Post by Finarvyn on Dec 11, 2014 5:20:47 GMT -6
When I started running 5E in my home campaign, I told my players to forget "everything you think you know" about older D&D -- monsters are different, bonuses are different, the scale is different. Now I'm finding I have to heed my own advice and rebuild my own "scale intuition" for the new edition.
In my Wednesday evening 5E sessions at the local game store, I'm running into some issues with scale and how to challenge my players. After a dozen or so sessions they have finally reached 5th level and I'm discovering that they can do a lot of things. (In my defense, I hardly ever run adventures higher than 3rd or 4th even in my OD&D games, so this may be an issue for any edition and not just 5th. )
Anyway, I'm finding that when I toss an encounter at them which seems to be a real tough challenge, sometimes they just wade their way through without much difficulty. The wizard has a key spell or the monk has some ki power or the fighter has a high enough AC that the monsters never seem to hit or there's always something.
I know there is a section about "balance" in the DMG and I'll probably have to read it because there is probably a rule as to how many monsters to throw at the party based on their level. I'm trying to run HOARD OF THE DRAGON QUEEN by the book, however, and hate to extrapolate too much or deviate too much from the numbers given in the module.
Anyway, I'm not sure if there is a question here or if I'm just having a mini-rant. If others have encountered similar situations, I'd like to hear what solutions you found for them. (I still like 5E and have to run the game as 5E in this store session, so switching editions isn't a fair solution.)
In my Wednesday evening 5E sessions at the local game store, I'm running into some issues with scale and how to challenge my players. After a dozen or so sessions they have finally reached 5th level and I'm discovering that they can do a lot of things. (In my defense, I hardly ever run adventures higher than 3rd or 4th even in my OD&D games, so this may be an issue for any edition and not just 5th. )
Anyway, I'm finding that when I toss an encounter at them which seems to be a real tough challenge, sometimes they just wade their way through without much difficulty. The wizard has a key spell or the monk has some ki power or the fighter has a high enough AC that the monsters never seem to hit or there's always something.
I know there is a section about "balance" in the DMG and I'll probably have to read it because there is probably a rule as to how many monsters to throw at the party based on their level. I'm trying to run HOARD OF THE DRAGON QUEEN by the book, however, and hate to extrapolate too much or deviate too much from the numbers given in the module.
Anyway, I'm not sure if there is a question here or if I'm just having a mini-rant. If others have encountered similar situations, I'd like to hear what solutions you found for them. (I still like 5E and have to run the game as 5E in this store session, so switching editions isn't a fair solution.)