Level Up (A5E) You don't hate exploration, you hate survival

[nevin]

Ironically, although XP systems create a facade of fairness, 5e XP (and that of systems which inherit it like A5e) doesn't offer much of a compelling standard against which to measure milestones. That is to say, even the crapiest and most unfair milestone leveling standards are likely more rigorous of expectations than standard 5e XP leveling.

Per my previous analysis, high level play has a surprisingly low number of encounters per level. We would expect that each level would require the party to expend their daily resources several times over to level up; we call the expendeture of all one's daily resources an "adventuring day." For high-powered characters with a lot of resources, that's a lot of long adventuring days---a lot of encounters! However, using A5e's Encounter Points Per Day system, we can see that at high level you don't need to spend all your daily resources in order to reach the next level: starting at 11th level, most characters can reach the next level even before completing one full adventuring day! By that point you've moved right past MCU flavor and stright into Gurren Lagann.

IMO that is not expected or desired. In that case, it would seem to me that "just do whatever" would be far better advice than following the RAW.

(And in case anybody was wondering, this is the reason why I say resource management doesn't matter in 5e. There is rarely a reason past 3rd level not to go full blast; at 11th level it is practically law. But maybe people like it that way.)

I agree resource's mean nothing in 5e. Short and long rests being codified broke what was left of resources mattering. i've more than once called 5e the "anime version" of D&D

 

[Timespike]

My issue with milestones is that you miss out on feeling a sense of accomplishment on a small scale, but only on a large one. Ultimately it really doesn't matter what you do; you can drift along at the back of the group and still level so long as the party crossed the DMs arbitrary line, which if it has any basis at all is solely narrative, ie, you level when it is appropriate to the story that you level. Not my preference.

Whereas is it exactly my preference as both a player and a GM, but I don't play RPGs to feel accomplished, either; to me, they're more about the story you and your friends are telling together.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Whereas is it exactly my preference as both a player and a GM, but I don't play RPGs to feel accomplished, either; to me, they're more about the story you and your friends are telling together.

yeah, to me generating a story in an RPG is incidental; the real joy of playing is portraying an inhabitant in an coherent imaginary world and interacting with it through that PC.

 

[Distracted DM]

Ironically, although XP systems create a facade of fairness, 5e XP (and that of systems which inherit it like A5e) doesn't offer much of a compelling standard against which to measure milestones. That is to say, even the crapiest and most unfair milestone leveling standards are likely more rigorous of expectations than standard 5e XP leveling.

Per my previous analysis, high level play has a surprisingly low number of encounters per level. We would expect that each level would require the party to expend their daily resources several times over to level up; we call the expendeture of all one's daily resources an "adventuring day." For high-powered characters with a lot of resources, that's a lot of long adventuring days---a lot of encounters! However, using A5e's Encounter Points Per Day system, we can see that at high level you don't need to spend all your daily resources in order to reach the next level: starting at 11th level, most characters can reach the next level even before completing one full adventuring day! By that point you've moved right past MCU flavor and stright into Gurren Lagann.

IMO that is not expected or desired. In that case, it would seem to me that "just do whatever" would be far better advice than following the RAW.

(And in case anybody was wondering, this is the reason why I say resource management doesn't matter in 5e. There is rarely a reason past 3rd level not to go full blast; at 11th level it is practically law. But maybe people like it that way.)

Oh wow, what? That's ... jeeze. It makes sense though, that's definitely how my 5e Night Below game went- the pace of leveling didn't slow in tier3, if anything it got faster :'D
I think that's also when I started tinkering with 5e "e8 or 9" houserules that I never pulled the trigger on.

 

[Undrave]

Really? How so?

Exploration works great in games, but survival? Most "survival" games to my knowledge are more about a crafting loop or surviving escalating combats.

What is a game which does survival well?
Ps I also love valheim, but wouldn't classify it as survival. Again, it's just a crafting loop

I just think a video game can handle minutiae a lot better than a table top game. You can add depth to a food system without adding tons of pages you have to go through, and the feedback doesn't have to filter through a human trying to remember when you need to do, say, a Thirst Check while also managing a story and NPCs and stuff.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I just think a video game can handle minutiae a lot better than a table top game. You can add depth to a food system without adding tons of pages you have to go through, and the feedback doesn't have to filter through a human trying to remember when you need to do, say, a Thirst Check while also managing a story and NPCs and stuff.

VTTs are a good aid for this, if it's a problem for you. I just don't see the answer being, "streamline the verisimilitude away in homage to the great God Simplisitus, master of Light Rules and lord of KISS", to be as dramatic as possible about it.

 

[Distracted DM]

VTTs are a good aid for this, if it's a problem for you. I just don't see the answer being, "streamline the verisimilitude away in homage to the great God Simplisitus, master of Light Rules and lord of KISS", to be as dramatic as possible about it.

I will say that in-person, I never enforced encumbrance because it was a pain with the constantly-updated weight math. I might occasionally be critical of the stringbean weaklings carrying too much, but if you invested in strength I probably wasn't getting on your case.
Online via ForgeVTT etc. it's all done automatically, so encumbrance is easy to manage!

 

[Umbran]

Friends of the site owner so never gets moderated for it.

Mod Note:
So, with respect, I don't keep tabs on who Morrus is friends with, and he has never told us to lay off someone because they were his friend.

If you have an issue with moderation, as always, we ask you to PM a member of the staff, rather than try to make the thread about the moderation. Thanks.

 

[Undrave]

VTTs are a good aid for this, if it's a problem for you. I just don't see the answer being, "streamline the verisimilitude away in homage to the great God Simplisitus, master of Light Rules and lord of KISS", to be as dramatic as possible about it.

To a certain point.

I think a video game could go deeper, but also limit what you need to worry about. Like, imagine all the recipe in Breath of the Wild but in a TTRPG? There's 122 of them! You could make it work, but the moment you leave Hyrule or even the Material Plane you have to come up with brand new recipe to work with the tons of potential new ingredients.

In a video game, you could create a whole system of firewood rating with burning duration in real time and people wouldn't try to burn random things because the game wouldn't let them harvest a villager's door, for exemple, or break down the goblin's wagon.

Plus, I think of lot of these would end up feeling like pointless busy work when they would only be notes on a sheet of paper. You'd probably abstract the firewood in units worth 1 hour each, for exemple.

 

[Xethreau]

Especially on this topic, do you remember I drafted a document precisely about how to change the XP to next level so that one could set the number of encounters first, and from that derive the xp to next level? It seems I was tapping into something, then...
That is to say, it seems that the numbers for xp to next level, xp per monster/encounters and encounters per day were kind of tossed up because they seemed right, without realizing that they are actually badly inconsistent (at high levels).

This seems vuagely familiar and very important! If you sent it to me on here I bet it is still in my inbox, and I'd be happy to shoot it back to you if you need it.