Well... no. Actually most of this is wrong.Sir Aubergine wrote:"Don't melee it stupid," is alive and well. If you don't have very high AC or damage resistance (both is preferable), you will get cut down like a dog wading into melee with high level monsters. They are more accurate and hit harder than you do, and their attacks often get rider effects, while you get: A magic weapon and a magic shield!CapnTthePirateG wrote: Mind elaborating a bit on the warriors? I vaguely remember high level monsters being disappointingly boring sacks of shit that could be owned trivially by a necromancer or a diviner.
In 5e, being in melee largely isn't up to you. Movement shenanigans don't move you very far, and starting with fucking orcs (bonus move action every turn), monsters are often faster than you, or have more or better movement modes, especially at high levels. If a big red dragon wants to be in your face, there is very little you can do about it beyond dimension dooring out of the fight completely.
More accurate is... pretty much completely false. Monsters cap out at +17... for the CR 23 monsters. CR 20 are +14, or exactly the same as a level 20 PC with a 20 stat and a +3 weapon (Prof is +6), and belts of giant strength bullshit can push this higher, as does just being a level 20 barbarian. But monster ACs are decidedly lower- Pit Fiends aren't even breaking AC 20, and Ancient Reds are only 22. A fighter can sport +3 plate and +3 shield and wander around as AC26, and there is other shit that you can stack on top (ring and fighting style push to 28, and then spells and shit on top). That's a pretty damn big swing- the PC is hitting the pit fiend on fucking 5s, and the PF is hitting back on 12s, minimum. Even if the PC is not pushing AC past 26 (though they can), they've still got the accuracy edge on the ancient red, needing 8s rather than 9s.
Resistances and AC are obviously useful though, because bullshit actions and lair bullshit actions add a fuckton of extra rolls to the monster's side.
As for magic sword and magic shield (or 3 ever!)... uh, no. 5e has a shitload of magic items, and while attunement limits some things, it doesn't have any impact on basic +1 or +3 weapons or armor, and there is a bunch of other shit you can pile on before you even have to care about attunement. At that level what you need attunement for is flight, resistances and speciality stuff like free action or mind shielding. Fact is, a lot of the attunement requiring weapons are just trash compared to having a +3 to hit and damage. Even shit like the frost brand has no bonus and deals +1d6 cold, gives you resist frost, and can snuff non-magic fires. That isn't worth a slot or losing +3 to hit. Let's not even talk about the trident of fish command.
And the random treasure tables in the DMG hand out potentially boatloads of magic items in treasure piles, in a very 1e random nonsense kind of way- in that your first Challenge 0 [whatever challenge 0 would be] treasure pile could spit out anything from literally nothing beyond large piles of copper and silver to wings of flying or a +2 weapon.
But if you really want to show 5e at its worst, throw low level fey against a party. Satyrs are CR 1/2 and have 31 goddamn hit points, Pixies are CR 1/4 and have fuck you invisibility, flight, confusion, polymorph, sleep, entangle, phantasmal force and detect thoughts. (Because spells are basically ignored when it comes to calculating CR in 5e)
4 of each are 'supposedly' a match for 3rd level party, are 127 bloody HP to chew through, and feature invisible flying fucks creating restrained rabbit choke-play deathmatches out of the party, while the satyrs just fucking tank.