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I got no problem with high level beasts living in the wilderness, but a CR20 dragon should be a legendary beast. It's range should be well known. Everyone should know where it is and how bad it would be to go bother the dragon.

Having a CR20 dragon just randomly hiding in the snow when you didn't have a chance to know you were in it's territory is super poor world building imo, never mind encounter balance.

In my homebrew the only White Wyrm lives on a gigantic glacier and has an entire tribe of frost giants in it's thrall, and everyone knows that going out on the Great Glacier is a terrible idea. All of the Wyrms in my campaign are well known and the borders of their territory are something any yokel could tell you.

 Da Boss wrote:
I got no problem with high level beasts living in the wilderness, but a CR20 dragon should be a legendary beast. It's range should be well known. Everyone should know where it is and how bad it would be to go bother the dragon.

Having a CR20 dragon just randomly hiding in the snow when you didn't have a chance to know you were in it's territory is super poor world building imo, never mind encounter balance.

In my homebrew the only White Wyrm lives on a gigantic glacier and has an entire tribe of frost giants in it's thrall, and everyone knows that going out on the Great Glacier is a terrible idea. All of the Wyrms in my campaign are well known and the borders of their territory are something any yokel could tell you.

It's a legendary CR20 beast known throughout the region so we knew exactly what we were facing once it revealed itself. This particular encounter was gakky game design in that you face a CR20 if you roll a 10 on a d20 during an equally randomly rolled blizzard. When that happens, you come upon the dragon while it's hidden under snow during a blizzard (it has blindsight so knows you're there from the get go). We actually had a ranger spec'ed out for max perception (passive 17) but that wasn't enough due to the stealth bonus the gargantuan dragon has plus the disadvantage from the blizzard. The only "indication" is a frozen corpse sticking out of the snow that we approached carefully 30ft away to investigate. The person who obviously peaked at the adventure recommended running away but in character we had literally no reason to so he stayed back along with the squishy folks and us tough guys went up a bit closer to investigate. Then surprise round breath weapon with no chance of avoiding it. And you can technically encounter this at 1st level as it's the same random roll as long as you venture beyond the safety of the towns (which 2/3 of the quests IN THE TOWNS force you to do).

So 5% chance every roll that you encounter that? That's crazy.

 Da Boss wrote:
So 5% chance every roll that you encounter that? That's crazy.

Yup. Basically, it's recommended that if you're outside of the urban areas the DM roll once each day on the random encounter timing table that determines the number of encounters that day and the timing of them. Then there is some separate roll to see if there is a blizzard (special campaign rule involving a central plot endless and extra harsh winter). Then you roll a d20 on the actual selection of types of encounters that range from harmless playful fey spirits that throw snowballs at you and a wild fox that hunts a rabbit off in the distance to being ambushed by a CR20 dragon. If it's "normal" weather, you see the dragon flying off in the distance with a whale or walrus in its mouth as a snack and it ignores you as long as you try to hide or at a minimum not try and get its attention. If you happened to roll a blizzard in the second of three rolls, the dragon ambushes you if you investigate the frozen corpse sticking out of the snow (that is on her back as her former master/rider but obviously you don't know that). Basically, if you actually roleplay as an adventurer that just approach close enough to investigate the frozen body (or god forbid a "hero" who might try to help/potentially save the unlucky person caught in the blizzard!) then you get whalloped with no chance realistically at avoiding/negotiating/begging your way out of it as written. And this is potentially a first level encounter.

Can a DM who is willing to wave their DMeus ex machina wand change it? Of course... but that doesn't excuse the horrible design as written. Our DM was clear that he was purposefully running it as written before starting the campaign and we agreed to it so I don't blame him (and he did admittedly partly try to go easy on us without breaking his rule or immersion completely FWIW by splitting up the attacks between us as well as not hitting everyone with the breath weapon like he could have). Unavoidable CR20 vs 1st level characters should NEVER be an option on a random chart. There are other encounters similarly unbalanced albeit not to that extent (like the CR8 band of barbarian berserkers we encountered in another random encounter while we were 2nd level) but this one was definitely the ultimate FU to players on the chart.

Also, this is the default setting for current Adventure League players getting possibly their first introduction to D&D through organized play. Lol.

That sounds miserable to deal with
Now i'm glad none of my gaming friends have mentioned wanting to try and run it

The actual adventure is rough but not THAT ridiculous. It's still also overly harsh (for example with 1st level characters start one of the two first adventures hunting down potentially two CR3 baddies with a half dozen CR 1/2 minions for maybe a CR5 encounter if you don't purposefully try to split them up) but the actual plot so far has been good. It's supposed to be based on which of the ten towns you start in but, if I were GM, I'd choose the other actually true starting adventure that is much easier and introduces you to the area instead of a deadly level encounter potentially for players completely new to the game. It's hard to go into specific details without spoilers.

In a nutshell, I've never seen a mega-adventure that starts at level 1 which requires so much balance/encounter tweaking to just work as intended out of the box.

Ugh! That is awful.

IT's like WOTC doesn't believe its own hype that the game is NOT DM vs Players.

This is me speaking as a not-even-novice DM, more of a hypothetical assumption on my part but I imagine for a seasoned DM who has been around the block a few times and tried all his theories, run all his best ideas and narratives an element of randomness would allow that DM to vamp a bit, roll with the punches and maybe even help a group avoid the pitfalls of railroad in themselves into the same old tracks.

This is purely a guess. I honestly have little to no experience beyond a hunch that that might be the case.

That is absolutely the point of a random encounter. To provide a seed of random inspiration to prevent you from falling into predictable patterns and help to simulate a living world.

But the scenario described here is a weird version of a random encounter. It isn't providing a random seed to generate ideas, it is plonking a fully developed scenario on the DM complete with very specific rules about the dragon's position, tactics, and the rules required to perceive it. That is no longer a random adventure seed, but rather a random chance of a particular fixed scenario happening. Obviously, you can fiddle with it, but I would wager that the majority of DMs when they fiddle with it will try to keep the encounter somewhat as described, leading to unrealistic behaviour on the part of the dragon so as to prevent a party wipe.

A weird decision from an adventure design standpoint. Putting a CR 20 dragon in your random encounter table is not bad - you can see it flying overhead, but you are beneath it's notice. It gives the players the feeling of a real world full of danger. And if the dragon does decide to attack they might have a round or two to come up with a way to flee. The presented scenario is just a deathtrap that will wipe out parties below a certain level as punishment for engaging with the game world.

As a DM, I NEVER use a random encounter. To me, encounters flow naturally from the actions of the players and the world they live in.

It is a personal preference for me as the whole idea makes no sense to me. Random encounters do happen in real life, but not in cinema/literary/make believe life!

 Easy E wrote:
Ugh! That is awful.

IT's like WOTC doesn't believe its own hype that the game is NOT DM vs Players.

Its more that they're bad at encounter design.

The original module for 4e (Keep on the Shadowfell) had all sorts of problems with party vs encounter balance. Not the least because several setups allowed for reinforcements that 4e's system just couldn't cope with.
The first encounter in the module was a 'waterfall cave' with a group of kobolds outside the waterfall, an (3rd level?) elite boss inside and a second room of kobolds. There was nothing to prevent a kobold running for reinforcements and getting 3 encounters worth of enemies in one big fight (at first level, when the PCs have one 'encounter' power each, and just 'at will' powers otherwise). Unless its softballed and all the enemies fight to death, never go for help and never call for help, its almost mathematically unwinnable.
Its not the only fight like that either, but because the designers developed the character classes, monsters and 1st module simultaneously and separately, they had no real gauge of what a party was capable of, and it was a complete cluster...bomb.

A year or so later, they had to adjust the formulas for monster stats and add some math fixes in the form of feats for PCs. The game just wasn't designed with the correct math, and the expectation that the classes they made would be fighting the monsters they made.
5e is a bit better, but has the same sort of problems, especially in the modules they produce.

Earlier editions had basically the opposite problem, where encounters were designed for assumed 'average party,' but it was possible that any given group would punch way above or way below the designers expectations. 4e and 5e and the principle of 'bounded accuracy' just doesn't allow for that (barring intentionally terrible decisions about putting low scores in your attack stat)

 Easy E wrote:
As a DM, I NEVER use a random encounter. To me, encounters flow naturally from the actions of the players and the world they live in.

It is a personal preference for me as the whole idea makes no sense to me. Random encounters do happen in real life, but not in cinema/literary/make believe life!

I think that speaks to a big and often under discussed division inside roleplaying games. Some people run the game as a narrative, a story with arcs analogous to TV or movies or novels or comic books. I think this is by far the most common and popular way to run games. I used to run games like that myself. And in a game like that Random Encounters don't make sense because they will disrupt the planned story and pace.

I have moved away from that (totally valid) way of running the game to an attempt to just simulate a fantasy world. So players have much more agency, as there is no narrative planned out ahead of time. The world still has people with goals going about achieving them, but who the players decide to interact with and how is totally open. Similarly, the wilderness is full of interesting locations for them to go and explore if they prefer. In that sort of game, random encounters are useful as part of the simulation, to give seeds to the DM to help give the idea of a bigger world with things going on in it, and to prevent the DM from falling into predictable patterns when they are forced to improvise a lot (because giving a lot of choice to the players means you will have to improvise a fair bit). Well designed tables and a good sense of how to use them are really useful in that scenario.

So they don't make sense to me in an adventure with a pre-planned set of outcomes and a pre-planned plot, like what WOTC sells. You should just pre-plan the encounters and make them as cool as possible rather than relying on rolls. If you build an adventure setting, which has no plot but is just a location to interact with, then I can see having random encounter tables. Funnily enough, the only 5e product like that, Dungeon of the Mad Mage only has suggest pre-scripted encounters and no encounter tables, which I found pretty funny!

I agree with Voss though. The designers for D&D are mostly pretty bad in my view. Just look at how many of the subclasses in the PHB are absolute garbage out of the box.

 Easy E wrote:
Wow, I have gone whole sessions (2-6 hours depending) with only 0-1 encounter.

I guess I maybe doing it wrong......

If the players are all having fun, you're doing it right.

Just be aware that "one big encounter" can mess up the balance between classes. Especially at higher levels, the "get spells back on a long rest" classes become a lot more powerful, especially if they know they don't need to hold back, since they can unload their big spells, while short-rest classes like the warlock or monk or classes that don't depend on rests like the melee beaters suffer by comparison. Of course, depending on the party and players, this might not even be an issue for you.


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 Da Boss wrote:

I agree with Voss though. The designers for D&D are mostly pretty bad in my view. Just look at how many of the subclasses in the PHB are absolute garbage out of the box.

My first D&D was 3.0 edition, where the Wizard, Druid and Cleric were on a different planet to the Fighter, Paladin and Monk from about level 5 onwards (and from level 15-ish, in a different galaxy). Compared to that, 5e is superbly balanced. I won't deny that some subclasses are weaker than others, but I find the balance issues get wildly overstated online (where apparently every encounter is a white-room race to see who can do the most DPR, where everyone stands toe to toe and races to 0 hp, and the classes never ever help each other) and most of the issues can be sorted with a bit of DM attention.

Da Boss, I actually approach the game more like you. I just set adventure hooks and then see where the PCs lead the way.

However, you are right. Since I do not do random encounters I am doing a LOT of improvising. I actually find this easier than prepping because after playing for years, I find players ALWAYS bypass what is prepared and I am Improvising anyway. I just decided to embrace it. I usually come to the table having done almost no prep work.

Yeah, I just find I become predictable quickly without some random element to bounce off of. And I just find rolling on tables fun!

My prep tends to be very much just preparing a map full of adventure locations. After that, I improvise most everything else.

Random encounters have their place in some games (especially long running campaigns IMO) and I do use them with pre-approval/pruning ahead of time. They should be challenging but not potentially or especially reliably a blowout for the PCs. Save the blowouts for scripted memorable climatic encounters. The reason I specified long running campaigns above is because I do like that they add an element of surprise specifically for the GM rather than the players who are technically surprised by every encounter (unless they're reading ahead in a written module).

YMMV but I don't feel they're inherently bad; it's just that the ones in Rime are.

If there are good random tables (especially multiple tables that work well together) I will pre roll on those tables about 20ish times and put all the needed details/features of those encounters onto note cards (1 card for each thing). They a just keep a little shuffled deck of random encounters next to me and when something triggers I just draw the note card and go.

This has both the advantage of being quick without having to reference tables and familiarizing myself with the results as I record them.

 Elemental wrote:

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 Da Boss wrote:

I agree with Voss though. The designers for D&D are mostly pretty bad in my view. Just look at how many of the subclasses in the PHB are absolute garbage out of the box.

My first D&D was 3.0 edition, where the Wizard, Druid and Cleric were on a different planet to the Fighter, Paladin and Monk from about level 5 onwards (and from level 15-ish, in a different galaxy). Compared to that, 5e is superbly balanced. I won't deny that some subclasses are weaker than others, but I find the balance issues get wildly overstated online (where apparently every encounter is a white-room race to see who can do the most DPR, where everyone stands toe to toe and races to 0 hp, and the classes never ever help each other) and most of the issues can be sorted with a bit of DM attention.

I don't think that's what Da Boss is referring to when he mentions garbage subclasses. Some are way too specific (ranger in general has a lot of these problems, as do some of the mount based subclasses). Samurai is bizarrely awful. 5 temp hp, 3/times a day, and it moves to 10 at 10th level? No level appropriate enemy will ever care about that past level 1 (and you don't get it until 3rd). At _15th_ level you can forgo advantage for an extra attack? That's a terrible trade. The best thing the whole subclass gets is proficiency with wisdom saves, which is basically half a feat, and fighters are the best class to just do that naturally.


Though there are still a lot of issues where non-spellcasters might as well go play Xbox games when it comes to contributing. Want to go to a Cloud Giant Fortress, raid the City of Brass, or scout for Aboleth hunting parties in the deep places underwater? Spellcasters have a half-dozen solutions for each, and non-casters have none. They can't even get there, let alone interact with some of those environments, or potentially deal with even non-hostile natives in those areas.

Way of the Four Elements Monk, or whatever it's called, is up there too. I've often seen the subclass openly derided for how laughably bad it is. And it's already a Monk, oft considered one of the weakest of 5e's classes.

Yeah. Frenzied Berserker can kill itself with it's main ability. Not great really!

Beastmaster Ranger just plain doesn't work for what it is supposed to do.

Assassin is almost completely DM dependent and has a poisoners kit that has no proper rules in the PHB (and the rules added in later supplements make it fairly pointless)

Wild Magic Sorcerer is DM dependent and terrible.

Way of Elements Monk does not work well at all.

These are all options in the core book, and it is pretty crazy that some of them made it in to be honest. Just shows that the designers don't give a gak.

As for Spellcasters vs. Martial, that has been a part of D&D for so long that I think it will never go away. It is like Space Marines being the stars of 40K.

Beastmaster at least got fixed a bit and became somewhat function as of Tasha's, though it's original incarnation was so busted I'm not sure Wizard's deserves credit for fixing it. The original state of the Beastmaster is such that it's baffling it made it through QA or play testing. But then I think some people would accuse Wizards of not doing QA or play testing, and I think they have a solid basis to think that sometimes.

I will just say, QA and Playtesting is NOT easy. 25 people working feverishly to deadline at work are no match for Thousands of recreationalists with all the time in the world.

I have never seen a "flawless" product or an "unbreakable" system, the closest is air traffic control and even they have some BIG mistakes.

I'm deeply unimpressed by people who say (and I realise you were not saying this!) "Beastmaster is fine because it was fixed in Tasha's!"

Like, super cool that I need to buy another 50 euro book because WOTC didn't care enough to write even basically passable rules for their first 50 euro book. It's like the homebrew solution people always give - yeah, but I really don't want to open negotiations on class features with all my players, I play D&D in the expectation that that stuff works reasonably well out of the box.

Genuinely though I think Frenzied Berserker is even worse than Beastmaster.

 LordofHats wrote:
Beastmaster at least got fixed a bit and became somewhat function as of Tasha's, though it's original incarnation was so busted I'm not sure Wizard's deserves credit for fixing it. The original state of the Beastmaster is such that it's baffling it made it through QA or play testing. But then I think some people would accuse Wizards of not doing QA or play testing, and I think they have a solid basis to think that sometimes.

I just started playing D&D recently right around the time Tasha's was released so I obviously didn't have any experience with the OG Beastmaster but, just from reading the rules, it really did seem lackluster. You'd end up with a trail of animal corpses behind you longer than the most successful taxidermist in the Forgotten Realms. The Tasha's alternative rules are a big improvement but also an inconsistent one. Given how badly the original version of both the base class and specifically this subclass were perceived, I'm surprised they deviated from the "lets give every ranger subclass three unique rules/benefits to start with" plan. It seems like most (if not all?) Ranger subclasses since the PHB have gotten three benefits upon entering the subclass at level 3. I suppose since this was technically a revision to the PHB where they only had one they kept that instead?


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 Da Boss wrote:
I'm deeply unimpressed by people who say (and I realise you were not saying this!) "Beastmaster is fine because it was fixed in Tasha's!"

Like, super cool that I need to buy another 50 euro book because WOTC didn't care enough to write even basically passable rules for their first 50 euro book. It's like the homebrew solution people always give - yeah, but I really don't want to open negotiations on class features with all my players, I play D&D in the expectation that that stuff works reasonably well out of the box.

Genuinely though I think Frenzied Berserker is even worse than Beastmaster.

Did they do the whole FAQ/errata free fix for the optional rules in Tashas that apply to PHB subclasses/base classes ? I honestly don't know but that would have been customer friendly.

They've generally left it to players to homebrew solutions. I think there's a bit of laziness in it. The philosophy seems to be 'players will homebrew what they don't like so don't bother getting it right.'

 Easy E wrote:
I will just say, QA and Playtesting is NOT easy. 25 people working feverishly to deadline at work are no match for Thousands of recreationalists with all the time in the world.

I have never seen a "flawless" product or an "unbreakable" system, the closest is air traffic control and even they have some BIG mistakes.

Sure, but Wizards has had some pretty notorious blunders that don't even hit functional, let alone flawless or unbreakable.

The 4e 'skill challenge' system is probably the biggest. In concept, its really simple- a group skill challenge that requires X successes before Y failures.
In practice, if you weren't the absolute best in the group at <skill> your contribution was likely to be a net negative. So the best way to handle skill challenges was to let the best person (or people in the case of tied modfiers) do it on their own, and everyone else sit on their hands for the scene, which is the exact opposite of the goal (everyone helps complete the task).
At print, the target DCs were also too high, so groups were _very_ likely to fail. It was just a basic math failure, that escalated with level- the DCs simply weren't on the same scale as PC skill totals, the DCs advanced faster.

WotC published at least six different fixes to them system, none of which really solved the problems.

As time went on and developers left (or more accurately, more fell to the annual christmas pink slips (they got fired), every year for the duration of the edition), one of major problems with it came to light: when they were internally testing 4th edition, they didn't use the skill challenge system. At all. They winged it with a bunch of houserules instead (and iirc the DC chart by level was written up in the last week before the books were sent to print).
For the official internal playtests for the new edition, the developers used house rules instead.

I'm sure there was a less punishing version of exhaustion that Frenzied Berserker was designed around and it never got updated.

5e is alright, but it just seems half baked in several areas. Some classes seem fully developed and cool, and if you play those then the game is pretty solid. Other stuff is obviously an afterthought.

I think D&D suffers from too much specificity in their rules packages and the class system is impediment to decent games and role-playing.

They need a more "a la carte" system where there are martial skills, and magic skills, and players can use skill points/XP to "Buy into" whatever they want IF they can meet the base requirements to simulate different archetypes or not at their choosing.

Now, you have Ulron the Frenzied Berserker! Which means you get Y mechanical advantages or advantage choices.

Instead the player has Ulron the Frenzied Berserker because I chose to play him as a frenzied berserker but he can actually swing an Axe pretty well, has a centering ability to help boost his crit % if he prays to Krum before attacking, and has the skill points to lay a good Boast out to intimidate his opponents because that is what I want to play.

Of course, that would COMPLETELY kill the class system as we know it and also force people to try and get creative and build their own "archetypes" instead of handing it to them.

I know, I know, not exactly a hot take.....

Hmm.
I rarely find class interacts with roleplaying in any way at all.

There are a few exceptions, like wizard = educated, and barbarian= unfortunate cultural stereotype, or street urchin= rogue, but thats more player choice than something set in stone.

Roleplaying is more about personality and back story, not class mechanics.
--
your example puzzles me, because except for crit % (which isn't an in-character roleplaying characteristic at all), swinging an axe well is in there by default, and boasting intimidation is easily accomodated by skills (either from class or background).

 Easy E wrote:
I think D&D suffers from too much specificity in their rules packages and the class system is impediment to decent games and role-playing.

They need a more "a la carte" system where there are martial skills, and magic skills, and players can use skill points/XP to "Buy into" whatever they want IF they can meet the base requirements to simulate different archetypes or not at their choosing.

Now, you have Ulron the Frenzied Berserker! Which means you get Y mechanical advantages or advantage choices.

Instead the player has Ulron the Frenzied Berserker because I chose to play him as a frenzied berserker but he can actually swing an Axe pretty well, has a centering ability to help boost his crit % if he prays to Krum before attacking, and has the skill points to lay a good Boast out to intimidate his opponents because that is what I want to play.

Of course, that would COMPLETELY kill the class system as we know it and also force people to try and get creative and build their own "archetypes" instead of handing it to them.

I know, I know, not exactly a hot take.....

AGREED!

The level/class system is honestly poison to the rp part of the rpg. It's long out dated. You can have semi classes ala the FF Starwars games or "professions" in other games. But they are jumping off points. Not a box you are trapped inside.