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We should also remember this is meant to be a way of the new system, not a super snowflake DM special epic. The point isn't to try and kill PC's, or necessarily even have goblins be 'natural', but for people to play, learn, and discuss the new rules.

Mr.Church13 wrote:

 pretre wrote:

Yeah, you guys sound like a hoot to play with.

"Everyone ready to roll up their 7th party to try and beat this first encounter?"

"Umm, no. I think we're just gonna go play video games forever now."

Manchu wrote:I think their point is, the encounters in question are not really that hard if DMed properly.

Manchu has it right. Just because something is difficult and requires though to beat, does not mean TPK. Generally, TPK is a failure in the cooperative experience.

Da Boss wrote:I'm sure that compared to 4th edition level 1 characters, 5th edition is a big shock. But I much prefer that. It's great to have that progression from being in fear of your life in every encounter to becoming more grizzled and hardened, and eventually becoming confident in your abilities.

Really? I didn't find these much less powerful than 4th. No daily, but that's about it.

Ambushes are always pretty nasty, and people can always get wiped out by lucky shots. This conversation is making me interested to try out the adventure in question to see how it would play with my group.

Let us know!

Mr.Church13 wrote:
Yeah, you guys sound like a hoot to play with.

"Everyone ready to roll up their 7th party to try and beat this first encounter?"

"Umm, no. I think we're just gonna go play video games forever now."

As a DM, I've never TPKed. Video games TPK all the time.

My poor players just received a TPK tonight, after another near TPK earlier on. With two players missing this week, including their wizard, the Wyvern Tor encounter destroyed them. Sadly it wasn't their tactics, as they were solid; I basically rolled hot and managed to critical the Cleric twice in a row and then consistently roll high against the two fighters.

We agreed to just redo the encounter next week with more players. It was really interesting to see what having no Wizard and no Rogue did for them, and the lack of Fireball was especially critical here. I think that it is valuable to have these moments before I begin a proper campaign!

Actually I take that back. I TPKed once while the party was playing Paranoia. But to be fair...

... it was Paranoia.

 Melissia wrote:
Actually I take that back. I TPKed once while the party was playing Paranoia. But to be fair...

... it was Paranoia.

If you don't TPK at least once while playing Paranoia you aren't playing Paranoia.

 pretre wrote:

Really? I didn't find these much less powerful than 4th. No daily, but that's about it.

It's interesting to look at the give and take for 4e vs 5e level 1 characters.

From a pure toughness perspective, 4e characters tend to have a few more HP than 5e. 10+con for a 4e wizard vs 6+con mod for a 5e wizard, for instance. 15+con for a fighter vs 10+con mod. All classes also get Second Wind, which seems to be fighter only in 5e.

From an ability perspective, I'd say at-will 4e powers are generally better than caster cantrips (since non-casters have no equivalent), but 1x encounter + 1x daily is a bit weaker than starting spells for wizards/clerics, imo.

Goblins tend to do about the same damage, though some particular goblin iterations in 4e actually do more damage than their standard 5e counterpart. Funnily enough, all retain the ability to one shot a wayward wizard.


It'll be interesting to see how my group handles 5e, if they handle it at all. I admit I'm still hesitant, mostly because I tend towards non-caster classes which I still see as lacking in 5e for the most part. Here's hoping the PHB in a few weeks will assuage those concerns.

Edit:

I have been party to at least 3 TPKs in various systems.

D&D as a player: an L5R game where we were ambushed by not-kobolds. They managed to surround us in a corridor, spit our party, and we wiped. It was embarrassing all around.
Werewolf the Apocalypse as a player: fetish to recover is inside an active volcano in the spirit world. For whatever reason, I was under the impression only I could pick it up (I was a Silver Fang, and it was an ancestral Silver Fang fetish). Well, my not-athletic social pack leader type ended up falling into lava. The rest of the pack basically died trying to save me. Also embarrassing all around.
Star Wars OCR as a GM: Not quite a TPK, but critical hits in that game were DEVASTATING. I almost wiped the party after a couple crits in a row. It was bad.

We've only had TPKs recently actually, and it's been quite refreshing and made a compelling little story for our open table game.

Steamdragon: I might be remembering this wrong, but in the play test, it was 6+con mod, whereas in 4th it was 10+con score? I'm at my parent's place in Ireland right now so I can't check.

The difference in number of hit points is mostly what I meant in terms of toughness.

Yeah, sorry, 'con' should be 'con mod' for 5e characters.

 Ahtman wrote:
The point isn't to try and kill PC's

Oh. I've been DMing wrong...

 kronk wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:
The point isn't to try and kill PC's

Oh. I've been DMing wrong...

Hey, if you'd been playing Paranoia, you'd have been doing* it** right*** all**** along*****.

*(as long as the deaths were funny)

** (or if the deaths were just, considering what the people did, and it amused you)

*** (or unjust, as long as it amuses you)

**** (or for narrative reasons, especially if it amuses you)

***** (or just because it amuses you, really)

I've never TPK'd. I'm in the camp that would aim to avoid character death in general, before aiming to create it.

I figure the actual danger level only needs to be high enough to create a sufficient feeling of risk to ensure the PCs pay respect to the tone of the game/setting. Of course depending on the tone, setting and the personalities of your players what that entails exactly can be pretty variable.

I tpk'd once. Starting adventure in 3rd or 3.5. Players ran into a wererat. No silver. Game over.

 pretre wrote:
I tpk'd once. Starting adventure in 3rd or 3.5. Players ran into a wererat. No silver. Game over.

That happened in Temple of Elemental Evil when random encounter was Shadows (or was it Shades?), which can only be harmed by magical weapons, of which no one had...

 Ahtman wrote:

 pretre wrote:
I tpk'd once. Starting adventure in 3rd or 3.5. Players ran into a wererat. No silver. Game over.

That happened in Temple of Elemental Evil when random encounter was Shadows (or was it Shades?), which can only be harmed by magical weapons, of which no one had...

Yeah but Temple is basically designed to kill parties...

 streamdragon wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:

 pretre wrote:
I tpk'd once. Starting adventure in 3rd or 3.5. Players ran into a wererat. No silver. Game over.

That happened in Temple of Elemental Evil when random encounter was Shadows (or was it Shades?), which can only be harmed by magical weapons, of which no one had...

Yeah but Temple is basically designed to kill parties...

We hadn't even gotten to the Temple yet...

Your party was playing TOEE and no one had a magic weapon?

 Alpharius wrote:
Your party was playing TOEE and no one had a magic weapon?

Not at level 1 when still exploring just outside the Hamlet of Hommlet, which is what we kept calling it. We also died to giant frogs at some point when one of the players rolled the max number of them for the encounter.

I don't feel so bad now. At least a raiding party of Orcs is a respectable and worthy opponent. Dying to giant frogs? Man.

The only TPK I was part of was in HackMaster when we heard rumor of a dragon when the party was at level 4.

It turned out to be an Adult SwackIron Dragon.

That was a mistake...

At least it wasn't a Gazebo.

Judging by the table of contents, what are you most looking forward to seeing in the PHB?

For me, it's a toss up between arcane specializations, feats, and all the new backgrounds.

Backgrounds and subclasses. For example, Eldritch Knight sounds amazing for giving that touch of magical flavour to a fighter without needing to multiclass, while giving a magical thief subclass nicely suits the 'medieval noir' style of character. As someone who will be GMing it, I'm really looking forward to giving the players these kinds of options without having to deal with stuff like Prestige Classes and weird feat chains. I also think that the backgrounds have been really entertaining so far and do a really nice job of giving that extra level of detail to a character.

All in all, I'm hopeful that 5e gives us the 3.x era idea of 'build your own concept', but without all the mindboggling complexities and acres of options.

 Manchu wrote:
At least it wasn't a Gazebo.

Judging by the table of contents, what are you most looking forward to seeing in the PHB?

For me, it's a toss up between arcane specializations, feats, and all the new backgrounds.

The Feats. As was mentioned earlier, they should be more rare(?) and are more along the lines of character background stuff?

Also, from what little I have seen and read (from you guys), it looks like everything has been stripped down to the basics. That would be refreshing.

 kronk wrote:


The Feats. As was mentioned earlier, they should be more rare(?) and are more along the lines of character background stuff?

4th had something like these in the Backgrounds section.. I know I've made a character who's background was as a Mariner, which gave me a bonus to one of two skills (they usually gave the option for 2 skills or a blanket option without any bonuses)

Behold the Paladin:

Heh. Is that a half-orc paladin? Excellent.

i want to know more about this "Sacred Oath" mechanic.

it's the Paladin's kit or path, at least in the Alpha leak it was.

"Sacred Oath
When you reach 3rd level, you swear the oath
that binds you as a paladin forever. Up to this
time you have been in a preparatory stage,
committed to the path but not yet sworn to it.
Now you choose the Oath of Devotion, the Oath
of the Ancients, or the Oath of Vengeance, all
detailed at the end of the class description.
Your choice grants you features at 3rd level,
and then again at 7th, 15th, and 20th level. Those
features include oath spells and the Channel
Divinity feature.
Oath Spells
Each oath has a list of associated spells. You gain
access to these spells at the levels specified in
the oath description. Once you gain access to an
oath spell, you always have it prepared. Oath
spells don’t count against the number of spells
you can prepare each day.
If you gain an oath spell that doesn’t appear on
the paladin spell list, the spell is nonetheless a
paladin spell for you. "

Yeah I figured as much, but I meant more as a mechanic than a concept -- i.e., what does the oath consist of, how is it maintained/broken, what are the game consequences, etc.

 Manchu wrote:
Yeah I figured as much, but I meant more as a mechanic than a concept -- i.e., what does the oath consist of, how is it maintained/broken, what are the game consequences, etc.

Like this?

Breaking Your Oath
A paladin tries to hold to the highest standards of
conduct, but even the most virtuous paladin is fallible.
Sometimes the right path proves too demanding,
sometimes a situation calls for the lesser of two evils,
and sometimes the heat of emotion causes a paladin to
transgress his or her oath.
A paladin who has broken a vow typically seeks
absolution from a cleric who shares his or her faith or
from another paladin of the same order. The paladin
might spend an allanight vigil in prayer as a sign of
penitence, or undertake a fast or similar act of selfa
denial. After a rite of confession and forgiveness, the
paladin starts fresh, with his or her oath renewed.
If a paladin willfully violates his or her oath and shows
no sign of repentance, the consequences can be more
serious. At the DM’s discretion, an impenitent paladin
might be forced to abandon this class and adopt
another, or perhaps to take the Oathbreaker paladin
option that appears in the Dungeon)Master’s)Guide.


Oath of Vengeance
The Oath of Vengeance is a solemn commitment
to punish those who have committed a grievous
sin. When evil forces slaughter helpless villagers,
when an entire people turns against the will of
the gods, when a thieves’ guild grows too violent
and powerful, when a dragon rampages through
the countryside—at times like these, paladins
arise and swear an Oath of Vengeance to set
right that which has gone wrong. To these
paladins—sometimes called avengers or dark
knights—their own purity is not as important as
delivering justice.
Tenets of Vengeance
The tenets of the Oath of Vengeance vary by paladin,
but all the tenets revolve around punishing wrongdoers
by any means necessary. Paladins who uphold these
tenets are willing to sacrifice even their own
righteousness to mete out justice upon those who do
evil, so the paladins are often neutral or lawful neutral
in alignment. The core principles of the tenets are
brutally simple.
Fight the Greater Evil. Faced with a choice of fighting
my sworn foes or combating a lesser evil, I choose the
greater evil.
No Mercy for the Wicked. Ordinary foes might win my
mercy, but my sworn enemies do not.
By Any Means Necessary. My qualms can’t get in the
way of exterminating my foes.
Restitution. If my foes wreak ruin on the world, it is
because I failed to stop them. I must help those harmed
by their misdeeds.