What archetypes does 5E not represent well?

[Dean]

The real difference isn't in exactly how many hundreds it takes to do something at high levels, because once you're into the hundreds, no one's counting.

No, the difference definitely is in how many hundreds it takes. The difference between 200 archers definitely killing any Dragon in 5E and probably hundreds of thousands of archers required to kill big Dragons in 3E is definitely a real difference. Stop trying to avoid eating the crow you put on your plate. 880 or 2200 archers would do nothing against top level 3E threats and that's important because for if the King can kill any threat with 200 men (and in 5E he can) then he doesn't need to hire your party. 3E adventurers can do what they say on the tin and 5E adventurers don't.

Every statement you make on this is a waffling, unclear half-argument spiced liberally with oberoni. Stop making them.

[fearsomepirate]

Several people have already mentioned the innate DR 15. Good job picking up on my oversight there.

Its a false equivalency.

5e dragons have some version of everything else you mentioned.

In a real situation, those 830 guards don't stand a chance for the same reasons.

[Stinktopus]

In a real situation, those 830 guards don't stand a chance for the same reasons.

You gonna throw some rules and numbers behind that statement? I'm guessing not, since you've already disdained those who feel compelled to math-hammer things.

[erik]

5e dragons have some version of everything else you mentioned.

No they don't.

3e dragon:


5e dragon:




3e dragons have fuck off AC, fuck off DR, fuck off fear aura, fuck off flight speed, fuck off area attacks, and fuck off spell casting.

5e dragons have fuck off area attacks, shitty flight, and a weaker fear aura DC and range that also gives a resave every round.

No spell casting. No insane flight speed. No DR. No sky-high AC and saves.
They basically took everything away except the breath weapon and melee attacks in 5e.

[fearsomepirate]

I was actually typing them up just now:

5e dragon:

Frightful presence: All but incapacitates (drops to 0.0025 chance to hit) 95% of guards within 120 feet.
Lightning Breath: Instantly kills all guards in 120'x10' line in front of the dragon. Recharge 5/6.
Wing attack: Instantly kills 95% of guards within 15'. Dragon flies 40 feet.
With longbows, any guard over 150 feet away has a 0.25% chance to hit.
Passive perception is 27, so the dragon sees the army coming long before it gets in range.
Fly speed: 80
Burrow speed: 40
HP: 481

He can either use his Frightful Presence + Triple Melee (range 15', miss only on 1), or his breath attack (16d10, half on save, save only on nat 20). I actually did the math on a 6-man wide, closely packed marching formation with heavy crossbows, and the dragon took about 30 damage on the first round and killed about 250 guards in the second. He can use his wing attack once as a reaction. He can also do a melee attack as a reaction.

Yes, the dragon will take some damage, unlike in 3.5. This means eventually, he will have to fly (or burrow) off. But the fight's on his terms. I freely admit this causes a difference in flavor. A 3.5 dragon is basically a god, and whether or not it destroys your entire army at one go is up to its discretion. A 5e dragon is not as powerful, and he can eventually be driven off but it's still too powerful for your army to take out on its own.

But this idea that low-level players will be able to recruit 40 city guards and take out ancient dragons is without merit.

[DSMatticus]

5e dragons have some version of everything else you mentioned.

No, no they don't.

In 5e, damage reduction (subtract a flat amount) has been replaced with damage resistance (half damage) and damage immunity (negate damage). But that doesn't even matter, because not even ancient dragons have either when it comes to weapon attacks. Dragons are immune to the damage type associated with their color and that's it.

In 5e, the highest AC any dragon has is 22. That's one higher than the level 10 fighter I posted. Yes, the CR 24 red dragon is within an RNG of the CR 1/8th who-gives-a-shit.

In 5e, dragon speed ranges from 60ft to 80ft. 3.5 dragon speed ranges from 100ft to 200ft.

In 5e, dragons have a frightful presence that caps out at 120ft. 3.5 dragons have a frightful presence that starts at 150ft and caps at 360ft.

So that ancient red dragon I mentioned? It has 546 HP, 22 AC, and can't do shit to anyone outside of 120ft - not even spook them. If you can use a longbow, you have a range of 150ft, and a range of 600ft when attacking with disadvantage.

So let's compare:

5e: An ancient red dragon (CR 24, 546 HP, 22 AC, 80ft, 160ft dashing) is closing on a mass of archers as fast as it possibly can. We'll use the scout (CR 1/2th, two longbow attacks, +4 to hit, 1d8+2 damage, 150ft range, 600ft range with disadvantage). The scouts get two rounds of attacking with disadvantage and one round of attacking without it before they are in range of anything the dragon can do. 2*2*.15*.15*6.5 + 1*2*.15*6.5 = 2.535 damage per scout. It takes 215 CR 1/2 scouts to murder the CR 24 ancient red dragon before it can put them in range of their attacks. Notice that almost all of the damage is actually coming from the final round (no disadvantage), so if you want to one round the dragon as soon as it shows itself it only takes slightly more.

3.5: A red wyrm (CR 24, 610 HP, AC 42, damage reduction 20/magic, 200ft, 400ft double move) is closing on a mas of archers as fast as it possibly can. We'll use the elf warrior, and even upgrade the bow to a composite one (CR 1/2th, one longbow attack, +3 to hit, 1d8+1 damage, 100ft, 10 increments). The elves get two rounds of attacking before they are within the fear aura (at which point 95% of them stop fighting) and then one final round of attacking before they are in range of the breath weapon (which we'll call a loss). You'll note that the archers can only ever deal damage on a crit (double twenties), and if you checked the math you'd find that the average damage for one of their crits is .4105. That's 2*.05*.05*.4105 + 1*.05*.05*.4105*.05 = .0021 damage per archer. It takes 290,000 archers to murder the CR 24 red wyrm before it can put them in range of its breath weapon.

[fearsomepirate]

For the curious, here's the 2nd ed blue dragon:

http://mmadnd.chat.ru/MM00055.htm#b265837e

Obviously, that's not the TRUE version of the blue dragon, since we all know D&D didn't really exist until 3.5 . Of course, resolving crits on this thing is about as fun as going to the dentist.

[Dean]

Frightful presence: All but incapacitates (drops to 0.0025 chance to hit) 95% of guards within 120 feet.

This is wrong. 5E fright doesn't "all but incapacitate" anyone. It makes you re-roll to hit if you fail, for a minute, with a free save every round to break the effect. Stop intentionally lying. Your math is also wrong. Guards have a +3 to hit which means that on a re-roll their odds drop from 1/10 hitting to 1/100 hitting.

I actually did the math on a 6-man wide, closely packed marching formation with heavy crossbows, and the dragon took about 30 damage on the first round and killed about 250 guards in the second.

I'm sure you did, and we'd all love to see more dishonest math from you so keep it coming

A 5e dragon is not as powerful, and he can eventually be driven off but it's still too powerful for your army to take out on its own.

Guy shut up. How is it too powerful for my army to take out but totally within range of power for it to drive off. When we drive it off we can go where it drove to and kill it.

But this idea that low-level players will be able to recruit 40 city guards and take out ancient dragons is without merit.

Guy shut up. The army of 40 no 250 no 830 no 2200 no Millions NO hundreds of thousand of soldiers you're waffling between whenever any number does or doesn't suit your point is tiring. Everything you're saying is you trying to play keepaway with data that is easy available to anyone who looks at the books. You're entire argument is trying to say wrong things fast enough that no one notices. Well we do.

So you're dishonest and a coward, that's unfortunate. Before I thought you were maybe just wrong and liked 5E which I would be more understanding of but now you've made it apparent you're going to be a completely dishonest fuckwit. Your constant state of goalpost moving and nervous shuffling between half-truths you haven't thought we've noticed is exhausting and makes it feel like I'm arguing with Burke from Aliens

[DSMatticus]

For the curious, here's the 2nd ed blue dragon:

http://mmadnd.chat.ru/MM00055.htm#b265837e

Obviously, that's not the TRUE version of the blue dragon, since we all know D&D didn't really exist until 3.5 . Of course, resolving crits on this thing is about as fun as going to the dentist.

In AD&D 2e, exactly like in 3.5, a bunch of shared rules text has been pulled out of the individual entries and placed in the front of the part of the book that covers dragons. If you read that shared rules text, it will tell you that all dragons of a certain age category or older ignore non-magical projectiles entirely. No amount of archers with ordinary longbows will kill those dragons - ever. They are harder to kill than 3.5 dragons in this way, not easier.

EDIT: It's actually also on the website you're using.

http://mmadnd.chat.ru/MM00053.htm

[Whipstitch]

For pure mook clearing the 5e Frightful Presence is actually nerfed pretty severely. It has far less range and vanilla 5e Frighten effects merely put your opponents at Disadvantage, whereas 3.x adult dragons can inflict Panicked on anyone with 4 hd or less, which means that ragtag militias literally just drop their shit and leave even if you did bother to equip them with gear way above their nominal paygrade. Plus, it's sorta funny that you brought up ancient blues in particular given that in 3.x they're the ones who get Veil and Hallucinatory Terrain, making them the dragon best suited to entering combat within their 300 foot Frightful Presence range. If that happens they're not going to be having much problem with a lowbie brigade.

[fearsomepirate]

Stuff

Okay, so I can see how if you go by the numbers, a 5e dragon isn't the sort of thing that would attack a group of 200+ archers in the middle of a field. That definitely changes the feel of things. At the minimum, players in the know will have to suspend disbelief if the story has an ancient red dragon annihilating an army. I agree with this.

But what you're complaining about isn't Bounded Accuracy; it's the removal of DR. If the 5e dragon had 20 DR, those scouts would be unable to damage the dragon, period. Even on a crit, their max damage is 18.

DR's been cut entirely because 5e dropped the assumption of magic weapons that governed the numbers in both 3rd and 4th. D&D fluff makes like magic weapons are hard to come by, but 3.5's (and 4e's, btw) RAW basically say there's a +3 Magic Weapons aisle at Walmart.

I will say that making magic items *actually* rare has changed the actual weekly game experience far more than how the math on a red dragon vs 250 archers works out. The latter's only affected forum arguments.

By the way, it doesn't matter that the 2nd ed dragons ignore damage for our purposes. They can't be hit by anything with a THAC0 of 20 to begin with.

[Username17]

But what you're complaining about isn't Bounded Accuracy; it's the removal of DR.

Removing DR is part of bounded accuracy. Bounded accuracy is the idea that you should be able to succeed or fail at tasks with any bonuses you could ever get, be they high or low, at any level. If creatures had DR NOPE/GTFO, then you wouldn't be playing a bounded accuracy game.

Literally the entire rest of your post isn't even worth responding to, because this sentence is you clearly and defiantly articulating that you have no idea what the words that are coming out of your mouth mean. Shut up.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

Specifically, the original description suggested accuracy would be level-independent and that high-level characters and high-level monsters would power up in the form of hitpoints and damage and everyone would be able to murder everyone through hitpoint attrition regardless of the level difference. Recruiting militia to fight a dragon is an example in the article. I know it's weird to think damage reduction is incompatible with bounded accuracy, but that's just a peculiarity of the way they chose to name things - the stated design goals behind 5e's bounded accuracy approach are incompatible with meaningful damage reduction.

You'll notice immediately that hitpoints and damage scale linearly. The rate of change isn't even that high. A level 1 fighter is doing 8d6+12 (40) damage in a four round fight. A level 20 fighter is doing 285.5 damage in a four round fight. A level 1 fighter has 18.5 hitpoints. A level 20 fighter has 249.5 hitpoints. That's 8 level 1 fighters to match the damage output of a level 20 fighter and 14 fighters to match the total hitpoints of a level 20 fighter. A mob is more susceptible to AoE's, but also less suceptible to single target effects.

You'll also note that because saving throws are bounded, you can't have interesting abilities that allow a save. Well, you could, if you weren't a fucking idiot, but the people who made 5e are fucking idiots. So instead of level-gating the effects of spells such that your low-level "save or get fucked" spells simply don't work (or have a lesser effect) on higher level opposition, most of those spells or abilities have just been nerfed into the fucking ground.

Consider frightful presence. Fighters do not have proficiency in wisdom saves and are unlikely to spend any of their ability score increases on wisdom. They're starting the game at level 1 with +1 on wisdom saves and ending the game at level 20 with +1 on wisdom saves. Even with indomitable, a fighter only has about a 30% chance of making the saving throw for an adult red dragon's (CR 17) frightful presence. If frightful presence actually did anything meaningful, it would be one big "you lose for rolling fighter" field.

[RelentlessImp]

So, to answer the thread question, the archetypes D&D 5E doesn't do well are those that aren't minionmancers and people that don't die to the local militia of Podunk, Fantasyland.

[Grek]

Assuming you take an inability for your character to personally kill armies as a design flaw, yes. That's pretty much on the nose, Relentless.

[vagrant]

My mid to high range character should honestly be able to take on fucking armies. That is, to me, a pretty core part of the DnD experience, starting with 'Lolidietocat' to 'I will personally slaughter everyone who stands between me and Arrix, the Goblin King.'

[RelentlessImp]

Assuming you take an inability for your character to personally kill armies as a design flaw, yes. That's pretty much on the nose, Relentless.

I take it as an insulting design flaw. It's a deviation almost as extreme as 4th Edition D&D was from the game we've been playing since the 80s. While the NATURE of the game has changed from edition to edition - going from Gygax's "fuck the players" mentality to "Maybe let your players succeed without royally screwing them" - the core concept being that "High level characters are no longer bothered by low level threats" has been pretty fucking consistent.

I find it insulting that my 20th level Fighter who has faced down Red Dragons in single combat (lolwut, just go with me here) is still bothered by the first level Warrior NPCs guarding the town in Podunk, Nowhere. That is a fucking disempowering experience compared to the power fantasies we've been able to play in since pretty much the inception of the game itself. And saying that it's not a design flaw, as you put it, is as insulting as WotC serving this shit sandwich out and expecting people to eat it up.

[fearsomepirate]

Regarding the fighters, I think once you factor in crits and AC, and Action Surge, it might take a few more than four L1 fighters to deal with an L20. But I think that's immaterial---the number certainly isn't even in the hundreds. I'm assuming in 3.5, there's some kind of special armor a 20th level fighter can easily afford or a feat he can take that makes him all but immune to the novice attacks.

Regarding the dragon, I don't think frightening a melee fighter is irrelevant, but I've come around to agreeing they're too weak against low-level characters. The fix is simple: Add non-magical weapon damage to their immunities. There are no dragons in my campaign, but if there were, that would be my first house rule. Granted, you should *need* to fix it, but at least up through level 5, I've been using monsters RAW, a welcome change from 4e. Given that devils, rakshasas, tarrasques, yugaloths, and others have either resistance or immunity to normal weapons, I suspect they committed themselves early on to making specifically dragons things you could take down with an army of foot soldiers. Because RAW, the greatest threat a regular army could possibly face is a single rakshasa, and that's a little silly.

[DSMatticus]

Yes, I do think it's pretty shitty that level 20 characters fear nobodies with sticks and stones. Not even an army of them; a couple hundred dudes does not an army make. But I think it's even shittier that nearly everything in the MM also fears nobodies with sticks and stones. No, not an army of them; still just a couple hundred dudes. What the fuck kind of threat is any of this shit supposed to be when the answer is always "line up a small number of archers and tell them fire on my command"?

But what I hate most is that there are a bunch of dumbasses who think finding a demon the size of an elephant around whom the air itself burns hot enough to kill an ordinary man in seconds and punching it in the face is a low power fantasy game. No, 5e is not a low power fantasy game. It's a failed high power fantasy game, in that the fluff is completely over the top but mechanically everything is shit.

[fearsomepirate]

But what I hate most is that there are a bunch of dumbasses who think finding a demon the size of an elephant around whom the air itself burns hot enough to kill an ordinary man in seconds and punching it in the face is a low power fantasy game.

That would be a terrible decision, even in 5e. Assuming your punch connects, you take 10 damage. You then take 10 damage at the start of the balor's next turn. You are now dead. That said, as before, a sufficient number of archers in an open field...

ISTM they should have followed a template more like:
CR 5-10: Monsters have resistance to one type of damage.
CR 10-15: Monsters also have resistance to nonmagical damage.
CR 15-20: Monsters have immunity to nonmagical damage.

That would have preserved the "epic threats require epic gear" of earlier editions without sacrificing "magic stuff really is actually rare." Instead, they're all over the place. A CR 13 rakshasa totally ignores anyone lacking magic gear and any wizard 10th level or below. A CR 21 Solar is easier to take down, since it only has resistance to nonmagical weapons.

[erik]

Army army army. No, it is a modest militia or company that can handle the most powerful threats available.

Everything else needs even less than that. Manticore attacking the town? The drunks at the bar can turn out, kill it and return before their ale gets warm.

Oh, an incorporeal wraith? That'll just take the drunks two rounds since it is intangible and thus gets damage resistance.

DR is a part of bounded accuracy, but it isn't an all-encompassing bandaid. Slapping it on one thing doesn't fix the whole fucking mess.

[tussock]

double post

[tussock]

AD&D characters are more likely to be army-killing than 3e ones, because the combats had some simplifying options built into the core rules, and nothing had enough hit points to stand up to a wand of fireballs and a few days worth of explosive runes set about the place, among more mundane trapwork. But they can all do it.

There's also a strong subjective element. I'm one of the people that disliked how ridiculously large attack/skill bonuses got in the d20 system. If to you, that's what made 3rd fun, okay, but it's not really something that was objectively good with no drawbacks.

It's not even the numbers. The AD&D Tarrasque is immune to most magic and all militia tactics ever, the LOS fear effect is fierce at low levels, it regenerates, and it can't be killed at all unless you have the biggest spell in the game (maybe). There is no number of even 16th level PCs who can actually make it stay down. You have to go to the very best.

But it's AC is 23, and it has 300 hp. That's smaller numbers than the 5e Tarrasque with AC 25 and 676 hp. And it's Challenge 30 in 5e, which means it's single-target damage is enormous so it kills high level PCs unless they kite it. Which they will, trivially.

A 6th level 5e Wizard can kill their Tarrasque in under half an hour, which is conveniently how long they can Fly for. That's not a threat to the continent, it's a joke of a puzzle monster. Lazy-ass game design and complete disregard for people actually trying things, a real quick way for your Wizard to hit 15th level. But hey, at least it can probably kill a bunch of the town guard in the meantime, right? Unless they just scatter.

I'm assuming in 3.5, there's some kind of special armor a 20th level fighter can easily afford or a feat he can take that makes him all but immune to the novice attacks.

NPC Fighters in 3e pretty reliably lie on the measure of double numbers each two levels lower that they can match or beat. Should be able to take ~700, and a rough calculation says maybe only 500 on an open field. PCs are much higher because custom builds can easily be immune to any numer, especially if items are picked after the enemy is known, while another build with different items might get screwed by just 100 or so.

[maglag]

Yes, I do think it's pretty shitty that level 20 characters fear nobodies with sticks and stones. Not even an army of them; a couple hundred dudes does not an army make. But I think it's even shittier that nearly everything in the MM also fears nobodies with sticks and stones. No, not an army of them; still just a couple hundred dudes. What the fuck kind of threat is any of this shit supposed to be when the answer is always "line up a small number of archers and tell them fire on my command"?

You know that 3.5 has volley rules, right? If robot race and book of weaboo fighting magic are valid arguments, then so is Heroes of Battle.

Then, 200 bow dudes divided in 20 10-strong squads. Count as if 1/5 of the arrows hit ignoring AC and instead you get a save for half. Assuming you make all the saves that's still 20 arrows auto-hitting, so easily some 100 auto-damage per round against anything without DR. If they have rapid-shot then it's double that damage.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If robot race and book of weaboo fighting magic are valid arguments, then so is Heroes of Battle.

If people are forced to use stuff in Heroes of Battle just because it exists, then Unearthed Arcana caused the game to implode years previous.