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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Colossus in the Playground
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    Default Party optimisation philosophy

    This is a tangent that was spawned in the thread about Chinese views on optimisation/Chinese tier list. I found the topic rather interesting, so I'm making a thread for it as opposed to taking bandwidth from the thread that mostly focuses on how the Chinese community views class balance.

    Initial chain of conversation:
    Quote Originally Posted by 憂鬱鬱 View Post
    The original author:
    ① Some readers think that the ranking of this list is based on "who can not be easily replaced", I think this is the correct way to read it. In China, there are many optimizers discussing“how to make the most powerful team with a limited number of players.” In fact, a team can only fill 4-6 characters, inevitably most of the classes are considered to be less competitive.

    The reason why the paladins are ranked first is that players cannot get a large group saving throws bonus from any other way. And Lore Bard has the most comprehensive spell table (yes, more than the wizards’ and the clerics’), as well as very strong Dispel Magic checks and Counterspell checks to help the team win the spell battle.

    A team cannot only be simply made up of pure casters. Fighters have uniqueness is because of their stable and powerful DPR. The reason why other gish classes are at the top is that they have more versatilities for spells and can also contribute stable DPR (although it may be lower than fighters). The divine soul sorcerer has become one of the most favored casters in China, because divine soul sorcerer has access to both the sorcerer’s spell list and cleric’s spell list, and Metamagic.

    These classes are difficult to be replaced by lower-tier classes in terms of their uniqueness: other classes have the lower DPR than fighters’; other wizards can hardly provide stable DPR and cast as a caster like Bladesinger; other clerics do not have sorcerer’s spell list and Metamagic as divine soul sorcerer, although they also have some domain features, the distinctiveness of domain features are not enough to get them into the upper tiers.

    There is a very popular view in China that the perfect five-person team is made of a paladin + a main caster (such as lore bard, chronurgist) + divine soul sorcerer + DPR classes (such as fighter, gish) + one other class depending on the situations. This may be biased, but it also has some reference value.
    Quote Originally Posted by Eldariel View Post
    I agree with the idea of creating the optimal 4-6 party composition but I fundamentally disagree with the need for a steady DPS class. I believe the more resources you have, the longer you can go - I think the optimal scenario is having either a ridiculous number of no-rest classes or only rest classes. That way all the classes are on the same page. Champion can't handle encounters for 4 alone no matter how much at-will ability it has. That is to say, the more at-will power you have, the longer you can go with all your resources depleted while the more resources you have, the longer you can go before them being depleted. Thus for an optimal party of 4, I generally prefer:
    - Lore Bard (Cutting Words is irreplaceable)
    - Diviner Wizard (Portent is irreplaceable)
    - Martialish Cleric (Arcana if going late; Forge, Grave, etc. are all fine choices too)
    - Shepherd Druid (or Moon if the early levels are a huge slog)


    That setup gives you plenty of at-will power and daily power and access to basically every ritual in the game. If I were adding a 5th member, Swords Bard and Ancients Pally/Divine Soul are both strong candidates. But I think the more casters you have the better you ultimately get at long slogs simply because you have more resources for a long slog than a party with some at-will characters who will not be able to extend the resources of the party and their at-will ability will be of little use when the party is otherwise unable to adventure. Of course, all-day minionmancy is also a big thing.
    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    Personally I believe it's ideal for all four party members to have both nova capability (for emergencies) AND at-will DPR capability (for efficiently solving non-emergencies).

    The way I evaluate a party is to look at the party and count up how much coverage it has on a variety of roles that I consider important.

    E.g. Alert Shadow Monk 11, Paladin 9/Wild Sorc 3 [Extended Spell, Quicken Spell], Hexblade 2/Lore Bard 9 [Aura of Vitality, Conjure Animals; Stealth, Perception Expertise], and Cthulock 2/Necromancer 9 [Inspiring Leader, Spell Sniper]:

    I see

    3 Tanks (Paladin, Monk w/ Darkness, Hexblade)
    2 Recon specialists (Monk and Bardlock)
    3 at-will ranged damage specialists (Bardlock, Necrolock, plus Shadow Monk and Wild Sorc put together sort of equals three)
    2 Summoners (Bardlock, Necromancer)
    2 single-target controllers (Monk Stunning Strike, Paladin with Wrathful Smite or grappling)
    2 area controllers (Bardlock and Necromancer with spells like Hypnotic Pattern and Confusion)
    2.5 Healers (Paladin and Bardlock are both amazing, and the Necromancer's self-healing via Grim Harvest is sort of an extra 0.5)
    3 teleporters (monk (Shadow Jump), Necrolock and Bardlock (Dimension Door))

    Minimal nova capability here (Monk nova with Flurry + Stunning Strike is merely okay, and the paladin can dual-wield for smiting but it's nothing special compared to e.g. a Hexvoker) so I'm calling that zero.

    TL;DR having both at-will and nova capabilities doesn't require having separate characters.
    I largely agree with what Max is saying. Every class has some at-will power in the game (for casters, cantrips; for mundanes, attacks), and how much at-will you've got depends on your classes. Similarly, every class as resources though how you recover them and what they provide you with varies. There are especially some harder to adjudicate "nearly-at-will abilities", such as Animate Dead, Tiny Servitor, and company, and some "with sufficient slot investment can be kept up all day"-abilities such as Conjure Animals, Holy Weapon, etc. (largely spells with a duration between ~1 hour and 4 hours - not all dayish like 8 hour+ but not "immediate" like 1-10 mins) Those tread the fence between At-Will and resource consumption; they do consume resources, but essentially you use resources for an all-day at-will offensive power in the first case, or are able to get multiple encounters' worth of time from a single slot in the second one to the point that you can get all-day coverage for said ability.

    Honestly, a framework of class at-will ability would be interesting to establish; it could then be expanded with a framework defining their short rest and long rest ability. Such a system could then be used to analyse the all-day contributions a class is capable of in different parties and how the party dynamics depend on the resources available and being used. I'm thinking it wouldn't be that difficult to process in practice and it could actually provide the most useful "Tier-like system" to date.
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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldariel View Post
    This is a tangent that was spawned in the thread about Chinese views on optimisation/Chinese tier list. I found the topic rather interesting, so I'm making a thread for it as opposed to taking bandwidth from the thread that mostly focuses on how the Chinese community views class balance.

    Initial chain of conversation:

    ...

    I largely agree with what Max is saying. Every class has some at-will power in the game (for casters, cantrips; for mundanes, attacks), and how much at-will you've got depends on your classes. Similarly, every class as resources though how you recover them and what they provide you with varies. There are especially some harder to adjudicate "nearly-at-will abilities", such as Animate Dead, Tiny Servitor, and company, and some "with sufficient slot investment can be kept up all day"-abilities such as Conjure Animals, Holy Weapon, etc. (largely spells with a duration between ~1 hour and 4 hours - not all dayish like 8 hour+ but not "immediate" like 1-10 mins) Those tread the fence between At-Will and resource consumption; they do consume resources, but essentially you use resources for an all-day at-will offensive power in the first case, or are able to get multiple encounters' worth of time from a single slot in the second one to the point that you can get all-day coverage for said ability.

    Honestly, a framework of class at-will ability would be interesting to establish; it could then be expanded with a framework defining their short rest and long rest ability. Such a system could then be used to analyse the all-day contributions a class is capable of in different parties and how the party dynamics depend on the resources available and being used. I'm thinking it wouldn't be that difficult to process in practice and it could actually provide the most useful "Tier-like system" to date.
    I think Max has solid points.

    Personally, if I'd optimize the entire party, I have the following guidelines (c/p from earlier optimization challenge thread):

    o An obligatory paladin (+5 to saves are just too good)
    o One or more sources of temporary HP or extra HP (aid / heroes feast), preferably both
    o The option to solve encounters trough fight, talk and stealth. The latter requires all characters to be at least somewhat proficient and have a decent dex, and support spells for this are nice as well.

    In addition, you want to cover all roles (healing, single target, area of effect damage, utility spells, etc.), and want all characters to have decent defenses (at least ac and hp - saves are taken care of through the paladin, at least for a large part)


    To make it a bit concrete, for a party for 4, I'd start with a dex ancients paladin (for party defenses, healing, nova potential), add a glamour bard (face, temp hp, healing, spells) OR sheperd druid (temp hp, healing, lots of melee potential through summons, scouting with wildshape). From here, I'd add to the bard a tempest cleric and a battlemaster fighter (optinal mutliclass EK fighter/ shadow sorcerer). With the druid, maybe a wizard and a fighter, though I'd try to get more skills (and bonusses to skills) through racial abilities - or maybe replace the wizard with a warlock with chain pact and scouting invocations.

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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    The name of the game is resource efficiency.

    As Max says, it's good to be able to vary your output -- The more dangerous an enemy is, the more efficient it is to use a nova. The less dangerous, the less efficient.

    The mistake some people make is thinking that at-will abilities are inherently more resource efficient, which counter to many people's intuitions isn't true. The reason for this is simple: There are two sides to attrition, that which you spend to do things, and that which is spent by enemies doing things to you (like HP damage). If the amount of bad stuff an enemy would do to you exceeds the cost of your 'reduce them to microscopic particles right this second' option, then that nova option becomes resource-efficient, and not doing so will reduce the number of encounters you can take before resting (or someone dying or something).

    Anyways, this is why, for instance, a party of 4 Champions generally won't actually last for more encounters a day than, say, a party of 3 Champions and a Life Cleric.

    The one caveat I'd add is that I wouldn't draw much of a distinction between 'literally at will' and 'has enough resources to be drawn out throughout most or all of the day." So, basically what Eldariel said in the very first post.
    Last edited by LudicSavant; 2020-07-08 at 08:11 AM.
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    Colossus in the Playground
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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    Quote Originally Posted by Waazraath View Post
    I think Max has solid points.

    Personally, if I'd optimize the entire party, I have the following guidelines (c/p from earlier optimization challenge thread):

    o An obligatory paladin (+5 to saves are just too good)
    I have to respond to this specifically, since I see this sentiment a lot when discussing the necessity of Paladin in an optimal party. While Paladin is a strong class, it is my own experience that Aura of Protection is a bit of a paper tiger. Sure, it looks absolutely bonkers on paper to get +5 to all saves for the whole party (and even just personal +5 to all saves is incredibly strong), but the party benefits are often less impressive than that IME, mostly due to the 10' range (up until level 18, which is after full casters already became demigods).

    Often, the things you want a saving throw bonus for are AOEs (Fireballs, dragon breaths, Banshee Wail, etc.) and in those encounters, huddling close together for the save bonus guarantees that basically the whole party gets hit. OTOH if you have enough room to split up and be ~30' apart (in the "Fireball formation"), the enemy will have to hit at most two characters. So to gain benefits of Aura of Protection, the party will have to accept more hits from the AOE (obviously this doesn't apply to non-AOE but I find those aren't as frightening all that often; most seem to be like max HP reduction or poisoning or curses or things of that nature that you can tend to out of combat, though save-or-dies and mind control effects do of course exist), which kinda defeats the purpose. Even if everyone saves thanks to the Aura, the total damage split across the party is the same as if two guys got hit and failed the save (let alone if two guys got hit and succeeded the save).

    Given the prevalence of AOE on higher levels, my parties generally assume fireball formation by default; it does make teamwork a bit more difficult but OTOH it prevents a powerful enemy from devastating the entire party in a single round. And in precisely such a setup where everyone kinda fends for themselves to a degree, the Aura is at its weakest. Of course, this criticism is far less biting on the level 18 version, which is incredibly good (and don't get me wrong, the level 6 version is also really personally and with significant party value but I feel like the peak value of the ability is somewhat diminished and it's more like "bonus to me and maybe the other frontliner" in most cases rather than "bonus to the whole party"). Ultimately, I generally find it a nice-to-have (Ancients is a bit different; Warding Aura means that against spellcasters who use damage spells specifically, your resistances are such that it's worth it to huddle together even if you take extra hits due to it), but I find the party can make do with Contingencies and Death Wards and Freedom of Movements (and yes, Revivifies) and Counterspells/Dispel Magics/Remove Curses/etc. to shore up the saving throw issues down the line.

    Quote Originally Posted by LudicSavant View Post
    The name of the game is resource efficiency.

    As Max says, it's good to be able to vary your output -- The more dangerous an enemy is, the more efficient it is to use a nova. The less dangerous, the less efficient.

    The mistake some people make is thinking that at-will abilities are inherently more resource efficient, which counter to many people's intuitions isn't true. The reason for this is simple: There are two sides to attrition, that which you spend to do things, and that which is spent by enemies doing things to you (like HP damage). If the amount of bad stuff an enemy would do to you exceeds the cost of your 'reduce them to microscopic particles right this second' option, then that nova option becomes resource-efficient, and not doing so will reduce the number of encounters you can take before resting (or someone dying or something).

    Anyways, this is why, for instance, a party of 4 Champions generally won't actually last for more encounters a day than, say, a party of 3 Champions and a Life Cleric.

    The one caveat I'd add is that I wouldn't draw much of a distinction between 'literally at will' and 'has enough resources to be drawn out throughout most or all of the day." So, basically what Eldariel said in the very first post.
    Indeed, it is good to spell this out. I think I did a poor job of depicting the big picture of party resource consumption, but it's of course worth noting that the longer enemies survive the more defensive resources they will likely burn through. Which is why the party with a lot of nova potential will ultimately probably lose less resources dealing with most problems than the party maxed out on at-will potential. I think taking it into the logical extreme, this is the easiest to showcase with a single character (yes, I know the game isn't designed for single character play).

    A single level 1 Fighter (let's say a Vuman Heavy Armor Master) is pretty good at beating weak things (single Goblins, single Skellies, etc.). However, if said Fighter ever runs into an equivalent enemy...say, two Orcs, they don't have anything to fall back on and they will most likely die (unless they are able to engage them out of range and the terrain prevents the Orcs from getting closer but especially with Aggressive, that's a highly specific and much less challenging encounter).

    A single level 1 Wizard (let's say a Vuman with Alert), on the other hand, is still pretty good at beating weak things (though again, always at a bit more risk since even a non-crit can kill him) but with tools that let him engage more on his terms (the cantrips) and most importantly, the ability to go nova. He can get Mage Armor on if he casts it and then Arcane Recoveries, thus adventuring with two slots. So the encounter with two Orcs? He can ready an action to cast Shield on the other Orc after the first one has acted. Then he can cast another Sleep on the first one. The Wizard will most likely win if one Orc misses a single attack. Adjusted CR of that fight is 2 (400XP where the daily XP budget of a level 1 solo character is 300), and the Wizard has a pretty reasonable chance even in a white room let alone with environment.
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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldariel View Post
    I think taking it into the logical extreme, this is the easiest to showcase with a single character (yes, I know the game isn't designed for single character play).
    Huh, this type of analysis seems different from what I look for in a tier list or class guide. Usually, I'm more looking for how well they will perform a certain roll (assuming a mythical balanced party is backing them up). The fighter you posted seems like a fairly optimal level 1 tank. Their lack of nova or CC is a problem, but that wasn't what the optimizer was going for.

    An optimized skill monkey, diplimancer, scout, striker, tank, healbot, or god wizard each brings something useful if not nessisarily unique.

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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    Are we trying to establish objective criteria for parties of 3, 4, 5, and 6 PCs in order to rank the combinations? (I have a thought in the back of my mind that this is a multivariable problem at best.

    The idea intrigues me, but I want to be sure I understand the aim/objective of this exercise.
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    Colossus in the Playground
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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    Quote Originally Posted by XmonkTad View Post
    Huh, this type of analysis seems different from what I look for in a tier list or class guide. Usually, I'm more looking for how well they will perform a certain roll (assuming a mythical balanced party is backing them up). The fighter you posted seems like a fairly optimal level 1 tank. Their lack of nova or CC is a problem, but that wasn't what the optimizer was going for.

    An optimized skill monkey, diplimancer, scout, striker, tank, healbot, or god wizard each brings something useful if not nessisarily unique.
    That was just party simplified down to 1 character to showcase why nova potential is of significant value. One party has little nova (Fighter has Second Wind and that's it), while the other one has very significant nova (two 1st level spells).

    This example can be extrapolated to party level, but showcasing it with a simple, practical example is infeasible within the context of a single forum post due to the amount of variables and inherent complexity of the setup.

    EDIT: I realise that two subsequent fights with individual Orcs would do the job better. The at-will party will probably beat the first one but at significant damage and fall to the second one, while the nova party can nova both and likely take 0 damage at it.

    Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast View Post
    Are we trying to establish objective criteria for parties of 3, 4, 5, and 6 PCs in order to rank the combinations? (I have a thought in the back of my mind that this is a multivariable problem at best.

    The idea intrigues me, but I want to be sure I understand the aim/objective of this exercise.
    Aye, that would be the goal. Probably necessary to split the ranking by tiers and have some kind separate values for endurance and peak potential (somehow accounting for long duration spells, at-will abilities, more restricted short rest abilities and long rest abilities).

    I'm still pondering the details of how to go about it hence this thread: to spitball and critically assess different options for quantifying class peak and endurance (not necessarily those exact things and not necessarily with only two values) and their strengths and shortcomings.
    Last edited by Eldariel; 2020-07-08 at 01:21 PM.

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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    In my book an optimised party has the following characteristics.

    1. There is nothing every party member is bad at (stealth, social, exploration, and the various main combat toles).
    And Any given task can be performed by at least 2 (3 if the group is large) party member

    2. Every party member is the best at something

    3. No party member has an obvious weekness that is not protected by at least 2 other party members

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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldariel View Post
    I have to respond to this specifically, since I see this sentiment a lot when discussing the necessity of Paladin in an optimal party. While Paladin is a strong class, it is my own experience that Aura of Protection is a bit of a paper tiger. Sure, it looks absolutely bonkers on paper to get +5 to all saves for the whole party (and even just personal +5 to all saves is incredibly strong), but the party benefits are often less impressive than that IME, mostly due to the 10' range (up until level 18, which is after full casters already became demigods).

    Often, the things you want a saving throw bonus for are AOEs (Fireballs, dragon breaths, Banshee Wail, etc.) and in those encounters, huddling close together for the save bonus guarantees that basically the whole party gets hit. OTOH if you have enough room to split up and be ~30' apart (in the "Fireball formation"), the enemy will have to hit at most two characters. So to gain benefits of Aura of Protection, the party will have to accept more hits from the AOE (obviously this doesn't apply to non-AOE but I find those aren't as frightening all that often; most seem to be like max HP reduction or poisoning or curses or things of that nature that you can tend to out of combat, though save-or-dies and mind control effects do of course exist), which kinda defeats the purpose. Even if everyone saves thanks to the Aura, the total damage split across the party is the same as if two guys got hit and failed the save (let alone if two guys got hit and succeeded the save).

    Given the prevalence of AOE on higher levels, my parties generally assume fireball formation by default; it does make teamwork a bit more difficult but OTOH it prevents a powerful enemy from devastating the entire party in a single round. And in precisely such a setup where everyone kinda fends for themselves to a degree, the Aura is at its weakest. Of course, this criticism is far less biting on the level 18 version, which is incredibly good (and don't get me wrong, the level 6 version is also really personally and with significant party value but I feel like the peak value of the ability is somewhat diminished and it's more like "bonus to me and maybe the other frontliner" in most cases rather than "bonus to the whole party"). Ultimately, I generally find it a nice-to-have (Ancients is a bit different; Warding Aura means that against spellcasters who use damage spells specifically, your resistances are such that it's worth it to huddle together even if you take extra hits due to it), but I find the party can make do with Contingencies and Death Wards and Freedom of Movements (and yes, Revivifies) and Counterspells/Dispel Magics/Remove Curses/etc. to shore up the saving throw issues down the line.
    Fair enough, it depends, and ofcourse I didn't take Ancients in my example by accident, that makes it better. In my experience a paladin covers at least 1 other party member with its aura usually though, and that +3/5 also is worth a lot. And in addition to that (and the other aura's, cause protection against fear, charm, spells etc.that can be shared is all very valuable) it's still a very good class that has healing, can nova, has strong defenses and can function as 'face' if no better option is present. So while I understand your point, me starting party optimization would still start with an ancients paladin, and I'd need a pretty strong reason not to include it.

    edit: question for everybody: how are you one temp hp? I think it's a pretty no-brainer to include a character that can provide it for everybody, but so far I think I'm the only one who mentioned this. Am I overestimating it?
    Last edited by Waazraath; 2020-07-08 at 01:47 PM.

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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    The reason at-will attacks are important is that they let you efficiently turn defense into offense, which in turn matters because 5E makes defense much cheaper to acquire than offense. E.g. there is no spell which can triple your DPR against an orc, but there are spells that can triple your longevity against an orc (e.g. Blur if you're already in heavy armor).

    Spells are not the only form of defense either. If you can kill said two orcs by expending 40 yards of movement plus a couple of bags of caltrops and two arrows (one of which you can retrieve after combat), you should. Movement regenerates, so to speak, much faster than HP and spell slots. Higher at-will damage here raises the number of orcs you can handle at a time before they catch up to you, and/or reduces their window of opportunity to switch strategies in a way that will inconvenience you. (E.g. if you've got plenty of movement speed but only 1d6 damage per round from a cantrip, the orcs may stop pursuing you and Dash off in opposite directions bellowing for reinforcements, and you'll wish you had killed more of them when you had the chance.)

    Nova damage, on the other hand, is useful for emergencies like when your buddy the Lore Bard just failed his save against Hold Person, within melee range of a hypothetical mob of orcs. At that point your own defensive abilities cease to matter and what matters now is the sheer amount of offense you can bring to the table, or your ability to find an alternate solution (Dimension Door, Otiluke's Resilient Sphere, Wall of Force, whatever you've got.) It must also be admitted that emergencies are fun and interesting for the player even if they are not so fun for the PC, and there's a tension there between the PC's rational desire to stay alive and the player's in-character desire to prevent emergencies, and the player's desire to stick the PC into water hot enough that emergency measures and improvisation are needed. This is another reason to desire a nova capability--realistically, you know you're going to need it eventually, or the game would be boring.

    ================================================== ================

    RE: paladin auras, I endorse Eldariel's perspective on Paladin Aura of Protection. Ultimately it's just a numerical bonus on saving throws, and saving throws are something you don't want to be making in the first place. A maxed out Charisma bonus (+5) will convert a failure to a success 25% of the time, so on average if four PCs are in Fireball formation and gets hit with an AoE effect, the aura is likely to save one PC on average (e.g. 3 fails => 2 fails, or 2 fails => 1 fail). That is nice to have, but it is also worse than saving 3 PCs automatically by virtue of not being in Fireball formation in the first place.

    There are some other paladin aura effects which are much more reliable (in particular I'm thinking of Charm immunity at Paladin of Devotion 7) and which I totally would enter Fireball formation for, in certain situations, but in general I've found that Bardic Inspiration is a surprisingly good substitute for a Paladin aura because the aura only covers a couple of PCs anyway. It is nice that the aura is always on, and the aura is still definitely a standout feature, but overall I feel like a good source of Bardic Inspiration is probably about half as valuable as a Paladin Aura, and neither is absolutely essential although both are painful to live without.

    There are lots of capabilities that are painful to live without, and a 4-man party can afford only about half as many as I'd like even with judicious multiclassing. Sometimes you have to just accept that a given party is going to have e.g. Greater Restoration and Revivify instead of Paladin save bonuses, and use one to compensate for lack of the other, if necessary.
    Last edited by MaxWilson; 2020-07-08 at 04:02 PM.

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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    This is a very broad thing to try and put into a rateable format and seems better suited to either a list of examples or a case by case analysis, though I have some general thoughts:

    It's a series of balancing acts that if understood can be worked in most compositions favour, some examples of these balancing acts are:

    -Offense and Defense, if you have a more potent offense then you can afford a relatively lower defense as your encounters will end faster (a nova party for example). If you have a higher defense then you can afford to take a bit longer to kill whatever the other side of the encounter is (Sword and board HAM Fighter, Bear Totem etc.)

    -Self sustainability vs healing, if you have a bunch of characters that are relatively self sustaining (Fighter's Second Wind for example) then you can afford to have a lower amount of inter-PC healing available

    -Pacing relative to your party's resources, you can have a long rest party with no issues assuming they PCs pace themselves appropriately (i.e. they're not walking into the final combat of the day relying on cantrips and basic attacks), you can have a party that novas hard and regularly providing that they are short rest based and are either seeking those rests or have someone capable of facilitating it (e.g. Cat Nap). Mixing a more resource/rest agnostic class/build in like a Rogue helps to stretch and cover both sides of this (in this example a Rogue can keep going unhindered at the end of a spell heavy day or if the party is struggling to rest).

    If you're seeking a method of rating parties then a series of criteria like powerlevels (rated out of 10) seem the most appropriate, something like:

    -DPR

    -Durability (mixture of active and passive defenses including HP totals)

    -Longevity (level of dependency on resources, amount of resources, regeneration time of resources)

    -Healing (mixed evaluation of ability to bring a fallen PC from 0, heal to prevent getting to 0 and healing up between combats)

    -Utility (skills, utility spells and class features)

    -Redundancy/versatility (essentially how effective a party can remain if the specialist in a certain area is rendered unavailable for some reason, such as the primary healer dropping)
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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    Resources seem to include both micro and macro.
    Riffing off of Max's post, I'll post that micro resources are tied to the action economy.
    Movement
    Action (anything that is a non-resource attack, like a bow show, cantrip, showve, dagger thrust)
    Bonus Action
    Reaction
    Interaction- where the tools, caltrops, flaming oil, holy water, and such can come into play.

    Macro resources seem to begin with long rest spells and abilities.

    I dont' know where short rest spells and abilities fit, but I think macro.

    HP as a resource: macro, micro, not sure, and I think that AC and HP are inextricably related for assessment purposes.

    Just spit balling here.
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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldariel View Post
    A single level 1 Fighter (let's say a Vuman Heavy Armor Master) is pretty good at beating weak things (single Goblins, single Skellies, etc.). However, if said Fighter ever runs into an equivalent enemy...say, two Orcs, they don't have anything to fall back on and they will most likely die (unless they are able to engage them out of range and the terrain prevents the Orcs from getting closer but especially with Aggressive, that's a highly specific and much less challenging encounter).
    Per DMG p. 82, a "Deadly" encounter for a single level 1 character is 100 XP, or one orc. Two orcs would fall between "Hard" and "Deadly" for a 3rd level fighter.

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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Wonderful View Post
    Per DMG p. 82, a "Deadly" encounter for a single level 1 character is 100 XP, or one orc. Two orcs would fall between "Hard" and "Deadly" for a 3rd level fighter.
    An enemy equivalent to yourself (e.g. your evil clone who can beat you as easily as you can beat him, 50/50%) is Deadly by definition, since 5E defines "Deadly" as "could be lethal for one or more player characters. Survival often requires good tactics and quick thinking, and the party risks defeat." If the PCs could conceivably lose, it gets labelled Deadly. If there's a 50% chance (!) the party will lose without good tactics and quick thinking, that's very "Deadly."

    It's certainly not impossible for a first-level fighter to defeat two orcs, but it's also not impossible for the orcs to defeat the fighter.

    Anyway, in this thread I think we're talking about capabilities (how many orcs/mind flayers/etc. can a given party handle, for some given value of "handle"), not DMG guidelines.

    That does raise an interesting question though: does a party which is optimizing to have a decent chance at beating extremely tough foes (a series of uber-Deadly 20th level encounters and 3x 20th level DMG adventuring days at party level 13) get built differently from a party which is optimizing to have a 100% chance at beating moderate foes very quickly (13th level DMG adventuring days at party level 13, but all the fights end in 1-2 rounds), or is one a superset of the other?
    Last edited by MaxWilson; 2020-07-08 at 04:20 PM.

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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    An enemy equivalent to yourself (e.g. your evil clone who can beat you as easily as you can beat him, 50/50%) is Deadly by definition, since 5E defines "Deadly" as "could be lethal for one or more player characters. Survival often requires good tactics and quick thinking, and the party risks defeat." If the PCs could conceivably lose, it gets labelled Deadly. If there's a 50% chance (!) the party will lose without good tactics and quick thinking, that's very "Deadly."

    It's certainly not impossible for a first-level fighter to defeat two orcs, but it's also not impossible for the orcs to defeat the fighter.

    Anyway, in this thread I think we're talking about capabilities (how many orcs/mind flayers/etc. can a given party handle, for some given value of "handle"), not DMG guidelines.
    DMG guidelines are how the game is structured.

    If you want to have combats thrown at you where it's "not impossible" to win, then I suppose you enjoy rolling up new character concepts.

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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    [QUOTE=Dork_Forge;24602890]
    Pacing relative to your party's resources, you can have a long rest party with no issues assuming they PCs pace themselves appropriately (i.e. they're not walking into the final combat of the day relying on cantrips and basic attacks),
    [\QUOTE]

    Let's be honest, pcs do that every single time.
    And don't forget having a bunch of characters at half hit points.

    After the last 3 "final bosses" our dm was like.
    "You know you were supposed to take a rest
    Before that fight eh?"
    But between the would be hero paladin and the hot blooded barbarian we very often wing it.

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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Wonderful View Post
    Per DMG p. 82, a "Deadly" encounter for a single level 1 character is 100 XP, or one orc. Two orcs would fall between "Hard" and "Deadly" for a 3rd level fighter.
    Actually, it's above Deadly because for a party of 2 or less characters you adjust the multiplier one step up and thus it takes 1,5x XP multiplier for 150 XP. So it's Deadly x 1,5. 2 Orcs is Deadly x 4 which is about equivalent to the point where the party is at a 50-50 fight. Standard encounters aren't interesting since any party will plow through any number of such adventuring days. The default guidelines are made so that PCs basically can't die no matter how idiotic things they do and how bad the dice fall (unless they forget basics like "yoyo heal", "focus fire", "rotate party formation", "always stealth", "kill casters", "avoid AOE", etc.) though, so they aren't interesting when stress testing the system and determining optimality. It's pointless to test "everyone wins"-scenarios, which goes for every DMG encounter for the majority of parties (of course, basically all published modules feature fights much more difficult than the cap level introduced in the DMG, acknowledging that it's boring to play like that).

    Of course, it depends on the party and indeed, this test of single level 1 characters vs. two orcs is a supersimplified example that showcases the point perfectly: high nova party with resources available has a rather high likelihood of winning while at-will heavy party with little nova has an abysmal shot. Whereas the Wizard has ~86% chance of winning Initiative and then he needs for the Orcs to just not kill him with a single Javelin attack (which does have a relevant likelihood of ~15% or so) for a total of 75% chance of victory in a neutral terrain (most terrain favours him since Sleep ignores cover and concealment while javelins have to deal with all of that; let alone precast protection from Minor Illusion and Mold Earth which can be cast out of combat every round for free). And that's without going into options like fighting in the open, where casting Expeditious Retreat and kiting them at above max range and finishing them off with Light Crossbow Disadvantageous attacks (+5 to hit vs. AC 13 for 42% to hit; it won't even take that long) is pretty trivial (you can do other tricks to negate the disadvantage and thus reduce bolt consumption, but no need to go there in this case).

    Meanwhile, without nova Orcs have 15 HP and 13 AC while a Fighter with Defense fighting style has +5 to hit, 1d8+3 damage. The Fighter averages 5,1 damage a turn so he takes about 3 rounds to drop an Orc on average (huge variance of course; not gonna do the exact math since it would take too long) while Orcs at +5 to hit vs. AC 19 (Defense Fighting Style, Shield, Chain Mail) and effective 1d12 damage (-3 from Heavy Armor Master) average 2,6 damage each (5,2 damage per turn) vs. Fighter's 13 HP and Second Wind (+6,5 HP) or a total of 19 HP. Orcs thus deal as much damage as the Fighter each round on average but have over twice the HP pool. The Fighter will have a decent shot at dropping a single Orc but he'll be so beat up by that point that the second Orc will most likely effortlessly finish him off (of course, this assumes both Orcs don't hit on the same round; if they do, it's fully possible they drop the Fighter before he gets to use Second Wind so full benefit cannot be assumed and in such a case, the Fighter is not favourite to drop even a single Orc).

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    The reason at-will attacks are important is that they let you efficiently turn defense into offense, which in turn matters because 5E makes defense much cheaper to acquire than offense. E.g. there is no spell which can triple your DPR against an orc, but there are spells that can triple your longevity against an orc (e.g. Blur if you're already in heavy armor).
    This is of course also reason why the efficiency of your At-Will matters. It's again easy to showcase with the level 1 single character party. A Dex 16 Wizard should buy a Light Crossbow on level 1 100% of the time, because +5 to attack for 1d8+3 damage is much more reliable than +5 to attack for 1d10 or 1d12 damage (and of course averages more damage too). Not to mention the option of acting at higher ranges. When you're going nova, this doesn't matter, but you don't want to have to "go nova" (i.e. use resources) against a single Goblin, since that would leave you with far lesser resources for a more serious fight. Light Crossbow increases kill reliability from having to first hit 50% hit and 5% crit rate and then having to roll a 7+ (40%) on the d10 damage roll or 7+ (85%) on the crit roll to same hit rate and then a roll of 4 (so 62,5%) sufficing on the d8 or 95,3% on crit roll. So the overall chance of a kill with e.g. Fire Bolt vs. Goblin would be 24,25% per attack while the chance to kill with Light Crossbow would be 36%. So L. Crossbow brings about approximately a 50% improvement in the likelihood of killing a Goblin with each given attack and thus an equivalent decrease in the likelihood of the Goblin having a chance to potentially burn through your defensive resources (in this case, Shield and HP - of course, crit is immediately quite likely to be fatal so there's extra pressure to minimise enemy actions but burning one of your level 1 slots is probably still a bit too much and probably the favourable tactic would be using your utility cantrips to craft a more favourable environment and thus skew the numbers in your favour).

    The power of the party's at-will directly influences how often you need to use your nova and also how likely you are to have to burn defensive resources (i.e. take hits) when using at-wills against lesser encoutners and thus, how many lesser encounters the party can go through. In essence, at-will power is a defense multiplier for weaker encounters and nova power is a defense multiplier for strong encounters. Where the line between the weak encounter and the strong encounter (or unfavourable and favourable circumstances; sometimes a nominally weak encounter can turn out dangerous when e.g. half the party rolls poorly on their saves vs. Intellect Devourers or Banshees and you suddenly need all the nova in the world to survive) is of course one of the problems that's hard to quantify without a more robust challenge rating system.


    All of this ties directly to...
    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    That does raise an interesting question though: does a party which is optimizing to have a decent chance at beating extremely tough foes (a series of uber-Deadly 20th level encounters and 3x 20th level DMG adventuring days at party level 13) get built differently from a party which is optimizing to have a 100% chance at beating moderate foes very quickly (13th level DMG adventuring days at party level 13, but all the fights end in 1-2 rounds), or is one a superset of the other?
    I think there's definitely at least corner cases where the party that can deal with more moderate encounters per day is not necessarily the same party that can deal with the highest difficulty encounters each day. I think this definitely warrants further study and this is in fact where the whole concept of "at-will party" and "long rest party" outlined in the might be useful. I think this has to be testable. Build extreme parties for both examples (I think the size of the party shouldn't matter overtly much so a party of 3 would be optimal for ease of computation) and then see how they perform against an extreme number of medium-easy encounters (it has to be run to the point of failure, I think, to truly test the long rest party's resources and on the other hand to see the sufficiency of the short rest party's encounter deletion power - in which case we're probably talking about ~50ish encounters at least; I'm thinking higher up long rest party using all-day slots will probably plow through them without burning any resources though so multiple level ranges have to be considered).

    I feel like the only feasible way of running this would be a simplified computer test with flowchart behaviour for each character and monster. It'll lose a lot of complexity inherent to D&D but it should answer the main point itself since both parties are principally able to make use of environmental factors and creativity to probably extend their day a bit more to much the same extent, I'd assume, so it should cancel itself out if omitted (well, casters of course have more tools to be creative with so they'd be more hurt by the restriction but if some general uses like "Silent Image to block enemy LoS while maintaining party LoS" are coded in, the lost complexity should default to edge cases).
    Last edited by Eldariel; 2020-07-09 at 04:14 AM.
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  18. - Top - End - #18
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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    Quote Originally Posted by Waazraath View Post
    I think Max has solid points.

    Personally, if I'd optimize the entire party, I have the following guidelines (c/p from earlier optimization challenge thread):

    o An obligatory paladin (+5 to saves are just too good)
    o One or more sources of temporary HP or extra HP (aid / heroes feast), preferably both
    o The option to solve encounters trough fight, talk and stealth. The latter requires all characters to be at least somewhat proficient and have a decent dex, and support spells for this are nice as well.

    In addition, you want to cover all roles (healing, single target, area of effect damage, utility spells, etc.), and want all characters to have decent defenses (at least ac and hp - saves are taken care of through the paladin, at least for a large part)


    To make it a bit concrete, for a party for 4, I'd start with a dex ancients paladin (for party defenses, healing, nova potential), add a glamour bard (face, temp hp, healing, spells) OR sheperd druid (temp hp, healing, lots of melee potential through summons, scouting with wildshape). From here, I'd add to the bard a tempest cleric and a battlemaster fighter (optinal mutliclass EK fighter/ shadow sorcerer). With the druid, maybe a wizard and a fighter, though I'd try to get more skills (and bonusses to skills) through racial abilities - or maybe replace the wizard with a warlock with chain pact and scouting invocations.
    You're broadly describing our most lethal party here. Everybody had stealth. My Dex Ancients Paladin with a 1 level dip in Rogue had expertise in Stealth. The end result was that we were all over most foes before they could do anything about it, and the criticism of the limited range of the Auras vs. AOE was often moot because we were already among the baddies (And the 7th level Ancients Aura which has already been mentioned in the thread). I wouldn't underestimate the protection from Fear Aura either; we were able to take out a Pit Fiend and a few goons fairly early only because the rest of the party didn't run away.

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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    Quote Originally Posted by 5eNeedsDarksun View Post
    You're broadly describing our most lethal party here. Everybody had stealth. My Dex Ancients Paladin with a 1 level dip in Rogue had expertise in Stealth. The end result was that we were all over most foes before they could do anything about it, and the criticism of the limited range of the Auras vs. AOE was often moot because we were already among the baddies (And the 7th level Ancients Aura which has already been mentioned in the thread). I wouldn't underestimate the protection from Fear Aura either; we were able to take out a Pit Fiend and a few goons fairly early only because the rest of the party didn't run away.
    Remark: one of the best things about Stealth--even better than the possibility of surprising an enemy and gaining tempo--is the ability to initiate combat on your own terms. E.g. if you know there's a Pit Fiend and you don't have a Paladin's anti-fear aura, but the Pit Fiend hasn't spotted you yet, you have more time to come up with a plan: maybe you aim to cast Protection From Evil on one PC to make them immune to the Pit Fiend's fear (and impose disadvantage on attacks), and then have that PC grapple the Pit Fiend, knock it prone, and drag it over to the other PCs for them to shoot at without advantage. (Disadvantage from fear + advantage for attacking a prone target 5' away = nothing.)

    For this reason I feel that a stealth capability on at least one PC is very important, and ideally you want a whole-party stealth capability and Pass Without Trace. (But you can never have everything you'd ideally like to have.)
    Last edited by MaxWilson; 2020-07-10 at 01:23 AM.

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    Halfling in the Playground
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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    This thread reminds me of an old Dungeon/Dragon magazine article... The main premise was comparing an adventuring party to a modern SWAT team. Unlike the adventuring party (which usually defines individuals by separate roles), on the tactical team everyone has the same role (put the opposition on the ground as efficiently as possible). It's basically the same premise as MaxWilson -- if you optimize for combat, you preserve resources by taking less damage.

    Can't seem to find the article again though unfortunately.

    One thing I'd throw out there is that theorycrafting optimal parties is way more difficult than optimizing individual characters. The seemingly minor choices players make (ie, spell selection, weapon selection, actions in combat, narrative actions outside of combat), end up having large cumulative swings in how encounters play out.

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldariel View Post
    Thus for an optimal party of 4, I generally prefer:
    - Lore Bard (Cutting Words is irreplaceable)
    - Diviner Wizard (Portent is irreplaceable)
    - Martialish Cleric (Arcana if going late; Forge, Grave, etc. are all fine choices too)
    - Shepherd Druid (or Moon if the early levels are a huge slog)
    As a side note, it's interesting how similar this is to a reasonably optimized 3.5 ed. optimal(ish) party. Combat cleric, combat druid, buff/debuff wizard... the only difference is that the bard has replaced the rogue for skill monkey/utility.

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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    For this reason I feel that a stealth capability on at least one PC is very important, and ideally you want a whole-party stealth capability and Pass Without Trace. (But you can never have everything you'd ideally like to have.)
    But this one really isn't hard to achieve imo; pass without trace is on plenty of spell lists, and available as a racial feature through some classes. The only difficulty is if you also want a disadvantage ging armor wearing person in the party.

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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    Quote Originally Posted by Waazraath View Post
    But this one really isn't hard to achieve imo; pass without trace is on plenty of spell lists, and available as a racial feature through some classes. The only difficulty is if you also want a disadvantage ging armor wearing person in the party.
    I agree, it's not that hard to achieve in some ways, but it's one factor that goes into party evaluation/optimization. If you have TWO druids in a party, for example, my immediate thought is "this party can afford to have pre-summoned meatshields AND still win surprise."

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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    5E has enough exploits normally held back by other party members that I think tier-zero optimal parties are going to be 100% gimmick builds.

    1 Araakockra Spell Sniper Sorlock's extreme kiting ability doesn't matter much, because every enemy who can't target him can target the PC that didn't invest in the gimmick.

    A 100% Araakockra Spell Sniper Sorlock Party is basically guaranteed no-risk victory against the vast majority of encounters, and because of that can safely nova through all other encounters without worrying about their depleted resources becoming relevant later.

    Similarly, stealth is often constrained by the least stealthy party member. But a party that goes all-in on stealth, such as 3 AT's and one Trickery Cleric 3 / AT 17 doesn't even really need to let the vast majority of encounters happen. And those few monsters that pose anything like a serious challenge (e.g. Aboleths with their Detect legendary action) can, again, be safely nova'd to smithereens without worrying about needing those resources later.

    The goal of the original thread gets into the mathematical complication of Shapley Values. In "fair" parties playing "normal" DnD I'd argue most of the differences in value comes from two places:

    • Reliance on other PC's to not die (-)
    • Ability to assist the party in recovering from or averting TPKs (+)


    This is because generally most encounters and adventures are highly winnable, with very little upside for "winning more", and the biggest risk IME is cascading character failure.

    Which is why I kind-of agree with a lot of the controversial choices in the original thread.

    A single PHB paladin on his lonesome will do alright. If he's added to the party later, lay on hands is enough to bring someone back from zero (recovering) and occasionally his nova will bring a threat down (averting).

    A single non-bladesinger wizard isn't going to make it very far on their own. This means that a lot of their apparent contribution to the group is substantially attributable to the other party members that keep them alive. While they do have some ability to avert disaster (e.g. force cage the baddy away), there's much less value add if they're redundant (e.g. because there's already a Lore Bard with Force Cage) and they have basically no ability to directly recover the party from disaster via healing. Wizards are extremely powerful, but that doesn't actually mean that that much of party success is due to them.

    The main areas where I then have to disagree with the original thread (outside of the issue of having too much in-class variance) is the low ranking for clerics.

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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    I think low opportunity cost gimmicks are nice to have. Everyone putting some effort into Stealth for instance is pretty nice and then you add Pass without Trace on top of it and you're good. You don't really need to Expertise it; that's excessive. Spell Sniper, however, is kinda pointless; you can already 600' kite with Longbows as basically any class as long as you make sure you out-mobility the enemy. This is the principle behind the Expeditious Retreat Wizard on level 1; you can ER to move at twice enemy speed and then just engage them beyond their effective range, using illusions and hiding (as an action) as necessary) to ensure one-sided combat.

    Similarly, everyone playing Aaracokra or another flying race would have obvious benefits and fairly low opportunity cost (though significantly higher than just stealth; one skill and Dex-focus is pretty low downside while race can get you a feat or magic resistance or things of that nature). What I don't really see is much advantage to Sorlock in this case; Longbow has plenty long enough range already and if the fight is one-sided, the amount of hits you need to take a single target down doesn't really matter. It's also worth noting with regards to flying races that a significant part of all established campaign paths is dungeons, where aerial kiting is much harder and they have to deal with a whole day's worth of enemies. And there's the issue of having to notice the enemy at long enough range to be able to start the kiting thingy.


    Far as being able to get someone back on their feet, yeah, it's a nice ability but generally you don't need everyone in the party to have it. Going from 3 to 4 Healing Worders is already a bit redundant in basically all circumstances. I'd say 2 is necessary and 3 is ideal but 4...doesn't really matter. For the party I suggested, Wizard/Cleric/Druid/Bard actually does get 3 Healing Worders (and I think Wizard in such a case adds much more than anything else could to the party) in addition to the maximal range of out-of-combat ability to maximise the ability to solve non-combat encounters regardless of the type of encounter. I honestly have a hard time seeing which character would be better off as a Paladin. I don't really see what a Paladin in this context would provide that a Bard/Druid/Cleric wouldn't do better aside from some potential burst (but all of those classes have other forms of nova). This is not to say that Pally would be bad again, but I do feel full casters generally provide you with more in the grand scheme of things (more ways to ensure death rolls never happen/more ways to ensure enemy doesn't get away/more ways to ensure you can solve any enemy or encounter with a single efficient effect).
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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    Quote Originally Posted by MinotaurWarrior View Post
    5E has enough exploits normally held back by other party members that I think tier-zero optimal parties are going to be 100% gimmick builds.

    1 Araakockra Spell Sniper Sorlock's extreme kiting ability doesn't matter much, because every enemy who can't target him can target the PC that didn't invest in the gimmick.

    A 100% Araakockra Spell Sniper Sorlock Party is basically guaranteed no-risk victory against the vast majority of encounters, and because of that can safely nova through all other encounters without worrying about their depleted resources becoming relevant later.

    Similarly, stealth is often constrained by the least stealthy party member. But a party that goes all-in on stealth, such as 3 AT's and one Trickery Cleric 3 / AT 17 doesn't even really need to let the vast majority of encounters happen. And those few monsters that pose anything like a serious challenge (e.g. Aboleths with their Detect legendary action) can, again, be safely nova'd to smithereens without worrying about needing those resources later.

    The goal of the original thread gets into the mathematical complication of Shapley Values. In "fair" parties playing "normal" DnD I'd argue most of the differences in value comes from two places:

    • Reliance on other PC's to not die (-)
    • Ability to assist the party in recovering from or averting TPKs (+)


    This is because generally most encounters and adventures are highly winnable, with very little upside for "winning more", and the biggest risk IME is cascading character failure.

    Which is why I kind-of agree with a lot of the controversial choices in the original thread.

    A single PHB paladin on his lonesome will do alright. If he's added to the party later, lay on hands is enough to bring someone back from zero (recovering) and occasionally his nova will bring a threat down (averting).

    A single non-bladesinger wizard isn't going to make it very far on their own. This means that a lot of their apparent contribution to the group is substantially attributable to the other party members that keep them alive. While they do have some ability to avert disaster (e.g. force cage the baddy away), there's much less value add if they're redundant (e.g. because there's already a Lore Bard with Force Cage) and they have basically no ability to directly recover the party from disaster via healing. Wizards are extremely powerful, but that doesn't actually mean that that much of party success is due to them.

    The main areas where I then have to disagree with the original thread (outside of the issue of having too much in-class variance) is the low ranking for clerics.
    [Googles 'Shapley values', stares at formal definition for a while, gives up for now due to lack of time]

    Very interesting thoughts, thanks for sharing. That's an interesting way of thinking about things, and I agree that if you have no ability to control the narrative and pursue greater challenges (it's not a sandbox), optimizing to minimize the chances of catastrophe is a perfectly reasonable approach.

    A related way to think about party optimization could be "how robust is this party against player error?" Are there certain PC classes which rely less on player skill, perhaps to the point where an incompetent or malicious player still cannot lose?

    The Holy Grail of one approach to party optimization (Punching Above Your Weight Class) might be "a party build which is so strong that, when played by skilled players, it can fight its way through an army of 5000 orcs and mind flayers and then kill Tiamat at 1st level at least 50% of the time, without even taking a short rest."

    The Holy Grail of another approach (Avoiding Catastrophe) might be "a party build which is so reliable that you can run 10,000 Adventurer's League tables with this build through the same WotC adventure without a single TPK."

    The Holy Grail of a third approach (Minimizing Incompetence) might be "a party build which is so reliable that one semi-competent newbie and three covertly-malicious saboteurs who are actively trying to TPK by displaying abject cowardice (Dashing away instead of fighting) and mistakes like Fireballs which 'accidentally' harm more PCs than bad guys will still successfully complete a typical WotC adventure at least half 90% of the time."

    I conjecture that these three types of party optimization lead to very, very different party builds.

    Furthermore, builds are only optimal w/rt a given set of rules and a style of DMing. E.g. Eldariel mentions Healing Word as an important mitigation strategy, which reminds me that Healing Word has very low importance at my table because HP can go below zero, and you can't just take a Fire Giant critical to the chest and pop back up on your feet with a single Healing Word (unless the Fire Giant crit left you at just-barely-negative HP). Another example: some DMs will actively attempt countermeasures against PC strategies that get used repeatedly, e.g. the Aarakocra party is now facing only monsters with spells and ranged attacks, 80'+ flying speed, or both. At these tables, the "best" strategies aren't those that work the best, they're the ones which are best at deceiving the DM into thinking you're on the verge of TPK when you actually still have lots of hidden defensive depth. (Having lots of Healing Word might be excellent under this type of DM, although I wouldn't really know because I avoid these types of DMs--but if you've got 2 PCs hitting zero HP in every encounter and everybody hovering around 10% health, the DM may not think hard about the fact that the party collectively still has 20 spell slots that could go towards Healing Word, full HD for short-resting, a Rope Trick to enable short rests, a Brazier of Summoning Fire Elementals, and a Horn of Valhalla for emergencies. The trick is to look weak without being weak.)

    The Adventurer's League Punching Above Your Weight Class build might not even work at my table, or vice-versa.
    Last edited by MaxWilson; 2020-07-10 at 03:10 PM.

  26. - Top - End - #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eldariel View Post
    I think low opportunity cost gimmicks are nice to have. Everyone putting some effort into Stealth for instance is pretty nice and then you add Pass without Trace on top of it and you're good. You don't really need to Expertise it; that's excessive. Spell Sniper, however, is kinda pointless; you can already 600' kite with Longbows as basically any class as long as you make sure you out-mobility the enemy. This is the principle behind the Expeditious Retreat Wizard on level 1; you can ER to move at twice enemy speed and then just engage them beyond their effective range, using illusions and hiding (as an action) as necessary) to ensure one-sided combat.

    Similarly, everyone playing Aaracokra or another flying race would have obvious benefits and fairly low opportunity cost (though significantly higher than just stealth; one skill and Dex-focus is pretty low downside while race can get you a feat or magic resistance or things of that nature). What I don't really see is much advantage to Sorlock in this case; Longbow has plenty long enough range already and if the fight is one-sided, the amount of hits you need to take a single target down doesn't really matter. It's also worth noting with regards to flying races that a significant part of all established campaign paths is dungeons, where aerial kiting is much harder and they have to deal with a whole day's worth of enemies. And there's the issue of having to notice the enemy at long enough range to be able to start the kiting thingy.
    The point of going all in on the gimmick is to reduce the number of non-trivial threats to as near zero as possible. Every marginal increase to the vulnerability you're exploiting actually has exponential gains, because you're basically working with a geometric distribution representing a mean time to happen of "we actually need to try for this encounter".

    For example, a regular basic rogue with reliable talent at level 11 can never get lower than a 23 on a hide check. That alone means that they only have to exert effort when:

    An enemy has a PP above 23
    There is no source of heavy obscuration
    The enemy has an action economy advantage that allows them to both make a perception check and take useful action, and a reason they need to be killed and not just bypassed
    The enemy has good AoE and a reason they need to be killed and not just bypassed

    That's a very small proportion of encounters already. Let's call it 5%

    If you just add pass without trace, suddenly the PP to beat becomes 33. Let's call that now 4% of encounters.

    That may seem like a small difference on the surface, but it has huge implications. You're going from "We can expect to complete 12 encounters trivially" and "we can expect to complete 17 encounters trivially."

    Now say that having invisibility takes it down to 3%. That's 23 trivial encounters. Now say that mage hand ledgerdemain takes it down to 2.5% (Because one out of 200 encounters is about retrieving an attended object from someone with AOE damage or powerful action economy), it's now 27 encounters. Etc etc.

    And those % are probably too high. Unfortunately I can't seem to find a way to search monsters by passive perception or other relevant attributes, but I think a fair estimate for the optimized stealth party is that they probably coast through 99.95% of encounters by level 11. There are several CR 20+ monsters that are a trivial challenge to them. There's quickly increasing marginal returns to extreme numbers just in terms of how rare it is for an enemy to exceed them.


    The kiting thing is more complicated because your real enemy becomes geometry. But again, it's all about the increasing returns to extreme cheese. If, at level 4, you all can go back and forth 25ft a turn, shoot from 600ft away, and push the target 10ft back per hit, you're already trivializing a huge number of encounters. Getting more features to make it even more extreme has huge returns.

    Far as being able to get someone back on their feet, yeah, it's a nice ability but generally you don't need everyone in the party to have it. Going from 3 to 4 Healing Worders is already a bit redundant in basically all circumstances. I'd say 2 is necessary and 3 is ideal but 4...doesn't really matter.
    Right, but when calculating these values you need to consider every order of adding the characters.

    In a Paladin / Wizard / Druid / Bard party, for the paladin you'd add up:

    The change in value for him vs nobody
    The change in value for every other class solo vs that class + the paladin (a HUGE change with the wizard)
    The change in value for any two of the other classes vs that pair plus the paladin
    The change in value for all three of the others together plus the paladin.

    To put it another way, the paladin, bard, and cleric are all equally the first, second, and third characters with healing.

    For the party I suggested, Wizard/Cleric/Druid/Bard actually does get 3 Healing Worders (and I think Wizard in such a case adds much more than anything else could to the party) in addition to the maximal range of out-of-combat ability to maximise the ability to solve non-combat encounters regardless of the type of encounter. I honestly have a hard time seeing which character would be better off as a Paladin. I don't really see what a Paladin in this context would provide that a Bard/Druid/Cleric wouldn't do better aside from some potential burst (but all of those classes have other forms of nova). This is not to say that Pally would be bad again, but I do feel full casters generally provide you with more in the grand scheme of things (more ways to ensure death rolls never happen/more ways to ensure enemy doesn't get away/more ways to ensure you can solve any enemy or encounter with a single efficient effect).
    But I think this is the wrong way of looking at things.

    If you want to decide the whole party at once, I think we can agree that the top choices are going to be specific janky exploit build.

    If you want to look at the overall power level, that's nice but kind of irrelevant (being more powerful rarely lets you win more).

    If you want to asses classes by their contribution to a fair party playing normal DnD, that's where I think wizards fall behind in the "Party Member" rankings compared to the "Class Power" rankings.

  27. - Top - End - #27
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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    The Holy Grail of one approach to party optimization (Punching Above Your Weight Class) might be "a party build which is so strong that, when played by skilled players, it can fight its way through an army of 5000 orcs and mind flayers and then kill Tiamat at 1st level at least 50% of the time, without even taking a short rest."

    The Holy Grail of another approach (Avoiding Catastrophe) might be "a party build which is so reliable that you can run 10,000 Adventurer's League tables with this build through the same WotC adventure without a single TPK."

    The Holy Grail of a third approach (Minimizing Incompetence) might be "a party build which is so reliable that one semi-competent newbie and three covertly-malicious saboteurs who are actively trying to TPK by displaying abject cowardice (Dashing away instead of fighting) and mistakes like Fireballs which 'accidentally' harm more PCs than bad guys will still successfully complete a typical WotC adventure at least half 90% of the time."
    I am reminded of an exchange we had in another thread.

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson
    Quote Originally Posted by LudicSavant
    It's not for every situation / party composition (for example, it can occasionally ruin your own Bard's day), but it's something I'll see optimizers who wanna fight 6+ Deadlies a day with Tucker's Kobolds / OSR Gygaxian meat grinder style DMs actually prepare, unlike other spells you gave similar ratings.
    I like this way of thinking about usefulness.
    Last edited by LudicSavant; 2020-07-10 at 05:15 PM.
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  28. - Top - End - #28
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    First of all, excellent posts everyone, thank you. This is quite the fruitful conversation, I can see.

    Quote Originally Posted by MinotaurWarrior View Post
    The point of going all in on the gimmick is to reduce the number of non-trivial threats to as near zero as possible. Every marginal increase to the vulnerability you're exploiting actually has exponential gains, because you're basically working with a geometric distribution representing a mean time to happen of "we actually need to try for this encounter".

    For example, a regular basic rogue with reliable talent at level 11 can never get lower than a 23 on a hide check. That alone means that they only have to exert effort when:

    An enemy has a PP above 23
    There is no source of heavy obscuration
    The enemy has an action economy advantage that allows them to both make a perception check and take useful action, and a reason they need to be killed and not just bypassed
    The enemy has good AoE and a reason they need to be killed and not just bypassed

    That's a very small proportion of encounters already. Let's call it 5%

    If you just add pass without trace, suddenly the PP to beat becomes 33. Let's call that now 4% of encounters.

    That may seem like a small difference on the surface, but it has huge implications. You're going from "We can expect to complete 12 encounters trivially" and "we can expect to complete 17 encounters trivially."

    Now say that having invisibility takes it down to 3%. That's 23 trivial encounters. Now say that mage hand ledgerdemain takes it down to 2.5% (Because one out of 200 encounters is about retrieving an attended object from someone with AOE damage or powerful action economy), it's now 27 encounters. Etc etc.

    And those % are probably too high. Unfortunately I can't seem to find a way to search monsters by passive perception or other relevant attributes, but I think a fair estimate for the optimized stealth party is that they probably coast through 99.95% of encounters by level 11. There are several CR 20+ monsters that are a trivial challenge to them. There's quickly increasing marginal returns to extreme numbers just in terms of how rare it is for an enemy to exceed them.


    The kiting thing is more complicated because your real enemy becomes geometry. But again, it's all about the increasing returns to extreme cheese. If, at level 4, you all can go back and forth 25ft a turn, shoot from 600ft away, and push the target 10ft back per hit, you're already trivializing a huge number of encounters. Getting more features to make it even more extreme has huge returns.
    There is first a more fundamental framework we need to work on: namely, the one Ludic refers to. What are we optimising towards? And what are our assumptions for the DM? My default for DM is "neutral DM who neither panders for the party nor builds against them" and default optimisation goal is "campaign arc efficiency"; ergo, a party that can just divine the big bad behind the story, teleport to them, imprison them forever in a ring and then proceed on to the next campaign is better than the party that has to slog through the encounters to get to the oracle, then fight through the BBEG's lieutenants and underlings, then get the McGuffin and then disable them via. McGuffin. There are other options: if you want to optimise towards "encounters" instead of "campaign", then things like stealth and flight parties become more relevant; they aren't very good at dealing with campaign level stuff but their gimmick is good for encounters. Similarly, they're good with neutral or favourable DM but absolutely worthless with adversial DM who will obviously just make sure no encounter ever caters to your gimmick and thus it's useless.

    If we assume "campaign" and "neutral" as our optimisation paradigm, we can discuss your idea further. The problem with stealth optimisation as suggested is that Reliable Talent means 11 levels in Rogue. At that point a casting class would be pretty close to trivialising every single encounter that doesn't deal with the object itself via e.g. Scrying, Contact Other Plane and Teleport. Stealth is first and foremost a low level power; we want to ensure sufficient minimum stealth to never be detected by standard enemies while stealthing without overspecialising. The thing is, overspecialising detracts from your ability to deal with the encounters that do beat your gimmick: a Rogue is just far worse at dealing with [thing] than any casting class, almost regardless of what [thing] is (call it 95% of [thing] on higher levels, which we're talking about). The number of enemies that have 19 but not 22 PP is not very significant. I posit you gain more encounter points by focusing on your ability to deal with the 19+ PP enemies than by trying to further go for 22 PP enemies, especially since most cases where this matters are where stealth fails (that is, the circumstances don't lend themselves to stealth). More to the point, you gain way more campaign solving points by having the right spell to the task instead of having to engage with whatever mundane nonsense the campaign expects you to (take SKT for example; instead of going through the whole nonsense you can just figure out Iymrith and Slarkather are behind the whole deal, unveil their facade and proceed to kick their asses so hard they kiss the moons and skip ~5+ levels worth of encounters entirely).

    Overall, I think all this just speaks for maximising your casting, specifically because campaign level magic does skipping encounters way better than skills. Better than Teleport is Rope Trick + Plane Shift, which we can include many classes in and thus get in and get out at will. The more 7th level spells the party has, the easier it is to, instead of bypassing encounters in some circumstances, to entirely just circumvent the whole arc of "get to X". I posit that Stealth is a Tier 1-2 strategy; Tier 3 changes the landscape of the whole game with the ability to just skip travel and movement entirely. Tier 1 travel is walking/flying, Tier 2 travel is Phantom Steed/equivalent, Tier 3 travel is teleportation. Tier 3 travel negates the whole concept of "encounter".


    If we add flight, that's again a really worthwhile Tier 1-2 strategy. It comes at the cost of Tier 3 power (where everyone can fly of their own volition and more to the point, encounter skipping forms other than flight become more important). I don't think overspecialising for the few percentages is really worth it compared to just using minimum resources for a gimmick and then using your actual build resources towards making sure you can overcome scenarios that completely negate your gimmick. Again, increasing your combat range from 600' to 1200' is just not that major; the bigger issue in 600' vs. 1200' is spotting and terrain rather than your attack range per ce. You can get 600' combat range and flight fairly cheap which can easily be worth it but I posit that the difference between 600' and 1200' is marginal; the number of encounters that can deal with one but not the other is just minor. Neither is good for dealing with any non-combat encounter, trap, social encoutner, etc. for instance

    Quote Originally Posted by MinotaurWarrior View Post
    Right, but when calculating these values you need to consider every order of adding the characters.

    In a Paladin / Wizard / Druid / Bard party, for the paladin you'd add up:

    The change in value for him vs nobody
    The change in value for every other class solo vs that class + the paladin (a HUGE change with the wizard)
    The change in value for any two of the other classes vs that pair plus the paladin
    The change in value for all three of the others together plus the paladin.

    To put it another way, the paladin, bard, and cleric are all equally the first, second, and third characters with healing.



    But I think this is the wrong way of looking at things.

    If you want to decide the whole party at once, I think we can agree that the top choices are going to be specific janky exploit build.

    If you want to look at the overall power level, that's nice but kind of irrelevant (being more powerful rarely lets you win more).

    If you want to asses classes by their contribution to a fair party playing normal DnD, that's where I think wizards fall behind in the "Party Member" rankings compared to the "Class Power" rankings.
    I actually think the opposite. In normal D&D as well as janky exploits parties, I think the party with a Wizard simply has options normal parties do not, which makes it more powerful. I don't think any individual gimmick is all-encompassing enough to make up for lacking e.g. Contact Other Plane, Teleport, Scrying, Clairvoyance, familiars or company.

    If we're playing campaign level D&D, nothing bypasses campaign arcs like a Wizard. Similarly, if we think combat, nothing solves [enemy] like a Wizard simply because Wizard spell list is the most encompassing. But Wizard power is more in altering encounter nature to be more favourable and fighting CaW style information wars (Find Familiar, Magic Mouth, Phantom Steed/Tiny Hut, etc. are all scaling effects of the same style) - though it certainly also brings irreplaceable combat effects (Wall of Force is the best way to negate 99% of the Monster Manual; even if the enemy survives, it doesn't matter since you're miles away by the time it can move again and if the party has multiple casters, you can ensure the enemy will not survive with a DoT of course).

    Re: Janky exploits specifically, I think they're just too one-sided. If they ever do run into a campaign arc where their janky exploit doesn't work, they lack the ability to bypass said arc like a party with all the 9th level spell lists available does. I think it's more important to be able to skip encounters than it is to defeat them, and more important to outmaneuver the enemies than it is to defeat them. Though I think you also want a decent degree of ability to defeat the enemy in cases where that is the campaign arc. If you must kill Zariel in hell, you must kill Zariel in hell; no amount of encounter bypassing gets you around that fact (though it can give you advantage in the act itself). I don't think a single module for instance is solvable via. Stealth without extremely loose stealth DMing (so not with a neutral DM). Many, however, are quite solvable via. teleportation and planar shifting combined with the ability to use a couple of Glyphs of Warding to nova an encounter dead with couple of hundred gold pieces (that you can trivially generate).

    EDIT: I suppose I should also defend my position on Wizard vs. a Generic DPS Class With Healing Word. I think the most important way of preventing "cascading character failure" as you put it is to minimize the chances of it happening. I think the best way to do it is magic that disables; this is because enemy HP scales ridiculously but enemy saves don't. Thus the most reliable way of making sure the enemy isn't outputting more damage than you're capable of taking without the whole party being downed before the healers get to it. As an example, Princes of the Apocalypse features an encounter for level 5 characters featuring up to half a dozen Fireball casting enemies with 50+ HP each. The only real way to deal with something like that is to use magic like Hypnotic Pattern and to beat their initiative.

    Again, I think Wizard is just the best party to such an end though Bard also works. I don't think a Healing Word class really adds much to it; it's a failsafe after the "TPK potential" is disabled but the part that makes the party survive the encounter is a couple of concentration disables that prevent the Fireball Doom. And that's something only CC classes can provide; they do so proactively so it's not as obvious since the party doesn't get to know what would've been but that's all the more valuable since it not only saves the party but also significantly conserves party resources.


    To try to formulate what I believe is the ultimate measurement of party power, I think narrative overrides are the de-facto thing we should be looking at since that allows the party to pick exactly what to engage in and thus picks what's the most favourable to them. Of course, this links purely to CaW, but I don't think CaS really makes sense in the context of ~a third of the spells chapter of the PHB, so provided we consider the whole system, I posit we should assume CaW framework.


    But it's true that the framework needs at least four components before we can get to the party optimisation framework itself:
    1) Combat-as-War or Combat-as-Sports?
    2) Pandering, neutral or adversary DMing?
    3) Encounter-level or campaign-level optimisation?
    3b) Maximal difficulty or maximal endurance?

    Are there any aspects I'm missing here?

    I think we should assume RAW WRT e.g. yoyo healing since that is the only common framework we all have and probably the most commonly used, though we could also try and address common houserules (Exhaustion upon healing or negative HP, I think). I think that would make the list most broadly applicable. It would probably be too cumbrous to consider more than few outliers (but perhaps yoyo healing specifically is common enough a house rule consideration that it warrants mentioning in rankings).
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  29. - Top - End - #29

    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    Quoting the parts I'm responding directly to:

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldariel View Post
    *snip*There is first a more fundamental framework we need to work on: namely, the one Ludic refers to. What are we optimising towards? And what are our assumptions for the DM? My default for DM is "neutral DM who neither panders for the party nor builds against them" and default optimisation goal is "campaign arc efficiency"; ergo, a party that can just divine the big bad behind the story, teleport to them, imprison them forever in a ring and then proceed on to the next campaign is better than the party that has to slog through the encounters to get to the oracle, then fight through the BBEG's lieutenants and underlings, then get the McGuffin and then disable them via. McGuffin.

    *snip*

    Though I think you also want a decent degree of ability to defeat the enemy in cases where that is the campaign arc. If you must kill Zariel in hell, you must kill Zariel in hell; no amount of encounter bypassing gets you around that fact (though it can give you advantage in the act itself). I don't think a single module for instance is solvable via. Stealth without extremely loose stealth DMing (so not with a neutral DM). Many, however, are quite solvable via. teleportation and planar shifting combined with the ability to use a couple of Glyphs of Warding to nova an encounter dead with couple of hundred gold pieces (that you can trivially generate).

    *snip*

    But it's true that the framework needs at least four components before we can get to the party optimisation framework itself:
    1) Combat-as-War or Combat-as-Sports?
    2) Pandering, neutral or adversary DMing?
    3) Encounter-level or campaign-level optimisation?
    3b) Maximal difficulty or maximal endurance?

    Are there any aspects I'm missing here?

    *snip*

    perhaps yoyo healing specifically is common enough a house rule consideration that it warrants mentioning in rankings).
    I have some problems with "campaign arc efficiency" as a metric for "better" (as opposed to, for example, maximum difficulty), and it's difficult to articulate why because the issues are all related. Let me make some observations:

    (1) If a campaign has a fixed arc with a specific BBEG that can be efficiently solved, and then you have to start a new campaign, then wasn't that "campaign" really just a single adventure? A campaign is what happens when you re-use the same PCs across multiple adventures.

    (2) Sandboxes don't necessarily have fixed BBEGs in the first place. You could just have a bunch of factions. Narrative power in this context could mean something like "player ability to take over a faction," or "ability to leverage one's faction to achieve one's character goals."

    (3) 5E... doesn't work all that well for Combat As War play, especially by RAW. I say that as someone who loves CAW, but finds that it requires the DM to innovate enormously in the empty spaces of RAW to give players even a moderate amount of predictability (and therefore agency). Super-simple example: 5E (DMG) RAW is that you can typically spot an enemy coming from a mile or more away if there are no obstructions, but of course there's no RAW on how common obstructions will or should be, and common practice (as opposed to RAW) seems to be to just make everything tiny enough to fit on a battlegrid with 5' squares. If the goal is "neutral DM", then you can't really have Combat As War as a goal too without making a whole bunch of other axes about DMing style.

    Maybe we should talk more about this part, but I'll give one other example of something I think doesn't fit well into 5E: surprise attacks on PCs during downtime. In principle there's nothing stopping an enemy of the PCs from collecting the bodies of various foes the PCs have defeated (a few beholders, a couple dragons, a Mind Flayer Arcanist or six) and Wishing them back to life over the course of a few weeks, then one night after midnight Teleporting everyone to wherever the PCs are, throwing up an Antimagic Field, and having the monsters eat all of the PCs who are present. (If PCs aren't glued to each other during downtime this scenario becomes "eat one of the PCs.") From the perspective of gameworld logic this could happen, but in practice we don't do this, and I think one reason is that it doesn't fit into the 5E idiom. 5E makes implicit promises with its approach to saving throws, easy resurrection, etc. that your PCs will have a fighting chance, and having the DM arbitrarily decide one day to kill you isn't fun. Having the DM arbitrarily decide not to kill you is just as arbitrary, but more fun, so we do it. If 5E were a game where things like divination and scry-and-die were meaningfully integrated into gameplay so that this became a game of play and counterplay, or politics and intrigue, then maybe even dying in this way could become fun, but it's a game without rules for stuff like this beyond handwaving: "the DM will decide what makes sense," so in practice we just don't do this stuff, unless the DM innovates heavily beyond the borders of RAW.

    (4) Solved games cease to be fun. I don't play Tic Tac Toe any more except with little kids who don't know how to play it properly. Or rather, I only play Tic Tac Toe variants which increase the difficulty to the point where it's no longer solved for me: three-person Tic Tac Toe on a 5x5 or 4x4x4 grid, for example, is still interesting.

    So anyway, one reason I don't really love the idea of optimizing for campaign-arc efficiency is that it sort of implies that your goal is to make your own adventures boring. In a sandbox this isn't as much of a problem assuming you can just seek out greater challenges, but that sort of ties into CAW play which 5E isn't good at (maybe we should talk more about this part?) without innovating beyond RAW, and we've said RAW is a goal.

    With that in mind I'll list additional axes that you'd have to consider if you did want to do this analysis:

    (1) How does the DM approach spell component price elasticity and availability? (I.e. can I kill a red dragon and reliably turn into 100,000s of gp into 100s of gems with which to Planar Bind to kill more red dragons, or are there only so many gems available?)

    (2) Is it a sandbox with PC-driven goals, or is there a DM-created plot which players are expected to participate in?

    (3) What kinds of hirelings are available, and how does the DM handle morale and loyalty?

    (4) Does the DM have a good way to run mass battles, or do they just get handwaved?

    (5) What's the availability of poisons? (Can they be magically created via spells like Polymorph + milking the Polymorphed creature? How about Creation for toxic plants?)

    (6) Is there some kind of game structure for players to engage with when it comes to investigations and divinations, or is it just "I cast Clairvoyance and the DM makes something up about what I overhear"? If a player intends to spend a week casting Clairvoyance and Arcane Eye over and over to learn everything possible about a given locale, do they need to have 500 ad hoc conversations with the DM while the other players sit around being bored?

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    Default Re: Party optimisation philosophy

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    I have some problems with "campaign arc efficiency" as a metric for "better" (as opposed to, for example, maximum difficulty), and it's difficult to articulate why because the issues are all related. Let me make some observations:

    (1) If a campaign has a fixed arc with a specific BBEG that can be efficiently solved, and then you have to start a new campaign, then wasn't that "campaign" really just a single adventure? A campaign is what happens when you re-use the same PCs across multiple adventures.
    This is probably an issue with how I used the terminology: a campaign arc is equivalent to a single adventure in my parlance. An arc is a part of a campaign that has a given goal. The campaign is a set of arcs intervowen in some way or another. As an example, the campaign arcs of Lost Mine of Phandelver would be getting to Phandelver, rescuing Gundred, finding and holding Wave Echo Caves. Essentially three separate arcs though the players can engage in optional arcs such as dealing with the Old Owl Well Orcs, getting knowledge of the spellbook location for Sister Garaele, helping out Reidoth, or dealing with Hamun Kost. Each of those would be a separate arc (except Orcs and Kost, since they're basically the same arc but just from two different angles).

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    (2) Sandboxes don't necessarily have fixed BBEGs in the first place. You could just have a bunch of factions. Narrative power in this context could mean something like "player ability to take over a faction," or "ability to leverage one's faction to achieve one's character goals."
    That doesn't really change anything; whether the arc is player- or DM-imposed is trivial. In this case an arc would be precisely something like "take over a faction" or "achieve a personal goal" or "defend gains against an usurper" or any of the sort.

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    (3) 5E... doesn't work all that well for Combat As War play, especially by RAW. I say that as someone who loves CAW, but finds that it requires the DM to innovate enormously in the empty spaces of RAW to give players even a moderate amount of predictability (and therefore agency). Super-simple example: 5E (DMG) RAW is that you can typically spot an enemy coming from a mile or more away if there are no obstructions, but of course there's no RAW on how common obstructions will or should be, and common practice (as opposed to RAW) seems to be to just make everything tiny enough to fit on a battlegrid with 5' squares. If the goal is "neutral DM", then you can't really have Combat As War as a goal too without making a whole bunch of other axes about DMing style.

    Maybe we should talk more about this part, but I'll give one other example of something I think doesn't fit well into 5E: surprise attacks on PCs during downtime. In principle there's nothing stopping an enemy of the PCs from collecting the bodies of various foes the PCs have defeated (a few beholders, a couple dragons, a Mind Flayer Arcanist or six) and Wishing them back to life over the course of a few weeks, then one night after midnight Teleporting everyone to wherever the PCs are, throwing up an Antimagic Field, and having the monsters eat all of the PCs who are present. (If PCs aren't glued to each other during downtime this scenario becomes "eat one of the PCs.") From the perspective of gameworld logic this could happen, but in practice we don't do this, and I think one reason is that it doesn't fit into the 5E idiom. 5E makes implicit promises with its approach to saving throws, easy resurrection, etc. that your PCs will have a fighting chance, and having the DM arbitrarily decide one day to kill you isn't fun. Having the DM arbitrarily decide not to kill you is just as arbitrary, but more fun, so we do it. If 5E were a game where things like divination and scry-and-die were meaningfully integrated into gameplay so that this became a game of play and counterplay, or politics and intrigue, then maybe even dying in this way could become fun, but it's a game without rules for stuff like this beyond handwaving: "the DM will decide what makes sense," so in practice we just don't do this stuff, unless the DM innovates heavily beyond the borders of RAW.
    I do think there are plenty of rules for this. Nondetection, Mind Blank, Scrying, Contact Other Plane, Divination, etc. are a part of the rules set as always and in a way, every class actually gets to participate a bit since Ritual Caster feat exists. Whether it's the most fun way to play the system? Ehh, depends on whom you ask. I feel like this question is irrelevant. I definitely think a PC enemy with 9th level spells could and should try just something like what's being suggested here. The PCs have weeks to enact their own plan in the meanwhile. They have divinations to figure out that somebody is moving against them and they have teleportation and the like to take the fight to them or minionmancy to raise their own army for the encounter or any such options. I do think plans like these are precisely what makes e.g. high level Liches fearsome opponents: not their combat potential but their out-of-combat potential.

    Actually, in my own LMoP game right now the party is at a stand-off with Glasstaff, unable to leave Phandalin since they know he'll take it over if they leave but as he was driven out he's not willing to give them a fight unless he has overtly favourable terms of engagement, and they have few means to force an engagement with an enemy on the run avoiding them. In short, they're fighting an information war and it's quite different bringing the party ranger in particular to bear in rather surprising ways (what's actually exposed Glasstaff is that he's animating the dead from the engagement at the hideout and the Rev. Ranger Gloomstalker has Favored Enemy: Undead so Primal Awareness actually gives him a compass straight to Glasstaff without him suspecting that it is a known quality; the party hasn't fully realised this yet which makes for a cool dynamic of both parties playing in k

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    (4) Solved games cease to be fun. I don't play Tic Tac Toe any more except with little kids who don't know how to play it properly. Or rather, I only play Tic Tac Toe variants which increase the difficulty to the point where it's no longer solved for me: three-person Tic Tac Toe on a 5x5 or 4x4x4 grid, for example, is still interesting.

    So anyway, one reason I don't really love the idea of optimizing for campaign-arc efficiency is that it sort of implies that your goal is to make your own adventures boring. In a sandbox this isn't as much of a problem assuming you can just seek out greater challenges, but that sort of ties into CAW play which 5E isn't good at (maybe we should talk more about this part?) without innovating beyond RAW, and we've said RAW is a goal.
    I don't think you can ever solve D&D. RAW D&D every ability players have is also available to NPCs so there's nothing CaW PCs can do that can't be done better by their opposition against them. Thus by definition it is impossible to ever reach a point where the party is more powerful than the challenge the world provides. Sandbox is indeed the best way to autogenerate appropriate challenge but it's of course quite trivial to activate opposition in existing modules to match this as well. There are, after all, powerful NPC demi-deity level enemies and general big movers and powerful spellcasters in pretty much all of them so they're fully capable of engaging in 5d Chess with the party.

    However, this requires the ability from the party to play the same game as well, because otherwise they will simply not have the ability to pick their fights and they'll soon be overpowered by completely unfair encounters as the enemy hits them in their weak spot when they're already spent. In short, I'd rather say that a powerful party is just a permission for the DM to actually play the world and the opposition naturally without having to dumb movers down to party level.

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    With that in mind I'll list additional axes that you'd have to consider if you did want to do this analysis:

    (1) How does the DM approach spell component price elasticity and availability? (I.e. can I kill a red dragon and reliably turn into 100,000s of gp into 100s of gems with which to Planar Bind to kill more red dragons, or are there only so many gems available?)
    So economy. Check, good point.

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    (2) Is it a sandbox with PC-driven goals, or is there a DM-created plot which players are expected to participate in?
    I think CaW pretty much assumes some degree of sandboxy but perhaps it is worth accounting for the scale of player-driven vs. plot-driven campaigns, indeed. Check.

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    (3) What kinds of hirelings are available, and how does the DM handle morale and loyalty?
    I think the first part is too detailed and campaign-specific and thus not that useful a question for a generic framework. The latter, however, is; however, I think we can assume that'll just default down to "NPC behaviour" (so NPCs will be loyal if it suits their interests and they will fight as long as they aren't at serious threat, and to gain more than that they need to stand to gain something worth substantial amounts or have firm belief in whatever they're fighting for). Probably a candidate for a key question in DMing/DM style.

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    (4) Does the DM have a good way to run mass battles, or do they just get handwaved?
    I think this is delving too far into the houserule territory as it's something the system simply doesn't touch on at all. I don't think it ultimately makes that big of a difference for the optimal party outside extreme scale minionmancy. Probably a part of a broader umbrella question on DMing/DM style.

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    (5) What's the availability of poisons? (Can they be magically created via spells like Polymorph + milking the Polymorphed creature? How about Creation for toxic plants?)
    These feel pretty minor; poisons aren't overtly big an enhancement for combat capability and as gold is often pretty cheap in the system, they probably are available through some means for PCs who want access anyways. Should probably belong under the umbrella question of DMing style.

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    (6) Is there some kind of game structure for players to engage with when it comes to investigations and divinations, or is it just "I cast Clairvoyance and the DM makes something up about what I overhear"? If a player intends to spend a week casting Clairvoyance and Arcane Eye over and over to learn everything possible about a given locale, do they need to have 500 ad hoc conversations with the DM while the other players sit around being bored?
    I'm pretty sure we should be able to include this in some broader umbrella category of game style considerations. I think this is too niche to be a consideration as a separate consideration, but "Pacing" in general is probably a worthwhile topic to cover. This would also cover things like whether resting is at player prerogative or DM purview, how do encounters occur, etc. Should probably be included under "Campaign style" - I feel like this might be a subset of "sandbox vs. plot-driven" (sandbox tends towards player-driven resting, while plot-driven tends towards doomsday clocks and DM-driven resting, but it's also influenced by DM style).


    I'll have to think about these a bit: I'm pretty sure these should all be coverable with just two-three major DM/campaign style questions instead of a set of questions on minutiae.
    Campaign Journal: Uncovering the Lost World - A Player's Diary in Low-Magic D&D (Latest Update: 8.3.2014)
    Being Bane: A Guide to Barbarians Cracking Small Men - Ever Been Angry?! Then this is for you!
    SRD Averages - An aggregation of all the key stats of all the monster entries on SRD arranged by CR.

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