragon, and considering whether it's advantageous or disadvantageous to have two extra combatants in the fight so that Empyrean and dragon both get extra legendary actions. (Advantage: Empyrean, because it doubles its number of attacks by getting two more legendary actions, whereas the dragon only adds 50%.) It even includes historical activities, like reading about the original fight between Hercules the Empyrean and Vorin the Ancient Black Dragon.

I don't know how you can meaningfully separate what actually happens from understanding what could occur while still supporting meaningful choice by the players. Being able to predict how the world works is fundamental to agency (agency = “the feeling of empowerment that comes from being able to take actions in the [virtual] world whose effects relate to the player’s intention”).

Legendary actions, in practice, would only occur when the "extra" opponents that DO trigger them are something of a threat; and, in that case, it actually does not degrade my verisimilitude to have the Legendary being become more dangerous when its life is more threatened. I may be misremembering my Beowulf here, but isn't it somewhat implied that one of the reasons for his success in his fights against Grendel and its mother came from the fact that he faced them alone?

No idea. But if the idea is that Grendel somehow lost some of his combat skill (made fewer attacks per unit of time) because Beowulf was alone, then that would break my suspension of disbelief too. It would make more sense to suppose that Beowulf just didn't have to worry about protecting others, or that Grendel overextended (e.g. continuing to fight when low on HP on the assumption that Beowulf must be almost dead, instead of kiting away).

GooeyChewie

2021-04-06, 01:17 PM

Sure, that's one way to look at it: but it can easily get you scaling improved information - and it could cost you a lot. This would allow modulating the effect: as it stands you won't be using your active Perception ever unless you literally have no productive actions left, which is at least as bad.

This system would allow moving stuff that isn't generally worth an action outside the turn as a reactive system (an active Perception check could easily be your entire "off-turn activity" at the cost of other options that could easily be written into it; stuff like blocking movement through adjacent squares or such). One reaction is just too little for interaction: legendary framework with different amounts of actions costing different amounts of action points and having a pool to draw from for each turn would make for much more fluid and varied interaction design.

Players most likely aren't going to make a Perception check mid-combat unless the DM indicates that there's an important reason to do so, regardless of what allows them to make the check. If the DM wants the check to be an important and memorable moment, then let it come as the result of a meaningful choice. If the check wouldn't make a meaningful different in the combat, then the DM shouldn't be wasting time having everybody take extra actions for no good reason. Either don't have whatever would cause the Perception check happen at all, or let the party just see whatever it is without a check, or adjudicate on a case by case basis to let them make the check without asking for it or using an action. In practice, I tend to do the third, and if you fail the initial check subsequent ones cost your action.

There's a catch-22 here. If the player Legendary Actions have significant effects, then they improve your action economy and the DM needs to put even more actions on the enemy side to balance them out. If they don't have significant effects, then they're just time sinks that don't accomplish anything of note. I just don't see an upside.

Eldariel

2021-04-06, 01:20 PM

Players most likely aren't going to make a Perception check mid-combat unless the DM indicates that there's an important reason to do so, regardless of what allows them to make the check. If the DM wants the check to be an important and memorable moment, then let it come as the result of a meaningful choice. If the check wouldn't make a meaningful different in the combat, then the DM shouldn't be wasting time having everybody take extra actions for no good reason. Either don't have whatever would cause the Perception check happen at all, or let the party just see whatever it is without a check, or adjudicate on a case by case basis to let them make the check without asking for it or using an action. In practice, I tend to do the third, and if you fail the initial check subsequent ones cost your action.

There's a catch-22 here. If the player Legendary Actions have significant effects, then they improve your action economy and the DM needs to put even more actions on the enemy side to balance them out. If they don't have significant effects, then they're just time sinks that don't accomplish anything of note. I just don't see an upside.

I just said they'd replace Reactions. So they can have at least that much effect without issue. Point is, when applying the system on multiple layers instead of "yes/no" like Reaction, you can modulate the effect and allow for both, more weaker interaction or fewer stronger interactions without affecting the core power level. It's just a more versatile system for handling actions outside turn than the rather trite and limited Reaction.

Same would go for base turn bonus action too: PF2E already did it much better though there's still room for improvement there too. The action/bonus action divide is artificial and stupid: why can't you take two bonus actions instead of action and bonus action, or perhaps convert two bonus actions into an action or any such. None of that makes any sense; it's a useless distinction that doesn't even accomplish any of its intended balance or complexity goals. PF-style "you get actions and you do stuff with them" is just better: hierarchy of actions has to be a property of the actions themselves to really make sense.

diplomancer

2021-04-06, 01:24 PM

Huh. For me it's about the rules of the gameworld, and that also includes planning activities, such as a PC trying to determine whether to enlist the aid of an Empyrean to fight a dragon, and considering whether it's advantageous or disadvantageous to have two extra combatants in the fight so that Empyrean and dragon both get extra legendary actions. (Advantage: Empyrean, because it doubles its number of attacks by getting two more legendary actions, whereas the dragon only adds 50%.) It even includes historical activities, like reading about the original fight between Hercules the Empyrean and Vorin the Ancient Black Dragon.

I don't know how you can meaningfully separate what actually happens from understanding what could occur while still supporting meaningful choice by the players. Being able to predict how the world works is fundamental to agency (agency = “the feeling of empowerment that comes from being able to take actions in the [virtual] world whose effects relate to the player’s intention”).

No idea. But if the idea is that Grendel somehow lost some of his combat skill (made fewer attacks per unit of time) because Beowulf was alone, then that would break my suspension of disbelief too. It would make more sense to suppose that Beowulf just didn't have to worry about protecting others, or that Grendel overextended (e.g. continuing to fight when low on HP on the assumption that Beowulf must be almost dead, instead of kiting away).

Sorry, I should have said "when it FEELS its life is more threatened", not "when its life is more threatened". Whether you model it as the legendary creature getting too cocky when faced with a lone opponent, or getting a bigger adrenaline surge from facing a lot of them and feeling more threatened, I don't really see a problem, but I see how people might feel it this way

MaxWilson

2021-04-06, 01:29 PM

Sorry, I should have said "when it FEELS its life is more threatened", not "when its life is more threatened". Whether you model it as the legendary creature getting too cocky when faced with a lone opponent, or getting a bigger adrenaline surge from facing a lot of them and feeling more threatened, I don't really see a problem, but I see how people might feel it this way

I would model "getting too cocky" as a change in tactics, not a change in stats.

PhoenixPhyre

2021-04-06, 01:29 PM

I just said they'd replace Reactions. So they can have at least that much effect without issue. Point is, when applying the system on multiple layers instead of "yes/no" like Reaction, you can modulate the effect and allow for both, more weaker interaction or fewer stronger interactions without affecting the core power level. It's just a more versatile system for handling actions outside turn than the rather trite and limited Reaction.

Same would go for base turn bonus action too: PF2E already did it much better though there's still room for improvement there too. The action/bonus action divide is artificial and stupid: why can't you take two bonus actions instead of action and bonus action, or perhaps convert two bonus actions into an action or any such. None of that makes any sense; it's a useless distinction that doesn't even accomplish any of its intended balance or complexity goals. PF-style "you get actions and you do stuff with them" is just better: hierarchy of actions has to be a property of the actions themselves to really make sense.

Legendary actions can't replace reactions. They're completely different things, even though both are off-turn actions.

LA are (limited) extra turns. They occur between other people's turns, and are limited to a specific set of actions (and only one action between any two turns). They're not triggered by anything other than the turn abstraction itself.

Reactions are interrupts. They occur during turns (your own or someone else's), based on triggers defined on other people's behavior.

Feather fall as a LA would be useless. Opportunity attacks as a LA would be useless (they're already out of range). Counterspell as a LA would be useless.

LA exists solely to give big solo monsters extra turns without the overhead of actually giving them extra turns. For those that dislike LA, you could just give them straight up extra turns at defined intervals (say INIT, INIT-10, INIT-20). Mechanically that's way more of a mess than LA, because it interacts with things like making saves at the end of your turns (and other turn-based durations). So if you don't want to change that, you'd also have to set rules. Which would end up dropping you back to basically LA, just more complicated.

Edit: and you're paying the price (with the proposed system) of extremely increasing complexity and thus turn time. Now everyone has to evaluate at every instant "can I act?" and deal with all the possible interactions. That's a lesson learned from 4e, which was heavy in interrupt-style abilities. And it slowed things to a crawl. It also provides much more fodder for unanticipated interactions, leading to unintentional brokeness that can't really be determined ahead of time (due to the combinatorial explosion). And emphasizes optimizing your action economy, something that 5e attempts to downplay as much as possible. The design of 5e is "Action + move, then next person. If you've got a bonus action, that's a bonus. But don't worry if you don't. Short, fast turns. Complexity comes from a tight response loop rather than in-turn complexity."

JNAProductions

2021-04-06, 01:38 PM

Legendary actions can't replace reactions. They're completely different things, even though both are off-turn actions.

LA are (limited) extra turns. They occur between other people's turns, and are limited to a specific set of actions (and only one action between any two turns). They're not triggered by anything other than the turn abstraction itself.

Reactions are interrupts. They occur during turns (your own or someone else's), based on triggers defined on other people's behavior.

Feather fall as a LA would be useless. Opportunity attacks as a LA would be useless (they're already out of range). Counterspell as a LA would be useless.

LA exists solely to give big solo monsters extra turns without the overhead of actually giving them extra turns. For those that dislike LA, you could just give them straight up extra turns at defined intervals (say INIT, INIT-10, INIT-20). Mechanically that's way more of a mess than LA, because it interacts with things like making saves at the end of your turns (and other turn-based durations). So if you don't want to change that, you'd also have to set rules. Which would end up dropping you back to basically LA, just more complicated.

Edit: and you're paying the price (with the proposed system) of extremely increasing complexity and thus turn time. Now everyone has to evaluate at every instant "can I act?" and deal with all the possible interactions. That's a lesson learned from 4e, which was heavy in interrupt-style abilities. And it slowed things to a crawl. It also provides much more fodder for unanticipated interactions, leading to unintentional brokeness that can't really be determined ahead of time (due to the combinatorial explosion). And emphasizes optimizing your action economy, something that 5e attempts to downplay as much as possible. The design of 5e is "Action + move, then next person. If you've got a bonus action, that's a bonus. But don't worry if you don't. Short, fast turns. Complexity comes from a tight response loop rather than in-turn complexity."

I've made monsters that get multiple turns. It's not as complex as you think.

But I'm on the side of "Legendary Actions, while perhaps a bit of a knock against verisimilitude, is a good way to help make the game more fun."

MaxWilson

2021-04-06, 01:42 PM

LA exists solely to give big solo monsters extra turns without the overhead of actually giving them extra turns. For those that dislike LA, you could just give them straight up extra turns at defined intervals (say INIT, INIT-10, INIT-20). Mechanically that's way more of a mess than LA, because it interacts with things like making saves at the end of your turns (and other turn-based durations). So if you don't want to change that, you'd also have to set rules. Which would end up dropping you back to basically LA, just more complicated.

It actually winds up being simpler.

Start of round: DM secretly decides what monsters will do (including legendary actions). Players confer with each other and then declare actions to the DM. DM reveals what monsters are doing.

Then everybody rolls dice and actions are resolved (including legendary actions). DM may or may not call for initiative contests for some characters based on what makes sense (e.g. shooting an arrow is probably faster than running and stabbing, but slower than simply stabbing without having to run first).

Then, process end-of-turn effects, as if turn = round.

GooeyChewie

2021-04-06, 01:47 PM

Eldariel

2021-04-06, 01:54 PM

Having the Legendary Actions replace reactions does not negate my point about the catch-22. Either you're using these action points for more powerful effects which the DM needs to balance against (possibly by giving ALL enemies Legendary Actions), or you're using them for insignificant effects which now can waste time multiple times per round per player.

Except giving more levers to adjust action power actually makes it easier to design the kinds of off-turn actions that can be used without breaking boss fights (who can have more powerful actions).

PhoenixPhyre

2021-04-06, 02:06 PM

It actually winds up being simpler.

Start of round: DM secretly decides what monsters will do (including legendary actions). Players confer with each other and then declare actions to the DM. DM reveals what monsters are doing.

Then everybody rolls dice and actions are resolved (including legendary actions). DM may or may not call for initiative contests for some characters based on what makes sense (e.g. shooting an arrow is probably faster than running and stabbing, but slower than simply stabbing without having to run first).

Then, process end-of-turn effects, as if turn = round.

At that point, you have something completely different that has its own world of implementation details (as in the devil's in the details). And is hellaciously more complex for new people and runs the risk of people not getting to actually act (their decided action is obviated and now useless or even counterproductive).

I'd find it obnoxious to both run and play. But in any case, it's a completely different system than D&D's default. Not a response to Legendary Actions at all.

I've made monsters that get multiple turns. It's not as complex as you think.

But I'm on the side of "Legendary Actions, while perhaps a bit of a knock against verisimilitude, is a good way to help make the game more fun."

For individual monsters, it's easy. Doing it as a generalized system requires you to deal with all the edge cases that you can ignore in the individual case.

Honestly, I've found success in decomposing monsters (where it makes sense) into a series of smaller monsters, each with their own turn and HP pool (with interactions with the "main body" as they are destroyed) and limited action set. But that doesn't make sense for a lot of monsters.

Composer99

2021-04-06, 02:41 PM

I knew someone would reply with this (imo a cop-out of an answer). Rule Zero is no excuse for the writers to get lazy. They pretty much say such and such a thing is not possible for a pc (zombie must be humanoid only) then go ahead and make non-humanoid zombies. The is lazy or inconsistent as best. If I have a contractor build me a house, "I left the windows for you to install" is not acceptable.

Why do you folks let WoTC off so easily? As much as we pay for their stuff, it is not unreasonable that after many years, they should go ahead and fill in some of these rule holes.

Oh, please.

Arguing "rule zero isn't an answer to bad mechanics" only works if there is widespread agreement that some set of mechanics is bad. Arguably it really only works if someone specifically agrees with you that a set of mechanics is bad but goes on to argue that rule zero lets you fix it. In any event it clearly not the case that there is general agreement that the rules asymmetry in 5e is a bad set of mechanics.

What people are telling you is that if you, personally, don't like some particular rules asymmetry, and it's well and good if you don't, you have rule zero to resort to in order to adjust things to your satisfaction. That is as it should be.

And comparing a tabletop roleplaying game to a house building project is, bluntly, preposterous nonsense.

MaxWilson

2021-04-06, 03:33 PM

At that point, you have something completely different that has its own world of implementation details (as in the devil's in the details). And is... more complex for new people and runs the risk of people not getting to actually act (their decided action is obviated and now useless or even counterproductive).

I'd find it obnoxious to both run and play. But in any case, it's a completely different system than D&D's default. Not a response to Legendary Actions at all.

Depends which edition of D&D you're playing. In some editions it _is_ the default. Here's a TSR PHB quote using exactly this system:

In the second round of the combat, the DM decides to use the modified group initiative. Rath is surrounded by trolls and not in the best of health. The rest of the party has yet to close with the monsters.
The DM decides that one troll will continue attacking Rath, with the help of the orcs, while the other trolls move to block reinforcements. In particular, the troll burned by the acid arrow is looking for revenge. The DM then turns to the players for their actions.
Players (all at once): “I'm going to...” “Is he going?...” “I'm casting a...”
DM (shouting): “One at a time! Rath?”
Harry: “I'll blow my horn of blasting.”
DM: “It'll take time to dig it out.”
Harry: “I don't care, I'm doing it.”
Jon: “Draw my sword and attack one of the trolls!”
DM: “Anne?”
Anne (not paying attention to the other two): “Cast a fireball.”
Harry and Jon: “NO! DON'T!”
DM: “Well, is that what you're doing? Quickly!”
Anne: “No. I'll cast a haste spell! Centered on me, so Rupert and Rath are just at the edge.”
DM: “Okay. Harry, roll initiative and everyone modify for your actions.”
Harry rolls 1d10 and gets a 6. The DM rolls for the monsters and gets a 5. Each person's initiative is modified as follows:
Rath is using a miscellaneous magical item (modifier +3). His modified initiative is 9 (6+3=9).
Rupert is using a [hand-and-a-half] sword +1 with two hands (weapon speed 7 instead of 8 because of the +1). His modified initiative is 13 (6+7=13).
Delsenora is casting a spell (haste spell, casting time 3). Her modified initiative is the same as Rath's, 9.
The trolls are attacking with their claws and bites (large creatures attacking with natural weapons +6). Their modified initiative is 11 (5+6=11).
The orcs are using long swords (weapon speed 5). Their modified initiative is 10 (5 + 5 = 10).
After all modified initiatives are figured, the combat round goes as follows: Delsenora (initiative 9) completes her spell at the same time that Rath (9) brings the house down on the orcs with his horn of blasting.
The orcs (initiative 10) would have gone next, but all of them have been crushed under falling rock.
The three trolls (initiative 11) are unfazed and attack, one at Rath and the other two springing forward, hitting Delsenora and missing Rupert.
Finally, Rupert (initiative 13) strikes back. He moved too slowly to block one troll's path to Delsenora, but manages to cut off the second. Things look very grim for the player characters.

Newbies handle this style of initiative just fine IME--even better, they quickly learn to work together, unlike under 5E's vanilla RAW initiative.

Legendary Actions are an attempt to fix the problems of player boredom produced by abandoning this system in favor of 5E vanilla RAW initiative (in which players spend 75-80% of their time waiting for their turn to talk to the DM), but Legendary Actions are just putting lipstick on a pig: it's still ugly. The original way of running initiative is better, simpler, more fun for players IME (because teamwork is fun), and (with good DM judgment) more realistic.

PhoenixPhyre

2021-04-06, 03:58 PM

Depends which edition of D&D you're playing. In some editions it _is_ the default. Here's a TSR PHB quote using exactly this system:

In the second round of the combat, the DM decides to use the modified group initiative. Rath is surrounded by trolls and not in the best of health. The rest of the party has yet to close with the monsters.
The DM decides that one troll will continue attacking Rath, with the help of the orcs, while the other trolls move to block reinforcements. In particular, the troll burned by the acid arrow is looking for revenge. The DM then turns to the players for their actions.
Players (all at once): “I'm going to...” “Is he going?...” “I'm casting a...”
DM (shouting): “One at a time! Rath?”
Harry: “I'll blow my horn of blasting.”
DM: “It'll take time to dig it out.”
Harry: “I don't care, I'm doing it.”
Jon: “Draw my sword and attack one of the trolls!”
DM: “Anne?”
Anne (not paying attention to the other two): “Cast a fireball.”
Harry and Jon: “NO! DON'T!”
DM: “Well, is that what you're doing? Quickly!”
Anne: “No. I'll cast a haste spell! Centered on me, so Rupert and Rath are just at the edge.”
DM: “Okay. Harry, roll initiative and everyone modify for your actions.”
Harry rolls 1d10 and gets a 6. The DM rolls for the monsters and gets a 5. Each person's initiative is modified as follows:
Rath is using a miscellaneous magical item (modifier +3). His modified initiative is 9 (6+3=9).
Rupert is using a [hand-and-a-half] sword +1 with two hands (weapon speed 7 instead of 8 because of the +1). His modified initiative is 13 (6+7=13).
Delsenora is casting a spell (haste spell, casting time 3). Her modified initiative is the same as Rath's, 9.
The trolls are attacking with their claws and bites (large creatures attacking with natural weapons +6). Their modified initiative is 11 (5+6=11).
The orcs are using long swords (weapon speed 5). Their modified initiative is 10 (5 + 5 = 10).
After all modified initiatives are figured, the combat round goes as follows: Delsenora (initiative 9) completes her spell at the same time that Rath (9) brings the house down on the orcs with his horn of blasting.
The orcs (initiative 10) would have gone next, but all of them have been crushed under falling rock.
The three trolls (initiative 11) are unfazed and attack, one at Rath and the other two springing forward, hitting Delsenora and missing Rupert.
Finally, Rupert (initiative 13) strikes back. He moved too slowly to block one troll's path to Delsenora, but manages to cut off the second. Things look very grim for the player characters.

Newbies handle this style of initiative just fine IME--even better, they quickly learn to work together, unlike under 5E's vanilla RAW initiative.

Legendary Actions are an attempt to fix the problems of player boredom produced by abandoning this system in favor of 5E vanilla RAW initiative (in which players spend 75-80% of their time waiting for their turn to talk to the DM), but Legendary Actions are just putting lipstick on a pig: it's still ugly. The original way of running initiative is better, simpler, more fun for players IME (because teamwork is fun), and (with good DM judgment) more realistic.

We're playing 5e (hence the forum), not earlier editions. Earlier editions had other intrinsic parameters that made those sorts of things work (or not, YMMV). Saying "hey, let's just import that into 5e" is a recipe for disaster. Just like trying to import mechanical bits from 3e.

What I see from that example is the table spending spending 3-4x as long calculating silly modifiers. Every single round. And mostly looking them up. And adjudicating all those things that don't have nicely written down modifiers. Yay! More bookkeeping and overhead on what's already a high-overhead, low fun part of the game (deciding who goes when). You end up playing the rules, not the game. The proposed method forces a total recalculation of all of that every single round, plus leaving lots of people doing silly things (Yay! the thing I said I was going to do no longer means anything, so I stand around like a dunce! Or maybe, even better, hurt my allies!) or not actually getting to act. Sounds like a totally fun time to me.

Plus, you have to rewrite all of the "x lasts until the end of Y's next turn" abilities. Which is a lot of them. Because their value changes tremendously when you use end of round instead. You're rewriting roughly half the core combat rules and most of the spells and other abilities. Just to spend more time doing bookkeeping. Not to mention the time spent deriving all of those modifiers in the first place, the very act of which puts lots of thumbs on the scale and forces an entire rebalance of every ability, weapon, and spell in the game. Because now being off by a little on those has major effects.

The trick is to take simple turns, and lots of them. If everyone is taking small turns and not dithering, things go by fast and there's no problem. It's when people decide that you have to optimize your turns (usually as a result of chasing the challenge spiral/optimization arms race) or don't pay attention and end up looking up all their abilities every turn that things slow down.

MaxWilson

2021-04-06, 04:05 PM

We're playing 5e (hence the forum), not earlier editions.

But you said "D&D's default", not "5E's default." I just clarified that 5E's default is not D&D's default.

Earlier editions had other intrinsic parameters that made those sorts of things work (or not, YMMV). Saying "hey, let's just import that into 5e" is a recipe for disaster.

For example, what intrinsic parameters would be needed to make it work for 5E? Certainly you could add extra detail (casting times for spells), but you don't sound like you're itching for that extra detail. What missing piece causes disaster in 5E?

What I see from that example is the table spending spending 3-4x as long calculating silly modifiers. Every single round.

{Scrubbed}

The calculations are trivial (3+6). It only looks complex because the PHB is describing all the calculations for all of the players as an example, but each player is only responsible for one. Calculating attack rolls would look equally complex if spelled out in detail.

cookieface

2021-04-06, 04:45 PM

What I see from that example is the table spending spending 3-4x as long calculating silly modifiers. Every single round. And mostly looking them up. And adjudicating all those things that don't have nicely written down modifiers. Yay! More bookkeeping and overhead on what's already a high-overhead, low fun part of the game (deciding who goes when). You end up playing the rules, not the game. The proposed method forces a total recalculation of all of that every single round, plus leaving lots of people doing silly things (Yay! the thing I said I was going to do no longer means anything, so I stand around like a dunce! Or maybe, even better, hurt my allies!) or not actually getting to act. Sounds like a totally fun time to me.

I fully agree with you. This sounds pretty horrendous. And also doesn't look like it solves any issues with Legendary Actions, AKA the topic of this thread (or at least what it has devolved into).

In that system, there is no benefit for a players' stats (only 1d10 + some modifier, which appears to be... based on action type and then subdivided into the weapon and/or spell you are using) and a heinous number of other things to consider, most of which would be cumbersome to track. There are problems with initiative as is (first off, a RAW/optional way to fall backwards in initiative would be nice, so that the Fighter can accept buffs prior to rushing into combat), but the nice thing is that it is easy.

This method sounds like absolutely chaos -- even in the example, the players are shouting over one another and cannot align on strategy clearly -- and looks like it would slow down the process immensely as "initiative" is calculated based on complicated methods AND done so each round of combat. Totally bonkers to me.

As method of comparison:
RAW 5e initiative: Based on one roll per combatant (or group of combatants, in cases of some NPCs) done at the start of an encounter, with only a single modifier on the roll (except in fringe cases, as with Gift of Alacrity or Feral Instinct).
Alternate initiative: Based on one roll at the start of each round, one per each faction(?) involved, with multiple modifiers, seemingly one per combatant, that all have incongruous modifiers attached based on the actions chosen and the details(!!) of those actions.

Yikes.

PhoenixPhyre

2021-04-06, 05:44 PM

I fully agree with you. This sounds pretty horrendous. And also doesn't look like it solves any issues with Legendary Actions, AKA the topic of this thread (or at least what it has devolved into).

In that system, there is no benefit for a players' stats (only 1d10 + some modifier, which appears to be... based on action type and then subdivided into the weapon and/or spell you are using) and a heinous number of other things to consider, most of which would be cumbersome to track. There are problems with initiative as is (first off, a RAW/optional way to fall backwards in initiative would be nice, so that the Fighter can accept buffs prior to rushing into combat), but the nice thing is that it is easy.

This method sounds like absolutely chaos -- even in the example, the players are shouting over one another and cannot align on strategy clearly -- and looks like it would slow down the process immensely as "initiative" is calculated based on complicated methods AND done so each round of combat. Totally bonkers to me.

As method of comparison:
RAW 5e initiative: Based on one roll per combatant (or group of combatants, in cases of some NPCs) done at the start of an encounter, with only a single modifier on the roll (except in fringe cases, as with Gift of Alacrity or Feral Instinct).
Alternate initiative: Based on one roll at the start of each round, one per each faction(?) involved, with multiple modifiers, seemingly one per combatant, that all have incongruous modifiers attached based on the actions chosen and the details(!!) of those actions.

Yikes.

Also: the modifiers in the RAW method are static and change only very rarely (ie at a new DEX ASI or one of what...2 feats? Plus one class ability, Jack of All Trades). To the point that you can just have a single button in a VTT that (given the inputs) automatically generates the initiative order. Turning a pure bookkeeping exercise into a simple button press. And those numbers get updated once in a blue moon.

In the alternative, you're changing the modifiers for each and every person, each and every round. And to even generate the modifiers in the first place, you're doing 1+ table lookups, which are super ultra heavy overhead. Not to mention the enormous and balance-issue prone need to construct those tables in the first place. Not just spells. Every weapon type needs a separate modifier. Every spell needs a separate modifier. Every monster action needs a separate modifier. Unless you do it straight by action type (Cast a Spell uses X, Attack uses Y, etc, but even then each monster action is different as they don't use the Attack action at all). And you've suddenly made those modifiers controlling (using a single d10 for randomness means that a +1 to initiative now counts for twice as much as before). So the numbers you assign to those modifiers mean everything. Especially since your chosen action can be completely obviated by people who go before you, and you don't have any chance to switch it up once the resolution process starts.

More cross-talk and finicky bookkeeping, less actual getting to do things. Yay!

Silly Name

2021-04-06, 05:49 PM

PhoenixPhyre

2021-04-06, 06:02 PM

Still doesn't solve the "problem" of Legendary Actions - they exists to counterbalance the action economy, and no alternative initiative system would address that. I personally don't mind them, and I think they're a pretty cool piece of design, and my players never complained about the monsters reacting to them in unexpected ways. What they seem to really dislike is the Legendary Resistance trait - enemies being able to just lolnope their spells and abilities is a bit aggravating to them (partially my fault for always rolling attacks and saves in the open, though), since it makes them feel like usage of their favourite tactics is being punished.

My players have never minded either. I found that simply explaining the game level purpose of LR[1] the first time a group of players (especially new ones) encountered a monster with them made them treat it as just another tool for the DM to help them have fun.

[1] My usual explanation goes something like "This is designed to be an interesting, complex fight. The boss has several fun abilities I'd like to use. Letting you simply shut him down on a bad (for me) roll would make it turn out to be a joke and not fun for either of us. Nor would it fit the fiction. So to prevent that, these types of monsters have Legendary Resistances. This lets them decide to succeed on a save if they fail. Once they do it 3 times, they can't do it any more. But the boss doesn't know what you're casting. In general, I'm going to use them the first three times they fail a save, prioritizing Wisdom saves. They'll rarely use it against a damage spell (DEX or CON), but any failed WIS save is going to burn a use. And I'll flat out tell you when they use it so you know when you burn a charge."

The wording varies, but the focus is on asking them to let me play with my toys (the monster's fun abilities); in return I'll try not to meta it. You want to burn it with vicious mockery? Feel free. Blasters will find their spells basically always work (modulo the save being failed), but people whose whole schtick revolves around disabling the enemy aren't going to be able to walk all over the bosses. Groups of monsters don't need them, because I've got other toys to play with if a few get disabled.

MaxWilson

2021-04-06, 06:36 PM

To be honest, I find the system quoted by MaxWilson to be pretty fascinating. If I wanted to port it to 5e I'd probably remove rolling at the start of every round (I find that far too tedious, no matter what), insert a simple range of potential "action modifiers" to the initiative score, keeping them tight and not too fiddly (stuff like weapon speed would likely have to be consolidated into universal modifiers for Light, One-handed, Two-handed and Heavy), have reactions count against your initiative score for the next round, and you have something that at the very least is worth trying for a session to see if you like it.

As mentioned previously, you don't strictly even need to roll initiative at all except in cases where the DM can't decide who would be faster.

If a player character is shooting his bow at a charging troll while falling back 30', it's 100% reasonable for the DM to rule based on what seems likely to actually be fastest, e.g. "your first two shots land before the troll reaches you, but your third shot happens after the troll attacks you back."

Still doesn't solve the "problem" of Legendary Actions - they exists to counterbalance the action economy, and no alternative initiative system would address that. I personally don't mind them, and I think they're a pretty cool piece of design, and my players never complained about the monsters reacting to them in unexpected ways. What they seem to really dislike is the Legendary Resistance trait - enemies being able to just lolnope their spells and abilities is a bit aggravating to them (partially my fault for always rolling attacks and saves in the open, though), since it makes them feel like usage of their favourite tactics is being punished.

Legendary Actions don't exist to counterbalance the action economy--Multiattack already does that, which is why Legendary Actions and Multiattack are both factored into CR exactly the same way (add total damage per round and compare to 5E DMG chart). Legendary Actions exist to solve the "players getting bored" problem by making the monster act more often.

Instead of Legendary Resistance I use TSR-era magic resistance (roll to completely negate a spell which would otherwise affect you, including summoning spells like Conjure Animals when a summoned creature attacks you), slightly tweaked to fit the 5E idiom (takes a reaction, involves an ability check instead of a % roll) because why not and because it makes it more tactically interesting (try to fool the monster into burning its reaction on something else so it can't resist your Hold Monster spell).

Silly Name

2021-04-06, 06:50 PM

Legendary Actions don't exist to counterbalance the action economy--Multiattack already does that, which is why Legendary Actions and Multiattack are both factored into CR exactly the same way (add total damage per round and compare to 5E DMG chart). Legendary Actions exist to solve the "players getting bored" problem by making the monster act more often.

While I agree LA also make the fights more engaging for the players, they have far more impact than Multiattack in a monster's action economy. "Attack more" doesn't really work at higher levels, except to raise a creature's damage output.

Getting to move away without provoking AoOs (a relatively common Legendary Action), however, is a very powerful tool that does change how the next turn is planned and played, counterbalancing the fact players can dogpile a boss monster pretty fast. Other possibilities include casting a spell or using a special ability outside of their turn - it is both more interesting and gives the monster an edge in terms of "how much stuff can I do".

Instead of Legendary Resistance I use TSR-era magic resistance (roll to completely negate a spell which would otherwise affect you, including summoning spells like Conjure Animals when a summoned creature attacks you), slightly tweaked to fit the 5E idiom (takes a reaction, involves an ability check instead of a % roll) because why not and because it makes it more tactically interesting (try to fool the monster into burning its reaction on something else so it can't resist your Hold Monster spell).

Hm, isn't this pretty much the same as rerolling a save as a reaction? Definitely less boring than the boss just no-selling a failed save, though.

MaxWilson

2021-04-06, 07:18 PM

While I agree LA also make the fights more engaging for the players, they have far more impact than Multiattack in a monster's action economy. "Attack more" doesn't really work at higher levels, except to raise a creature's damage output.

Multiattack does more than just "attack more". For some creatures, like dragons, it also provides defense (by imposing disadvantage through fear). For others like Gloomweavers, it adds an AoE threat ("The gloom weaver makes two spear attacks and casts one spell that takes 1 action to cast" such as Hypnotic Pattern).

Getting to move away without provoking AoOs (a relatively common Legendary Action), however, is a very powerful tool that does change how the next turn is planned and played, counterbalancing the fact players can dogpile a boss monster pretty fast. Other possibilities include casting a spell or using a special ability outside of their turn - it is both more interesting and gives the monster an edge in terms of "how much stuff can I do".

I agree that it's powerful, but it would be equally powerful as part of a multiattack or recharge ability (see: Star Spawn Mangler) or even just a standalone ability (Flyby).

Hm, isn't this pretty much the same as rerolling a save as a reaction? Definitely less boring than the boss just no-selling a failed save, though.

In practice it's very different, because it works against things like Wall of Force, Telekinesis, and Conjure Animals which don't have a save. It's more like a reaction-based Dispel Magic that also works against instantaneous spells. This makes fighting magic-resistant creatures less of an exercise in metagaming ("what spells use ability checks instead of saving throws?") and more of an exercise in roleplaying and getting inside the creature's head ("what is the demon expecting us to throw at him and how can we use that expectation against him, if we can't just overwhelm its resistance with brute force?").

Tanarii

2021-04-06, 07:59 PM

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}
Having to calculate individual initiative every round was horrendous for pacing. That's why they got rid of it in Combat and Tactics.

Side initiative with declare, roll side init, resolve is fine though. It has its benefits (and lots of them) compared to 5e individual init, but also its downsides.

The absolute best part about it is not having to sit around until your turn comes back up, and giving the impression of working as a team, even if you don't allow crosstalk during declaration.

MaxWilson

2021-04-06, 08:18 PM

Having to calculate individual initiative every round was horrendous for pacing. That's why they got rid of it in Combat and Tactics.

I think you misremember. "Initiative is normally determined with a single roll for each side in a conflict." (PHB p. 93, 2nd edition.) Rolling individual initiative was an optional rule in a sidebar on page 95, and was never intended to be used in situations where it would be "horrendous for pacing."

Side initiative with declare, roll side init, resolve is fine though. It has its benefits (and lots of them) compared to 5e individual init, but also its downsides.

The absolute best part about it is not having to sit around until your turn comes back up, and giving the impression of working as a team, even if you don't allow crosstalk during declaration.

Concur. I haven't advocated complicated modifiers for initiative (I think that's one of the things Mearls got wrong in his proposal). As time goes on I'm more and more a fan of not rolling initiative at all, most rounds and for most actions. It generally makes things more realistic.

IME the trickiest thing is trying to make sure nobody's action resolution accidentally gets skipped before you go on to the next round, but not rolling initiative actually helps slightly with that because the DM can resolve things in a coherent order that makes sense in his head, such as "Kate enters melee, then Zoog's Fireball goes off and we resolve that, then the frog tries to finish swallowing Benjamin while Benjamin stabs it back, and then finally Kate gets to attack," instead of trying to remember whatever ordering the initiative dice decreed this round.

DwarfFighter

2021-04-07, 04:13 AM

What they seem to really dislike is the Legendary Resistance trait - enemies being able to just lolnope their spells and abilities is a bit aggravating to them (partially my fault for always rolling attacks and saves in the open, though), since it makes them feel like usage of their favourite tactics is being punished.

I think you might be able to sell the Legendary Resistance as a better game mechanic out-of-game: When an enemy uses his Legendary Resistance, that's a step towards victory. And a lot of spells have some effect even on a succesfull save.

As for "being punished", I can't really sympathize. The players should pretty quickly discover that they are dealing with a legendary enemy (the Legendary and Lair actions are a huge giveaway!), so they should know better than to open up with their big spells. I get that there may be some frustration at having to come up with a different tactic, but if they stubbornly stick with the tactic that causes their Big Spells to fizzle to LR...

It's like they run along the same track every day, and one day someone has put a big wall in the way. They can climb over it and complain that this wall doesn't belong here, but if they just run head-first into it and get busted up they are at fault for their own injury.

Edit:

If you want a house rule that keeps LR in play but makes it less predictable for the players, how about this:

When the legendary creature fails their save and they have Legendary Resistances remaining, they can roll again. If the save is failed again they don't get a new roll. If the save is successful they must spend one LR.

-DF

Jerrykhor

2021-04-07, 05:05 AM

I think you might be able to sell the Legendary Resistance as a better game mechanic out-of-game: When an enemy uses his Legendary Resistance, that's a step towards victory. And a lot of spells have some effect even on a succesfull save.

As for "being punished", I can't really sympathize. The players should pretty quickly discover that they are dealing with a legendary enemy (the Legendary and Lair actions are a huge giveaway!), so they should know better than to open up with their big spells. I get that there may be some frustration at having to come up with a different tactic, but if they stubbornly stick with the tactic that causes their Big Spells to fizzle to LR...

It's like they run along the same track every day, and one day someone has put a big wall in the way. They can climb over it and complain that this wall doesn't belong here, but if they just run head-first into it and get busted up they are at fault for their own injury.

Edit:

If you want a house rule that keeps LR in play but makes it less predictable for the players, how about this:

When the legendary creature fails their save and they have Legendary Resistances remaining, they can roll again. If the save is failed again they don't get a new roll. If the save is successful they must spend one LR.

-DF
There's a stronger case against Legendary Resistance than for it. IMO this is one mechanic that really screws over newer players, as they really have no way of expecting this mechanic just because of Legendary Actions.

The difference is also that Legendary Actions don't feel unfair or oppressive, while LR does. Most DMs also highly metagame LR (won't use it against saves that only deal damage, and only use it against things that debuff/controls the monster). This makes burning the 'Burn LR charges' tactic pretty impossible sometimes, and by the time they realise that, the monster is almost dead from the Martials DPR, and that if they were a cheerleader to the Martials from the start, the monster would have died faster.

Without metagaming or looking at statblocks, new players have no way of knowing that most monsters that have LR usually have +10 to all saves, advantage on saves, a long list of resistances/immunities, and other possible gimmicks like Spell Reflect or some OP crap. Even as a veteran of the game now, I can't be bothered to deal with LR, prefer to just go around it. Hit it till it dies still works 99% of the time.

You mention 'trying different tactics', but spells with no save required are usually deemed cheese, like Wall of Force or Forgecage, or summoning powerful creatures.

LR is a terrible mechanic. Its a cheat-code, an I-Win button.

Eldariel

2021-04-07, 06:29 AM

I think you might be able to sell the Legendary Resistance as a better game mechanic out-of-game: When an enemy uses his Legendary Resistance, that's a step towards victory. And a lot of spells have some effect even on a succesfull save.

Legendary Resistance is a good PC mechanic (and something I like to snag up with Shapechange) - it's limited in daily uses and it lets you succeed those impossible save-or-dies in your poor saves. Over the course of an adventuring day, it being worn down and having to be careful as to what to LR works. For enemies though, it's just lousy. Simply because it's not efficient to punch through them. It's much better to just use spells and tactics that ignore them, i.e. turn into a beater and savage the enemy dead in one round or trap the enemy with non-save effects (Wall of Force, Forcecage, Illusory Reality, Mirage Arcana, Maze, etc.). Or summon a bunch of things or a big thing to kill it.

Fact is, Legendary Resistance mostly punishes:
- Monks: Their one big thing is being able to land heavy CC so the CC'd target is easy pickings for everyone else. This basically means they need to land 4 before they do anything.
- Diviners, Chronurgists and Eloquence Bards: It basically means their shtick doesn't work. Of course, they're all Bards and Wizards so they don't really mind that much and their shtick is a tad too strong when it does work.

Everyone else doesn't really care. Clerics do their usual thing just without casting CC spells, Druids do their usual thing (summon a horde of things to kill it and turn into a thing while at it), Wizards do their usual thing (whatever the hell they want because they're ****ing Wizards), Bards do their usual thing (same as Wizards), Warlocks just blast away as always and Sorcs...do their best Wizard impression.

What Legendary Resistance does accomplish is that it restricts the spells that are worth using higher up extremely severely to the point that everyone uses the same spells since they're the only ones that work reliably. Your options are basically:
- Summon
- Shapeshifting
- Trap

This is one of the biggest design failures of the system: the fact that it automatically succeeds means that there's no point in even trying. Why try to invoke anything but incidental saving throws if you know they'll make it if it matters anyways? The answer is, you don't. There's no reason to bother. And since most things worth killing are legendarily resistant, this goes double. Worse, legendary resistance doesn't protect against some of the effects that are easily the most powerful effect type in the game (i.e. ones that autosucceed).

Tiamat goes to Maze and gets stuck in Forcecage the same as every other chump. It doesn't matter that it's a literal god, it doesn't have any protection whatsoever (not even as much as a level 5 Wizard who could at least Counterspell or even a level 3 Wizard who at least has Misty Step for Forcecage!). It gets blasted to oblivion by high level Magic Missiles. Or Spirit Shroud + Scorching Ray. Or whatever. All of its magic resistance, legendary resistance and limited magic immunity amounts to jack **** due to the way all magical resistances are tied to saves. It's written as a creature that should be hard for a caster to affect but, due to the way the edition is designed, most of that is just empty rhetoric.

Tanarii

2021-04-07, 09:41 AM

I think you misremember. "Initiative is normally determined with a single roll for each side in a conflict." (PHB p. 93, 2nd edition.) Rolling individual initiative was an optional rule in a sidebar on page 95, and was never intended to be used in situations where it would be "horrendous for pacing."Technically I wasn't clear. I remembered side initiative was the 2e default, what I meant was C&T replaced the rolling individual initiative variant, and the new rule was individual initiative variantV2 that varied with action with 3-4 speeds instead of rolling each time. VFast, Fast, normal, slow iirc. That was way better, although still somewhat clunky.

Concur. I haven't advocated complicated modifiers for initiative (I think that's one of the things Mearls got wrong in his proposal). As time goes on I'm more and more a fan of not rolling initiative at all, most rounds and for most actions. It generally makes things more realistic.The 1e standard iirc. At least until you started a 1-on-1 duel, and then weapon lengths and spellcasting speed factors and OSRIC initiative time it is! :smallyuk:

IME the trickiest thing is trying to make sure nobody's action resolution accidentally gets skipped before you go on to the next round, but not rolling initiative actually helps slightly with that because the DM can resolve things in a coherent order that makes sense in his head, such as "Kate enters melee, then Zoog's Fireball goes off and we resolve that, then the frog tries to finish swallowing Benjamin while Benjamin stabs it back, and then finally Kate gets to attack," instead of trying to remember whatever ordering the initiative dice decreed this round.I feel like the trickiest thing would be breaking the assumption that who goes first always matters. For example, if you think that removing hit points down to zero will prevent any attacks the opponent was making, then it matters between opponents. If you care about redirecting attacks that would otherwise be "wasted" because they're resolved after someone kills an enemy, then it matters within the party.

If players just get to say "I attack the Orcs" and every kill removes an orc without worrying about which ones it was, and if all the Orcs still get to counterattack even though they've been 'killed' (yay true simultaneity!) then it works fine only rolling when you need to.

------

BECMI had always roll side initiative, and within each side divided the action into phases (something like move, Missile, Magic, melee). I don't believe you had to declare, you just acted. The thing I didn't like was that each side got to do everything before the other side, and order didn't have Magic last.

MoiMagnus

2021-04-07, 09:55 AM

I feel like the trickiest thing would be breaking the assumption that who goes first always matters. For example, if you think that removing hit points down to zero will prevent any attacks the opponent was making, then it matters between opponents. If you care about redirecting attacks that would otherwise be "wasted" because they're resolved after someone kills an enemy, then it matters within the party.

Agree. And you didn't even mention save-or-suck spells that are the biggest case of "first to act wins".

anthon

2021-04-07, 10:06 AM

I generally agree with the sentiment OP has. Low AC monsters with a mountain of HP is a big issue I have with 5e. If I stab something with a sword as a high level character, I want this thing to die, not shrug off the blow because it has enough HP to take 10 other blows. Although I can definitely see why they chose to go this route, it makes combat far less swingy, and thus easier for DMs/Module writers to come up with encounters that don't end up with a TPK because nobody in the party could muster a roll higher than a 12.

You forgot option (d): Let mundane characters have nice things and be able to heal permanent injuries and death with something like a high DC Medicine check (of course, that would also mean letting characters that actually invested in the skill be able to reach such high DCs somewhat consistently)

part of the problem of "investment" in skills in 5e is lack of granularity, which is also evinced in the problem of assymetry.

like, it is lack of granularity of investment (no skill, a skill, double prof for example, vs. +4/+17/+25/etc. point distribution) with actions that led to legendaries, (i.e. because there's a lack of granularity in player abilities, a good ability is always good, a bad ability is always bad. a spell list is lengthy, etc., and its harder for a DM to extrapolate a custom legend worthy defense without pages and pages of options that clutter up the manual)

and it is MMORPG tactics and video games that led people to conclude wall of hp requires x10 best attacks to preserve "need for team work" or whatever.

But ive never been superdependent on artificial rules to make existing rules work for me. if a dragon can cast spells, and in most editions, they do, you can have them have their own buffs, and simply not tell the players their targets were buffed. We used to have a spell that absorbed around 12 melee hits with 0 damage. We had spells that would eat 100% of the breath weapon damage from a White, Silver, Red, or Gold Dragon... or fireball, or meteor swarm, or cone of cold... i mean literally 0 damage would be taken.

Now, think about how drastically that changes the encounter. if each of your uber fighter/wizard attacks is absorbed and you don't tell them why, it gives the impression the creature is invincible. Perhaps it simply has 240 more hit points than you thought. Maybe 500 more than you thought...

But all you did was use existing buffs that players take for granted. My point is you don't need legendary actions,

you need to act legendary.

KorvinStarmast

2021-04-07, 11:30 AM

But I'm on the side of "Legendary Actions, while perhaps a bit of a knock against verisimilitude, is a good way to help make the game more fun." Me also.

Saying "hey, let's just import that into 5e" is a recipe for disaster.
The simplification theme is a core 5e value.

The trick is to take simple turns, and lots of them. If everyone is taking small turns and not dithering, things go by fast and there's no problem. Yep. Keeps the pace of play moving. :smallsmile:

Telok

2021-04-07, 12:25 PM

Part of the issue is that the game basically lacks a structure for actors to react to things happening off turn. Yeah, everyone has a "reaction" but that's really just an opportunity attack unless the actor is a caster with a particular set of spells.

If all actors had reaction options beyond "make an opportunity attack" and pcs & significant opponents had a resource or trade to get a couple more reactions, then you wouldn't have legendary actions or the negative reacions to them. The solo monster fights would just just have an extra option or two and a larger pool of resources. You could wrap the legendary resistance thing into it too.

Hmm. One reaction each round, gain another by sacrificing your next turn or spending a hit die or inspiration. Limit of your prof bonus each round and no more than one per turn. Everyone gets... opportunity attack if normal conditions are met, spell if spell conditions are met, move 5' in response to an attack roll or physical spell effect with a check to move before the attack/effect lands, maybe some sort of parry? Your legendary monsters then could get to use a reaction to reroll a save. They mostly have high prof and hit dice, maybe give them a 1/round free inspiration.

Huh. Intetesting. Might be workable, may fix a number of issues.

NorthernPhoenix

2021-04-07, 01:13 PM

Having monsters and NPCs use different rules from PCs is one of the best parts of 5e, and a major factor in making DMing it tolerable.

MaxWilson

2021-04-07, 02:13 PM

What Legendary Resistance does accomplish is that it restricts the spells that are worth using higher up extremely severely to the point that everyone uses the same spells since they're the only ones that work reliably. Your options are basically:
- Summon
- Shapeshifting
- Trap

This is one of the biggest design failures of the system: the fact that it automatically succeeds means that there's no point in even trying. Why try to invoke anything but incidental saving throws if you know they'll make it if it matters anyways? The answer is, you don't. There's no reason to bother. And since most things worth killing are legendarily resistant, this goes double. Worse, legendary resistance doesn't protect against some of the effects that are easily the most powerful effect type in the game (i.e. ones that autosucceed).

Bravo! A cogent statement of why Legendary Resistance is a bad game mechanic.

It's written as a creature that should be hard for a caster to affect but, due to the way the edition is designed, most of that is just empty rhetoric.

I remember how disappointed I was as a player the first time I saw a Mind Flayer die to an upcasted Fireball. I couldn't believe that that idiotic strategy actually works in 5E. Advantage on saves is not nothing, but it's not much compared to 90% magic resistance (as in AD&D). For my games I wanted to bring back the feel of a monster who just shrugs off magic, like water off a duck's back.

Silly Name

2021-04-07, 02:27 PM

Funnily(?), this transplants a common videogame problem into D&D. If you have ever played Final Fantasy or similar RPGs, you'll be familiar with the dreaded useless powerful spells. Stuff like four to five flavours of instant death, poison, time stop, silence and the like: all powerful conditions you can impose on your enemies... Except when it matters. Bosses are almost always resistant to all those nifty powers you can get, while the creatures susceptible to them aren't worth spending the resources on.

Now, this isn't as bad because usually in D&D you can still get some worth out of your class features by directing them at minions or in other encounters, but as we approach higher level the resemblances grow. If the enemy can just auto-succeed at his save against your only ninth-level spell for the day, you will want to pick a ninth-level spell that doesn't allow for a save.

I am perfectly cognisant of the balancing factor of Legendary Resistance, and so are my players. It simply feels bad, especially when you consider that casting a spell that allows for a save means the player has already committed to the chance of failure, just like how the party's fighter knows he could miss on his next big attack. Seeing the boss monster fail the saving throw and then just shrug it off isn't really a cool thing. There should be a more elegant way to address the problem of powerful Save or Suck powers shutting down a boss.

Hell, probably outright immunity would be less feel-bad. "The lich's centuries of research in the deepest arcane secrets have granted her the ability to be unaffected any illusion and charm spell of less than sixth level" is far more interesting and better communicates the lich's powers than "the lich can say 'no' to three saving throws per day".

MaxWilson

2021-04-07, 02:54 PM

KorvinStarmast

2021-04-07, 03:02 PM

Having monsters and NPCs use different rules from PCs is one of the best parts of 5e, and a major factor in making DMing it tolerable. Yep.

Bravo! A cogent statement of why Legendary Resistance is a bad game mechanic. Disagree with "bad" - it meets the 'good enough' standard. I understand why some folks would prefer something different.

I remember how disappointed I was as a player the first time I saw a Mind Flayer die to an upcasted Fireball. I couldn't believe that that idiotic strategy actually works in 5E. Advantage on saves is not nothing, but it's not much compared to 90% magic resistance (as in AD&D). For my games I wanted to bring back the feel of a monster who just shrugs off magic, like water off a duck's back. I never liked that, the magic resistance (it started in Eldritch Wizardry, OD&D, among some of the demons) but that's a matter of taste. It has now become baked in. *shrugs* It's workable.

IMO immunity isn't unfun as long as it makes sense Yep, but honestly, not all of them do make sense ...
BTW it's also quite funny that 5E's CR system charges for Legendary Resistance (it's an effective HP increase) but not for condition immunities or teleportation powers. Two ways to skin a cat but only one of them affects CR. You seem to desire a higher level of precision in CR calculation (you are not alone, there are plenty of people who scratch their heads on that) but I like to repeat this frequently: CR is a ballpark estimate.

EggKookoo

2021-04-07, 03:07 PM

There's two sets of rules. One for DMs and one for players. They aren't the same.

Correct. There are also two sets of characters. PC and NPCs. They aren't the same. They don't play the same at all. Making PCs with NPC rules would result in overly simplistic characters that are either stuck at the same level of power forever or be subject to an arguably cluttered progression mechanic. Making NPCs with PC rules would result in overly complicated creatures that are saddled with features that they don't need.

D&D 3e tried using the same set of rules for both. At very low levels it wasn't too bad. But it didn't scale well and by the time the players were mid-level, the NPCs were a nightmare to build and run. Fifth realized that the needs of the players aren't the same as the needs of the DM and set the rules up to accommodate each.

Don't get hung up on the literalness of the mechanics. There's no difference in-fiction between Extra Attack and Multiattack. A 1st level PC wizard can swing a longsword five times despite having neither. It's just that, mechanically-speaking, the player only gets one chance per turn to make an attack roll (and that with disadvantage), which means either only one of those swings matters (which one? whichever one you like), or his attack was the cumulative result of all of them. Likewise, when a fighter with 2 attacks hits two separate creatures, narratively-speaking that could well have been one swing that connected to both.

The mechanics only exist for the players. The creatures in the game just have laws of physics, which is the same for all of them.

MaxWilson

2021-04-07, 03:13 PM

I never liked that, the magic resistance (it started in Eldritch Wizardry, OD&D, among some of the demons) but that's a matter of taste.

I think it's more than just a matter of simple taste, it's an important game balance factor--magic-immune monsters are also factors that contributing to making playing a fighter fulfilling and fun even at high level when big spells are available. (Powerful consumable magic items, antimagic zones, and tactical options like disarming and parrying also contribute.)

5E's legendary resistances are an attempt to recreate a similar dynamic, and they work, sort of, until players figure out the spell combinations that work around magic resistance, e.g. Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound + Wall of Force, or Conjure Fey (Giant Ape, etc.) from a Shepherd Druid + Planar Binding, or Animate Objects. After that point, playing a non-caster becomes a roleplaying choice or something that you do for extra challenge, not something you do because you think fighters/barbarians/rangers/etc. are actually needed for a balanced party.

D&D 3e tried using the same set of rules for both. At very low levels it wasn't too bad. But it didn't scale well and by the time the players were mid-level, the NPCs were a nightmare to build and run.

That sounds like the fault of the 3E designers then for designing a nightmarishly complex system for PCs, because using the same rules for PCs and NPCs worked perfectly well for the whole two decades before WotC bought the D&D brand. NPC Fighters, Magic-users, etc. are ubiquitous in TSR products.

Silly Name

2021-04-07, 03:17 PM

Isn't outright immunity exactly what you were criticizing in video games? IMO immunity isn't unfun as long as it makes sense (undead being immune to poisoning and exhaustion) but irritating when it's clearly just unexplained gamism (a modified lich which is immune to grappling and stun purely to mess with monks and fighters).

Eh, the problem with those videogames is actually closer to what you lament (the bosses' catch-all immunites are due to being bosses, not something inherent to their being), and the fact those powerful spells are wasted on typical random encounters due to cost or efficiency (why try to cast Instant Death at that dragon if a single physical attack/lower costed spell kills it anyways?). Until high levels, in D&D your spells/special abilities can still be useful against the enemy big beater or mook army without feeling like you're wasting precious resources.

When I talked about substituting LR with immunites, I had in mind specific, lore-justified immunites as you said. If there's no good reason for the dragon to bypass illusions, then he shouldn't get to.

Now that I think about it, LR has pretty iffy interactions with illusions from an in-fiction perspective...

KorvinStarmast

2021-04-07, 03:21 PM

I think it's more than just a matter of simple taste, it's an important game balance factor--magic-immune monsters are also factors that contributing to making playing a fighter fulfilling and fun even at high level when big spells are available. Just gonna say that it now works better than it did.

5E's legendary resistances are an attempt to recreate a similar dynamic, and they work, sort of
They work well enough. We fought a vampire a few weeks ago, and that bugger used up his leg saves ... very tough fight.

Silly Name

2021-04-07, 03:29 PM

That sounds like the fault of the 3E designers then for designing a nightmarishly complex system for PCs, because using the same rules for PCs and NPCs worked perfectly well for the whole two decades before WotC bought the D&D brand. NPC Fighters, Magic-users, etc. are ubiquitous in TSR products.

Meh, I can whip up a perfectly serviceable NPC Fighter or Wizard for 3.5 in a few minutes. Part of that is system mastery, but it also gets much easier once you abandon the ridicolous attitude of needing to optimise every little thing: pick a theme, stick to core and one or two splats at most, and it's not that difficult to create even high-level NPCs that fulfill their role.

If you go dumpster-diving and search for the best feats and spells all across your library + Dragon magazines every time you build an NPC, sure, it's a mess. The real hassle is choosing equipment, and that's mostly because you need to keep in mind that every fallen NPC is a bag of money you're handing your players...

5e is still faster and easier to use, especially when wanting to create a proper monster rather than an NPC. Hit dice by size rather than type in particular is a very effective choice, and the consolidation of saves and attack bonuses in Proficiency and divorcing Prof. score from how many HD an NPC has are the two other great simplifying factors.

EggKookoo

2021-04-07, 03:32 PM

MaxWilson

2021-04-07, 09:52 PM

IIRC, 1e monsters weren't built like anything resembling PCs. A 1e monster typically had stuff like hit dice rather than hit points (although it could be converted over) and things like "number of attacks" and "damager per attack" sort of independent of weapons or any detailed equipment you'd find on a PC. No abilities listed aside from Intelligence, and that set as an adjective ("average") instead of a number. And so on... Really, 1e monster stat blocks were more "different" from PCs than they are in 5e. I don't remember much about how 2e did it.

You misremember. 1E has monsters like orc chieftains, yes, but it also has NPCs, as does BECMI D&D, and those NPCs use the exact same rules as PCs--the only distinction between them is whether they're being run by a player (PC) or non-player (NPC).

E.g. Bargle is a magic user (initially level 5-7).

Aleena is a cleric (level 2 IIRC).

Mordenkainen starts off as a 12th level wizard and eventually goes to 20+ (depending on which book you consult).

Elminster is a 29th level wizard, IIRC with some remnants of Fighter and Thief skill from dual-classing in his youth. The Simbul is a 30th level wizard.

All of the Athasian sorcerer kings are dual-classed 21st level or higher wizard/psionicists (Nibenay is level 23 initially, IIRC goes to 24 eventually; Hammanu goes from 21 to 23 I think). Borys of Ebe of course is a 30th level wizard/psionicist/dragon.

Online sources tell me that Lord Robilard is a 24th level Fighter but I'm taking that on faith because I'm not very familiar with Greyhawk.

EggKookoo

2021-04-07, 10:06 PM

You misremember. 1E has monsters like orc chieftains, yes, but it also has NPCs, as does BECMI D&D, and those NPCs use the exact same rules as PCs--the only distinction between them is whether they're being run by a player (PC) or non-player (NPC).

So I'm thinking of things like this.

http://666kb.com/i/cuzqntkuso9yied84.png

This reminds me of a 5e-ish stat block. Or are we talking about different things?

Tanarii

2021-04-07, 10:48 PM

This reminds me of a 5e-ish stat block. Or are we talking about different things?
It also had elves, dwarves, halfling, and Men (bandits, berserkers, merchants etc). I can't remember if it had commoners though.

But in both AD&D and BECMI modules, PC classed individuals were endemic.

Eldariel

2021-04-07, 11:22 PM

Just gonna say that it now works better than it did.
They work well enough. We fought a vampire a few weeks ago, and that bugger used up his leg saves ... very tough fight.

I'll say that this probably really depends on the table. The more savvy the players are, the less likely they are to waste time hitting through legendary saves simply because they prepared spells that don't care. The same thing solves magic resistance too. In this edition, magic resistance is "All eggs in the same basket" - nothing [except like Big T's carapace, which is a unique effect on a chump monster so it doesn't really matter] protects you against attack roll spells (which is why Scorching Ray + Spirit Shroud is actually pretty good as is Magic Missile + Empowered Evocation).

So if players do burn through legendary resistance, they might be doing things "as intended" but they're also wasting a lot of resources: generally once they figure out which spells always work, this simply won't happen (except in cases where it doesn't matter like Spirit Guardians, which is really good against...everything regardless of whether they save or not). Which is what I fear may happen with you: players learn and get more savvy and the next Vampire will be a cakewalk. Then again, this might not be the case: it depends on the players' goals and table style as much as everything else. But I can say that for instance in my tables, it simply doesn't work.

The older versions didn't have this problem. You didn't have a single optimal way of dealing with all problems nor a single category of effects that autofails while others succeed (okay, 3e was pretty bad about this too since immunities became endemic on high levels) - which preserved the plurality of solutions available for caster to contribute, but still made weapon damage something you actively wanted in the party. In 5e you generally just use summons or minions on high levels so you don't need weapon damage really, and when you do well, shapeshifting makes you every bit as good a warrior as any Fighter (better, actually, 'cause you can cast spells like Shield and Absorb Elements and Counterspell while at it, and get to use NPC-only damage riders, which get pretty ridiculous pretty fast).

MaxWilson

2021-04-08, 03:28 PM

That sounds like the fault of the 3E designers then for designing a nightmarishly complex system for PCs, because using the same rules for PCs and NPCs worked perfectly well for the whole two decades before WotC bought the D&D brand. NPC Fighters, Magic-users, etc. are ubiquitous in TSR products.

IIRC, 1e monsters weren't built like anything resembling PCs. A 1e monster typically had stuff like hit dice rather than hit points (although it could be converted over) and things like "number of attacks" and "damager per attack" sort of independent of weapons or any detailed equipment you'd find on a PC. No abilities listed aside from Intelligence, and that set as an adjective ("average") instead of a number. And so on... Really, 1e monster stat blocks were more "different" from PCs than they are in 5e. I don't remember much about how 2e did it.

Also, pre-3e PCs were ridiculously simple compared to what came afterward.

So I'm thinking of things like this.

http://666kb.com/i/cuzqntkuso9yied84.png

This reminds me of a 5e-ish stat block. Or are we talking about different things?

We are talking about different things. I'm talking about when Gary Gygax wrote NPCs, not monsters, for example this (Against the Giants pg 7):

https://i.postimg.cc/Qdq9qyDX/Dwarf.png (https://postimages.org/)

or this (pg 25)

https://i.postimg.cc/sg51g0xY/NPCs.png (https://postimg.cc/cv4dDhQC)

To repeat the point: if (arguendo) 3E NPCs are nightmarishly complex (although @Silly Name appears to disagree that this is the case), that's the fault of the 3E designers for making character design nightmarishly complex. 5E character design isn't nightmarishly complex and so using the Gygaxian approach to NPCs works well in 5E.

Necrosnoop110

2021-04-08, 03:55 PM

This kind of thing never bothered me as a player or DM. Sometimes there are things you just can't do. I actually like it when Monsters can do things I (as a PC cannot) it increases novelty, challenge, and uniqueness for me.

I think there are plenty of legit flavor reasons for such abilities to exist above and beyond any meta- or breaks in verisimilitude that may or may not exist. Maybe the NPC makes a deal with an evil power that will only communicate with evil monsters of a given race, maybe it grinds babies up for a ritual, maybe it has two brains and can do things humanoids just cannot or will not do.

We're part of the most intelligent and technologically advanced species on the planet and there are still things animals can do that humans cannot, sometimes we even fail to understand how the animals do it. And yes I realize that theoretically we could one day understand and replicate what an animal does but right now we can't. Who's to say that in a given fantasy world in the arms race between PCs and NPCs there are things in one camp that the other cannot currently perform.

I think a modern "I can just youtube it and master any skill" mentality bleeds over into the game world sometimes. Trust me there is a skill out there that you cannot master regardless of effort, and even more so if that skill or ability depended on anatomy that you simply do not have.

I'd also ask, doesn't this "two rulesets problem" go both ways? To the best of my knowledge Monster NPCs don't have access to certain class abilities, from mundane up to 20th level capstones? Sure a humanoid NPC that can take up classes maybe could but an outright monster?

Silly Name

2021-04-08, 04:15 PM

To repeat the point: if (arguendo) 3E NPCs are nightmarishly complex (although @Silly Name appears to disagree that this is the case), that's the fault of the 3E designers for making character design nightmarishly complex. 5E character design isn't nightmarishly complex and so using the Gygaxian approach to NPCs works well in 5E.

I think they are less complex than most people seem to think, and experience with the system makes (N)PC creation and control more intuitive (as well as picking up some tricks for streamlining character creation). No disagreeing that they're more complex than both previous and successive editions, it'd be a pretty ridicolous position.

I also recognise I seem to have a very different experience with 3e than the majority of this forum, in the sense that the people I've played with always kept the game far simpler and less optimised (saw very little "dipping", a very conservative ACFs, think I've seen only... three or four PCs that were non-standard races), so a lot of the NPCs even at high level could be "[Base class] X/[Prestige Class] Y" (or even pure base class, or simply dual-classing for simplicity) and remain competent, because that was the baseline level of complexity for PCs too.

(I also find Pathfinder NPCs to have far much more "noise" due to some design choices of that game. If I ever ran a game in that system again, I'd probably be tempted to backport some 5e design into NPC creation just so I could cut down all the pointless clutter)

Creating monsters, now, that was an ungodly mess that required far too much cross-referencing. I had some fun spending afternoons homebrewing creatures, but it is needlessly complicated. As I said above, 5e simplifies the process and corrects many problems in a way I think is very satisfying.

Eldariel

2021-04-08, 04:34 PM

Creating monsters, now, that was an ungodly mess that required far too much cross-referencing. I had some fun spending afternoons homebrewing creatures, but it is needlessly complicated. As I said above, 5e simplifies the process and corrects many problems in a way I think is very satisfying.

Meh, given the sole purpose of monster creation rules was to produce CR, which was even at best a total crapshot, those rules were basically just not there. At least I never used them; if I created a monster, I just wrote it up off my head. I don't see how 3e requires following those rules any more than 5e. I have actually yet to see an edition with good monster creation rules but I have yet to see any use in such rules too, so it kinda evens out; chances are that even if someone found the Grail,I just wouldn't use it.

jas61292

2021-04-08, 04:38 PM

Personally, I think that the rules for PCs and NPCs being different is one of the best things about 5e. It allows the game rules to be game rules, and not world rules. They facilitate the game, they don't run your world.

I frequently see things such as "how does X existing logically effect the world" with X being something a player can do. And while those can often lead to interesting discussions, my first thought is usually "it doesn't do much, because that is a PC ability, and PCs are incredibly rare". The rules presented in the players handbook are not the physics of the game world, and the game is better for it.

And, of course, on the flip side, this means that monster abilities are not some universal system that players can also get. I like it that the answer to "why can that NPC do that but I can't" is that "he is an NPC with special training/anatomy/backstory/etc. that lets him do that", and not "well, he has class X and racial feature Y and special item Z." This makes worldbuilding so much easier.

Also, for what its worth, while I understand that everyone is different and I'm certainly not saying anyone is doing anything wrong, I don't really understand that point of view that things like legendary actions take you out of the game. To me, the entire idea of epic creatures having special mechanics and extra abilities draws me further in. But, to each their own.

Doug Lampert

2021-04-08, 04:47 PM

I think they are less complex than most people seem to think, and experience with the system makes (N)PC creation and control more intuitive (as well as picking up some tricks for streamlining character creation). No disagreeing that they're more complex than both previous and successive editions, it'd be a pretty ridicolous position.

I also recognise I seem to have a very different experience with 3e than the majority of this forum, in the sense that the people I've played with always kept the game far simpler and less optimised (saw very little "dipping", a very conservative ACFs, think I've seen only... three or four PCs that were non-standard races), so a lot of the NPCs even at high level could be "[Base class] X/[Prestige Class] Y" (or even pure base class, or simply dual-classing for simplicity) and remain competent, because that was the baseline level of complexity for PCs too.

(I also find Pathfinder NPCs to have far much more "noise" due to some design choices of that game. If I ever ran a game in that system again, I'd probably be tempted to backport some 5e design into NPC creation just so I could cut down all the pointless clutter)

Creating monsters, now, that was an ungodly mess that required far too much cross-referencing. I had some fun spending afternoons homebrewing creatures, but it is needlessly complicated. As I said above, 5e simplifies the process and corrects many problems in a way I think is very satisfying.

I think I can agree with this. A new monster in 3.x is HARD, hence the silly number of mistakes in the various monster manuals. (Like virtually every fractional HD or 1 HD animal having a feat it didn't qualify for which they errataed to be a bonus feat requiring all those creatures to get another feat that didn't have any real impact.)

Advancing a monster either by HD or class levels is not easy (and frequently results in being forced to take cross-class skills), and things like the claim that you don't get retroactive skill points are ignored by the designers in the rules for things like creating dragons because it's blatantly too difficult.

An NPC wizard has the same problem. But most NPCs aren't nearly as bad as a custom or advanced monster.

MaxWilson

2021-04-08, 04:59 PM

Tanarii

2021-04-08, 05:06 PM

5E character design isn't nightmarishly complex and so using the Gygaxian approach to NPCs works well in 5E.
Given I can build any non-warlock in my head through level 6 or so, except for full spell lists, I'm inclined to agree. There's no way I could do that for 3e or 4e.

But it's not building which is the issue. It's execution. PCs usually have far more features to keep track of. Excluding spells, which are just as bad when it comes to mental overhead on Monster-NPCs as they are on PC-NPCs.

A single PC-NPC wouldn't be too bad, especially a non-caster. But several would be a bit of a pain. (Like, I'd hate to do evil opposites.)

MaxWilson

2021-04-08, 06:18 PM

Given I can build any non-warlock in my head through level 6 or so, except for full spell lists, I'm inclined to agree. There's no way I could do that for 3e or 4e.

But it's not building which is the issue. It's execution. PCs usually have far more features to keep track of. Excluding spells, which are just as bad when it comes to mental overhead on Monster-NPCs as they are on PC-NPCs.

A single PC-NPC wouldn't be too bad, especially a non-caster. But several would be a bit of a pain. (Like, I'd hate to do evil opposites.)

This is an excellent point, and one of my major gripes with 5E as a whole: execution is often a nightmare because so many rules are exception-based.

However, I'm having trouble thinking of a specific example of an execution problem, and furthermore execution issues with NPCs cause less trouble with players than execution issues with PCs. (If the DM forgets that the NPC Conjuror shouldn't have to roll a concentration save on his Web spell, no player will complain, but if you ask a PC Conjuror to roll a concentration save and he fails it, you are probably going to have to deal with either a retcon or sad players, once the players realize you did it wrong.)

Likewise, it's not an issue if the DM forgets to use Second Wind on a Fighter NPC because the fighter is so busy using his Crossbow Expert. The DM doesn't get stressed about playing NPCs non-optimally.

So... what kind of nitpicky complexity are you thinking of that would cause problems in play, and is there a reason you couldn't just build NPCs that choose different subclasses with less complexity? I didn't even realize until you mentioned it that I can't build warlocks in my head, either, because I usually make NPC wizards and fighters instead.

EggKookoo

2021-04-08, 06:34 PM

So... what kind of nitpicky complexity are you thinking of that would cause problems in play, and is there a reason you couldn't just build NPCs that choose different subclasses with less complexity? I didn't even realize until you mentioned it that I can't build warlocks in my head, either, because I usually make NPC wizards and fighters instead.

NPCs created like PCs work as long as you're only dealing with one or two of them. PCs are as complex as is reasonably handled by a single player. I mean that's kind of how they're optimized, complexity-wise. But as soon as the DM has to juggle a decent number of them, it behooves him (or me, anyway) to have a kind of simplified view into each.

Basically, if the DM can handle multiple NPCs that are as complex as PCs, then players should be able to handle more complex PCs, which then compounds the issue.

Skrum

2021-04-08, 07:05 PM

I very much agree with this sentiment. I totally understand WHY the game was made this way (kind of a practical vs completionist method), it bugs me that the PC's work entirely different than NPC's and monsters - especially intelligent monsters. It's like a life-hacky thing, when it could've been done properly with full continuity of mechanics. For that reason, I really do like 3.5 (at least in theory....the outcome had some, uh, notable holes).

Silly Name

2021-04-08, 07:13 PM

Meh, given the sole purpose of monster creation rules was to produce CR, which was even at best a total crapshot, those rules were basically just not there. At least I never used them; if I created a monster, I just wrote it up off my head. I don't see how 3e requires following those rules any more than 5e. I have actually yet to see an edition with good monster creation rules but I have yet to see any use in such rules too, so it kinda evens out; chances are that even if someone found the Grail,I just wouldn't use it.

It doesn't require it, but it's the method the game does suggest you use. I agree that you could create a perfectly serviceable monster in 3.5 by using a less rigorous method than the one outlined in the DMG, but then you have to do it all on your own, and that's hard especially for newbie DMs. The DMG offers a step-by-step guide and various suggestions, so most DMs will follow the method they are presented with.

If 5e suggested you should tie Proficiency bonus to number of hit dice rather than fiddle with the numbers in order to get close to the desired CR, a lot of DMs would follow that advice simply because they'd be under the impression that's how the system works and deviating from it means risking doing something out of balance.

MaxWilson

2021-04-08, 07:15 PM

@EggKookoo I didn't see a response to my answer to your question about NPCs in 1E (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?629617-Two-Sets-of-Rules-the-Good-and-Bad&p=24999861). Did you overlook it or just not consider it worth responding to?

Anyway...

NPCs created like PCs work as long as you're only dealing with one or two of them. PCs are as complex as is reasonably handled by a single player. I mean that's kind of how they're optimized, complexity-wise. But as soon as the DM has to juggle a decent number of them, it behooves him (or me, anyway) to have a kind of simplified view into each.

But MM monsters aren't necessarily simpler to run than PCs are. I'd rather run a team six Barbearians (easy, make twelve attacks per round and move 40', and track HP) than two Mind Flayers (lots of expendable abilities to keep track of uses, have to roll recharge every round on mind blast, plus making sure players reroll their saves every round and/or every time they're damaged, depending on which ability they're affected by) and a Dybbuk (completely different set of abilities).

You'll be okay if you don't use too many different KINDS of characters/monsters in the same encounter, but that's not related to how you build an individual NPC.

NPCs using PHB rules are also more discoverable to the players. If your NPC casts Hunger of Hadar, you're implicitly communicating to the players that it's a warlock so they can react accordingly. That reduces a different kind of complexity: communication overhead.

EggKookoo

2021-04-08, 08:45 PM

@EggKookoo I didn't see a response to my answer to your question about NPCs in 1E (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?629617-Two-Sets-of-Rules-the-Good-and-Bad&p=24999861). Did you overlook it or just not consider it worth responding to?

Anyway...

Sorry, I was satisfied that we weren't quite talking about the same thing and that you confirmed it. Didn't intend to come across as dismissive.

But MM monsters aren't necessarily simpler to run than PCs are. I'd rather run a team six Barbearians (easy, make twelve attacks per round and move 40', and track HP) than two Mind Flayers (lots of expendable abilities to keep track of uses, have to roll recharge every round on mind blast, plus making sure players reroll their saves every round and/or every time they're damaged, depending on which ability they're affected by) and a Dybbuk (completely different set of abilities).

You'll be okay if you don't use too many different KINDS of characters/monsters in the same encounter, but that's not related to how you build an individual NPC.

NPCs using PHB rules are also more discoverable to the players. If your NPC casts Hunger of Hadar, you're implicitly communicating to the players that it's a warlock so they can react accordingly. That reduces a different kind of complexity: communication overhead.

5e's NPC rules aren't perfect for sure. I would have preferred NPC spellcasters to work differently. No spell slots, just abilities, perhaps with a recharge mechanic at most.

My gripe from 3e comes from custom monster building, where I felt like I couldn't give a monster a feature or ability if it wasn't already available to PCs. And if I invented such a feature, I felt obliged to justify how it could be available to some PC class somewhere. 5e felt like it didn't care about that.

MaxWilson

2021-04-08, 09:13 PM

My gripe from 3e comes from custom monster building, where I felt like I couldn't give a monster a feature or ability if it wasn't already available to PCs. And if I invented such a feature, I felt obliged to justify how it could be available to some PC class somewhere. 5e felt like it didn't care about that.

If that's how 3E worked, that does sound pretty nightmarish. I'm baffled why they would do that. It's generally been the case in D&D for over forty years that monster descriptions are always chock-full of things like breath weapons and petrifying gazes which would be totally bizarre on a PC, and even certain classes are NPC-only (Oathbreaker).

Out of curiosity, where did that 3E expectation that PC Ability === Monster Ability come from? Is it part of 3E's rules, or just part of the general idiom in the way it feels "wrong" (un-idiomatic) for a 5E monster to destroy magical weapons while they are being wielded, or inflict wounds or negative conditions that last longer than a long rest?

OldTrees1

2021-04-08, 10:07 PM

If that's how 3E worked, that does sound pretty nightmarish. I'm baffled why they would do that. It's generally been the case in D&D for over forty years that monster descriptions are always chock-full of things like breath weapons and petrifying gazes which would be totally bizarre on a PC, and even certain classes are NPC-only (Oathbreaker).

Out of curiosity, where did that 3E expectation that PC Ability === Monster Ability come from? Is it part of 3E's rules, or just part of the general idiom in the way it feels "wrong" (un-idiomatic) for a 5E monster to destroy magical weapons while they are being wielded, or inflict wounds or negative conditions that last longer than a long rest?

I played 3E and that was not the expectation.

Sure 3E had a lot more content so it had PC options for things like Earth Elemental PCs or Totemist's collection of curated monster abilities. The "bizarre" stuff was only used when groups were okay with it (I ran one of those groups). Although Dragonborn got popular enough to have Breath Weapons in the 5E PHB. Odd.

However you could always create a new feature and have it be just on that monster. Unless you were playing at a high enough optimization level that the Monster Manuals became part of the Wizard spellbook. Polymorph used to be a problem if allowed to be a problem. (Our group did not want that issue so we didn't have that issue.)

So when I created Elder Evils with unique abilities, there was no expectation they would become PC abilities.

All in all 3E had 2 sets of rules, they just shared more of the core engine. Too much in all honest. I still want the ability to play monstrous PCs that feel like their species. However I do value faster NPC generation.

EggKookoo

2021-04-09, 06:48 AM

Out of curiosity, where did that 3E expectation that PC Ability === Monster Ability come from? Is it part of 3E's rules, or just part of the general idiom in the way it feels "wrong" (un-idiomatic) for a 5E monster to destroy magical weapons while they are being wielded, or inflict wounds or negative conditions that last longer than a long rest?

I played 3E and that was not the expectation.

Sorry, I think I conveyed the wrong position. Default monsters in 3e definitely had a simplified presentation compared to PCs.

My problem came when trying to create custom monsters, especially at high tiers. If I wanted a custom, high-power monster, the 3e MM (or DMG? it's been a while) suggested adding PC class levels to it. That's where the complexity came in, as with feats and multiple scaling BAB and things like AC tightly bound to ability scores, it became hard to make a creature that hit as hard as I wanted it to without giving it some ridiculous AC, or perhaps the reverse. Every number seemed tightly bound to another. Tweaking one thing caused a cascade where a bunch of other values were affected. A big part of this problem was that 3e PCs themselves were fairly complex.

I don't want to suggest that this was my biggest problem with 3e. It was manageable, as most of the work was done pre-game and just amounted to a lot of homework (which I enjoyed, to be honest). But it fed into another problem with 3e regarding the speed and cognitive load of combat. These high-tier PC-like NPCs had so many numbers to deal with...

Games like D&D don't spell everything out. As a DM, you often have to look at the rules as presented, as much as you can cram into your head, and derive a philosophy on how to extend them based on what you've read. For me, 3e seemed to imply it ran a pretty tight ship. Things hook into other things, and you don't just change them without considering how that hits everything else. I found when switching to 5e that the monsters had their own subset of mechanics. at least in some senses. If I wanted a (custom) creature that attacks multiple times in 3e, I had to work with the BAB, which implied working out a functional level and all that. In 5e, I just say it has Multiattack and makes X melee hits or whatever. Nothing else about the creature is affected, and all I have to do is keep an eye on CR, to the extent that I think CR means anything of precision.

Other things help this. Bounded accuracy keeps things in a tighter channel, so to speak, and it feels like 5e's balance is more around overall monster HP and monster-to-PC ratios than individual monster CR (with some caveats -- damn CR 2 Intellect Devourers!). So it's not just about NPC complexity.

Regarding the original topic, I've long been an advocate of the idea that rules only exist at the table. Multiattack and Extra Attack aren't actually two different things from the perspective of the creatures in the game. They're not aware of them as such in either case. Having two sets of rules matters at the table, where there are two distinct roles (player and DM), but doesn't matter within the game itself.

OldTrees1

2021-04-09, 08:03 AM

Sorry, I think I conveyed the wrong position. Default monsters in 3e definitely had a simplified presentation compared to PCs.

My problem came when trying to create custom monsters, especially at high tiers. If I wanted a custom, high-power monster, the 3e MM (or DMG? it's been a while) suggested adding PC class levels to it. That's where the complexity came in, as with feats and multiple scaling BAB and things like AC tightly bound to ability scores, it became hard to make a creature that hit as hard as I wanted it to without giving it some ridiculous AC, or perhaps the reverse. Every number seemed tightly bound to another. Tweaking one thing caused a cascade where a bunch of other values were affected. A big part of this problem was that 3e PCs themselves were fairly complex.

Don't worry, I saw the word "custom" in your previous post.

There were a few ways to create custom monsters in 3E. But they provided the most support for the most complicated (add levels). Less support for the middle (add RHD or templates). And even less support for the least complicated (just change it to what you want).

Monster Manual 3.5 Appendix 4 was the first place a 3E DM would go for advice on changing a monster and calculating a new CR. It talks about 3 methods:
1) Class levels (The symmetric method is very complex)
2) Increasing the hit dice of the creature. And 3E's equivalent to Proficiency was tied to HD (just like 5E) but Feats were also tied to HD.
3) Add templates

For creating a custom monster I would use step 2, add some unique abilities, and then estimate the CR based upon the increased hit dice and my estimation of the unique abilities I added. This is only a bit more complex than 5E DMG but did not provide guidance on estimating those unique abilities.

There was a 4th option of "just increase/add what you want increased/added" but it did not provide advice or even a section on that in the monster manual.

I am a bit surprised by "it became hard to make a creature that hit as hard as I wanted it to without giving it some ridiculous AC". Use Str to hit and Dex for AC? Give it misc attack bonuses?

Games like D&D don't spell everything out. As a DM, you often have to look at the rules as presented, as much as you can cram into your head, and derive a philosophy on how to extend them based on what you've read. For me, 3e seemed to imply it ran a pretty tight ship. Things hook into other things, and you don't just change them without considering how that hits everything else. I found when switching to 5e that the monsters had their own subset of mechanics. at least in some senses. If I wanted a (custom) creature that attacks multiple times in 3e, I had to work with the BAB, which implied working out a functional level and all that. In 5e, I just say it has Multiattack and makes X melee hits or whatever. Nothing else about the creature is affected, and all I have to do is keep an eye on CR, to the extent that I think CR means anything of precision.

The 3E Multiattack and 5E Multiattack work similar. The proficiency bonus was more complicated in 3E but you did not use 3E's BAB based Extra Attack during 3E Multiattack.

However in 5E I can easily make an enemy that attacks 5 times with a sword (so not multiattack). I just have to calculate the expected damage per round. In 3E there was the question of how it got the extra attacks. Was it from BAB which meant the attacks got less accurate after the first? Was it a flurry making all attacks less accurate? Was it just free extra attacks representing speed/haste? Or was it a new feature that monster has? 5E skips to that final answer.

Hopefully this provides some extra context. You could have monster abilities that were not PC abilities. You could use the asymmetric building process rather than add class levels. However 5E did increase the support for those processes.

5E also broke the smooth power curve which hampers my ability to estimate CR, added bounded accuracy which hampers my ability to estimate encounters, and has not allowed monstrous PCs. So you take the good with the bad.

EggKookoo

2021-04-09, 09:53 AM

Monster Manual 3.5 Appendix 4 was the first place a 3E DM would go for advice on changing a monster and calculating a new CR.

Was that true for the original 3e MM? I never had the 3.5 books.

I am a bit surprised by "it became hard to make a creature that hit as hard as I wanted it to without giving it some ridiculous AC". Use Str to hit and Dex for AC? Give it misc attack bonuses?

My memories are fuzzy but it might have been with regard to ranged attacks. I also won't assume I wasn't making mistakes, but I seem to make less of those kinds of mistakes with 5e.

The 3E Multiattack and 5E Multiattack work similar. The proficiency bonus was more complicated in 3E but you did not use 3E's BAB based Extra Attack during 3E Multiattack.

Also possibly a 3e/3.5e thing. I don't recall a Multiattack feat but I don't have my old 3e books handy. A quick SRD search suggests it came in with 3.5.

Interesting if it turns out much of my beef with 3e was with the pre-3.5 stuff.

5E also broke the smooth power curve which hampers my ability to estimate CR, added bounded accuracy which hampers my ability to estimate encounters, and has not allowed monstrous PCs. So you take the good with the bad.

Always true!

NorthernPhoenix

2021-04-09, 10:11 AM

At the very high level of mechanical analysis, "monsters" and other creatures do use the "same rules" as the players. Nearly all monsters can have their heart represented by a table such as this (or a slightly tweaked 3rd party equivalent, there are many).
https://static1.gamerantimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/monster-statistics-by-challenge-rating-chart-5e-dungeons-and-dragons.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=740&h=1502
Which along with stats (which cannot exceed 30, normally), create a "character" that exists within the same core dice-rolling rules in the same way player characters do.

What's different from 3.5 or similar games however, is that monsters (or NPCs) do not need to be confined to or defined by the "classes" or abilities available to player characters. I think the conflict when it comes to this stems from the assumption (subconscious or not) that the "classes", spell lists, and ability choices available to players represent a totality or even a majority of the powers, abilities, and talents that exist in a given fantasy world or game setting. Under the assumption of 5e and similar games, they don't. The "classes", spell lists, and abilities merely represent a sub-set that the game deems appropriate for player choice. Within the confines of the table above (the heart of the equal rules), "monsters" or NPCs can have any ability, spell, magic or power that i can think of. If I'm being "fair", these abilities should comply with the action resolution rules and rolls (ideally including "saves"), but can otherwise serve any function for the story or encounter.

MaxWilson

2021-04-09, 11:21 AM

For creating a custom monster I would use step 2, add some unique abilities, and then estimate the CR based upon the increased hit dice and my estimation of the unique abilities I added. This is only a bit more complex than 5E DMG but did not provide guidance on estimating those unique abilities.

Note that 5E gives very little guidance on custom abilities either. It gives guidance on mimicking some MM abilities, but nothing on how that guidelines were derived, so if you have a monster with a non-damage-based ability that isn't listed (e.g. paralyzing breath weapon; or the ability to alter the parameters of spells cast by creatures they can see, such as the spell's target; ability to puppeteer PCs a la Crown of Madness), you have to wing it completely.

OldTrees1

2021-04-09, 11:22 AM

Was that true for the original 3e MM? I never had the 3.5 books.

I don't have a 3.0 Monster Manual handy and I don't trust the online pdfs I found since they had nothing about advancement at all.

My memories are fuzzy but it might have been with regard to ranged attacks. I also won't assume I wasn't making mistakes, but I seem to make less of those kinds of mistakes with 5e.

Ah ranged attacks did use Dex and AC for high Dex creatures used Dex. That situation still exists in 5E. In both editions we use other modifiers (even ad hoc modifiers) to fine tune.

I am assuming you were not making mistakes. I am assuming it was too complex for you to easily navigate. So whether it was fewer mistakes, or 5E just being easier to navigate, you feel more in control with 5E.

Also possibly a 3e/3.5e thing. I don't recall a Multiattack feat but I don't have my old 3e books handy. A quick SRD search suggests it came in with 3.5.

There were 1-2 multiattack feat trees but I was talking about before feats. When a creature had multiple natural weapons, they got to attack with all of them on a full attack. This is the same as 5E multiattack.

Brown Bear
Full Attack: 2 claws +11 melee (1d8+8) and bite +6 melee (2d6+4)

The bear has 2 claws and a bite, so it attacks with all 3.

So if I wanted to create a custom manbearpig creature in 3E or 5E I would give it a multiattack.

Note that 5E gives very little guidance on custom abilities either. It gives guidance on mimicking some MM abilities, but nothing on how that guidelines were derived, so if you have a monster with a non-damage-based ability that isn't listed (e.g. paralyzing breath weapon; or the ability to alter the parameters of spells cast by creatures they can see, such as the spell's target; ability to puppeteer PCs a la Crown of Madness), you have to wing it completely.

Agreed. 5E only has guidance on DPS abilities. That was useful when I recently created some bosses, but only if they were only damage based threats. For the rest I have to rely on my own judgement (which was impaired in 2 ways in 5E).

PhoenixPhyre

2021-04-09, 12:05 PM

There were 1-2 multiattack feat trees but I was talking about before feats. When a creature had multiple natural weapons, they got to attack with all of them on a full attack. This is the same as 5E multiattack.

Brown Bear
Full Attack: 2 claws +11 melee (1d8+8) and bite +6 melee (2d6+4)

The bear has 2 claws and a bite, so it attacks with all 3.

So if I wanted to create a custom manbearpig creature in 3E or 5E I would give it a multiattack.

Except that in 3.5e, that was a guarantee. Your full-attack routine always included all your natural weapons (assuming you used them). Whereas in 5e it's a design choice. For instance, dragons don't Multiattack with their tail.

3e had relatively rigid expectations for how monsters were built. HD correlated with lots of things (CR, to some degree, skills, etc), adding class levels always increased HD, templates had limits based on all sorts of parameters. Different HD types were different, not just in size (humanoid vs monstrous humanoid vs undead vs ...), you had non-abilities and curlicues based on that (ie Undead used CHA for a bunch of things that normally CON was used for), etc. Adding HD added feats at a particular rate, etc.

Whereas in 5e, I can do what I'm about to do tonight. I've got a bunch of wight stat blocks representing (now undead) adventurers that I'm going to assign different weapons, armor, and adjust the HP. I might recalculate the CR, but there's really no need for that since I don't use XP[1]. I can do this entirely on the fly, even. This one gets sneak attack and uses daggers, that one has plate and a sword and shield, plus action surge, this other one can cast spells XYZ like a warlock. Done. Heck, I can flat out give them human-level intelligence.

I can make a dragon into a spellcaster by...adding spells. Instead of trying to figure out how to staple on X numbers of Y class levels, plus prestige classes and deal with the change to HD, skills, etc. plus the inevitable breakage because X is only available to Y, except under conditions Z (found in an entirely separate book).

Could you do this in 3e? Sure. But you'd be fighting the system to do so. And any players who were detail-oriented are going to get irritated because you're breaking the normal rules. And heaven help you if they get access to polymorph and want to assume the form of one of those custom monsters.

3e and 5e are both "game-turing complete". You can (generally) get to the same point in either of them. But they're very different in the work required to get there and how much the system helps vs hurts. And in different ways depending on what you're trying to do--it's not a pure X > Y. 3e has a lot more content and a lot more fiddly bits you can twiddle. 5e makes doing the majority of things WAY simpler and less error-prone.

MaxWilson

2021-04-09, 12:18 PM

I might recalculate the CR, but there's really no need for that since I don't use XP[1]. I can do this entirely on the fly, even. This one gets sneak attack and uses daggers, that one has plate and a sword and shield, plus action surge, this other one can cast spells XYZ like a warlock. Done. Heck, I can flat out give them human-level intelligence.

I can make a dragon into a spellcaster by...adding spells. Instead of trying to figure out how to staple on X numbers of Y class levels, plus prestige classes and deal with the change to HD, skills, etc. plus the inevitable breakage because X is only available to Y, except under conditions Z (found in an entirely separate book).

Could you do this in 3e? Sure. But you'd be fighting the system to do so.

Making a dragon into a spellcaster in 5E is fighting the system too, because there's little to no guidance on how non-damage-oriented spells like Quickened Hypnotic Pattern should affect CR. You're not engaging with those 5E rules so it doesn't matter you, and when I do it I generally just shrug and err on the side of more XP, but RAW there isn't any real guidance. The forum kids would say "Oberoni fallacy" here if someone tried to claim that 5E supported dragons as spellcasters. It's fighting the system to use them.

EggKookoo

2021-04-09, 12:27 PM

Note that 5E gives very little guidance on custom abilities either. It gives guidance on mimicking some MM abilities, but nothing on how that guidelines were derived, so if you have a monster with a non-damage-based ability that isn't listed (e.g. paralyzing breath weapon; or the ability to alter the parameters of spells cast by creatures they can see, such as the spell's target; ability to puppeteer PCs a la Crown of Madness), you have to wing it completely.

My experience with 5e makes me think they expect you to mostly work backwards, at least conceptually. Find your CR, give the monster the abilities you want either by stealing them from other monsters or whipping up your own. Do the damage/defense calculations and compare to your target CR. If it's too far off, tweak the numbers until you get where you want. Unfortunately, it sometimes feels like the actual instructions in the DMG can't decide which angle you should come at it, but once I finally grokked what CR actually meant, it became very simple to build just about anything to any CR (now there's the question of the value of CR itself, but that's something else...).

I don't remember 3e having this basic approach, but I suppose it could have been there as well. Just buried under a lot of nuts & bolts.

In both editions we use other modifiers (even ad hoc modifiers) to fine tune.

To be honest I don't really remember the specific of my anxiety over ad hoc modifiers. I just remember struggling with it and finding the game didn't really offer clear guidance. Maybe I was approaching it wrong, and moving to 5e broke my preconceptions simply because it was a new edition.

3e and 5e are both "game-turing complete". You can (generally) get to the same point in either of them. But they're very different in the work required to get there and how much the system helps vs hurts. And in different ways depending on what you're trying to do--it's not a pure X > Y. 3e has a lot more content and a lot more fiddly bits you can twiddle. 5e makes doing the majority of things WAY simpler and less error-prone.

That was it, really. Whether through my own deficiencies or the system itself, building custom monster felt like a garden full of rakes just waiting to be stepped on. And then in the middle of the game, when I realized I had inadvertently built in a trap, undoing that mistake just triggered more rakes. In 5e, the rakes are there, but it's easier to avoid or move them.

OldTrees1

2021-04-09, 12:27 PM

Except that in 3.5e, that was a guarantee. Your full-attack routine always included all your natural weapons (assuming you used them). Whereas in 5e it's a design choice. For instance, dragons don't Multiattack with their tail.

Dragon broke that rule in 3E too. They did not get their Tail Sweep if they wanted to use their Bite/Claw/Wings

3e had relatively rigid expectations for how monsters were built.
-snip-
Whereas in 5e, I can do what I'm about to do tonight.
-snip-
3e and 5e are both "game-turing complete". You can (generally) get to the same point in either of them. But they're very different in the work required to get there and how much the system helps vs hurts. And in different ways depending on what you're trying to do--it's not a pure X > Y. 3e has a lot more content and a lot more fiddly bits you can twiddle. 5e makes doing the majority of things WAY simpler and less error-prone.
Agreed.

Warning Tangent Not meant to derail:
Honestly I would rather build 6E monster rules off of 5E's model than off of 3E's model. I would just need:
1) Monstrous PCs (like a Savage Species splatbook with example and guidance to help DMs make more)
2) A smoother power curve. No special levels that are meant to be worth more.
3) An exponential power curve rather than bounded accuracy. You cannot begin to understand how massively useful this is for designing encounters. It takes me seconds to design a 3E encounter (using existing creatures) and minutes to design a 5E encounter. The simple guideline that 2 creatures of CR X are roughly as threatening as 1 of CR X+2 is amazing for creating detailed encounters with different types of creatures.

Do that with the simple generation 5E has (with maybe more guidance for non damage related abilities) and you have a nice 6E in my opinion.

EggKookoo

2021-04-09, 12:41 PM

The simple guideline that 2 creatures of CR X are roughly as threatening as 1 of CR X+2 is amazing for creating detailed encounters with different types of creatures.

There is the issue of action economy, though. In order for one CR 6 creature to be the same threat as two CR 3 creatures, that CR 6 creature has to basically function like two creatures. Otherwise it just gets piled on. So in the end you have something that, mechanically, is two CR 3 creatures. I believe that was the impetus behind Angry's paragon thing.

I get pretty good mileage in 5e out of always aiming for rough CR/APL parity, and adjusting the threat by adding more or fewer monsters. Can make for some pretty big fights, though, especially as the PCs get up around 7th/8th.

Silly Name

2021-04-09, 12:51 PM

I get pretty good mileage in 5e out of always aiming for rough CR/APL parity, and adjusting the threat by adding more or fewer monsters. Can make for some pretty big fights, though, especially as the PCs get up around 7th/8th.

This is where I'd bring back 4e style minions. Very useful for inserting mooks into a encounter without increasing complexity, and still useful to balance actions and resource attrition.

MaxWilson

2021-04-09, 12:51 PM

My experience with 5e makes me think they expect you to mostly work backwards, at least conceptually. Find your CR, give the monster the abilities you want either by stealing them from other monsters or whipping up your own. Do the damage/defense calculations and compare to your target CR.

And yet, for custom abilities there is no guidance for those damage/defense calculations. They don't even explain where their formulas for existing abilities comes from. (Why is Legendary Resistance a change to effective HP and not AC, or directly to defensive CR? Why is Nimble Escape effective +4 to hit and AC?) The guidance is very opaque and not useful for custom abilities. That's my point.

OldTrees1

2021-04-09, 01:03 PM

There is the issue of action economy, though. In order for one CR 6 creature to be the same threat as two CR 3 creatures, that CR 6 creature has to basically function like two creatures. Otherwise it just gets piled on. So in the end you have something that, mechanically, is two CR 3 creatures. I believe that was the impetus behind Angry's paragon thing.

I get pretty good mileage in 5e out of always aiming for rough CR/APL parity, and adjusting the threat by adding more or fewer monsters. Can make for some pretty big fights, though, especially as the PCs get up around 7th/8th.

Against a 10th level party I could have a 13th level encounter comprised of 1 CR 10 boss, 2 CR 8 lieutenants, and 4 CR 4 minions. A quick encounter calculation for an encounter ranging 9 CRs. This worked due to the smooth exponential power curve that allowed for the CR X+2 = 2 CR X rule of thumb.

That takes seconds. 5E does not have a smooth power curve. Some levels like 4-5 are big power spikes. 5E also does not have as much of an exponential curve so it does not have a nice rule of thumb. What it does have is a flat difficulty multiplier based on the total number of enemies. What level party would my example encounter be appropriate for in 5E? It is a lot of extra math to calculate (which matters even more when designing an encounter rather than just double checking final CR). According to a calculator it is CR 22 in 5E.

PhoenixPhyre

2021-04-09, 01:10 PM

Making a dragon into a spellcaster in 5E is fighting the system too, because there's little to no guidance on how non-damage-oriented spells like Quickened Hypnotic Pattern should affect CR. You're not engaging with those 5E rules so it doesn't matter you, and when I do it I generally just shrug and err on the side of more XP, but RAW there isn't any real guidance. The forum kids would say "Oberoni fallacy" here if someone tried to claim that 5E supported dragons as spellcasters. It's fighting the system to use them.

Uh, non damage spells don't affect CR. By definition of CR. CR is not how hard a monster will be as a challenge. That's 3e thinking. It's a combination of "will this monster be able to one round ko my PCs" and "will this monster last 3 rounds under pressure." Both under some relatively restrictive assumptions.

CR is not needed. It may be useful in some cases, but I rarely calculate it anymore. I'll use the table to give starting values, but that's it. And that's the intent. Unlike 3e, where CR mattered a lot, here it's entirely advisory and intended to be ignored by experienced DMs.

MaxWilson

2021-04-09, 01:20 PM

Against a 10th level party I could have a 13th level encounter comprised of 1 CR 10 boss, 2 CR 8 lieutenants, and 4 CR 4 minions. A quick encounter calculation for an encounter ranging 9 CRs. This worked due to the smooth exponential power curve that allowed for the CR X+2 = 2 CR X rule of thumb.

But 5E CR doesn't really measure threat anyway, so even if 5E CR were exponential instead of quasi-linear you'd still be better off guesstimating.

My own rule of thumb is that CR roughly equates to level, so 4 CR 10 monsters vs. 4 level 10 PCs is a fight that could go either way, and 2 CR 10 monsters is a fight where the PCs outgun the monsters by roughly 2:1 and so will take only 25% as much damage as in a fair fight. It's not really true (calculated CRs for leveled PCs tend to lag their actual level, although they often have lots of abilities not accounted for in CR), but then again it's not even really true that there is such a thing as a generic "level 10 PC" in the first place--a level 10 Shepherd Druid, Necromancer, or Fleshlock (from the Cthulhu book) contributes vastly more to a fight than a level 10 Cavalier or Assassin does.

But the rule of thumb is good enough that I don't feel bad dropping a CR 9 Fire Giant, a CR 5 Giant Crocodile, and a CR 8 Mind Flayer Arcanist into an adventure designed for 10th level PCs. I expect that to be a nontrivial fight but I can also treat it as a speedbump instead of a wall, from the adventure design perspective: I don't need to build in multiple ways to go around it. (Kobold.club says it's Deadly x2 by DMG rules, which seems about right for what I intended.)

Necrosnoop110

2021-04-09, 01:24 PM

Personally, I think that the rules for PCs and NPCs being different is one of the best things about 5e. It allows the game rules to be game rules, and not world rules. They facilitate the game, they don't run your world.
Couldn't agree more. I'm not in denial about the rule flaws and gaps that others are rightly pointing out but in the end I'd personally rather see two rulesets: one for the needs of the DM and one for the needs of the PC.

MaxWilson

2021-04-09, 02:11 PM

Couldn't agree more. I'm not in denial about the rule flaws and gaps that others are rightly pointing out but in the end I'd personally rather see two rulesets: one for the needs of the DM and one for the needs of the PC.

I think the primary controversy is over whether the DM should be allowed to ever use the PHB rules. Some people say "yes, sometimes that is appropriate" and some people say "why would you ever want to do that?" which may or may not be the same thing as "no".

5E's official position is "yes, sometimes", per the 5E DMG, but the WotC-published 5E adventures never do AFAIK so WotC's internal position may be closer to "why would you ever want to do that?"

PhoenixPhyre

2021-04-09, 02:33 PM

I think the primary controversy is over whether the DM should be allowed to ever use the PHB rules. Some people say "yes, sometimes that is appropriate" and some people say "why would you ever want to do that?" which may or may not be the same thing as "no".

5E's official position is "yes, sometimes", per the 5E DMG, but the WotC-published 5E adventures never do AFAIK so WotC's internal position may be closer to "why would you ever want to do that?"

Should be allowed to? Of course. DMs can do whatever they want.

Is there a better, easier way 99.999999% of the time (exaggerating for effect)? Also yes.

NorthernPhoenix

2021-04-09, 02:56 PM

I think the primary controversy is over whether the DM should be allowed to ever use the PHB rules. Some people say "yes, sometimes that is appropriate" and some people say "why would you ever want to do that?" which may or may not be the same thing as "no".

5E's official position is "yes, sometimes", per the 5E DMG, but the WotC-published 5E adventures never do AFAIK so WotC's internal position may be closer to "why would you ever want to do that?"

I think the primary controversy is over whether the DM should have to use the PHB rules, to which i think the answer should be a resounding "no".

Tanarii

2021-04-09, 03:11 PM

EggKookoo

2021-04-09, 03:21 PM

I've seen a number of thread where folks have been told, in effect or fairly explicitly, that if they are doing NPCs as PC builds they are Doing it WrongTM

Of course, the most common time this comes up is someone trying to figure out how level maps to CR.
(Short version is it doesn't, you need to compare it to the DMG table and see what CR comes out.)

As with all of these things, it depends on your goal. Making NPCs as PCs as a matter of course isn't exactly wrong, but it's not how the game was designed so it causes a lot of extra work. If you're doing that extra work toward some purpose, then fine. If you're doing it because you don't know there's an Easier Way, then, well, it might be worth it to learn that way.

In the vast majority of cases, you don't need to make NPCs as PCs and the game will work fine. If you can't tolerate that NPCs and PCs are built on different chassis (even if they drive the same road and use the same fuel and all that), again, no one's going to stop you from making them the same. But the game itself isn't wrong for being built otherwise.

Cybren

2021-04-09, 03:30 PM

NorthernPhoenix

2021-04-09, 03:37 PM

So here's the thing about those 'useless final fantasy spells'.
They aren't useless, there's usually a logical application for them, it's just that figuring out which enemies are weak to which spells is more effort than just mashing attack until the combat is over.

They're not useless, because they serve their purpose really well in Final Fantasy, and their purpose is to dunk. You dunk on the muggles with your god-wizard powers to show-off how powerful and cool of a super-being you are. These kinds of dunk-powers, of course, have no place in a climactic throw-down between equally powerful super-people. That would be anti-climactic, after all.

In my ideal version of DnD, it would be the same their. But a degree more than what 5e has already achieved is going to be needed to move the table culture of the game towards a place where dunking on minions is considered properly fun without "optimizers" shutting things down, and/or demanding "dunk" abilities work equally well on every main villain or climactic end-conflict. Pathfinder 2 has made great strides in this area, but it has other issues in other areas.

MaxWilson

2021-04-09, 03:38 PM

I think the primary controversy is over whether the DM should have to use the PHB rules, to which i think the answer should be a resounding "no".

There is no controversy over whether "whether the DM should have to use the PHB rules". Literally nobody on this thread is arguing that position, ergo there's no controversy.

There are people though who seem to be arguing that a DM should never use PHB rules for NPCs, and others who disagree. Ergo, controversy.

NorthernPhoenix

2021-04-09, 03:45 PM

There is no controversy over whether "whether the DM should have to use the PHB rules". Literally nobody on this thread is arguing that position, ergo there's no controversy.

There are people though who seem to be arguing that a DM should never use PHB rules for NPCs, and others who disagree. Ergo, controversy.

The OP clearly wishes the DM would use more aligned rules. That is the "argument" that has created the thread, and if it has been thoroughly enough debunked, then that's great. Though you see the attitude often enough on forums like this in other threads, mostly in the context of simulationism. The DM shouldn't use PHB rules for NPCs because it's pointless. You can if you want to, just like you can stand up and turn around three times before you roll your dice.

OldTrees1

2021-04-09, 03:48 PM

There is no controversy over whether "whether the DM should have to use the PHB rules". Literally nobody on this thread is arguing that position, ergo there's no controversy.

There are people though who seem to be arguing that a DM should never use PHB rules for NPCs, and others who disagree. Ergo, controversy.

I have not seen either extreme in this thread. I have seen people describe a preference and appreciation for there being simpler rules. I have seen people describe how they did not like the more complicated rules.

However I have not seen the "The PHB rules must/must not be used"

Even the OP is asking about degrees (asking the good and the bad over having different rules)

You can if you want to, just like you can stand up and turn around three times before you roll your dice.

What, you mean you don't do the hokey pokey before each roll?

MaxWilson

2021-04-09, 05:14 PM

I have not seen either extreme in this thread. I have seen people describe a preference and appreciation for there being simpler rules. I have seen people describe how they did not like the more complicated rules.

However I have not seen the "The PHB rules must/must not be used"

NorthernPhoenix and PhoenixPhyre both seem to hold this position, that DMs should never use PHB rules for NPCs. (99.999999% says PhoenixPhyre, but unless she gives an example this seems like an assertion of "never.")

OldTrees1

2021-04-09, 05:20 PM

NorthernPhoenix and PhoenixPhyre both seem to hold this position, that DMs should never use PHB rules for NPCs. (99.999999% says PhoenixPhyre, but unless she gives an example this seems like an assertion of "never.")

One of the quotes in question was:

Should be allowed to? Of course. DMs can do whatever they want.

Is there a better, easier way 99.999999% of the time (exaggerating for effect)? Also yes.

1) They say DMs should be able to use the PHB when creating encounters.
2) They suspect there is almost always a "better / easier" way.

This does not sound like either extreme. It shows a strong preference for one method and says both methods should be available to the DM.

MaxWilson

2021-04-09, 06:34 PM

JNAProductions

2021-04-09, 06:43 PM

I don't see a distinction between that perspective and "arguing that a DM should never use PHB rules for NPCs". What difference do you see?

They're not using "Should" as a moral thing. They're using it as a practical thing.

Put another way, when you want to cut the beef you just cooked, do you use a knife, or do you use a laser? Both work just fine (assuming a sufficiently powerful laser) but one is a lot more practical, convenient, and easy.

MaxWilson

2021-04-09, 06:49 PM

They're not using "Should" as a moral thing. They're using it as a practical thing.

Put another way, when you want to cut the beef you just cooked, do you use a knife, or do you use a laser? Both work just fine (assuming a sufficiently powerful laser) but one is a lot more practical, convenient, and easy.

"[A] DM should never use PHB rules for NPCs" is also not a moral claim. It's an (fallacious) practical claim. It's like claiming that a knife is a sufficiently-good substitute for a spoon that you shouldn't buy spoons, just knives.

What they really mean is "I personally don't like using PHB rules for NPCs; they don't fit my style of game" but then they overgeneralize.

EggKookoo

2021-04-09, 06:49 PM

This debate has gotten unusually pedantic, even for this forum!

(I don't even know if I should use blue text or not.)

OldTrees1

2021-04-09, 07:00 PM

I don't see a distinction between that perspective and "arguing that a DM should never use PHB rules for NPCs". What difference do you see?

The difference is:
One perspective writes a paragraph in the Monster Manual about adding class levels to monsters. Then writes 5 pages of support for the better / easier method.
The other writes a paragraph in the Monster Manual telling you monsters can't have class levels. Then writes 5 pages of support for the better / easier method.

Basically they know their style, but are they shutting down the other style, or still including it just in case?

MaxWilson

2021-04-09, 07:41 PM

The difference is:
One perspective writes a paragraph in the Monster Manual about adding class levels to monsters. Then writes 5 pages of support for the [purportedly] better / easier method.
The other writes a paragraph in the Monster Manual telling you monsters can't have class levels. Then writes 5 pages of support for the [purportedly] better / easier method.

Basically they know their style, but are they shutting down the other style, or still including it just in case?

Okay, now I'm really confused. Are we still talking about what's controversial w/rt this thread, or about the opinions of hypothetical WotC employees in a universe where the 5E books have been written with less support for NPCs with character classes? E.g. no NPC-only subclasses like Oathbreaker in the DMG. Because if you have to go that far out in the hypotheticals to find a distinction, that isn't a meaningful distinction: it's accurate to describe them as claiming you should never use NPCs with class levels.

While we're at it, if we're measuring "better" by page count, 300+ pages on creating (N)PCs with character classes certainly trumps 5 pages on creating them by fiat.

PhoenixPhyre

2021-04-09, 07:42 PM

1) They say DMs should be able to use the PHB when creating encounters.
2) They suspect there is almost always a "better / easier" way.

This does not sound like either extreme. It shows a strong preference for one method and says both methods should be available to the DM.

Should be able to. Absolutely. Should not be considered "doing it wrong" for doing so.

However, doing it that way is extra, unnecessary work every time I've tried to do it (which I've tried). And doing so has led to less-successful monsters than doing it the "normal" way.

An analogy: Someone making a Skyrim mod could build all his own animations and scripting from scratch. Or, realizing that he's just making a minor change to an existing thing, alter the included asset and scripts and call it a day. There are cases where the first is the right thing to do. But they're cases that the vast majority of modders will never run into. Is it forbidden? No. Just...not encouraged. Because honestly, the chances of accidentally breaking things is much higher. It's like using straight C (the programming language) for web development. The risk of foot-gunning well outweighs (for most of us) the increased efficiency and speed.

------------

Realizing that monsters and PCs have complementary but different roles and different mechanical needs is the key to the whole thing. And realizing that the game mechanics are just a UI into a fictional world. They don't define anything other than how the players interact with the world and with those game elements. They're not part of the world at all, although they should be designed to be compatible (at some level of abstraction).

-------
And he, not she or they. But I don't particularly care.

MaxWilson

2021-04-09, 07:54 PM

Should be able to. Absolutely. Should not be considered "doing it wrong" for doing so.

However, doing it that way is extra, unnecessary work every time I've tried to do it (which I've tried). And doing so has led to less-successful monsters than doing it the "normal" way.

...

And he, not she or they. But I don't particularly care.

Sorry, "he." Didn't want to assume without a picture.

Anyway, if NPCs with class levels are difficult for you, it's fine for you to avoid it. No one is telling you that you have to use them. But sometimes just plopping a 7th level Diviner with 46 HP into an adventure is simpler than adjusting an MM Mage template to be 7th level and recalculating the CR, which is a nightmare if the spell loadout includes spells like Hypnotic Pattern, Lightning Bolt, Polymorph, Evard's Black Tentacles, and Tasha's Hideous Laughter.

noob

2021-04-09, 07:57 PM

The issue arise when using some abilities that then feels constrained by the arbitrary barrier between the two sets of rules.
For example you say that sir Kay the CR5 knight that the team fought at the end of their first campaign due to a misunderstanding and a lost letter could shrug off many abilities through his extreme training (legendary resistance or something) and sir kay was exceptionally good at fighting (CR5 boss monster and not just an ordinary CR5 monster)
Now much later the adventurers gets access to true polymorph and for some reason one player with a fifth level fighter that is otherwise similar to sir kay joins the table.
That fighter could be true polymorphed in sir kay which is stronger than him but that is not the only weird thing: you could also turn a rock in a sir kay but you can not turn sir kay nor a rock to that adventurer despite that adventurer seemingly being weaker than sir kay and sir kay being very widely within the limits of what you could get by transforming a rock.
Furthermore it also means an adventurer can have legendary resistance but only while transformed but they can not get legendary resistance by training despite sir kay being an human and having gained legendary saves somehow.
So now the wizard having read that true polymorph can not turn a creature in a creature stronger than itself is definitively confused by that situation(the wizard player can just read the rules and figure out it is due to the pc/npc separation)

The problem comes from abilities that handles in a fundamentally different way npcs and pcs while both from their own pov are living in the same world and are of the same species.
Why such abilities even exists?
Could dnd finally make polymorph make sense one day?

PhoenixPhyre

2021-04-09, 08:06 PM

Sorry, "he." Didn't want to assume without a picture.

Anyway, if NPCs with class levels are difficult for you, it's fine for you to avoid it. No one is telling you that you have to use them. But sometimes just plopping a 7th level Diviner with 46 HP into an adventure is simpler than adjusting an MM Mage template to be 7th level and recalculating the CR, which is a nightmare if the spell loadout includes spells like Hypnotic Pattern, Lightning Bolt, Polymorph, Evard's Black Tentacles, and Tasha's Hideous Laughter.

A 7th level wizard is like CR 2. Maybe. If even. Defensive CR << 1, offensive CR...not much better.

So you're recalculating the CR anyway, if you care. You can't have it both ways. Dropping in PC-classed creatures requires you to recalculate the CR from scratch, and will not come out how you think it does. I've done the math with a bunch of different characters. CR =/= level. At all. Not in any way. Roughly, CR is anywhere from > level (a low-level martial) to ~ 1/2 level (asymptotically). With lots of build-specific messiness.

Calculating CR for PC-classed things is way harder than adjusting an existing monster. Most of the time, you can eyeball it (every 15 HP and 6 DPR is +1 CR bracket) for existing monsters. PCs have to go from scratch. Those other things? Don't affect CR at all. Because they don't cause damage or soak damage. If you're going to adjust for them, you'll also be adjusting for situational factors.

Remember, CR is just a first step. It's a filter--"will this creature have a chance of surviving to do its cool things" + "can this creature ORKO a weak party member"? It bounds both above and below the range of "viable" monsters for new DMs against stock parties. Against any party using any variant rules or with significant magic items, it's not worth calculating. Nor is it meant to be calculated.

Sorinth

2021-04-09, 08:11 PM

OldTrees1

2021-04-09, 08:20 PM

Okay, now I'm really confused. Are we still talking about what's controversial w/rt this thread, or about the opinions of hypothetical WotC employees in a universe where the 5E books have been written with less support for NPCs with character classes? E.g. no NPC-only subclasses like Oathbreaker in the DMG. Because if you have to go that far out in the hypotheticals to find a distinction, that isn't a meaningful distinction: it's accurate to describe them as claiming you should never use NPCs with class levels.

While we're at it, if we're measuring "better" by page count, 300+ pages on creating (N)PCs with character classes certainly trumps 5 pages on creating them by fiat.

Ach, sorry for not being clear. I think PhoenixPhyre makes it a bit clearer himself. I don't see much "controversy" here if everyone seems to be saying "Yes, let both exist. I have opinions on which is <insert qualifier> better but let both exist." Nobody has being saying one or the other is the wrong way.

Should be able to. Absolutely. Should not be considered "doing it wrong" for doing so.

However, doing it that way is extra, unnecessary work every time I've tried to do it (which I've tried). And doing so has led to less-successful monsters than doing it the "normal" way.
Nice I am glad I read that accurately.

And he, not she or they. But I don't particularly care.
I apologize. I have a strong intentional habit of calling everyone they. Maybe I should rethink that.

MaxWilson

2021-04-09, 08:24 PM

A 7th level wizard is like CR 2. Maybe. If even. Defensive CR << 1, offensive CR...not much better.

Prove it with sources.

There's no DMG guidance on how Polymorph affects offensive and defensive CR, or how Hypnotic Pattern or Tasha's Laughter affects offensive CR. It's just up to the DM to guesstimate something.

I apologize. I have a strong intentional habit of calling everyone they.

Aside: "They" has a 700 year-old history in English as the gender-neutral pronoun. It is perfectly correct to refer to anyone as "they" if you aren't sure. Obviously once you know better you can be more specific, but there's nothing wrong with "they" as a wildcard.

"Eche of theym sholde ... make theymselfe redy." — Caxton, Sonnes of Aymon (c. 1489) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they)

Sorinth

2021-04-09, 08:25 PM

MaxWilson

2021-04-09, 08:34 PM

Even if making a 7th level Diviner NPC, there's little reason to build them as a full PC. When you create the stat block for this NPC are you really going to add features like Divination Savant? It's entirely irrelevant for an NPC. Even possibly relevant abilities like Expert Divination which might grant extra spell slots seem rather pointless, it's just work for no reward.

What do you mean by "add features"? The feature is there in the PHB. It probably won't be relevant, and I'm certainly not going to write "Divination Savant" in my notes because "Diviner 7" already tells me that it has all of the features of a Diviner.

Eliminating Divination Savant or Expert Divination would be extra work, because then I'd have to write "Diviner 7, but without Divination Savant", and why would I ever do that? It complicates the NPC for no reason. I need that space for other things like documenting the NPC's relationships with PCs and other NPCs.

PhoenixPhyre

2021-04-09, 08:53 PM

Prove it with sources.

There's no DMG guidance on how Polymorph affects offensive and defensive CR, or how Hypnotic Pattern or Tasha's Laughter affects offensive CR. It's just up to the DM to guesstimate something.

The DMG specifically says how to calculate CR. It says "include these factors". Including anything else is a houserule.

You calculate offensive CR (a function of DPR and hit bonuses/saves) and defensive CR (a function of HP and AC), and then you average the two. There's a finite list of things that modify the components of CR. And they can't give you specifics for anything else, because it all depends on the details.

Does hypnotic pattern deal damage? No? Then it doesn't affect CR because using it reduces the best-three-rounds DPR. Which is what is used.

42 HP: base defensive CR 1/4.
AC (assuming mage armor and +2-3 DEX): 15-16. That's 2-3 above par, so final defensive CR: 1/2.

Without further information, I can only assume that their offensive best three rounds are
1) lightning bolt (4) = 9d6 * 2 = 63
2) lightning bolt (4) = 9d6 * 2 = 63
3) lightning bolt (3) = 8d6 * 2 = 56

For a base offensive CR of 9. Level 7 ==> +4 INT ==> save DC = 15, which is one below the specified, so final offensive CR is unchanged = 9.

Total CR: 4.5 ==> 5 (rounding up due to damage output). So I was off a bit. But functionally, it acts like a really bity monster of much lower CR, because it will die if a PC sneezes on it.

Alone, this thing will die before it gets more than one attack off. 42 HP is trivial, even against a level 4 party.

Not to mention it's a bad monster, as are all such glass cannons. Because it comes down to "did it go first?" Then someone's going to be seriously hurt. Otherwise, it dies without putting up a fight at all. Likely won't even get a turn.

And in building this using PC rules, you've spent 5-10 minutes writing down a bunch of details you'll never use.

PCs and monsters have different design needs. They are best if they're built differently. Monsters can be built back-to-front, cherry picking the pieces you need. You both save time and make better fights that way. PCs have to have staying power over an entire day. And lots of moving bits to play with. Monsters don't need either, in fact those get in the way.

MaxWilson

2021-04-09, 09:03 PM

The DMG specifically says how to calculate CR. It says "include these factors". Including anything else is a houserule.

AFB, but you might want to re-read the final steps of the CR calculation because no, considering additional factors is NOT a houserule, it's just something with no guidance given beyond the fact that you should do it. Explaining how they derived the existing guidance for Nimble Escape, Legendary Resistance, etc. would help in extrapolating guidance for other things, like the ability to steal memories and warp enemy spells, or sunder weapons.

And in building this using PC rules, you've spent 5-10 minutes writing down a bunch of details you'll never use.

Does it really take you 5-10 minutes to write down "Diviner 7"? Or is it the spell list that takes you 5-10 minutes to write down? You need that spell list no matter which approach you use to NPC creation.

I think now we know why NPCs with classes are so hard for you, PhoenixPhyre: you're doing unnecessary work.

Not to mention it's a bad monster, as are all such glass cannons. Because it comes down to "did it go first?" Then someone's going to be seriously hurt. Otherwise, it dies without putting up a fight at all. Likely won't even get a turn.

I guess you must really hate the 45 HP CR 7 Drow Mage in the MM too.

Well, that's a revealing comment. It says a lot about how you run your game: Combat As Sport apparently, with NPCs whose presence onscreen lasts for approximately six to eighteen in-game seconds. I play Combat As War (sometimes hybridized with DramaSystem), and NPCs are meant to have an onscreen presence that lasts between minutes and years--otherwise they'd be monsters instead of NPCs. No wonder we build NPCs so differently.

KorvinStarmast

2021-04-09, 09:21 PM

(99.999999% says PhoenixPhyre, but unless she gives an example this seems like an assertion of "never.") He, and it is clearly indicated by the little blue circle/arrow symbol under his avatar, just like the one under my location. :smallcool:

NPCs: use the PHB for them sparingly. Easier to use the MM/Volos premades (less work).

Of my NPCs, as a DM, maybe two dozen are PC built. (That's in three different campaigns, but one of them's dead...)

MaxWilson

2021-04-09, 09:22 PM

He, and it is clearly indicated by the little blue circle/arrow symbol under his name, just like the one under my name. :smallcool:

Oh, interesting. Thanks.

KorvinStarmast

2021-04-09, 09:25 PM

Oh, interesting. Thanks.

That symbol (and the circle/cross symbol for lady) has been around since the late 60's as far as I can recall, maybe earlier. (Yeah, I am that old...) I vaguely recall a loose association with the feminist movement of those days, but that's a very rough recall so don't quote it as gospel.

Sorinth

2021-04-09, 09:31 PM

What do you mean by "add features"? The feature is there in the PHB. It probably won't be relevant, and I'm certainly not going to write "Divination Savant" in my notes because "Diviner 7" already tells me that it has all of the features of a Diviner.

Eliminating Divination Savant or Expert Divination would be extra work, because then I'd have to write "Diviner 7, but without Divination Savant", and why would I ever do that? It complicates the NPC for no reason. I need that space for other things like documenting the NPC's relationships with PCs and other NPCs.

If just writing the subclass and level is enough for you to remember every feature at the NPCs disposable without having to waste time looking it up then I can see why that would work for you. I know for myself it's a sure fire way to forget to use abilities or be forced to look them up to get the exact wording/details. So I'd want Portent on the sheet so that I don't have to try and remember whether there there was a range limit like 60' or not but I wouldn't put Divination Savant because it's not an ability that is worth the space because like you said the space can be better spent.

Mikal

2021-04-09, 09:35 PM

MaxWilson

2021-04-09, 10:10 PM

That symbol (and the circle/cross symbol for lady) has been around since the late 60's as far as I can recall, maybe earlier. (Yeah, I am that old...) I vaguely recall a loose association with the feminist movement of those days, but that's a very rough recall so don't quote it as gospel.

It's much older than that (Wikipedia says (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_symbols#:~:text=Medieval%20%28Johannes%20Ka materos%2C%2012th%20century%29%20form%20of%20the,M unicipality%20in%20Sweden%20%281932%29%2C%20here%2 0representing%20copper%20mining.) the convention was introduced by Linnaeus in the 1750's) but I never realized before that it showed up on the site. My ad blocker is set to block everyone's avatars, and I never noticed before that there's another little gender icon that it's not blocking.

If just writing the subclass and level is enough for you to remember every feature at the NPCs disposable without having to waste time looking it up then I can see why that would work for you. I know for myself it's a sure fire way to forget to use abilities or be forced to look them up to get the exact wording/details. So I'd want Portent on the sheet so that I don't have to try and remember whether there there was a range limit like 60' or not but I wouldn't put Divination Savant because it's not an ability that is worth the space because like you said the space can be better spent.

Yeah, for the NPCs I create it is***.

*** I couldn't tell you off the top of my head what a Beastmaster's 17th level ability is, but I don't create 17th level Beastmaster NPCs. If I did I'd just look it up as part of the design process, and then I would write down a note if it was relevant and I thought I might forget it. P.S. Oh! Apparently the 17th level ability is... nothing (except for the obvious: another level of spells).

Anyway, sounds like we basically agree about how to do NPCs, although I wouldn't bother writing down Portent either unless I was going to pre-roll the Portent dice and write that down, e.g. "Portent 17, 5". But I probably wouldn't even do that until something came up that made Portent potentially relevant, like the NPC casting a Contact Other Plane spell or a fight starting.

Tanarii

2021-04-09, 10:50 PM

42 HP: base defensive CR 1/4.

For a base offensive CR of 9. Level 7 ==> +4 INT ==> save DC = 15, which is one below the specified, so final offensive CR is unchanged = 9.

Total CR: 4.5 ==> 5 (rounding up due to damage output). So I was off a bit. But functionally, it acts like a really bity monster of much lower CR, because it will die if a PC sneezes on it.

You don't treat fractional CRs as a decimal point to be averaged. CR 1/4 is 2 steps down from CR 1. The average of CR 9 and CR 1/4 is CR 4. Five steps up from CR 1/4 and five down from CR 9.

Does it really take you 5-10 minutes to write down "Diviner 7"? Or is it the spell list that takes you 5-10 minutes to write down? You need that spell list no matter which approach you use to NPC creation.

I think now we know why NPCs with classes are so hard for you, PhoenixPhyre: you're doing unnecessary work.And it's just as easy to write down Diviner (Volvo pg ##).

The only difference is you appear to have the very complex PC build memorized (as do I for many of them), but not a Goblin or Orc, or more understandably a not-common NPC stat block. A stat block takes roughly as much time to jot down and invent as does custom notes of the important stuff you plan to need from a PC build, and customizing either for the particular NPC takes extra time regardless.

-----

Personally I'd rather not use PC stat blocks for NPCs exactly because they are designed for resource attrition across an adventuring day. Even in CaW scenarios, they usually aren't anywhere near the appropriate use-case for the rule set when used for enemies.

They are the wrong tool for the job.

Telok

2021-04-09, 10:53 PM

An analogy: Someone making a Skyrim mod could build all his own animations and scripting from scratch. Or, realizing that he's just making a minor change to an existing thing, alter the included asset and scripts and call it a day. There are cases where the first is the right thing to do. But they're cases that the vast majority of modders will never run into.

Ah, a surprisingly apt analogy. See, both the Skyrim mob and your critter out of the D&D MM are just a text and numbers that get interpreted through a rules engine (in this case the DM equates to the graphics card).

So take, say, a rat. What's it got? The usual ac, hp, dmg, etc. numbers. No problems there, same stuff acrossthe crpg & d&d. Oh, a scurry animation/default tactics, a rat model/description, and a disease effect on attack/save vs disease . Ok, it's a rat. You want a simple change? How about a better rat that's poisonous? Add some numbers, increase the size 20%, swap disease effect for poison effect.

You're right, no need for complicated stuff there in any system. How about a two headed web shooting snake instead? Oops, we'll need some new models, new animations, scripts for two heads and slithering instead of scurrying. Oh well, how about in d&d? Well two heads might do something to mental saves, there's no good cr estimate for the webs because they aren't hp damage, and it probably shouldn't fight like a rat. Well, looks like were pretty much writing stuff up from scratch no matter what system we use.

CRPGs evolved from gamers who learned to code and wanted RPGs. They are an RPG rule engine just like TTRPGs. They just swap an inflexible calculator and graphics card for the human DM.

Building monsters differently than PCs is fine. Nobody expects parity between a halfling thief and an ancient red dragon. Non-parity is sort of the point there. Building NPCs is less perfect. If you just need a random thug or an insane sorcerer that sold brain & soul for forbidden magic? Yeah, you can skimp all the rules you like. You just need the combat stats for a fight. But if the party takes an enemy NPC knight captive and the PC fighter wants to turn then into an ally and learn that special knight move... Well it gets awkward if they're too different. 4e had... notable issues... around that sort of thing. It gets pretty lumpy with enemies on cr appropriate riding animals too.

MaxWilson

2021-04-09, 11:08 PM

Personally I'd rather not use PC stat blocks for NPCs exactly because they are designed for resource attrition across an adventuring day. Even in CaW scenarios, they usually aren't anywhere near the appropriate use-case for the rule set when used for enemies.

Are all NPCs enemies? Are all enemies designed for a single short scene?

Not in my games.

Tanarii

2021-04-09, 11:22 PM

Are all NPCs enemies? Are all enemies designed for a single short scene?

Not in my games.
No, but I use PC rules for henchmen. So that's a fair point. And I would for allies too, although that wasn't relevant to my campaign.
(A good example of your point, the allies in OotA are monster stat blocks, and pretty useless because of it.)

And let's put it this way, all enemies are FAR closer to single short scene use case scenario than they are to an adventuring day (or more) use case scenario. Playing a CaW game or CaS game won't change that.

And if they're neither, I don't need a stat block. And if an enemy becomes an ally or vice versa, I'd much rather convert their stat block to the next closest thing that use the other kind. (Although that's a lot of extra work.)

MaxWilson

2021-04-09, 11:52 PM

No, but I use PC rules for henchmen. So that's a fair point. And I would for allies too, although that wasn't relevant to my campaign.
(A good example of your point, the allies in OotA are monster stat blocks, and pretty useless because of it.)

And let's put it this way, all enemies are FAR closer to single short scene use case scenario than they are to an adventuring day (or more) use case scenario. Playing a CaW game or CaS game won't change that.

That's interesting. For me, many but not all enemies are a presence for a short time, but others last much longer. E.g. the golems guarding an arcane vault that the PCs might like to break into may last for in-game YEARS. A hobgoblin army may last months. A rival NPC (like Belloq to Indiana Jones) may also last in-game years, especially if the relationship is such that he can't easily be disposed of. (Either he represents The Law, or murder is simply illegal, or he's a scion of a house you need to stay in good graces with, or he's your brother-in-law... C.f. Knife Theory, https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-L-9CvlTWhoADagJfSZO)

Generally, if someone weren't intended to have a presence that lasts for at least several scenes (even if they are offscreen), I wouldn't bother making them a human NPC, I'd just use a monster. Exception: minions attached to an important NPC might or might not make sense as low-level Fighters (no subclass) instead of monsters (orcs, ogres, trolls, etc.), but if I really want the players to know it's okay to ruthlessly kill the minions once open conflict occurs I'll make them monsters.

An off-screen NPC still shows signs of activity. Witnesses interviewed, Fireballs launched, allies recruited, treasure stolen, ribald graffiti painted, etc. Even if they eventually die in one Action Surged lucky attack, they still will have had an impact on the play experience, or they wouldn't be worth making as NPCs in the first place.

PhoenixPhyre

2021-04-10, 12:14 AM

Ah, a surprisingly apt analogy. See, both the Skyrim mob and your critter out of the D&D MM are just a text and numbers that get interpreted through a rules engine (in this case the DM equates to the graphics card).

So take, say, a rat. What's it got? The usual ac, hp, dmg, etc. numbers. No problems there, same stuff acrossthe crpg & d&d. Oh, a scurry animation/default tactics, a rat model/description, and a disease effect on attack/save vs disease . Ok, it's a rat. You want a simple change? How about a better rat that's poisonous? Add some numbers, increase the size 20%, swap disease effect for poison effect.

You're right, no need for complicated stuff there in any system. How about a two headed web shooting snake instead? Oops, we'll need some new models, new animations, scripts for two heads and slithering instead of scurrying. Oh well, how about in d&d? Well two heads might do something to mental saves, there's no good cr estimate for the webs because they aren't hp damage, and it probably shouldn't fight like a rat. Well, looks like were pretty much writing stuff up from scratch no matter what system we use.

CRPGs evolved from gamers who learned to code and wanted RPGs. They are an RPG rule engine just like TTRPGs. They just swap an inflexible calculator and graphics card for the human DM.

Building monsters differently than PCs is fine. Nobody expects parity between a halfling thief and an ancient red dragon. Non-parity is sort of the point there. Building NPCs is less perfect. If you just need a random thug or an insane sorcerer that sold brain & soul for forbidden magic? Yeah, you can skimp all the rules you like. You just need the combat stats for a fight. But if the party takes an enemy NPC knight captive and the PC fighter wants to turn then into an ally and learn that special knight move... Well it gets awkward if they're too different. 4e had... notable issues... around that sort of thing. It gets pretty lumpy with enemies on cr appropriate riding animals too.

Why do I need to calculate things into CR which don't factor in? Why do I care? And there's already good analogs for all those things. Grab the webs from a spider, slithering is narrative, and two-headed is already a trait. Done. Total time: 30 seconds, maybe a few minutes if we want to calculate all the pieces.

And for NPCs...uh, wat? You use the stat blocks and add in things as needed. Their non-combat stuff is just entirely what they should have for their role in the world. No need to worry about "well, he's a wizard, so he can't have XYZ as a skill unless he's taken those three PRCs in that particular order, and then..." It's way better at having world-fidelity than a more crunchy system where you have to explain how you got to all the values. Because you're not trading off things that have to be balanced for PC use (which inevitably come with game oriented tradeoffs and requirements that don't always make sense for that particular person.

And as for dissonance...I've never felt it to be all that difficult to give people boons as quest rewards. You want to learn from him? Do a favor and sure, the ability is yours. Easier, cheaper, and less unbalancing than giving magic items as rewards IMX.

-----------

I think the big disconnect is that I don't consider CR to be more than it is. A first-pass tool, mainly for new DMs who don't know how to judge difficulty for their particular party yet. And it does OK at that. I don't bother calculating CR or the encounter budget any more, because I have a sense of what the party can take and I'm just building based on what's in the world. CR is not, nor was it intended to be, the be-all and end-all of difficulty. It's not supposed to take into account highly situational factors (such as web or two heads, both of which can be devastating or pointless depending on the group, the other enemies, the terrain, etc). So stop asking it to take those into account. Use it for what it's designed for, under the assumptions it was designed for.

I made a group of "former adventurers turned undead" for a session tonight. One was stock, just pulled a deathlock wight. The other two were wights, but one with plate armor and a shield + action surge and the other with sneak attack and a magical dagger/magical armor. Oh, and bumped the HP on them a bit. Total build time? about 3 minutes for the entire encounter. And most of that was programming it into the VTT I have to use because the sessions are remote. If it'd been in-person, I'd likely have not even written stat blocks and done the translation in my head.

I've got another one coming up with a fancy construct. Grabbed a Gearforged Templar (Tome of Foes IIRC), said "great, his glaive does force damage[1] and he's got a short-range teleport 1x/day". Done. Total time? 10 seconds. No rebalancing needed. Frees me up to plan the stuff that actually matters (which is very very very very rarely the mechanical bits and bobs). Especially since the other way involves more work (have to come up with all the numbers from scratch, have to dig through books to see what's available to whom when, etc).

If I wanted a caster who could cast those 3 spells off of that list and these other 4 spells off of the other list, all with CHA (for various in-world reasons), done. No extra work. I write them down and be done with it. Instead of having to figure out what multi-class would be required, and not be able to do it.

[1] They's magical constructs.

Tanarii

2021-04-10, 01:50 AM

That's interesting. For me, many but not all enemies are a presence for a short time, but others last much longer. E.g. the golems guarding an arcane vault that the PCs might like to break into may last for in-game YEARS. A hobgoblin army may last months. A rival NPC (like Belloq to Indiana Jones) may also last in-game years, especially if the relationship is such that he can't easily be disposed of. (Either he represents The Law, or murder is simply illegal, or he's a scion of a house you need to stay in good graces with, or he's your brother-in-law... C.f. Knife Theory, https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-L-9CvlTWhoADagJfSZO)
I don't see how that impacts that the NPC is using something close to an adventuring days worth of resources in the process of opposing the PCs and anything else they're doing in the day, they're far better built on the monster stat block model.

One thing that I've done before is assume some kind of resources expended for a specific encounter, and if that impacts CR recalculate it. That applies to monsters too, especially ones with spell lists that have used their highest damaging spells.

MaxWilson

2021-04-10, 02:33 AM

And for NPCs...uh, wat? You use the stat blocks and add in things as needed. Their non-combat stuff is just entirely what they should have for their role in the world. No need to worry about "well, he's a wizard, so he can't have XYZ as a skill unless he's taken those three PRCs in that particular order, and then..."

Those aren't even actual rules for any wizards, including PCs. Sounds like you're just carrying over opinions from 3E to 5E without updating them based on the actual rules for 5E.

I don't see how that impacts that the NPC is using something close to an adventuring days worth of resources in the process of opposing the PCs and anything else they're doing in the day, they're far better built on the monster stat block model.

One thing that I've done before is assume some kind of resources expended for a specific encounter, and if that impacts CR recalculate it. That applies to monsters too, especially ones with spell lists that have used their highest damaging spells.

You snipped the part that talks about how offscreen NPCs still use resources in pursuing their goals, but to reiterate and elaborate: scorch marks from a Fireball and corpses mark where the NPC expended spell slots on Fireball; allies such as grungs may result from the NPC casting Tongues, Suggestion, or Enhance Ability; bloodstains may mark the spot where an NPC took an opportunity attack stealing a precious artifact; an NPC who's actively opposing you may send a steady stream of demons your way while hiding in a "safe" location, but if you catch him in that safe location he'll be down those spell slots unless he's been resting long enough to regain them.

(Honestly an NPC who specifically opposes you can put a ton of hurt on you just by encouraging monsters to not invite defeat in detail--a 3rd level chainlock with a Sprite familiar who remotely persuades two group of five orcs to merge into one group of ten orcs has doubled their combat power against the PCs.)

Bottom line: significant NPCs should have an agenda, even while they're offscreen. If their presence in the story is limited to a few seconds of combat only, they might as well just be monsters (like those ten orcs) instead of NPCs.
Edit: Now that I reread what you wrote I'm concerned by the fact that I don't understand what you mean by "anything else they're doing in the day, they're far better built on the monster stat block model." How and in what way? What point are you trying to make here?

OldTrees1

2021-04-10, 06:47 AM

I think the big disconnect is that I don't consider CR to be more than it is. A first-pass tool, mainly for new DMs who don't know how to judge difficulty for their particular party yet. And it does OK at that. I don't bother calculating CR or the encounter budget any more, because I have a sense of what the party can take and I'm just building based on what's in the world. CR is not, nor was it intended to be, the be-all and end-all of difficulty. It's not supposed to take into account highly situational factors (such as web or two heads, both of which can be devastating or pointless depending on the group, the other enemies, the terrain, etc). So stop asking it to take those into account. Use it for what it's designed for, under the assumptions it was designed for.

That is a big disconnect.

At the beginning of 3E, I thought of CR as WotC's estimation of the average expected difficulty of that monster.
At the beginning of 3.5, I thought of CR (or more appropriately Encounter Level) as a useful term for the difficulty I expect the party to face from that monster or encounter. By then I still used WotC's estimation as a first pass baseline but I had experience adjusting the EL with ad hoc modifiers for different types of hazards, ambush, etc.
Deeper into 3.5, I thought of CR (or more appropriately Encounter Level) as a useful term to describe the difficulty this particular party would face, and I had the experience necessary to estimate that concept unless I went too crazy with custom abilities.

Basically I adopted the term for its professed meaning in 3E (rating the challenge) while acknowledging estimating difficultly was a task I needed to do.

However since I acknowledge estimating difficulty was a task I needed to do, I wanted WotC's first pass to be useful to newer DMs. I wanted the CRs to be WotC's first pass at estimating the challenge of the monster. If WotC can only check damage rather than attempt to address offense, that is a bit disappointing. They do a better job on defense where they account for saves in addition to effective hp.

I would be more disappointed if I had higher faith in WotC's estimation. I would be less disappointed if 5E had used a smooth power curve rather than the "tier boundaries must be special" which hampers my own estimation. Bounded accuracy also hampers my estimation, but if the "first pass tool for new DMs" handled that in a way that made sense when calculating encounters of mixed CR, I could have rebuilt my estimation abilities easier, earlier, and further.

MaxWilson

2021-04-10, 05:36 PM

I would be more disappointed if I had higher faith in WotC's estimation. I would be less disappointed if 5E had used a smooth power curve rather than the "tier boundaries must be special" which hampers my own estimation.

For PCs, yes, there's a spike, especially at level 5. But there's no corresponding spike in power at CR 5 relative to CR 4, although of course there's a pretty big spike at CR 1 relative to CR 1/2. Monster power growth isn't aligned with tier boundaries.

OldTrees1

2021-04-10, 05:48 PM

For PCs, yes, there's a spike, especially at level 5.

Exactly. Those abnormal spikes make it harder for me to retune my difficulty intuitions.

PhoenixPhyre

2021-04-10, 06:02 PM

For PCs, yes, there's a spike, especially at level 5. But there's no corresponding spike in power at CR 5 relative to CR 4, although of course there's a pretty big spike at CR 1 relative to CR 1/2. Monster power growth isn't aligned with tier boundaries.

That's because, unlike 3e, there's absolutely no assumption that CR ~ level. For a "stock" party, the "safe"[1] range of CRs go from ~level + 3 down a level-dependent amount. Although there's a general presumption that you'll more frequently fight things below your CR than above, and that most fights will involve multiple opponents (my personal sweet spot is about 6 enemies to 5 players up to twice as many enemies as players).

So that CR 5 creature might be any of the following:
* A boss monster with some minions for a mid-T1 party.
* An "equal match" in groups of roughly the same size as a party of level 6-8s
* A minion for a low T3 group.

Some work with XGtE's encounter building guidelines suggests that the median non-boss enemy faced by a party of level 20s is roughly CR 10-11, in a range from CR 7 - CR 14 or so. In fact, CR ~ Level is the least likely to occur--too strong to face in significant groups, too weak for a boss.

[1] ie unlikely to simply evaporate while also unlikely to TPK the party on a bad roll by accident. The sort of thing you could theoretically face multiple times a day.

MaxWilson

2021-04-10, 06:21 PM

Exactly. Those abnormal spikes make it harder for me to retune my difficulty intuitions.

Huh. So even though the monster power curve is somewhat smooth (two CR 6s are roughly interchangeable with four CR 3s), it still trips you up because you're not sure how strong the PCs are? That's a different problem than the one I thought you were describing.

That's because, unlike 3e, there's absolutely no assumption that CR ~ level. For a "stock" party, the "safe"[1] range of CRs go from ~level + 3 down a level-dependent amount. Although there's a general presumption that you'll more frequently fight things below your CR than above, and that most fights will involve multiple opponents (my personal sweet spot is about 6 enemies to 5 players up to twice as many enemies as players).

So that CR 5 creature might be any of the following:
* A boss monster with some minions for a mid-T1 party.
* An "equal match" in groups of roughly the same size as a party of level 6-8s
* A minion for a low T3 group.

Some work with XGtE's encounter building guidelines suggests that the median non-boss enemy faced by a party of level 20s is roughly CR 10-11, in a range from CR 7 - CR 14 or so. In fact, CR ~ Level is the least likely to occur--too strong to face in significant groups, too weak for a boss.

[1] ie unlikely to simply evaporate while also unlikely to TPK the party on a bad roll by accident. The sort of thing you could theoretically face multiple times a day.

While I disagree with many of the conclusions you reach here, and it's also not relevant to what I was discussing with OldTrees1 (how smooth scaling impacts estimation), I do realize that you thought you were being helpful by sharing your opinions and I thank you for your good intentions.

OldTrees1

2021-04-10, 06:41 PM

Huh. So even though the monster power curve is somewhat smooth (two CR 6s are roughly interchangeable with four CR 3s), it still trips you up because you're not sure how strong the PCs are? That's a different problem than the one I thought you were describing.

Yeah, 3E really spoiled me by letting the PCs power curve and the monster power curve be smooth exponentials of roughly the same base. That means it takes seconds for me to design balanced encounters of mixed enemies and unequal ratios. Boss fight? Ambush? Guardians with traps? Swarm with coordinators? It was really easy which let me focus more time on making sure they were interesting compositions rather than fighting the system trying to calculate what mixed compositions wouldn't be a TPK.

My 3E earlier example of 1 CR 10, 2 CR 8s, 4 CR 4s as an EL 13 boss fight took ~30-45 seconds to calculate and double check.

Other fast examples:
EL 13: 3 CR 9 Guardians with a CR 7 hazard and 2 CR 5 traps
EL 13: 2 sets of (4 CR 6 Swarmlings with a CR 8 Commander)
EL 13: 2 sets of (8 CR 4 Swarmlings with a CR 6 Squad Leader) with 1 CR 8 Commander.
EL 13: An ambush with 2 CR 7 Hosers 2 CR 7 Artillery and 4 CR 5 Assassins.
PS: These are all TPKs in 5E. Don't try them.

Edit: If only we could combine that 3E ease with simple stat blocks like 5E.

MaxWilson

2021-04-10, 07:35 PM

Yeah, 3E really spoiled me by letting the PCs power curve and the monster power curve be smooth exponentials of roughly the same base. That means it takes seconds for me to design balanced encounters of mixed enemies and unequal ratios. Boss fight? Ambush? Guardians with traps? Swarm with coordinators? It was really easy which let me focus more time on making sure they were interesting compositions rather than fighting the system trying to calculate what mixed compositions wouldn't be a TPK.

My 3E earlier example of 1 CR 10, 2 CR 8s, 4 CR 4s as an EL 13 boss fight took ~30-45 seconds to calculate and double check.

Other fast examples:
EL 13: 3 CR 9 Guardians with a CR 7 hazard and 2 CR 5 traps
EL 13: 2 sets of (4 CR 6 Swarmlings with a CR 8 Commander)
EL 13: 2 sets of (8 CR 4 Swarmlings with a CR 6 Squad Leader) with 1 CR 8 Commander.
EL 13: An ambush with 2 CR 7 Hosers 2 CR 7 Artillery and 4 CR 5 Assassins.
PS: These are all TPKs in 5E. Don't try them.

Edit: If only we could combine that 3E ease with simple stat blocks like 5E.

But 5E is so easy by default (if you avoid trick monsters and advanced tactics) that I can still do the same thing anyway in 30-45 seconds. Level 13 fight: how about one CR 13 Devourer, a couple of CR 5 Star Spawn Manglers, and let's add three CR 4 Flameskulls as magical support. Same 45 seconds to compute, similar level of certainty (it won't be a TPK unless the party is exceptionally weak but will be strong enough to feel dangerous/punish mistakes). Same flaws too: have to know the monster abilities, not just the CR, and lots of variance in the actual power level of said level 13 party based on builds and tactics.

CR just isn't very precise (the difference in stats between CR 6 and 8 is small, just look at white vs. green young dragons), so any variance from guesstimating difficulty is swamped by the variance in party builds/tactics anyway as well as dice variance.

JNAProductions

2021-04-10, 07:38 PM

Selion

2021-04-10, 07:50 PM

Depends. They kinda can but it's a bit of a different ballgame at that point. Well, playing Tarrasque would probably not be very gratifying except as a one-shot but a game of Ancient Dragons could make for a very engaging Tier 4ish campaign.

RP an ancient dragon, sure!
"master, i think I'll sleep on my hoard for a decade, wake me up if the world is ending or something..."

Tanarii

2021-04-10, 07:51 PM

Yeah, 3E really spoiled me by letting the PCs power curve and the monster power curve be smooth exponentials of roughly the same base.
Thats nothing like the 3e I played. Different classes had different power curves. They weren't even necessarily curves, they could be a jagged line. And Multiclassing/PrCs made a joke of the entire concept of a power curve of any kind.

OldTrees1

2021-04-10, 08:20 PM

But 5E is so easy by default (if you avoid trick monsters and advanced tactics) that I can still do the same thing anyway in 30-45 seconds. Level 13 fight: how about one CR 13 Devourer, a couple of CR 5 Star Spawn Manglers, and let's add three CR 4 Flameskulls as magical support. Same 45 seconds to compute, similar level of certainty (it won't be a TPK unless the party is exceptionally weak but will be strong enough to feel dangerous/punish mistakes). Same flaws too: have to know the monster abilities, not just the CR, and lots of variance in the actual power level of said level 13 party based on builds and tactics.

CR just isn't very precise (the difference in stats between CR 6 and 8 is small, just look at white vs. green young dragons), so any variance from guesstimating difficulty is swamped by the variance in party builds/tactics anyway as well as dice variance.

I just double checked that encounter you described using an online calculator that uses the 5E DMG rules. The same rules 5E thought to give new or transitioning players / DMs. I did not bother spending time doing the math by hand. I see that 45 second design results in a EL of 21 and more than 3x the Deadly threshold. If you are right and that is a fine encounter, the DMG does not communicate that to me. Double checking, my EL 13 examples were because the party was level 10. If you meant level 13 then it is only 1.5x the Deadly threshold. Still, I don't see 5E as succeeding on this front.

Are you confusing 3E with 4E?

Because in 3E and its derivatives, I could make a party that could curbstomp those EL 13 fights, or one that could get bopped so hard by them. Power is wildly inconsistent across the same level in 3.5, depending on builds.

You missed context upthread in the monster stat block subthread. I am using CR as the actual challenge relative to the party, not the WotC estimate. So that would factor in the party optimization level.

This is another reason why I like 5E simplified monster/NPC generation rules.

Tanarii

2021-04-10, 08:26 PM

and more than 3x the Deadly threshold. If you are right and that is a fine encounter, the DMG does not communicate that to me.
Max has some heavily divergent ideas from the DMG, and for that matter from what I've seen most DMs on these forums, about what constitutes a "fine encounter". :smallamused: His bare minimum seems to be 2xDeadly.

Edit: but I should be clear, he's very consistently divergent.

MaxWilson

2021-04-10, 08:32 PM

I just double checked that encounter you described using an online calculator that uses the 5E DMG rules. The same rules 5E thought to give new or transitioning players / DMs. I did not bother spending time doing the math by hand. I see that 45 second design results in a EL of 21 and more than 3x the Deadly threshold. If you are right and that is a fine encounter, the DMG does not communicate that to me. Double checking, my EL 13 examples were because the party was level 10. If you meant level 13 then it is only 1.5x the Deadly threshold. Still, I don't see 5E as succeeding on this front.

It's actually 33,800 adjusted XP, about 50% over the Deadly threshold of 20,400 for four 13th level PCs, which is pretty much what I was aiming for: nontrivial (there's a chance of someone dying = Deadly by definition) but not too hard. If you got 3x Deadly there's a bug in the calculator you used. My experience teaches me that this fight is not too tough for 13th level PCs--I invite you to run a test fight and you'll see. (Try to take out the manglers ASAP because they are glass cannons.)

By other's accounts it sounds like 3E was about the same as 5E in this regard, maybe worse, due to more variability in PC power.

Max has some heavily divergent ideas from the DMG, and for that matter from what I've seen most DMs on these forums, about what constitutes a "fine encounter". :smallamused: His bare minimum seems to be 2xDeadly.

Edit: but I should be clear, he's very consistently divergent.

In this case it's not even 2x Deadly. Note that WotC has published encounters of a similar difficulty, e.g. Rime of the Frost Maiden is full of Deadly+ fights.

For the record I don't mind having trivially-easy encounters in my adventures, I just don't like spending table time on them. If the party splits up to investigate rumors and a lone 13th level PC runs across a dozen bandits led by an Oni and the situation degenerates into combat, I'll play that fight out (it turns out to be Deadly x2 BTW) but if the whole party is there I'd rather just skip to the next part--there's no dramatic question about whether the PCs can win that (Medium) curbstomp. I don't like dragging scenes out after the dramatic question is resolved.

OldTrees1

2021-04-10, 08:58 PM

It's actually 33,800 adjusted XP, about 50% over the Deadly threshold of 20,400 for four 13th level PCs, which is pretty much what I was aiming for: nontrivial (there's a chance of someone dying = Deadly by definition) but not too hard. If you got 3x Deadly there's a bug in the calculator you used. My experience teaches me that this fight is not too tough for 13th level PCs--I invite you to run a test fight and you'll see. (Try to take out the manglers ASAP because they are glass cannons.)

By other's accounts it sounds like 3E was about the same as 5E in this regard, maybe worse, due to more variability in PC power.

The 3x was when I checked the same 10th level party (EL 13 fight for a 10th level party was a boss fight in 3E). I noticed part way through that you upgraded them to 13th.

I barely doubt you about whether the fight actually is / is not too tough. However the DMG math (add up the xp values and use a flat multiplier based on number of monsters) does not give me the exponential power curve that makes it easy to go:
Start
13
12 10
10 10 10
10 8 8 4 4 4 4
Done
So 5E math has me do guess and check. And after the guess and check I am left with a wrong answer. But despite the answer being wrong, I am still building the intuitions to correct it. Basically 5E made it hard to use and hard to trust the encounter design rules. Or at least that is my personal experience (which is dominated by mixed CRs and unequal ratios).

Tanarii's experience with 3E differs from my curated experience. Our group maintained a consistent optimization level that did not see anything nearly as jagged as 5E tiers levels. The kind of power curves I saw were what the 3E DMG expected, as long as I estimated the CR of monsters myself based on our consistent optimization level.

MaxWilson

2021-04-10, 09:07 PM

The 3x was when I checked the same 10th level party (EL 13 fight for a 10th level party was a boss fight in 3E). I noticed part way through that you upgraded them to 13th.

Oh, I had no idea you wanted 10th level. I just gave you a "bossfight" (i.e. minor adventure climax) off the top of my head, aimed at a level 13 party. I guess I misunderstood what you were trying to convey when you said "EL 13."

For a level 10 party, call it an Abominable Yeti and two Wraiths plus a Bone Naga.

I barely doubt you about whether the fight actually is / is not too tough. However the DMG math (add up the xp values and use a flat multiplier based on number of monsters) does not give me the exponential power curve that makes it easy to go:
Start
13
12 10
10 10 10
10 8 8 4 4 4 4
Done
So 5E math has me do guess and check. And after the guess and check I am left with a wrong answer.

5E power curves are closer to linear than exponential, except at CRs under 1. When I built that 13th level fight in my head I was basically equating CR = Level (4 CR 13 creatures), then deducting one monster to tilt the odds in the party's favor (3 CR 13s), then converting some of them into weaker creatures (1 CR 13, two CR 5s, three CR 4s) to tilt it even more in the party's favor while giving more variety to the adventure. Ditto for the level 10 fight.

5E power curves aren't really linear because the slope of the power curve changes at certain points (IIRC around CR 10 it gets a little steeper and then at least 20ish the slope gets three times steeper) but it's definitely much closer to linear than exponential. Instead of telling yourself that CR 10 = 8+8, tell yourself that CR 10=5+5ish.

OldTrees1

2021-04-10, 09:32 PM

Oh, I had no idea. I just gave you a "bossfight" (i.e. minor adventure climax) off the top of my head, aimed at a level 13 party. I guess I misunderstood what you were trying to convey when you said "EL 13."
That is my bad. However you labeled your example well enough that I eventually noticed and recalculated the x1.5 threshold.

5E power curves are closer to linear than exponential, except at CRs under 1. When I built that fight in my head I was basically equating CR = Level (4 CR 13 creatures), then deducting one monster to tilt the odds in the party's favor (3 CR 13s), then converting some of them into weaker creatures (1 CR 13, two CR 5s, three CR 4s) to tilt it even more in the party's favor while giving more variety to the adventure.

5E power curves aren't really linear because the slope of the power curve changes at certain points (IIRC around CR 10 it gets a little steeper and then at least 20ish the slope gets three times steeper) but it's definitely much closer to linear than exponential. Instead of telling yourself that CR 10 = 8+8, tell yourself that CR 10=6+5ish.

Linear? As in: (CR,Power) follows F(X) = mx + b? That sounds too good to be true.
2 CR X is the same power as 1 CR X+a and 1 CR X-a?
Oh and you are saying "b" is small so 2 CR X might be the same power as 1 CR 2X?

This really sounds too good to be true. If this is true then this should have been in the 5E DMG. That would have made things much easier. I apologize for being so skeptical, but this does sound too good to be true. Linear and exponential can both make really fast design math.

MaxWilson

2021-04-10, 09:48 PM

Linear? As in: Power(CR) = m(CR) + b? That sounds too good to be true.
2 CR X is the same power as 1 CR X+a and 1 CR X-a?
Oh and you are saying "b" is small so 2 CR X might be the same power as 1 CR 2X?

This really sounds too good to be true. If this is true then this should have been in the 5E DMG. That would have made things much easier. I apologize for being so skeptical.

It's not something the DMG says outright, it's something you notice when you examine the table on DMG page 274 closely. Between CR 1 and CR 19, every +1 to CR adds 15 HP and 6 damage. It's also something you can derive from the encounter construction rules (e.g. compare adjusted XP two CR 3s to a CR 6). The AC and to-hit progressions are not as neat but still basically linear.

The relationship is not neat and it breaks down in several places (a CR 30 monster has the stats you'd predict for a CR 50ish monster if you extrapolated from CR 1 to 19, and of course CR 1/8 to 1 has a very strange power progression indeed). But it's a smoother progression than the PC power progression and since 5E is meant to be tilted in favor of the players anyway, it's easy to guesstimate a fight by erring on the side of the PCs.

It's not like anyone has an exact, objective metric anyway for determining if a fight was the "right difficulty." The 5E designers got their table from playtesting AFAICT, just fitting a curve to whatever level of difficulty made their playtesters happy in the dungeon crawls they were using during the playtest, and I'm sure that the CRs over 20 got minimal playtesting anyway. There's no secret master plan.

OldTrees1

2021-04-10, 10:16 PM

It's not something the DMG says outright, it's something you notice when you examine the table on DMG page 274 closely. Between CR 1 and CR 19, every +1 to CR adds 15 HP and 6 damage. It's also something you can derive from the encounter construction rules (e.g. compare adjusted XP two CR 3s to a CR 6).

Hmm. That is a good point. The increase in AC and atk would increase it a bit themselves.

The encounter construction rules (according to the calculator I am using) tell me 1-8 CR 3s are EL 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15. So the DMG is not claiming they scale linearly according to the encounter construction rules.

The relationship is not neat and it breaks down in several places (a CR 30 monster has the stats you'd predict for a CR 50ish monster if you extrapolated from CR 1 to 19, and of course CR 1/8 to 1 has a very strange power progression indeed). But it's a smoother progression than the PC power progression and since 5E is meant to be tilted in favor of the players anyway, it's easy to guesstimate a fight by erring on the side of the PCs.

It's not like anyone has an exact, objective metric anyway for determining if a fight was the "right difficulty." The 5E designers got their table from playtesting AFAICT, just fitting a curve to whatever level of difficulty made their playtesters happy in the dungeon crawls they were using during the playtest, and I'm sure that the CRs over 20 got minimal playtesting anyway. There's no secret master plan.

Yeah, I hope 6E is better about this. Even if it only gets better at communicating.

MaxWilson

2021-04-10, 10:22 PM

The changes to stats normally would generally imply quadratic growth. A linear increase in damage and in health => quadratic growth in threat. The tables also see increases in AC and Atk which would also be factors. That made me suspect polynomial growth.

But monster quantity scales power quadratically too. Therefore, it's still valid to treat power as scaling roughly linearly in CR, for purposes of encounter construction. Two CR 5s and one CR 10 are both about four times as strong as one CR 5. I'm not explaining it with the right words but hopefully you get the point.

(Actually, the adjusted XP bonus treats power as scaling roughly as the 3/2 power, not quadratically, for quantities over 3. See: Lanchester's Laws. 3/2 power is a common simplification when you can't predict in advance whether AoEs or direct attacks will be more prevalent, e.g. both melee (linear power growth) and archers (quadratic power growth) are in the army.)

OldTrees1

2021-04-10, 10:36 PM

But monster quantity scales power quadratically too. Therefore, it's still valid to treat power as scaling roughly linearly in CR, for purposes of encounter construction. Two CR 5s and one CR 10 are both about four times as strong as one CR 5. I'm not explaining it with the right words but hopefully you get the point.

You caught me mid edit as I realized that. It takes me a moment to remember and apply Lanchester's Laws

I will give this model a try. It should help handle mixed CRs much better than the flat quantity multiplier 5E DMG uses.

MaxWilson

2021-04-10, 10:39 PM

You caught me mid edit as I realized that. It takes me a moment to remember and apply Lanchester's Laws

Ah, okay. Responding to edit:

The encounter construction rules (according to the calculator I am using) tell me 1-8 CR 3s are EL 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15. So the DMG is not claiming they scale linearly according to the encounter construction rules.

Yeah, I hope 6E is better about this. Even if it only gets better at communicating.

I don't quite follow what you mean about ELs and the DMG. Do I need to, or are we on basically the same page now about how to build 5E encounters in your head?

I will give this model a try. It should help handle mixed CRs much better than the flat quantity multiplier 5E DMG uses.

The flat multiplier is an attempt to apply Lanchester's Laws without having to explain Lanchester's Laws. (Basically its N ^ 1/2 power, for N monsters, so total adjusted XP (proxy for resource usage) scales as the 3/2 power of N.) IMO they should have explained, at least briefly, that that's what they were doing.

OldTrees1

2021-04-10, 10:42 PM

Ah, okay. Responding to edit:

I don't quite follow what you mean about ELs and the DMG. Do I need to, or are we on basically the same page now about how to build 5E encounters in your head?

We are on the same page now. You don't need to follow the bit about the ELs.

The 5E encounter calculator I was using automatically compares the encounter's adjusted xp vs a single monster of CR X.
https://kastark.co.uk/rpgs/encounter-calculator-5th/
It calls it "Encounter Challenge Rating" which was EL back in 3E.

MaxWilson

2021-04-10, 10:53 PM

We are on the same page now. You don't need to follow the bit about the ELs.

The 5E encounter calculator I was using automatically compares the encounter's adjusted xp vs a single monster of CR X.
https://kastark.co.uk/rpgs/encounter-calculator-5th/
It calls it "Encounter Challenge Rating" which was EL back in 3E.

Ah. You may want to check out Kobold Fight Club (https://kobold.club). It has a really nice UI which helps my creativity sometimes.

Tanarii

2021-04-10, 11:15 PM

But it's a smoother progression than the PC power progression and since 5E is meant to be tilted in favor of the players anyway, it's easy to guesstimate a fight by erring on the side of the PCs.PC non-linear power progression is (supposed to be) accounted for in the non-linear encounter difficulty and adventuring day tables. For example, the jump from 4th to 5th is quite obvious when you look at it.

And from experience before I started running T1 and T2 games separately, it's pretty noticeable at the table too. You definitely can have a level 5 'power level' some level 1s, while not getting much in the way out of it themselves. Even more so for a single lower level character. Which is one reason I don't think it's absolutely required to start replacement characters at the same level as the old ones. Bottom of the Tier works fantastically, mixed levels within a Tier within problem at all. Cross-tier you'll definitely start to get a bit of handholding to stay alive at for a session or two (ie starting a level 1 with a few 8s).

MaxWilson

2021-04-10, 11:38 PM

PC non-linear power progression is (supposed to be) accounted for in the non-linear encounter difficulty and adventuring day tables. For example, the jump from 4th to 5th is quite obvious when you look at it.

Yes, that's my point - - it's not built into CR itself, so it doesn't stop you from swapping out one CR 10 for two CR 5s, for example.

PC power variability is huge though. All Nth level parties are not equally capable.

And from experience before I started running T1 and T2 games separately, it's pretty noticeable at the table too. You definitely can have a level 5 'power level' some level 1s, while not getting much in the way out of it themselves. Even more so for a single lower level character. Which is one reason I don't think it's absolutely required to start replacement characters at the same level as the old ones. Bottom of the Tier works fantastically, mixed levels within a Tier within problem at all. Cross-tier you'll definitely start to get a bit of handholding to stay alive at for a session or two (ie starting a level 1 with a few 8s).

Yeah, I agree that replacement characters do not need to be the same level as who they replace. I sometimes have 20th level PCs and 5th level PCs in the same party, or level 14s with first-level PCs. (They don't stay first level for long, but still...)

Levels 1-2 are a bit fragile but after that you can pretty much mix and match anyone with anyone if you want to.

Disclaimer: my games are a mix of simulationism for procedural resolutions like combat (i.e. show "what would really happen" instead of trying to create "balanced encounters") and DramaSystem-inspired narrativism for pacing, content introduction, and emotional interactions between characters (i.e. let players share explicit ownership over the creative agenda and what details we should drill down on vs. skip over, instead of the DM just assuming--if you think it's relevant to have a flashback scene of you discussing your fears with your mother prior to accepting the current mission, you can make that happen). It works well for me and my players and keeps things interesting at all levels, but if you're running a more conventional epic fantasy Forgotten Realms-style campaign I can imagine players of certain lower-level PCs (e.g. 4th level monks) getting frustrated with their relative lack of impact during epic combats. YMMV.

KorvinStarmast

2021-04-12, 08:05 AM

My ad blocker is set to block everyone's avatars, and I never noticed before that there's another little gender icon that it's not blocking. Aah, that explains it. :smallsmile:

Though note the symbol doesn’t appear if you’re on the mobile site Since I never use mobile, I didn't know that. Thanks! :smallsmile:

You don't treat fractional CRs as a decimal point to be averaged. CR 1/4 is 2 steps down from CR 1. The average of CR 9 and CR 1/4 is CR 4. Five steps up from CR 1/4 and five down from CR 9.

And it's just as easy to write down Diviner (Volvo pg ##). The Diviner is a big fan of driving safety, I notice. Even Volo noticed, I guess. :smallbiggrin:

The 5E designers got their table from playtesting AFAICT, just fitting a curve to whatever level of difficulty made their playtesters happy in the dungeon crawls they were using during the playtest, and I'm sure that the CRs over 20 got minimal playtesting anyway. There's no secret master plan. Not gonna bet against that, and thanks for the insight you gleaned on the CR pattern.
Yeah, I hope 6E is better about this. Even if it only gets better at communicating. You are bound to be disappointed in the latter. :smallmad: Unless new blood is brought int.
PC power variability is huge though. All Nth level parties are not equally capable. Understatement of the week. :smallsmile:

MoiMagnus

2021-04-12, 08:52 AM

That's because, unlike 3e, there's absolutely no assumption that CR ~ level.

Mostly correct in practice.
But some effects like the Polymorph spell ("The new form can be any beast whose challenge rating is equal to or less than the target's (or the target's level, if it doesn't have a challenge rating).") proves that the designers did intend CR = level to be a reasonable match.

KorvinStarmast

2021-04-12, 09:14 AM

proves that the designers did intend CR = level to be a reasonable match. Hardly proof of anything.

I think it was done for the sake of (1) simplicity (a key effort throughout 5e development) and without balance considerations in mind. (So, maybe it's a Mearls thing).

PhoenixPhyre

2021-04-12, 09:30 AM

Hardly proof of anything.

I think it was done for the sake of (1) simplicity (a key effort throughout 5e development) and without balance considerations in mind. (So, maybe it's a Mearls thing).

Agreed. The DMG (in the Creating a Monster section) has this:

A single monster with a challenge rating equal to the adventurers’ level is, by itself, a fair challenge for a group of four characters. If the monster is meant to be fought in pairs or groups, its expected challenge rating should be lower than the party’s level.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that your monster must have a challenge rating equal to the level of the characters to be a worthy challenge. Keep in mind that monsters with a lower challenge rating can be a threat to higher-level characters when encountered in groups.

It would be rather odd if a character of level X was a fair challenge for 4 characters of level X. In fact, that makes approximately zero sense.

Polymorph is an outlier. And a bad spell to boot (not as bad as it was in earlier editions, but). I'd say it should be more like wildshape--you get CR = level / 3. If a moon druid can't wildshape into it, polymorph shouldn't work either. Wizards shouldn't be better at changing shapes than druids, nor should land druids than moon druids. Just another way that "spell list is most of your class features" is bad design. Both for land druids and for wizards.

Tanarii

2021-04-12, 11:01 AM

Mostly correct in practice.
But some effects like the Polymorph spell ("The new form can be any beast whose challenge rating is equal to or less than the target's (or the target's level, if it doesn't have a challenge rating).") proves that the designers did intend CR = level to be a reasonable match.
Absolutely not. All it proves is who ever wrote that spell doesn't understand how CR works.

I'm shocked it hasn't received errata yet, even with 5e's original "we don't fix unbalanced things with errata, only typos or incorrectly written things" policy. Of course, since that policy has gone by the wayside with Tasha's, Polymorph is a prime candidate.

Segev

2021-04-12, 11:13 AM

Agreed. The DMG (in the Creating a Monster section) has this:

It would be rather odd if a character of level X was a fair challenge for 4 characters of level X. In fact, that makes approximately zero sense.

Polymorph is an outlier. And a bad spell to boot (not as bad as it was in earlier editions, but). I'd say it should be more like wildshape--you get CR = level / 3. If a moon druid can't wildshape into it, polymorph shouldn't work either. Wizards shouldn't be better at changing shapes than druids, nor should land druids than moon druids. Just another way that "spell list is most of your class features" is bad design. Both for land druids and for wizards.

Absolutely not. All it proves is who ever wrote that spell doesn't understand how CR works.

I'm shocked it hasn't received errata yet, even with 5e's original "we don't fix unbalanced things with errata, only typos or incorrectly written things" policy. Of course, since that policy has gone by the wayside with Tasha's, Polymorph is a prime candidate.
I dunno. A "fair challenge" is not, remember, "a 50/50 shot of either side winning." A "fair challenge" is still something the PCs are expected to win fairly handily, just expending a certain amount of resources. I am less sure of the math in 5e than 3e, but I know in 3e it was expected to use up about 1/4 the resources of a party of 4 to face an encounter whose CR matched theirs. A single level 5 PC-like creature vs. a level 5 party of 4 would, in fact, seem just about right to burn 1/4 of that party of 4's resources before they win handily.

Now, again, that math isn't 5e's, so it may not hold up exactly, but I can certainly see how it's POSSIBLE that "level is approximately CR" would work. I won't say it definitely does in 5e, though. Especially not when the 5e shapeshifting rules tend to make the shapeshift almost an extra summon, what with the bonus hp it represents.

PhoenixPhyre

2021-04-12, 11:31 AM

I dunno. A "fair challenge" is not, remember, "a 50/50 shot of either side winning." A "fair challenge" is still something the PCs are expected to win fairly handily, just expending a certain amount of resources. I am less sure of the math in 5e than 3e, but I know in 3e it was expected to use up about 1/4 the resources of a party of 4 to face an encounter whose CR matched theirs. A single level 5 PC-like creature vs. a level 5 party of 4 would, in fact, seem just about right to burn 1/4 of that party of 4's resources before they win handily.

Now, again, that math isn't 5e's, so it may not hold up exactly, but I can certainly see how it's POSSIBLE that "level is approximately CR" would work. I won't say it definitely does in 5e, though. Especially not when the 5e shapeshifting rules tend to make the shapeshift almost an extra summon, what with the bonus hp it represents.

Doing the CR math, simple characters end up somewhere between on-par or a little ahead (level 1-2 only, due to better armor) and way behind (CR ~ 1/2 level). And the spread is tremendous for spell-casters. An Archmage (by stock CR 12, level-equivalent 18 by casting) can be anywhere from CR 4-ish (with bad spell selection, his hit points and defenses are trivial) to CR 20+. Martial builds are more consistent, but it's not constant. A level 18 Champion fighter ends up CR 9, where a level 1 fighter is not quite CR 2.

There is no single mapping between CR and level. At all. And if you expect to consistently throw CR = level monsters at the party, your encounters will be sub-optimal.

Plus, the balance defined by CR only applies with some assumptions. Specifically, it's designed as a baseline that assumes:
1) little to no optimization, but no anti-optimization. Best score in main stat, but no racial optimization, no action-economy optimization, no team synergy.
2) no variant rules, including multiclassing or feats.
3) no combat-effective magic items at least until T3, and then no assumptions about which ones (ie a common Moon-touched blade that bypasses resistance is fine).
4) no particular teamwork, terrain, allies, etc.

It's purely a measure of combined staying power and HP threat. And explicitly so. Things that don't affect either one directly aren't considered (they're considered later in the encounter-building process). CR is just a first pass filter to narrow the list. Does that take more effort? If you want to do it well.

But on that note, 3e's CR system is notoriously borked as well. In theory, you can say things about balance. But really, two different parties facing identical threats may have anything between a curbstomp for the PCs to a curbstomp for the enemies.

4e did better, at quite a bit of a cost in various directions. Although I do happen to like 4e-style monster-building techniques (in principle, if not in implementation).

MoiMagnus

2021-04-12, 11:31 AM

Doug Lampert

2021-04-12, 12:17 PM

Having entered the stats of "Greg the boring fighter" (so champion which only takes ASI up until it reachs 20/20 in Str/Con and then consider other feats, and with only +X items) in a CR calculator on few levels, and it seems that indeed, the better approximation is CR = Lv * 2/3.

That also matches the CR of high level spellcasters NPCs from the MM (Mage level 9 -> CR 6, Archmage level 18 -> CR 12). Though they don't have class features while spellcaster PCs do have significant class features to back up their spells.

So yeah ... while optimised PCs might be around a CR equal to their level, I probably read into polymorph much more than what was intended.

PC spellcasters have lots of nifty class features, that typically don't greatly enhance their CR.

NPC casters from the MM have more HP which does increase their CR.

So, despite all the nifty class features, I'm not sure that PC spellcasters should be expected to be even as high a CR as the equivalent MM mage.

MoiMagnus

2021-04-12, 12:57 PM

NPC casters from the MM have more HP which does increase their CR.

Do they, really?

The Mage (Lv 9, CR 6) has 40 HP (9d8 and CON 11), while a Lv 9 wizard with the same CON 11 would have 38 HP (because they cheat on their d6 and have 6 at level 1 and 4 each level after that). And IME, mages tend to have at least 12 CON because they like succeeding at concentration checks.

The Archmage (Lv 18, CR 12) has 99 HP (18d8 and CON 12), while a Lv 18 wizard with the same CON 12 would have 92 HP. Again, 12 CON for a level 18 PC wizard is very low, especially when there is a rare amulet that raises your CON to 19.

Silly Name

2021-04-12, 01:46 PM

Do they, really?

The Mage (Lv 9, CR 6) has 40 HP (9d8 and CON 11), while a Lv 9 wizard with the same CON 11 would have 38 HP (because they cheat on their d6 and have 6 at level 1 and 4 each level after that). And IME, mages tend to have at least 12 CON because they like succeeding at concentration checks.

The Archmage (Lv 18, CR 12) has 99 HP (18d8 and CON 12), while a Lv 18 wizard with the same CON 12 would have 92 HP. Again, 12 CON for a level 18 PC wizard is very low, especially when there is a rare amulet that raises your CON to 19.

You gotta compare them to their CR, not their HD. Monsters/NPCs have "inflated HP" in the sense they have more HP than an average PC whose level equals the monster's CR. A level 12 wizard with CON 12 has 12d6+12 HP, which means an average of 56 HP.

That's why CR as level doesn't work (and why Polymorph is so powerful), because monsters are built radically different from PCs. A monster has to have enough HP to last 3 to 5 rounds against a party of four whose level is equal to its CR, and its abilities are all geared around the assumption it won't "exist" after that encounter. They normally don't get to go nova and have consistent damage outputs throughout a fight (even spellcasters are usually built with a list of prepared/available spells that is meant to keep their damage output in check).

For example, last night one of my players (Barbarian 8/Fighter 3) dealt around 85 damage in a single round, which would have been enough to drop three out of four of his other party members. A horned devil (CR 11) can deal, on average and assuming all hits connect, 40 damage per round in melee or 42 damage per round at range. But the horned devil has 178 HP, and the Barbarian had roughly 120 max HP.

MaxWilson

2021-04-12, 01:55 PM

Agreed. The DMG (in the Creating a Monster section) has this:

It would be rather odd if a character of level X was a fair challenge for 4 characters of level X. In fact, that makes approximately zero sense.

You can't use the "fair challenge" guidelines to infer anything about level:CR equivalence, because what would be really odd if "a fair challenge" were intended to mean "equal in strength to the PCs", since the party would then TPK approximately half the time. "Fair challenge" != "equivalent in strength." It means "curbstomp that doesn't feel like a curbstomp to newbies."

Having entered the stats of "Greg the boring fighter" (so champion which only takes ASI up until it reachs 20/20 in Str/Con and then consider other feats, and with only +X items) in a CR calculator on few levels, and it seems that indeed, the better approximation is CR = Lv * 2/3.

And that's without counting abilities that don't show up in CR but actually do add a lot of power/survivability (like the Mobile feat and access to Blur), and also without optimizing the Fighter (no GWM/PAM, etc.). More combat-optimized PCs have a higher CR.

In practice, a rule of thumb that CR N monster ~= lvl N PC works out pretty well. If the intent is "players fight an enemy as strong as the PCs," then four 12th level PCs are in for a tough fight vs. two CR 13 Beholders and four CR 6 Medusas, and the players may take some casualties even if they win, but winning is as plausible as losing. (It's even more plausible if they work out the correct trick--all the monsters rely on vision!)