One problem with 5e being so open ended is that as you’ve proved it’s very easy to break the game if you know enough of the rules. Whereas pathfinder is way complicated but it’s nowhere near as easy to minmax and it’s a lot easier to get balanced encounters. So whilst I’m not defending pathfinder or attacking 5e, having played both i can see disadvantages to both.
My group has essentially a gentleman's agreement not to break the game -- like, if there's something that can clearly invalidate the plot completely, the players just don't do that, and in return, the DM agrees not to actively try to kill or otherwise screw over the players. It helps balance the game wonderfully.
That's how all the games I've played have run too, except the DM says it explicitly. I then look for how to cheese the system even harder to stay within the letter of the law. It's like Occam's Razor in reverse.
At the weekend I had a player at level 5 who insulted a Marid. It was a devastating fight and I gave them the opportunity to flee. Otherwise that would have been a TPK. Not sure if this was a good decision, but now they have two problems: The Marid is pissed and they don't have any potion of waterbreathing left.
Blaine: "the rules are so open ended that anyone capable of critical thinking can patch problems that make their games less enjoyable" Me: *cries in stupid*
I went to Pathfinder 2 as a test, but won't go back. It has actually functional encounter building rules and is fun to run, while providing players with more options as well. Note, Pathinder 2, not Pathfinder 1.
@@mycatistypingthis5450 pathfinder combat is painfully slow though. As a player there's such a wait between turns and as a DM there's so much to do. The rest of 2e has been great though
@@jamieadams2589 Even in online play? I soley play online so generally things go very fast in 5e, so i am kinda wondering because ive been curious about 2e pf
God, I would kill for official Spelljammer rules for 5e. Found two of the old books for it at a Goodwill when I was 11. They were what got me interested in TTRPGs.
Some of my favorite games were with a big group of players playing 3e. We constantly fought significantly higher threat enemies, because of our numbers. You would die in two or three hits usually.
@@KjoshWaddellBananasAreGood I mean during the actual problem. You use the slot when you enchant the item but don't need to consume a spell slot to use an enchanted item.
As someone who makes every character with point-buy and average HP increase, I look on in horror whenever someone rolls for those things. I am not a gambler.
To me, D&D's engine is more suited to a classic Roguelike attitude. Make three heroes in your first session, roll 3d6 in order and choose race and class afterward, roll for HP even at first level. Maybe I'd even ask you to roll for your race and then choose class, since like your individual level genetics your parentage isn't something you have control over, but your career path is. You will fight random monsters. You will receive treasure off a randomized table. No, this dungeon doesn't have a bottom floor; just an infinite stack of basements with stronger monsters, better treasures, and nastier traps. If I wanted point buy, I'd go with Hero System or (more likely) GURPS. In that case, giving basic guidelines about how to build a character and looking forward to the wacky, mentally unstable maniac the players throw at my game world would be the appeal.
One stunt was to make every PC character get 13s in every stat to start with. After that, the players can increase one stay by 1 pt if they drop 2 other stats by 1 pt each (or drop one stat by 2 pts). So the more they min-max the worse overall they become, and it is all their choice
@@toddkes5890 That's just point buy, basically, only you're changing the reference point from 8 to 13. I do think it's more "fair" than making people roll for stats and more interesting than the standard array (and 13s across the board is what I'd have always taken when I was new to the game in part because I love middle of the road jack of all trades characters and 13 is my favorite number anyway). I also like the way it sounds on paper more than the paragraph of rules that goes into standard point buy due to its very easily grasped exchange rate.
@@stevenmatthews4848 Nobody mentioned Morning Lords! Quit trying to... oh... Well, Revenants was perfectly... Oh well... at least Wardens weren't... bugger... But Seekers! No wait...
Then there is Pathfinder 2e, where the classes are mostly balanced, and people love it. Except for 1e caster mains that loved being overpowered. And 1e Bloodrager/Skald mains who don't have a good way to translate their build. And D&D5e players who don't like adding double digit numbers. And bad DMs who prepare boring combats and are pissed that their players always fight the same. And serial multiclassers who dislike the new uncheesable multiclassing system. And OSR players who are like "bro PF2e is still basically D&D5e, if you really wanna try something cool and different you should play *insert OSR game*".
I'll go to my grave before telling my players that the bbeg actually had 1 hp left after being punched by the cleric (attack of opportunity). I let him get the killing blow because of how awesome it was.
It'd be nice if some of my DMs would do that. So many end-of-dungeon/plot-line bosses (not BBEG) down in 1-3 rounds. Congratulations! The final battle was 18 seconds long...wut?
I do something a little different for HP gains at level up for my players. They roll their hit die and I roll one in secret. They can either take take the number they rolled or take the gamble for what I rolled. It keeps things interesting.
@@JoelFeila Honestly, I have players that will only take my roll if they roll a one or two in an effort to minimize their odds of a low roll. Sometimes it means they take their 5 instead of my 8. It's just a game of chance that's all. I don't really think there is a decent way of "figuring out" who is rolling higher. I have a pretty good poker face.
@@jonsimpson6240 the issue is that if every character is perfectly balanced all the time then we run into a 4e situation where it doesn't matter what class you are
@@jamieadams2589 agreed. And I'm not really expecting that. I just want the players to be able to be expert at something, average at most things and mediocre at some things. If one player becomes expert at all things, it could start being less fun for the table.
Every time I get a bad roll either on a fight or stats, I just see it as a challenge to try and beat the game while being a piece of paper with the strenght to lift a spoon
I deliberately create really dumb character concepts, that have obvious flaws. I made a really gobby goblin fighter once who was constantly getting himself into fights that he couldn't win due to his puny strength stat - he had like, -1 in strength despite being a melee fighter - and then had to find a way out with my intelligence and charisma. It was really funny to play.
@@ethanbotterill2743 Archer with +3 for missiles, +6 initiative, -4 Dex check to move without tripping over their own feet. A far sight rogue with poor night vision, prone to dropping his lock picks. Fighter -4 str to carry, +10 to push/shove, +5 atk/dmg through plat armor due to brute strength, -3 to hit cause cause lacks hand and eye coordination.
With a mildly generous GM & some good luck I can have a build that kills great wyrm chromatic dragons in the amount of "real time" somebody can remember the number to their favorite pizza place
In a game of 3.5 I'm in, my character can do 24 attacks in a single round as long as I don't move, 12 if I do. It gets to the point that if they keep trying to block me, they very soon won't be able to block me.
@@SorinCloud Im playing pathfinder as a void cleric, whilst it doesn’t sound overpowered remember I have augment calling and calling feathers Meaning I can summon 10hd outsiders with a 4th level spell at level 7. I also have thoughtful wish maker, meaning wishes I make, can’t be twisted. So at level 7 I have access to genies. And wishes, which can’t be twisted. Not to mention the other powerful outsiders I can summon I also am a divine paragon of nocticula, so when I reach a high enough level, I can change outsiders alignment to mine, to get a loyal army. Whilst this isn’t the most powerful, it’s definitely very broken.
seeing DMs that are genuinely capable of making good challenges for high power campaigns are genuinely a sight to behold, though sometimes even they still have to trot out of the ban hammer.
In a high power, homebrew heavy game.I have great pride in making the DM ban tactics as the rouge. He gave us an item that let us sacrifice HP to cast spells, I took magic initiate for shield and suddenly I can spend 8 HP to cast shield, and AC 23 is a lot to deal with.
I really like the Stars Without Number way of rolling HP: Every time you level up, you roll ALL of the hit die you would have on the level and add modifiers. If the total is less than you already had, increase your HP by 1. If it's more, then it becomes your new total.
I had to scroll way too far down to find one of my SWN siblings. It's the only game that made me ever feel good about having players roll stats. Ability score rolling has a similar safety net by letting players discard one roll and replace it with a 14. Since SWN distributes its modifiers over a rather gentle bell curve, a 14's +1 modifier is as good as most characters can realistically hope for, ensuring even the worst rolled characters have something to contribute. Since skill checks are made on 2d6 instead of 1d20, that +1 is worth a lot more than it probably seems.
Legit, the fun of D&D for me is probably the pure unbalanced chaos of it, I like having to deal with my party almost getting wiped by mimic I thought was obvious enough, or having to add some crazy new thing to a fight that’s just too easy.
I had players write up multiclass 4th-level PCs, then turn around and have them play baby mimics killing off an orc hoard moving into their cave system. Player, " So can my baby mimic learn to use a crossbow I wrote up for my PC you wasted my time on ?" Me as DM, " Yes. " Other player, " How about my wizard/rogue ?" Me, " Yes." Third player, " I'm going to have so much fun with my ranger/rogue stealth abilities." Me, " Don't forget you can climb across ceilings and evasion dodge Fire Balls along with sneak attacks for extra damage."
My first d&d game was 3.5 and then pathfinder, I've been playing pathfinder nonstop every week for over 5 years and I'm still learning new things about it
My DM uses max HP instead of rolling and as players we love it and appreciate it. Doesn’t make us too powerful at all, we struggle all the time to avoid TPK
We also do that in our campaign, enemies also take this into their stats, but at the end of the day it doesnt change much, it only makes abilities like fireball not as deadly as they are most of the time, that way everyone has a better chance of surviving abilities that on other places would be too deadly, and it also allows players to take more chances on potentially dangerous situations
Throw back to my first game DMing, where my entire party died to the first fight in Lost Mines of Phandelver. Three times. I gave them an extra party member NPC just to balance the encounter. I should've adjusted the encounter, not the party, but it was my first time
That's okay, clarity comes from experience and doing stuff for the first time can be hard and confusing. If you fail, it's only a failure if you didn't learn anything from it.
@@AttilaTheOneOriginal There were ideas nothing else. No guide on how to make a Dungeon challenging enough, or what kind of traps to do, or how to space out encounters, or how much XP to give etc. No I don't count 2 pages of rollable tables for ideas as a guide. They should have done what they did to the workshop category where they gave you solid advice and guides on what to build.
@@MegaAgamon There were far more than 2 pages of tables. I think the TOC shows 2, but there's more like a dozen pages. These give you ideas for the types of traps, types of encounters, etc. What are you looking for exactly, maybe I can try to help? A dungeon is inherently a creative endeavor. If you want something perfectly balanced, maybe try slightly modifying an existing adventure? Because DnD is such such open ended game, theres not a whole lot they can put on the DMG that will be guaranteed to result in a good dungeon for you. I do see though that it does lack explicit details on pacing, number of encounters, etc. I definitely think these are things they could have tried to make some charts for at the very least, but I suspect they just figured it is something something you'll know from experience. One could argue thay your pacing doesn't matter at all if the party either gets lucky or rests alot, but if you're saying what I think you're saying, I can totally see the frustration. Unfortunately, there is no easy answer, and most of it is experience based. :/ What helped me was to listen to a D&D game podcast and try to absorb what seemed to go well, and what didn't. Being a player can also help develop this sense.
@@AttilaTheOneOriginal The DMG cannot guarantee a good result for anything, magic items, monsters, spells, character options. Yet for those they have guides on how to create them in chapter 9 the workshop. I started DnD back in 2017 as a DM, it seemed way more interested than being a player for me. So I went and bought the DMG as my first book. To quote the actual cover "Everything that a Dungeon Master needs to weave legendary stories for the world's greatest roleplaying game" The reason I bought this book is that while I did have ideas plenty of them I lacked the skill and experience to implement them. And I was hoping that this book would help me, because every guide I found online through either youtube or forums were ideas not implementations and guidelines. Honestly my frustation was through the roof when I discovered that the DMG was a book full of ideas but very little mechanics and implementations. I didn't need my dungeons to be perfect, I just wanted to implemented my idea in a way that didn't suck.
The one thing I like about rolling for stats rather then point buy isn’t being allowed to go higher, it’s being allowed to go lower. It’s amusing to me to have -2 or -3 for something, so when those checks come up, it makes the character feel weak in those areas rather than just being okish at almost everything. I mean sure you’ll roll low in some cases anyway even when you specialise but there’s something funny about rolling lower then 1 in something for a strength or charisma check sometimes.
Oh man, once played a campaign where everyone got +9 stat bonuses (I think, don't remember the exact amount). You rolled 5 stats, and then 6th was determined so that your total bonus was the same as everyone else's. I played a bard with a constitution of 1. I didn't die during the campaign, but every time I got hit i started making death saves.
Yeah I typically like point buy the only thing is that you (at least typically) can’t start with anything higher than a plus 3 and nothing lower than a -1, and even for the plus 3 your race needs to have a bonus to that stat from your race which limits your options a lot.
It does follow specific design principles. In 5E, if some piece of matter is created by some spell, it is always destroyed when the spell ends. Also, players are very rarely directly punished for using an ability or spell, see the frenzy barbarian or the wish spell. 25 is the max AC for creatures, but not for players. And others 👍
I've DM'd several homebrew campaigns, and one of the hardest fights my players ever had in my games was against a Tabaxi Fighter possessed by a cursed crystal. The crystal let it use several spells, and the crystal would also try to possess the party's minds after every reset of the turn order. However, it was the fact it let the Tabaxi (who already had an AC of 17) use Shield (temporarily boosting it to 22) that caused them so much trouble. It could only use it a few times, but until it ran out of Shield uses they could barely scratch him, whereas he had multiattack and was striking several of them with his sword per turn. I think it may have led to a few of my players actually wanting to branch out their spell lists, since spells that require saves don't care how high the enemy's AC is; if they'd focused on those (assuming they had them) then the fight would have been way easier.
Just to add on: My first campaign. We're level 16 in my first ever round of combat. One party member uses Hunger of Hadar around the enemy. They roll bad on those saves. Its my turn. I don't know how effective its gonna be, so I add in a blade barrier along the perimeter. I get some crazy damage rolls. Long story short, these poor arena fighters stumble out of pure frozen darkness filled with acid tentacles, only to walk through 5 feet of sharp death, and promptly forfeit because most of their health is gone from 2 spells. The murder hobo PC rolled bad initiative, and didn't even have time to use the machine gun bow build they had which can one round people. We plan on saving that combo in case we ever need to ruin some people's days again. Whenever we type the name its in bold and italics, because that entire encounter was trivialized so fast the DM was ahead of schedule.
Once when I was 14, our local RPG club decided they were sick of pootling about at low levels and decided to have a level 20 PVP session. (This was 1994 btw). We all had to come to next week's session with a level 20 character as pimped out as possible and basically played a tabletop version of Fortnite all night. One of those totally unforgettable sessions.
Petition for Blaine to spend an episode creating custom classes for certain play styles like a cheater who meta games but this class lets you gain information you aren't supposed to have
I like how you didn't acknowledge od&d or becmi. For people who are having balance issues with 5e, try playing some OSR or older D&D editions. They reward players for acquisition of treasure over killing monsters. There's a morale system with clear use cases. Sometimes monsters you come across in the dungeons won't immediately want to kill you! It's about the story of your consequences much more so than the narrative of the DM's plot.
I got fed up with D&D ages ago. I eventually wrote my own game system which is sort of like GURPS in that you can do anything with it, except that actually works and it's really easy.
I like how in the red riding hood joke he said that that was the dark version. I’m from germany and one of my children picture books had that excact ending 😅😂
The Wolf's name is Fred, stay away from Fred cause he likes to screw around. Red Riding Hood catches .. Fred .. in bed with Grandmother. The Hunts Man catches Fred in bed with Grandmother and Red Rinding Hood. Hunts man, " Fred ! You said you will stop Cheating on Me, on US ! " Fred the Wolf, " Come on now it really is not what it looks like, .. well it is, but really Hennry you need to stop taking our relationship not so seriously. " Now telling this joke in the USA by translating both in English and German and you will get. " Is the Wolf's name Fred or Adolph ?"
If only there was a way for a DM to restrict access to magic items. If only they had some power over the game to prevent this. Oh wait, they do. Just like how they can eliminate randomness on rolling HP for monsters (something which nobody does), they too can also decide “The party isn’t going to get an immovable rod, but rather get a bag of holding”. And HP wise, we always do roll and average is minimum HP you can get. None of these balancing issues come up from people who just aren’t idiots. And as for the shambling mound example, I’d totally throw that it against a party whose utilizing one form of damage without any reason. It would make more sense if one of them was a pyromancer or trying to make a storm themed caster, but most scenarios probably don’t have that. Punishing your players for leaning on one thing too much gives them the gentle reminder “You know you can have damaging spells other than firebolt and fireball, right?” And with an entire party of wizards, that’s a glass cannon scenario that would struggle in early levels as they die to two hits from some of the weakest creatures in dnd.
I open a time portal to have an F-22 Rapto- I mean a large metal bird temporarily rain down fire against our foes. *Rolls Nat 20* **AN F-22 RAPTOR SHOWS UP TEMPORARILY SHOWS UP TO PUT LEAD INTO A WHELP, THEN IT LEAVES THROUGH ANOTHER PORTAL** Huzzah!
The way my group does stats is something we got from Way of the Wicked. Everyone gets one 18 and one 8 to place anywhere they want, then roll the rest. That way everyone has something they're guaranteed good at, something they're guaranteed bad at and that fun element of chance for the rest.
Was given a Cloak of Displacement when I was a very squishy Wizard. I multiclassed Cleric and now I have 18 AC, Shield spell readied, and Displacment. Alongside the Portal Wand (gun), Branch Evergreen has become a terror that can be taken down with a single lucky shot.
I recently took the Lucky feat. I haven't gotten to use it yet, but my DM is already scared even though I'm not playing a Halfling (let alone a Halfling Divination Wizard). If you know the Lucky feat, you know how busted that thing is.
HP gain on level up is worse than that, because the "average" is rounded up, meaning it's mathematically superior to rolling for HP, when that should be the benefit the inconsistent, random option should offer.
You wouldn't believe the amount of unwritten rules we made with our DM in pathfinder when we got high level spells. "No scry and fry" "No summoning T-rexes that have more hit points than the whole party" "No sundering items unless you want yours sundered" and my favorite "No teleporting the enemy into the sun." The list goes on enough to fill it's own book
4:09 Which, contrary to popular belief, is how most fights play out IRL. One side or the other will likely have the upper hand from the start, or pull the upper hand out their rear end with some inventive thinking. Having a "Balanced" encounter where both sides take a while to win is just unrealistic and hard.
So apparently original D&D has no limit on the amount of times you're allowed to activate a wand in one turn, at least according to my GM. I found out when I tried to shoot my wand of fireball at a dragon and my GM asked how many charges I'm using. The dragon died a few seconds later after I unloaded 15 fireballs directly into its face. Perfectly balanced, clearly.
I have ran a few games, and most of the time a battle goes about as planned. But above level 5 it can get harder to predict really fast. You almost have to know your players better than their characters, because some players, no matter the class they play, manage to be helpfull every battle while others just flail about randomly. I am not even talking about hardcore minmaxing. For a good example a couple of weeks ago the party got ambushed by 2 slaad. Together they would have been pretty deadly together. But with a clever summon lesser demons right in front of the furthest slaad he basically kept that one "out of the fight" so they could club that first one. 4 of the party were slaughtering that 1 slaad, but the "bright" fifth player of the party decided that sniping at the 2nd slaad from a distance would be the best idea. Similarly, when that same player from the first example plays a bard when there's a handful of enemies in a cluster he casts enemies abound on the toughest looking one. The boss of that group starts wacking on his servants. In the same trend, if you think sending a flock of kobolds in a blob towards a 5th level sorceror/wizard you can bet your ass it's getting fireballed. And if you play with a player that twin hasted twice it is likely they'll do it again when given the right setup. When you create a setup that highly favors some of the parties favorite moves you can go high on the balance and the party will have a great time incinerating opposition. But at times, try to create situations that don't favor their usual strategy, and make it normal if you are affraid the party isn't flexible enough to counter it. And with don't favor their usual strat I don't mean counterpick everything against the party. If you suffer from twin haste if you "force" the sorcerer to get more use out of any other spell, such as see invisibility, fly or even spiderclimb, you will eliminating the meta just by immediate surroundings. If you keep your brutes being affected by "enemies abound", try using a caster as boss sometime, or a properly spaced ambush with more equally strengthed creatures which devalues the effect of using a mind controlling spell. Long story short if you have smart players and give them a straightforward fight they're likely to abuse the situation and steamroll the enemy. If you create a more complex situation, with more working against the players the balance shifts into the enemies favor.
I like to use the random numbers provided in the stat block as a range (for example- the Orc has 2d8+6 hp, so it has an hp range of 8-22). That means any time a foe takes damage within that range the hit *could* be the kill shot depending on what's happening. This gives flexibility in both narrative and pacing, rather than unbalancing the game. It also has the added benefit of showing the players that the creatures are different from the exact stat number, but not completely although I can see how it wouldn't be for everyone. Another thing I like to do w/those hp ranges is when I have a group of a bunch of one type of monster- I like to set 1 or 2 (depending on how many) to the lowest hp threshold and 1 or 2 to the maximum while setting the rest either at standard or close to it. The effect makes these monsters with the same stat block seem pretty different in play, usually with the stronger foes assuming an almost "encounter boss" standing, even if it's just a pack of wolves which are otherwise similar.
Biggest gripe with 5e: Bad Optimizers. These people will sit there and write up a whole statistics analysis, probability scenarios, and quantum mechanical algorithms to prove to the DM that dragons should NEVER land and ALWAYS fight from the sky in every situation with no wiggleroom. Then when the DM rules otherwise, they rules lawyer up and pull the "Um, akcthually" then call you a bad DM if you don't let them reflavor a fireball to do cold damage instead because "It's just math, the specifics don't matter as long as the math is right" actual quote from an optimizer I spoke to
I’ve got a friend new to being a GM and since he doesn’t know how to balance things out I’ve been acting as a helper both out of game and in game where I’m playing as a high level teacher who jumps in whenever the encounter is turning into a TPK. Which is what I recommend other new DM’s do, have a high level NPC on standby to act as bail when your plans go to shit and if you feel spicy when the party is strong enough by themselves you can always make them a twist villain the party has to kill off.
Something I like to do for combat is to get rid of ‘hit points’ and just have attacks do actual things like rupturing a kidney or tearing the wing etc. It just makes combat flow better for my group then video game style health bars, and helps with immersion.
The random rolls are always odd in NPC encounters. You can have a horde of 100 orcs... all with 1hp. Or a Ancient dragon that has 20hd with 20. But I think the most broken thing in DnD is NPC parties. Player character classes are by and large built to take on the world. A small party of adventures face dozens of enemies and epic monsters... Coming up against enemies with those same powers tend to end in death. Far too many abilities are simple save or die situations. It's why people tend to worship stats because in that critical situation nothing you do but having a high constitutions or dex will save you from instant death.
First off, 4E was awesome. 2nd off, later editions didn't make getting into play easier. Maybe versus High Gygaxian AD&D 1st Edition, but Basic/Expert were and still are far easier to explain and introduce characters into then just about any other version of D&D (even Od&d because of how demi-humans worked. The problem with rolling stats is a major one you missed. In the early days, stats had little impact on game play. Meaning a fighter with a 4 strength in OD&D could contribute just about as much as one with an 18 strength because there were no hit modifiers based off the attribute. The Greyhawk supplement added the plethora of attribute modifiers we have all come to love and hate, and that made it where what you rolled was super important. B/X d&d scaled the modifiers way down, so even an 18 only gave you a +3. So again, rolling stats could be a fun addition to character creation. Also, for most characters, only Dex, Con, and Cha mattered (yes, Cha). High or low Int and Wis had zero impact on casters. Str mattered to fighters and clerics, but Con (for hp), dex (for ac), and cha (for hirelings) were the important stats. So yeah, if you play 3.X+ editions where stats are everything, then yes, it's a problem to roll stats. But it didn't have to be like this. Also, rolling for HP is and was always stupid. You don't get a random to hit modifier, nor do you get a random amount of spells or skills. Why the hell should you get random HP?
I specifically had my Players start as Level 2 Paladins in my Undead/Demon eradication campaign so they can always get a Smite in if they need to reduce the enemy HP fast
@@burritoornot856 Yeah.... like that's a no from me dawg. It's one thing for the GM to ban certain classes/races due to lore of their world and the like, but, you can't just assign a class to a PC, no matter how few levels. It's not the GM's character. Don't step on your players agency. I'm a GM first & foremost, in case someone wants to say something like "PlaYeR Is bUtT huRT oVeR rUlE zErO"
@@SuperSwineGod2MaximumOverSwine Ye, understandable, that's why I advertised it as such, since many people will be against it, so only those who are interested would join, I did have a couple people who asked to join before reading the whole thing so I had to highlight some stuff in my post lol
If you want to get better at making homebrew rules for D&D, best advice I could give is to play other TTRPGs! There are so many fun and interesting ones out there with a variety of mechanics and abilities! Easy one I've found, the Flashback mechanic from Blades In The Dark. Put in D&D, this gives your players the option to call for a flashback if they'd like to have prepared something beforehand , like maybe secret hand signals for the party. You can give them a roll to either see how well the prepared or how well they act in that moment, but using the "Act now, plan later" idea from Blades In The Dark means that your players can figure out more interesting ways to overcome obstacles in the moment. They can plan for what DOES happen instead of what COULD happen. If you want you can limit how many flashbacks they get, maybe tie them to inspiration points, or you can go nuts and always have it be an option. Have fun!
@ 4:00 that's not the DM's fault for putting a reasonably challenged monsters against their party and for the party to fail in being flexible or strategic. Of course the expectation is different at different tables, but I think most would expect if players fail so poorly by bad spell choices then it isn't the DM's fault at all.
Balance can be a pretty hard thing to achieve. If two fighters have different weapons, you might "balance" them in terms of overall damage output, or a combination of damage and defense from a shield. But once you start getting into different classes and abilities, finding balance turns into a game of comparing apples and oranges. Tactical advantages such as movement or crowd control are hard to quantify, and there's basically an infinite number of ways for creative players to apply their class features in a fight. I've always disliked trying to challenge my players by simply giving monsters more health, or making them hit harder. Instead, I'd rather look for abilities that confound my players' strategy, and smart tactics of my own. My group knows that I make up 90% of my own stat blocks, so they can't expect the monster manual to be of any help. I do try to be consistent with what I give to a monster; a disgraced former soldier might have a feat like sentinel, but his undisciplined lackeys won't have anything special. My overall approach to balancing an encounter is to give my monsters many more tools than I think they'll need. Most of those tools end up not getting used, but there's usually something I can pull out to stop my players from just facerolling what I put in front of them. By the end of the fight, the monsters only used one or two special abilities that would have appeared reasonable for them to have. I just didn't know what those abilities would be ahead of time, since I didn't know what my players would do when the fight started. So I gave myself lots of reasonable-sounding options and picked the one that was needed most in that moment.
My group never roll stats since we've had poor guy with stat modifier's sum being only +2 at level 1. Standard array is really helpful and we let the background/race/class become the primary factor to get different stats
I get that some players only care about stats if rolling is allowed, but personally I prefer it that way, I've had characters with every stat 16+ and characters with a 9 as the highest stat and I've never felt the need to kill a character over it. If players care about the RP, the stats are just how the story is told so they don't really matter.
I usually go with point buy for stats, but if my players really want to roll Ive found this alternate method usefull: Instead of rolling three dice six times I have pkayers roll six dice three times, and each time they get to split the six dice in two (with three dice in each). This still allows for randomeness, but gives the player a degree of controll. Usually what pkayers hope for isnt a statistical higher than average statline, but rather getting that 18 for their main stat, but when they roll 6 times and each set of three dice either has a 1 or 2 in them, or just a low average they get really disheartened by not having a single roll better than 13-14. In my experience players are a lot more willing to deal with having a weak stat if they also have a strong stat in something else. This method allows them to either have strong stats at the cost of some weaker ones, it reduces the risk of rolling a statline with no strong points, but also allows for a more well rounded statline if desired.
Aw, that's adorable, you've figured out what it was like GMing and playing 1st - 3rd ed. Us old schoolers figured out tricks to keep TPKs from happening because of our own miscalculations. Not that hard to fudge stuff. That's like 90% of the reason you roll behind your screen; so that if you accidentally made that beholder WAY too strong, then you have plausibility for why the players can actually win, and avoid a GM-responsible TPK. Also if your GM can't monkey-paw his way through a poorly worded wish, then he needs to watch more classic horror.
I think rolling for abilities is 100% fine as long as DM allows you to reroll in the really bad situations. You only really need 2-3 stats for most characters so having a -3 in str as a wizard only makes your character more flavorful as opposed to a boring -1 you can get otherwise
The way I have run them, the characters roll 3 sets of stats in order. Pick one set, and then can substitute 1 roll from each other set to its stat (Int for Int, Cha for Cha, etc. )
this is missing one huge essential element....the player. the human condition has always been about using our minds to solve problems. IF your character winds up with weaknesses, its up to you, the player, to find a way to accommodate or turn those weaknesses into strengths. low HP? well, maybe consider glass cannon ideaology, rather than trying to sustain damage output when you can't sustain yourself in battle. maybe specialize in something that lets you stay off the enemies radar..... A good character is not made from the dice. A good character is made from the player. The dice provide the challenge.
i honestly use programs i coded in visual studio for everything. re-rolls can be saved upon leveling max at 5, so some players can spend 5 re-rolls at once to get a decent hp boost. (you can roll irl or in the system, either way it subtracts 1 roll) same goes for the shop and rolling for loot.
Some of it has to do with the desire to provide options so that people can make the character they have in mind. Eventually if you make enough books in this way you will get things that don't combine together in any way but to break systems because you run into the mage quandary of not being able to anticipate everything.
Simple solutions: standard array of ability scores and maxed HP per level. Pretty much removes the unbalanced effects of random dice. I’ve also ran entire campaigns with damage always being either max damage or average damage rounded up. Apply the same techniques to players and NPCs and the game becomes SOOOO smooth to play.
4:02 Time for me to tactically assess this because I have nothing better to do. Four wizards at level 6 with an average of 30 ft movement, against one shambling mound? Even if all they have is firebolt, all they need to do is run and strafe it to death,. since the shambling mound can only move 20ft, and if it dashes to one of them, that wizard can disengage while the others continue firing. If they have something Toll the Dead, or heaven forbid a Bladesinger with Ashardalon's Stride and Two-Weapon Fighting, that shambling mound goes down even faster. And that's without accounting for other spells: Hypnotic Pattern, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Web, Glyph of Warding, Haste... if you're a party of four against a single shambling mound and you're all killed by it, the DM or the dice have either really gotten it out for you, or you really need to hone your fighting tactics.
On the hit point thing, we have a house rule that you take Max HP at every level up, but I do so with the monsters as well. Granted most combat encounters only last 2-3 turns now they are lvl10, but I almost killed the party cleric with a Boneclaw in 1 turn. And it would have got away if it wasn't for the fighter having sentinel and basically can never miss a hit with his ridiculous +10 to hit. But I enjoy the games, cause every fight is a matter of who gets their actions off first. I have a lot of fun building encounters to give them a challenge when they can kill anything CR15 below in 1-2 turns. But they always know the same goes for them making.
I have a party of players that are fairly optimized, so what I like to do is roll for monster hp until the encounter is at least higher than average difficulty, but keep the average in mind. That way, if the party is doing good I can use the rolled hp, keeping them on their toes with how much hp the enemy has, but if they're unlucky, I can revert back to the average hp. Its a fairly simple way to adjust encounter difficulty, and no fudged rolls are required
The HP thing is so true. I once made a wizard for a level 20 group that had rolling for HP. I rolled 11 1s, 7 2s, and 1 3s. DM took one look at my low HP stat of 54 (I had 12 in Con), said, "I'll let you take average due to being a wizard." So, yeah, Average it was. So, ended up with 92 Hp. Though, I once the opposite happen with stats. In a group that rolled stats, I rolled 4 18s and 2 17s, in front of the DM. Felt like a beast.
"Unless you especifically plan for those outcomes..." Wait.. You're saying that is NOT normal to just give maleable stats to a monster, especially regarding hp, resistances, and damage dices because you dont want to tpk the party, or hand them a super easy boss, because it all depends on what spells, skills and features the party had avalaible at the time at the fight and not about the boss stats per se?
Not to nitpick but in the Wizards Vs shambling mound example that's kind of on party for not adapting there strategy to make use of just how slow shambling mounds are
The way we always do health in our games is based on my dad's old house rules. We do max hit die+Constitution ( 6 on 1d6 +Con mod, for instance), and then when we level up, we add the total of that to our new health total. For example, say I have a barbarian. At level 1, I add 12+3 (The con mod) and get 15 health. At level 2, I add 15 (The total from last time) and enter 2nd level with 30 health. Is it terribly balanced? No, but it makes calculating health a little bit easier and less random based.
My DM put five people up against three goblin archers and a gelatinous slime in our second Battle of the game, we were supposed to run but we actually killed it (barely)
