Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on May 22, 2015 15:39:12 GMT -8
In order to challenge the players I *am* having to come up with encounters that are higher than suggested, which means higher HP. I have noticed that the fights are taking longer. The suggested model for 5E is that the party will face about eight encounters of medium-difficulty per adventuring day. Many DMs are finding they need to use high-CR encounters in order to challenge the party, because they're only doing two or three combats in a day, so the party isn't sufficiently worn-down going into those fights. One suggestion for handling this is to change the length and period of a long rest. If you say that a long rest takes twenty-four hours, and you can only take one long rest per week, then you don't have to cram all of those fights into a single day before they start taking their toll on the party.
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Post by rickno7 on May 22, 2015 16:35:04 GMT -8
There's your problem right there. Additional rule books always seem to add more and more crunch to a game. The Complete X series taught me the same lesson, but I promptly forgot it after Pathfinder started rolling along. I resisted for a few years, then got comfortable with the Advanced Player's Guide and permitted a few classes. Next thing I know, we've become the douchebags with the "Dual-Shieldmaster/TechnoWitch/Quad-Crossblooded Half-God VikingMonk (slash Order of The Extra-Smite Paladin for self-heals)" and I kind of just want to burn all my books. I think I'm going to enjoy just using the Inner Sea World Guide for inspirational or drop-in world ideas and just abandoning the rule system. I understand why they more or less had to stick with it, and it was a huge improvement over the existing rulebase--but it's just not something I can overlook anymore. I'm tempting fate with D&D 5th. I think the Ranger got the worst, most boring treatment of all classes in 5E. So if they have some class books that work on the Ranger, I'll probably get them. That's my favorite class even though I don't really get to be a player very much these days.
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Post by ilina on Sept 25, 2015 7:14:21 GMT -8
D&D 5e Assumes you have 8 encounters of moderate difficulty per day, but like any other edition, it is a war of Resource Attrition. and bigger encounters is kind of a bad solution. it leaves no real build up. plus you don't have the smaller fights as Resource Taxes.
say you have 6 Fights at CR = APL, you can do a 7th Fight at CR = APL+2 and get away with a 7 fight day where the 7th fight feels epic because the first 6 fights were resource taxes. this was also a problem i have witnessed in pathfinder, 3.5 and most editions of D&D
solo monsters will never be a tough enough encounter on their own, but enough waves of cleverly played small fries can really eat up player stamina and i would assume 12 or even 16 waves of goblin or kobold reinforcements dispersed throughout the day oughtta make things fine.
if you try to do 4 encounter days, 5E doesn't do that. PF didn't either. PF Assumed 1 Encounter at CR+2. one Encounter at CR, 4 Encounters at CR-4 and 2 encounters at CR-2 for adventure module design, the lesser encounters were supposed to be resource taxes while your worked into the bigger fights with reduced stamina. that same logic could help with 5e.
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The GMs Table
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 9
Preferred Game Systems: Savage Worlds, D&D 5e, FF Star Wars
Currently Playing: I'm exclusively GMing right now
Currently Running: Savage Worlds, D&D 5e, FF Star Wars
Favorite Species of Monkey: Spider
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Post by The GMs Table on Sept 27, 2015 13:24:53 GMT -8
In my experience 5th edition is all around faster but not prefect. High CR monsters get hp spongy and the assumed 8 combats per day attrition are issues, but the adv/dis system let's you crazier with situation and environmental effects. Personally I like throwing lots of smaller enemies that are still a threat (thanks to the limited bonuses with in the system) as more of a set piece are setback while having a single bigger threat that acting as the real fight. I would also looks at how they suggest handling large groups with limited rolling in the DMG.
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Oct 5, 2015 20:35:02 GMT -8
I'm running for a group that came straight from D&D 3.5, having skipped 4E. They feel that the combats run faster than 3.5. The group is currently at level 8.
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Post by ilina on Oct 6, 2015 0:06:38 GMT -8
5e fights are faster than 4e fights, mostly because 5e has fewer overall mechanics to worry about and generally simpler ways to determine damage. plus, while 5e monsters are HP sponges, monster armor class is much lower, spell damage is far more potent in a relative manner, and with no penalty on iterative attacks, martial characters hit much more often. and thanks to the changes to resistances and removal of most immunities, monsters are easier to damage. plus, turns go much faster with a smaller list of prepared spells. i mean, a 5th level wizard with 20 int prepares 10 spells at a time, and well, evokers getting int to each magic misile or scorching ray means big bad monsters die faster. actually making evokers and magic missile useful for taking huge chunks out of a bosses health bar.
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Oct 9, 2015 5:46:09 GMT -8
I can't figure out why Stu keeps complaining that 5E combats are slow. I don't think my group has ever had a single combat that lasted as long as 90 minutes--and many of them are on Roll20, which is slower than face-to-face for me because I haven't gotten around to finding out how to set up macros, so I manually type out many of the rolls. It's not player experience either, because my players and I all started playing 5E at the same time.
Maybe I should get caught up on the Eldemy APs and see if I can figure it out. Does anyone know which session has the 90-minute combat?
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Post by babbageuk on Oct 15, 2015 0:34:26 GMT -8
Combat in 5E is markedly faster than combat in 4E and marginally faster than combat in Pathfinder. This becomes more and more pronounced the higher up the levels you go. In 4E the whole idea was "difficult to hit, lots of hit points, lots of damage", whereas in 5E it's "easy to hit, lots of hit points, decent damage". Your AC doesn't scale and stays relatively flat, as does your attack bonus. I prefer this model as it's much more satisfying to hit every round for a decent amount of damage than it is to miss every round and eventually hit for a ton of damage. The effect is the same over a number of rounds, but you've had more fun. It's true that if you let your players rest often, or don't have enough encounters between rests, they will coast through and rarely be challenged; they will always have their healing available. It doesn't matter what CR you're using if the party is out of heals and worn down by other, earlier combats. Watch your players squirm!
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Post by greatwyrm on Oct 17, 2015 6:46:32 GMT -8
When we played online a few days ago, I had 6 PCs vs 2 animated suits of armor, 4 flying swords, and a barrel of animated caltrops. It penciled out at about medium difficulty. I think it took us maybe 20 minutes or so. that would have been close to an hour and a half in 4e.
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starwar
Apprentice Douchebag
Posts: 52
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Post by starwar on Nov 7, 2015 4:54:00 GMT -8
I have had combats that have gone over an hour, so in honesty I would have to say combats can go long. I nor to my knowledge the players, have never been bored of any of those battles.
For whatever reason the players roll bad when it comes to fighting goblins. So, the times I threw goblins at them those encounters felt longer than they should have been. While not boring, slightly frustrating for us all. I chose to have the goblins start running away when the players finally got a good hit in. It made since to me story wise, if everybody is missing goblins would split when they see one of there own take a big blow while not dealing out much damage of their own. Once during a long combat and once during a shorter one (that should have been shorter).
The players and I are pretty in sync with what we all find fun. For the most part more role playing, but a fun and memorable battle at least once every three sessions. The times those fun and memorable battles lasted over an hour, they were fun and memorable (including the goblin combat once we got over that hump of bad rolls). Like most of the shorter ones. A few short combats while memorable to me, fell under the "remember not to waste the players time" type of memorable. I prefer a session long epic battle than a five minute waste of time. But that is not to say that I never had a five minute fun and memorable combat.
While I can understand why session long battles can be unappealing, I have yet to encounter that feeling. Nor have I felt sessions without combat were unappealing. Though I would not want too many of either to come around too often without a few good mixed sessions to break them up.
So, the short answer is 5-90 minutes in my experience. Probably a 25 minute mean. Though I saw some of a four hour or longer battle people did against Tiamat, that was too long for me even. But then again I was only a temporary spectator that time.
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