D&D 5E Encounter Balance holds back 5E

[Ruin Explorer]

and the DM can make opponents run away. Make them subdue. Make them friends. Even adjust hit points as needed (why would opponents always be at max HP?). The DM always knows how much danger is involved, because the DM controls danger.

Absolutely, but I think there are a lot of DMs, new and old, who would consider stuff like adjusting HP on the fly to be "unacceptable" (I wouldn't - though I do prefer to avoid it). Also to me that's controlling the outcome rather than predicting the outcome, which is different, imho. Like, in 4E, I personally really appreciated that, because the encounter building (after the monster math was fixed) was so reliable, and the RNG was a lot lower than 5E (for various boring reasons), I could kind of "let loose" with monsters, and know that just because I was "playing hardball", I wasn't going to cause a random TPK, just a more exciting encounter.

In 5E it's still better than 2E or 3E, but I still think there's a lot to be desired about the ability to encounter balance, which for me very much speaks against the OP's position that 5E is inappropriately overfocused on it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I can jump in here. “eyeballing” I guess describes how I create encounters, having learned on 1st edition. Usually, it works well, but just occasionally it goes wrong. For example, last session we came close to a TPK on what should have been a straightforward encounter when a CR2 Living Doll incapacitated 75% of the 8th level party on round 1 when they failed a simple DC 13 wisdom save.

Do I think this unpredictability is a problem? Hell no, it was the most fun fight we have had for a while!

I personally hate it when I don't know that even could happen in an encounter, especially if the ability seems cheap - his sort of extreme swing-y-ness I think I don't really want from a game that focuses on combat as much as D&D - I'd prefer that from games where combat is strictly to be avoided, like some OSRs or CoC.

CRs do sometimes help give a warning that an otherwise innocuous-seeming enemy has some kind of fairly outrageous ability though!

EDIT - The Living Doll is okay - it has the most important balancing factor - "it targets one or two creatures" on its cackle. I personally think it's lame when an effect totally takes a PC out of a combat based on one single save AND there's literally nothing anyone can do to help them, as is the case here. But it's not unbalanced numerically, just unpleasantly designed. Like at least put in a way the PC can be helped, so if the part don't help them, it's a tactical decision or because he forgot to bring the pizza he promised or something!

 

[Vaalingrade]

I’d consider the Fellowship to be pretty heroic, but they sure as hell ran away from the Balrog that would otherwise have obliterated them.

They're also part of a non-interactive piece of fiction instead of an interactive one.

That's why I specifically cites how it feels.

There's a difference between watching a character in a book or movie have to break and run and being the one forced into a route.

 

[MichaelSomething]

CR doesn't tell you what to do; it tells you the (expected) result of your action.

Vague instructions are there to create room for DMs to run things via judgement.

 

[MarkB]

They're also part of a non-interactive piece of fiction instead of an interactive one.

That's why I specifically cites how it feels.

There's a difference between watching a character in a book or movie have to break and run and being the one forced into a route.

And how it feels does tend to play into how it pans out. I've more than once seen a retreat fail due to the simple matter of half the party wanting to be the one making the heroic last stand while the others got away, leading to hardly anyone actually retreating even after all agreeing that they needed to.

 

[DarkCrisis]

They're also part of a non-interactive piece of fiction instead of an interactive one.

That's why I specifically cites how it feels.

There's a difference between watching a character in a book or movie have to break and run and being the one forced into a route.

Sounds dangerously close to "The players should never fear losing" which at that point it ceases to become a game and becomes telling a story.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Sounds dangerously close to "The players should never fear losing" which at that point it ceases to become a game and becomes telling a story.

No, it doesn't cease being a game, it becomes a different game. It's fine to not want to play that game, but to claim that just because you aren't being randomly TPK'd by random-ass unlikely monsters from a poorly-constructed chart, or whatever, it's "not a game" is not a viable argument.

The big problem too is that D&D 5E doesn't want to tell stories about fleeing. It's very bad at it. Fleeing is usually suicidal for most of the group involved, in part for the reasons discussed in various posts above. 5E does not have good mechanics for it, and it doesn't work well as a tactic.

Now, that can be fixed, by adding new, fleeing-related mechanics, and making sure they work well (at least for the PCs), but they're not something currently in the game. 5E was not designed around fleeing threats. Claiming it's "not a game" because of that doesn't make sense. The Balrog is an interesting example, because in D&D, many DMs would have have had it run (or fly) past Gandalf and start one-shotting hobbits. And even if Gandalf's player managed to stop it (he's probably a GMPC, let's be real), the Fellowship fleeing in the way they did would have got them absolutely MURDERED. Why? Because arrows would have hit them - a lot of arrows. Because they would have been unable to make some of those jumps. Because they would have failed various RNG-y checks. D&D is not the game for this.

You want a narrative flight like that, like one of the most famous flights in fantasy fiction, perhaps all of fiction, you're going to need a more narrative game. D&D's version will be full of pratfalls and Legolas getting pincushioned by arrows and similar idiocy.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Sounds dangerously close to "The players should never fear losing" which at that point it ceases to become a game and becomes telling a story.

And as we all know, collaborative storytelling games both don't exist and are also bad and wrong.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

This is not the business plan, however.

Before 2000 the basic D&D idea was "here is a book of fun suggestions on how to play a game, but really just do whatever you want and have fun!"

And After you get...

"We, the Wizards of the Coast, are the only Official Gatekeepers of D&D! If you wish to play REAL D&D you must buy all our books and must follow all our iron clad rules! All you are is another D20 in the dice bag!

Gygax was pretty fond of pontificating on how if you changed any of his rules you weren't playing "real" D&D.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I always try to relate to my players "the encounter is what it is, you can always run."

Today's players aren't to keen on that idea and feel they can usually brute force any combat and 5E being 5E they are usually right.

Except often you can't, particularly at low levels. Odds are someone in the group has a speed of 25 from heavy armor/being a shorty, and monsters often have faster speeds than 30. You're stuck in a loop of eating opportunity attacks to double dash (whereupon they just double dash) and the cycle repeats. If you're running it tactically on a grid, with initiative, it becomes an even bigger PITA because they removed the delay option. So if the rogue wants to drop caltrops and has a higher initiative you have to jump through hoops to ready the action until after the fighter runs by, hoping that the monster doesn't go in between, etc etc. Players also know how difficult fleeing can be because odds are they've chased down and butchered some fleeing goons.

Some DM's play loosy goosey with that, others don't. If they're able to run, it's typically because the DM lets them.