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ritorix posted:These tend to be monsters with abilities that kill outside of the normal HP system. That's also what lets them punch far above their CR value, the same way as the ID's int drain is very dangerous at any level.
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Oct 12, 2014 16:05
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With all the encounter-building talk, heres a tool to do it quickly: http://kobold.club/fight/#/encounter-builder Set the group size and level, then add monsters with the + signs.
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Oct 12, 2014 16:19
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ascendance posted:I'm not sure why Fighters don't just get a power that lets them ignore save or suck effects at high levels. This would totally be in line with the old school tradition of having great saves.
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Oct 12, 2014 16:19
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I think it would be easier at this point to just clumsily retrofit the 4e monster math onto 5e, than actually try to put 5e's monster math into practice. It might not work, but at least it would consistently not work in a way that was predictable.
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Oct 12, 2014 16:31
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ImpactVector posted:I think it'd be neat if Fighters just succeeded at all saves forever after a certain point. That way the class that's pretty much locked into the HP attrition game forces their enemies to play by the same rules. Monks get proficiency in all saves and can reroll a failed one for 1 Ki. Fighter of the same level can reroll 2 per day. Fighters suck. That's actually a pretty cool thing, thanks.
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Oct 12, 2014 16:35
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ascendance posted:That's exactly the play style I intend to use with 5e, which is why the encounter math working out is not that important to me right now. This is wrong. If anything, having understandable and clear encounter math is MORE important in the sandbox than other play, because you need a consistent way of signalling to the players that they are in over their heads. The party getting one-shot by a generic centaur doesn't really know what to worry about, and the same goes for a brain on legs. There's ways to facilitate player knowledge - rumours, signs of strength and so on - but the underlying structure needs to be consistent, or the players are going to be robbed of their agency by the incomprehensible nonsense of the system.
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Oct 12, 2014 16:36
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Generic Octopus posted:That's actually a pretty cool thing, thanks. And it just showed that I was doing XP guidelines wrong. I thought the website was wrong, but nope, 5e uses the XP values as the upper threshold of that range. So a medium encounter for level 13 is 4401XP to 8800XP, not 8800XP to 13599XP. Deadly is 13601XP to 20400XP, and anything above that isn't rated. That makes our illithid and other examples all Hard encounters. A medium fight by those standards would have to drop the Umber Hulk and just be 3xIDs and a Mind Flayer. It doesn't really affect the fights per day logic - the guide still says players should be able to handle "6 to 8 medium or hard fights per day".
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Oct 12, 2014 16:44
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This encounter builder has Ancient Red Dragons as a thing a party of 4 level 20s should never ever fight...that doesn't sound right. Don't have access to an MM but is there anything to that?
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Oct 12, 2014 16:50
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Generic Octopus posted:This encounter builder has Ancient Red Dragons as a thing a party of 4 level 20s should never ever fight...that doesn't sound right. Don't have access to an MM but is there anything to that? It's CR24 with 546HP, 22AC and a 91 damage breath weapon. For a party of 6 its just a medium fight.
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Oct 12, 2014 16:57
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EscortMission posted:I think it would be easier at this point to just clumsily retrofit the 4e monster math onto 5e, than actually try to put 5e's monster math into practice. Edit: someone needs to build a list of average damage, defenses, and to-hit per level. ascendance fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Oct 12, 2014 |
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Oct 12, 2014 17:06
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ritorix posted:546HP, 22AC and a 91 damage breath weapon. Yikes. Idk it just seemed odd that a monster would be labeled as "out of bounds" for a max level party.
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Oct 12, 2014 17:08
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Generic Octopus posted:Yikes. High level d&d tends to stray very far from the guidelines. Add a few crazy magic items to a level-capped group and the xp values are basically useless.
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Oct 12, 2014 17:12
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Generic Octopus posted:Yikes. This has always been a thing, really, going all the way back to the 1e MM. Regular monsters? NAH HERE'S SOME DEMON LORDS TO DIE AT THE FEET OF. 3e had the tarrasque. Pathfinder put the tarrasque in the Bestiary and then later printed a literally unkillable even tougher one in Inner Sea Gods for the party to fight.
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Oct 12, 2014 17:19
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:I think your math is off. The ID's psychic blast first causes an intsave, which even the presumed int8 fighter (who i guess isnt an EK, and never deigned to take Resilient in his weak save) has a 40% chance of succeeding at. If he fails this save he has to lose an int contest of 12 vs 8, or d20+1 vs d20-1. [Ed note: my numbers actually originally assumed an int 10 fighter, an int 8 fighter is even worse off, lol, I'll use the int 8 example in this post] Uh, what? No. If he fails the save, 3d6 is rolled and if it is more than or equal to the fighter's int, his intellect is reduced to 0, he's stunned, and he's out of the fight. The subsequent int contest is only relevant if the fight isn't a TPK/leave the fighter to die situation, but even if the int contest is done, the fighter's new int is 0 and his odds of winning are 23%. I have seen no indication that Indomitable applies to either the 3d6 or the opposed roll, only the initial save. Rerolling a 40% chance of success is actually not a huge deal, especially when it's one of up to 3 such rolls in a turn. Your chance of success increases from 40% to 64%. 3d6 meets or beats 8 84% of the time, so your chance of not getting knocked out increases from 50% to 70%. Only, it's three attacks, not one, and the other two are unaffected. Your chance of surviving the round with your int intact only went from 12.5% to 17.5%. Indomitable actually increases your chances of surviving by a little over 30% at int 8 because the odds are so poo poo that it has a bigger effect than on int 10, but uh... I wouldn't bet on those odds, ya know? I certainly wouldn't call it "protection". The funny part of this is that depending on your level, even if you survive the fight alive (and there's no reason why you should since at a 77% chance of instant death per attack against a stunned fighter, it could well happen in round one) it could end the adventure as the rest of the party has to cart the fighter out of the dungeon and find someone to fix him. If it's a hex crawl and you don't have restorations available, you almost kind of have to hope he dies.
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Oct 12, 2014 17:38
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:Noone let go of the mind blank stick!
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Oct 12, 2014 18:00
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goldjas posted:I'm lazy(and can't really find the 4E and 5E stats easily on short notice) but if someone would link say, a 3.x orc, 4E orc, and 5e orc, and then a 3.x kobold, 4e kobold, and 5e Kobold I think what I mean by the monster design would be pretty abundantly clear. It's a long-rear end post and I'm not sure about the rules on posting this kind of thing so I just put it behind this pastebin
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Oct 12, 2014 18:07
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Over the last two years I played a lot Pathfinder. I didn't want to. I thought the system was ridiculous -- I found it convoluted, inflexible and cumbersome. I never got to play 4e (except at a convention once), but I read the PHB and I really liked what I saw. I would have preferred playing 4e over Pathfinder, but you play what people are willing to GM, and everyone played Pathfinder. With what seemed like WotC wanting to capitulate to the grognards/throwbacks, I was bracing myself to be disappointed with DnD 5e, figuring it would be Pathfinder 2.0. So... after having played 5e for a few sessions, I'm glad to say that DnD 5e has really won me over. It's a great system. I really think WotC succeeded in walking that fine line of being regressive *just enough* (i.e. catering to grognards/throwbacks that make up the majority of the customer base) while also improving the game in much needed ways for normal people. All the hate for 5e in this thread is kinda weird.
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Oct 12, 2014 18:18
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AlphaDog posted:The XP/CR numbers in the already-published MM are hosed, in that a monster can be notably better or worse than another monster at the same CR. Unless they're going to publish a list of real CR/XP numbers in the DMG, I don't see how they can possibly fix it. If they do end up going with that, it's only going to be an enormous pain in the arse to actually use. Ok here is a question. While some monsters may be better or worse then others in the same CR. Are they better then the ones in the CR above them. If they are not then their CR is fine. (Don't bring up the ID.)
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Oct 12, 2014 18:24
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MonsterEnvy posted:(Don't bring up the ID.) Just by saying this, you're indicating that you know the answer is "yes", so why did you ask?
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Oct 12, 2014 18:28
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Has Dungeons and Dragons always been released this way? By that I mean that the basic rules, PHB, MM and DMG were staggered. How did people deal with that back in the 3.x or 4E days?Dahbadu posted:Over the last two years I played a lot Pathfinder. I didn't want to. I thought the system was ridiculous -- I found it convoluted, inflexible and cumbersome. Saying "5E is bad" is kind of imprecise anyway. It's mediocre and it's conservative and it's almost guaranteed that there's another game out there that does what you want (varies from person to person) but better, or cheaper, or both. Even if we set aside 4E as something that's just so out there that WOTC would never go back to it, there's also games like 13th Age or even pre-3.x D&D's to compare it to.
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Oct 12, 2014 18:35
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Dahbadu posted:So... after having played 5e for a few sessions, I'm glad to say that DnD 5e has really won me over. It's a great system. What does it do that you like?
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Oct 12, 2014 18:36
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30.5 Days posted:Just by saying this, you're indicating that you know the answer is "yes", so why did you ask? Because its the exception.
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Oct 12, 2014 18:37
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Dahbadu posted:All the hate for 5e in this thread is kinda weird. A lot of it has to do with the math being completely hosed in 5e, having regressed greatly from the more mechanically tight 4e. The past few pages alone illustrate just how messed up the encounter system is, with very little of the monster XP budget making any kind of sense or approaching anything even close to balanced (which, as a DM, is something you very much need if you don't want an accidental TPK). Never mind the imbalances between classes and how something like a Bard does the gish thing better than the Eldritch Knight. Like, it would be one thing if WotC took 3.X, streamlined it, and made the math make sense, but they didn't. It smacks of laziness and a lack of understanding of how to make a good game, and of ignoring several advances in RPG systems that have gone on over the past few years. As someone said, 5e would be a fine game in 2003, but this is 2014 and that poo poo doesn't fly anymore.
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Oct 12, 2014 18:38
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gradenko_2000 posted:Has Dungeons and Dragons always been released this way? By that I mean that the basic rules, PHB, MM and DMG were staggered. How did people deal with that back in the 3.x or 4E days? 4e was the only one with out it. Wotc disliked it because they had to do a ton of errata at once. Now they have a smaller team and they want to focus on one book at a time.
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Oct 12, 2014 18:39
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MonsterEnvy posted:Because its the exception. What possible design process or ethic could produce something as completely loving out of band as the intellect devourer but otherwise be entirely A-OK? You're delusional. EDIT: To answer your question, if I recall from earlier in the thread, the rust monster is CR 1/2 and the orc is CR 1.
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Oct 12, 2014 18:39
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Dahbadu posted:Over the last two years I played a lot Pathfinder. I didn't want to. I thought the system was ridiculous -- I found it convoluted, inflexible and cumbersome. If all you've been playing for years is 3.X/Pathfinder then Next probably seems like a substantial improvement. Next isn't the worst game ever, and by all accounts it's (relatively) better than 3.X, which is damning with faint praise but there you go. The argument over Next's CR system and how it doesn't really work as advertised, for example, is why you're seeing people in this thread bag on Next the way they are because after playing/running 4E or even other non-D&D games, the "improvements" Next makes aren't and the ways in which it's regressive sometimes go out of their way to break things that other editions had actually managed to fix in the first place.
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Oct 12, 2014 18:39
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Dahbadu posted:Over the last two years I played a lot Pathfinder. I didn't want to. I thought the system was ridiculous -- I found it convoluted, inflexible and cumbersome. Most of the 'hate' for 5e is a stew of disappointment, mismanaged expectations, continued bitterness over the non-stop edition war rhetoric and resounding blandness of a regressive game. I think people wanted to like 5e. Most of us here were fans of 4e or at least rotated it into our play. 5e pretty much came out of the constant bashing of 4e about very specific and often false things that the designers of 5e evidently took to heart despite their falseness, e.g., Fighters shouldn't be like WoW warriors, magic doesn't feel magical enough, etc. The parts that are pretty decent were done much better in other games, including 4e, which now is like the Edition That Never Happened. There are a couple of cool innovations in 5e and I think everybody is on board with those (Advantage is a cool idea, Inspiration is fun, and a few others) but mostly people are just tired of the constant defense of mechanics that don't make any sense except to enshrine tradition.
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Oct 12, 2014 18:42
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Wait does the 5E MM actually not have an index organized by monster difficulty? Even 3E had that, what the gently caress?
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Oct 12, 2014 18:47
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30.5 Days posted:Wait does the 5E MM actually not have an index organized by monster difficulty? Even 3E had that, what the gently caress? You have to download it as a PDF
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Oct 12, 2014 18:51
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So hey I dipped into the MM and here's another example: CR2 Centaur is AC12, HP 45, Speed 50. It has a +6 reach 10 19dmg attack, a +6 reach 5 11 dmg attack, and can do 10 bonus damage on any round if it gets 30 movement first. CR3 doppleganger is AC 14, HP 52, Speed 30. It has +6 reach 5 7 dmg attack, another +6 reach 5 7 dmg attack, and can do 10 bonus damage on the first round if it surprises you.
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Oct 12, 2014 18:56
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30.5 Days posted:What possible design process or ethic could produce something as completely loving out of band as the intellect devourer but otherwise be entirely A-OK? You're delusional. Then you would be wrong. The Orc is 1/2 as well. 30.5 Days posted:So hey I dipped into the MM and here's another example: 30 movment straight. Doppleganger also has the power to easily gain advantage and disguise itself but yeah the Centaur is in a direct fight more deadly. The Doppleganger is more for ambushes and deception.
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Oct 12, 2014 19:12
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30.5 Days posted:Wait does the 5E MM actually not have an index organized by monster difficulty? Even 3E had that, what the gently caress? It's a downloadable PDF. It is planned to physically be in the DMG along with the encounter building guidelines were it would be most useful.
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Oct 12, 2014 19:13
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MonsterEnvy posted:Then you would be wrong. The Orc is 1/2 as well. Well it might have been a bit too strong for CR1 but that's fine then
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Oct 12, 2014 19:14
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Really Pants posted:Well it might have been a bit too strong for CR1 but that's fine then How so. Orcs are fairly tough but they are inferior to Every CR 1 creature.
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Oct 12, 2014 19:16
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Kai Tave posted:If all you've been playing for years is 3.X/Pathfinder then Next probably seems like a substantial improvement. Next isn't the worst game ever, and by all accounts it's (relatively) better than 3.X, which is damning with faint praise but there you go. I'm still not convinced it's better than 3.X. It's simpler, which is something, but it's also only two books. I agree that 5E is likely better if you're just starting out, but I've got a decade's worth of material, house rules, and running experience. I just don't see a lot of reason to switch to a mediocre system.
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Oct 12, 2014 19:17
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gradenko_2000 posted:Has Dungeons and Dragons always been released this way? By that I mean that the basic rules, PHB, MM and DMG were staggered. How did people deal with that back in the 3.x or 4E days? But yes, D&D Has been released this way a lot. I think the real exception was the Basic Set. People have gotten around this by buying a starter box set, or by buying an adventure with monster stats and set encounters.
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Oct 12, 2014 19:34
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IT BEGINS posted:I'm still not convinced it's better than 3.X. It's simpler, which is something, but it's also only two books. I agree that 5E is likely better if you're just starting out, but I've got a decade's worth of material, house rules, and running experience. I just don't see a lot of reason to switch to a mediocre system. Piling a bunch of supplemental material and house rules on top of a lovely game doesn't actually make it less lovely though. That with years of experience, tons of extra stuff, and having internalized all the bugs and flaws enough to let you weave your way through them you can run 3.X without it imploding isn't really a selling point. I'm not saying Next is a great game or even a good game because I don't think it is, I think it's a pretty mediocre one, but if you're sick to death of dealing with 3.X's particular brand of brokenness and won't play 4E or BECMI or even AD&D2E and you absolutely have to play something with D&D in the name because your game group digs their heels in if you try, then Next is probably the better option.
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Oct 12, 2014 19:43
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Now, even though I'm playing it, I think we should start put together a D&D 5e death pool. I would define death as... * announcement of a revised edition * WotC stopping production of D&D products * sale or licensing of D&D brand to another company, with WotC ceasing production of D&D products Any other scenarios that constitute death that I have missed?
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Oct 12, 2014 19:44
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ascendance posted:Now, even though I'm playing it, I think we should start put together a D&D 5e death pool.
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Oct 12, 2014 19:50
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ascendance posted:Now, even though I'm playing it, I think we should start put together a D&D 5e death pool. At LEAST 18 months. EDIT: Like wizards make it very clear in 5E's design that they see 4th as a failure, and it was still 3 and a half years from 4E release to 5E announcement. 30.5 Days fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Oct 12, 2014 |
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Oct 12, 2014 19:51
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