"Explosion in complexity" my foot. If you can handle a ninth-level character you can handle a twentieth-level character, and the game is so simplified that nobody needs to use half the options they get anyways. Every base class has all its critical features in place by ninth. Frankly most classes have all their critical bits in place by fifth.
Nah. People assume high-level characters are impossible to challenge because the game language tells them so - "characters above twelfth level are Infamous heroes of the Realm and have saved the whole world multiple times" - and because a first-level barbarian can have fifteen hit points while the same barbarian, at twentieth level, can easily have over four hundred. That's beyond ridiculous and it warps the game.
Bounded accuracy was the right move, but Wizards didn't take it far enough. Bounded HP comes next, and if that means characters have to be more careful instead of just tanking three different ancient dragon breath weapons with their nekkid barbaric nipples and not caring in the slightest? I'd consider that to be Good For Game. There are some things that ancient, powerful creatures beyond mortal limits can do that should worry even a powerful and highly skilled mortal hero. As opposed to "this thousand year old dragon can unload his worst breath attacks on me for the next three solid days and I might feel a faint tickle of worry by the end of the third day", a'la current D&D.
How dare you besmirch the astronomical fortitude of my barbaric nip-nips?!? For shame.
PS- By my math, a Hill Dwarf Barbarian with the Tough feat, 20 Con, and perfect rolls on every Hit Die would max-out at 400 HP by 20th level. How are you “easily” getting “over” that number?
"Explosion in complexity" my foot. If you can handle a ninth-level character you can handle a twentieth-level character
9th level is already pretty problematic, and the complexity problem is mostly on the side of the DM -- the players can throw so much weird stuff at you and you need to somehow handle all of it. It's easy to deal with extra hit points, that 400 hp barbarian can be flattened by a midsized kobold swarm (I mean, maybe high level monsters should have more damage and/or accuracy, but that's just numbers).
Bounded accuracy was the right move, but Wizards didn't take it far enough.
Bounded accuracy was the wrong move unless you also remove high level spells. 20th level fighters should be able to sunder castle walls with a strike, and ancient dragons should be able to go Godzilla on said castle.
Bounded accuracy was the right move, but Wizards didn't take it far enough. Bounded HP comes next, and if that means characters have to be more careful instead of just tanking three different ancient dragon breath weapons with their nekkid barbaric nipples and not caring in the slightest? I'd consider that to be Good For Game.
(I would use the term "Bounded Hit Dice")
I think that would make for a better game, but it has a couple issues with the D&D brand:
"heroes who can tank epic things" and "heroes who can tank at all" are both, to many people, a really key part of the definition of D&D.
All of D&D's systematic components are linked together. Some people may see that as a strength, others as a weakness, but it's basically true because D&D has spent several decades evolving as a brand. While Bounded Accuracy mostly just meant using a unified proficiency bonus and paying close attention to stackable powers, Bounded Hit Dice would also imply Bounded Damage and maybe Bounded Spell Levels and even Bounded Levels. Which is a lot of earth to move, and a potentially much bigger freakout from D&D traditionalists.
Bounded accuracy was the right move, but Wizards didn't take it far enough. Bounded HP comes next, and if that means characters have to be more careful instead of just tanking three different ancient dragon breath weapons with their nekkid barbaric nipples and not caring in the slightest? I'd consider that to be Good For Game.
(I would use the term "Bounded Hit Dice")
I think that would make for a better game, but it has a couple issues with the D&D brand:
"heroes who can tank epic things" and "heroes who can tank at all" are both, to many people, a really key part of the definition of D&D.
All of D&D's systematic components are linked together. Some people may see that as a strength, others as a weakness, but it's basically true because D&D has spent several decades evolving as a brand. While Bounded Accuracy mostly just meant using a unified proficiency bonus and paying close attention to stackable powers, Bounded Hit Dice would also imply Bounded Damage and maybe Bounded Spell Levels and even Bounded Levels. Which is a lot of earth to move, and a potentially much bigger freakout from D&D traditionalists.
Well, you can simplify that down to 'Bounded Levels'. If you want to bound everything, just run e6.
Sure. But when you can gain an over two thousand percent increase in your ability to take damage between levels 1 and 20? That's going to warp things and limit what DMs can do to challenge players. Not every adventure can start with "five hundred kobolds invade your bedroom..." or "an ancient dragon swoops out of the sky again to ruin your Tuesday..." If ordinary mortal threats were still a problem for high-level characters, high-level play would be much easier.
Like, if an assassin knifes you in the back at fifth level? You're on the ground making death saves, and that's if he doesn't roll well enough to just gib you in one go. If the exact same assassin knifes you in the back at fifteenth level? You turn around with the knife still in your back, look at the guy, then calmly and casually say, "Son? You've made poor decisions in your life. But that one? That one's the poorest."
And DMs say PCs having more things they can do is what's hard to balance around? Nah. Bloating attack and damage numbers to the absolutely ludicrous levels required to make a PC so much as notice a single hit much past eighth level is what gets annoying in a hurry.
Sure. But when you can gain an over two thousand percent increase in your ability to take damage between levels 1 and 20? That's going to warp things and limit what DMs can do to challenge players. Not every adventure can start with "five hundred kobolds invade your bedroom..." or "an ancient dragon swoops out of the sky again to ruin your Tuesday..." If ordinary mortal threats were still a problem for high-level characters, high-level play would be much easier.
If ordinary mortal threats were still a problem for high level characters, they wouldn't be high level characters.
I have run literal superhero games (not using D&D) with characters that were far more durable than that 20th level barbarian, and it's no problem -- you just need equally over the top threats. The problem with 5e is that they nerfed the threats by more than they nerfed the PCs. A Tarrasque should a threat that can level a city, not a moderately overgrown lizard.
"Explosion in complexity" my foot. If you can handle a ninth-level character you can handle a twentieth-level character
9th level is already pretty problematic, and the complexity problem is mostly on the side of the DM -- the players can throw so much weird stuff at you and you need to somehow handle all of it. It's easy to deal with extra hit points, that 400 hp barbarian can be flattened by a midsized kobold swarm (I mean, maybe high level monsters should have more damage and/or accuracy, but that's just numbers).
This. A ton of HP is not a challenge. If they don't go down fast enough, throw more and/or harder hitting attacks their way. Alternatively, bypass HP altogether - coerce the PCs, charm them, frighten them. I know players often dislike having their agency taken away, but they can suck it up in moderation. All part of the game. High level spells on the other hand, or some archmage owing the party a favour, or being able to throw a literal king's ransom at a problem - that requires some foresight and creativity. And those things you might actually see coming; there's been plenty of unpredictable shenanigans thrown at me, and it's bad DMing to always push back against things you're unprepared for.
Like, if an assassin knifes you in the back at fifth level? You're on the ground making death saves, and that's if he doesn't roll well enough to just gib you in one go. If the exact same assassin knifes you in the back at fifteenth level? You turn around with the knife still in your back, look at the guy, then calmly and casually say, "Son? You've made poor decisions in your life. But that one? That one's the poorest."
Like, if an assassin knifes you in the back at fifth level? You're on the ground making death saves, and that's if he doesn't roll well enough to just gib you in one go. If the exact same assassin knifes you in the back at fifteenth level? You turn around with the knife still in your back, look at the guy, then calmly and casually say, "Son? You've made poor decisions in your life. But that one? That one's the poorest."
Why would it be the exact same assassin though? Why isn't he packing some hotter heat if he's able to go after a 15th level party? Are CR 15 nemeses too cheap to look anywhere but the bargain bin for their inhumation needs?
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Like, if an assassin knifes you in the back at fifth level? You're on the ground making death saves, and that's if he doesn't roll well enough to just gib you in one go. If the exact same assassin knifes you in the back at fifteenth level? You turn around with the knife still in your back, look at the guy, then calmly and casually say, "Son? You've made poor decisions in your life. But that one? That one's the poorest."
Why would it be the exact same assassin though? Why isn't he packing some hotter heat if he's able to go after a 15th level party? Are CR 15 nemeses too cheap to look anywhere but the bargain bin for their inhumation needs?
Or why hasn’t their Sneak Attack increased to be commensurate with a CR 15 threat level?
Let's give a concrete example: consider the Baldur's Gate 3 opening cinematic:
The Nautiloid is literally hundreds of feet long.
There is a watch tower (at around 2:32) which from the scale of the guardsman inside is about 100' tall. At 2:53 the Nautiloid grabs it (using a tentacle that appears to be around 10' thick) and demolishes it with a single squeeze. Later on more tentacles (much thinner, either inconsistent cinematics or different tentacles) are moving through the city street disintegrating people at a touch.
Now, at 3:22 three red dragons come through a gate. The gate appears to be hundreds of feet across, and based on the scale of the githyanki (human-sized) riders, the dragons are in the vicinity of a hundred feet.
None of that stuff is actually unreasonable for epic play. However, I don't believe the Nautiloid has actually been statted up in 5e at all, and according to Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, the red dragons who work with the Githyanki are generally Young (they leave when they reach adulthood), which is... not a hundred foot dragon. And, well, PCs who can reasonably fight against the stuff in that cinematic are not on a scale to care about 'ordinary mortal threats'.
I remember when the <class> handbooks came out, so you could have different types of fighters - beastriders, savages, barbarians, bladesingers, different types of clerics, wizards, etc. I had a swashbuckler with a rapier (of course) who was so much fun to play, because he spent half his time worrying about his appearance and half worrying about poking things....
Although I can understand why that went away - too many sourcebooks, not enough profit, etc, that was a really fun D&D time for me. I enjoy the heck out of 5E but it does seem a little generic in some ways. What saves it for me is I am big into the RPing, so my character stats are not as meaningful as how my character acts,
Bounded accuracy was the right move, but Wizards didn't take it far enough. Bounded HP comes next, and if that means characters have to be more careful instead of just tanking three different ancient dragon breath weapons with their nekkid barbaric nipples and not caring in the slightest? I'd consider that to be Good For Game.
(I would use the term "Bounded Hit Dice")
I think that would make for a better game, but it has a couple issues with the D&D brand:
"heroes who can tank epic things" and "heroes who can tank at all" are both, to many people, a really key part of the definition of D&D.
All of D&D's systematic components are linked together. Some people may see that as a strength, others as a weakness, but it's basically true because D&D has spent several decades evolving as a brand. While Bounded Accuracy mostly just meant using a unified proficiency bonus and paying close attention to stackable powers, Bounded Hit Dice would also imply Bounded Damage and maybe Bounded Spell Levels and even Bounded Levels. Which is a lot of earth to move, and a potentially much bigger freakout from D&D traditionalists.
Binding hit dice doesn’t necessarily mean all that. Back in 1e, you stopped getting hit dice around level 10, depending on class. IIRC, you still got a couple hp per level, but it dramatically reduced hp of high level characters. Of course 1e is a completely different game from 5e, but a system like that can work.
"Explosion in complexity" my foot. If you can handle a ninth-level character you can handle a twentieth-level character, and the game is so simplified that nobody needs to use half the options they get anyways. Every base class has all its critical features in place by ninth. Frankly most classes have all their critical bits in place by fifth.
Nah. People assume high-level characters are impossible to challenge because the game language tells them so - "characters above twelfth level are Infamous heroes of the Realm and have saved the whole world multiple times" - and because a first-level barbarian can have fifteen hit points while the same barbarian, at twentieth level, can easily have over four hundred. That's beyond ridiculous and it warps the game.
Bounded accuracy was the right move, but Wizards didn't take it far enough. Bounded HP comes next, and if that means characters have to be more careful instead of just tanking three different ancient dragon breath weapons with their nekkid barbaric nipples and not caring in the slightest? I'd consider that to be Good For Game. There are some things that ancient, powerful creatures beyond mortal limits can do that should worry even a powerful and highly skilled mortal hero. As opposed to "this thousand year old dragon can unload his worst breath attacks on me for the next three solid days and I might feel a faint tickle of worry by the end of the third day", a'la current D&D.
Oh no! You're starting to sound like Dungeon Craft.
I think bounded accuracy was a good thing. I DM'd one AD&D homebrew module that was high level and they faced Githyanki Knights with their silver swords (they were vorpal) but the only way they could hit one of the characters was to roll a natural 20 (which would be decapitation) because their AC was so high (Well, low actually. Think it was an AC -7). So I think WotC did a good job with handling bounded accuracy, AC's, DC's etc...
AD&D had characters only roll dice for HP up to a certain level (Fighters gained 3 HP after 9th level, Thieves got 2 HP after 10th, Magic-Users got 1 HP after 11th, and they only had d4 hit dice) so if that kind of option came into play in 5e (or 5.5e) then some high level spells might need adjusting. But maybe not as many as you'd think.
Like, if an assassin knifes you in the back at fifth level? You're on the ground making death saves, and that's if he doesn't roll well enough to just gib you in one go. If the exact same assassin knifes you in the back at fifteenth level? You turn around with the knife still in your back, look at the guy, then calmly and casually say, "Son? You've made poor decisions in your life. But that one? That one's the poorest."
Why would it be the exact same assassin though? Why isn't he packing some hotter heat if he's able to go after a 15th level party? Are CR 15 nemeses too cheap to look anywhere but the bargain bin for their inhumation needs?
Yeah. When you get to higher level you should be up against more dangerous threats that can still challenge the party. Even other humanoids thrown at the party should be sufficiently tough to challenge the party, unless the DM is having some fun throwing a softball encounter to job for the party to show how far they've come.
A 5th level assassin not being a particularly dangerous threat for the kind of person who wrestles dragons and fights demigods seems working as intended to me.
As Yurei themselves said:
There are some things that ancient, powerful creatures beyond mortal limits can do that should worry even a powerful and highly skilled mortal hero.
Only in this case, the 19th level fighter is the powerful creature and the assassin is the one who should be worried.
Hit Points: 32 -> 333 (x10). A level 2 fighter with 14 con probably has 20 hit points, a level 20 with 18 con (2 ASIs) has 203 (x10)
AC: 16 -> 18 (+2). The fighter likely went from something like 18 (chain+shield) to something above 25 (plate+2, shield+2, ring of protection) (+7)
Damage over 3 rounds: wyrmling 65 (breath 2 targets=45, 2 bite=20), ancient 362 (breath 2 targets 144, bite x2 56, claw x4 60, tail x6 102), about 5.5x. The fighter went from 4 attacks (action surge) for 1d8+5 (38) to 20 attacks for 1d8+10 (290) plus 6d12 (39) from battlemaster dice (or more, with feats and so on),a bout 8x.
Attack Bonus: +4->+14 (+10). The fighter likely went from +5 to +14 (+9)
Overall, the fighter has much sharper scaling of AC and damage, similar scaling on attack and hit points, and is thus considerably stronger (relative to an equal CR foe) at level 20 than they were at level 2. That's just Wizards being bad at math, though, nothing about hit points per se.
Hit Points: 32 -> 333 (x10). A level 2 fighter with 14 con probably has 20 hit points, a level 20 with 18 con (2 ASIs) has 203 (x10)
AC: 16 -> 18 (+2). The fighter likely went from something like 18 (chain+shield) to something above 25 (plate+2, shield+2, ring of protection) (+7)
Damage over 3 rounds: wyrmling 65 (breath 2 targets=45, 2 bite=20), ancient 362 (breath 2 targets 144, bite x2 56, claw x4 60, tail x6 102), about 5.5x. The fighter went from 4 attacks (action surge) for 1d8+5 (38) to 20 attacks for 1d8+10 (290) plus 6d12 (39) from battlemaster dice (or more, with feats and so on),a bout 8x.
Attack Bonus: +4->+14 (+10). The fighter likely went from +5 to +14 (+9)
Overall, the fighter has much sharper scaling of AC and damage, similar scaling on attack and hit points, and is thus considerably stronger (relative to an equal CR foe) at level 20 than they were at level 2. That's just Wizards being bad at math, though, nothing about hit points per se.
Yeah, I would much rather have the monsters scaled up than to see the characters scaled down.
Edit: I also think scaling up the monsters would be easier than readjusting all the characters classes and associated abilities.
Like, if an assassin knifes you in the back at fifth level? You're on the ground making death saves, and that's if he doesn't roll well enough to just gib you in one go. If the exact same assassin knifes you in the back at fifteenth level? You turn around with the knife still in your back, look at the guy, then calmly and casually say, "Son? You've made poor decisions in your life. But that one? That one's the poorest."
Why would it be the exact same assassin though? Why isn't he packing some hotter heat if he's able to go after a 15th level party? Are CR 15 nemeses too cheap to look anywhere but the bargain bin for their inhumation needs?
Yeah. When you get to higher level you should be up against more dangerous threats that can still challenge the party. Even other humanoids thrown at the party should be sufficiently tough to challenge the party, unless the DM is having some fun throwing a softball encounter to job for the party to show how far they've come.
Yeah, like, at least a better assassin 😉:
Better Assassin
Medium humanoid (any race) , any non-good alignment
Alert. The better assassin has an additional +5 Bonus to initiative rolls, cannot be surprised unless Unconscious, and other creatures don’t gain advantage on attack rolls against it as a result of being unseen.
Assassinate. During its first turn, the assassin has advantage on attack rolls against any creature that hasn't taken a turn. Any hit the assassin scores against a surprised creature is a critical hit.
Evasion. If the assassin is subjected to an effect that allows it to make a Dexterity saving throw to take only half damage, the assassin instead takes no damage if it succeeds on the saving throw, and only half damage if it fails.
Sneak Attack. Once per turn, the better assassin deals an extra 28 (8d6)damage when it hits a target with a weapon attack and has advantage on the attack roll, or when the target is within 5 feet of an ally of the assassin that isn't incapacitated and the assassin doesn't have disadvantage on the attack roll.
Actions
Multiattack. The better assassin makes two melee attacks, or two ranged attacks.
+1 Shortsword. Melee Weapon Attack:+11 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (1d6 + 6) piercing damage, and the target must make a DC 17 Constitution saving throw, taking 31 (7d8) poison damage and is Poisoned until the end of the assassin’s next turn on a failed save, or half as much damage and is not Poisoned on a successful one.
Longbow. Ranged Weapon Attack:+10 to hit, range 150/600 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (1d8 + 5) piercing damage, and the target must make a DC 17 Constitution saving throw, taking 31 (7d8) poison damage and is Poisoned until the end of the assassin’s next turn on a failed save, or half as much damage and is not Poisoned on a successful one.
Bonus Actions
Cunning Action. On each of its turns, the better assassin can use a bonus action to take the Dash, Disengage or Hide action.
Reactions
Uncanny Dodge. When a creature the better assassin can see hits it with an attack, the better assassin can use its reaction to halve the attack’s damage against it.
"Explosion in complexity" my foot. If you can handle a ninth-level character you can handle a twentieth-level character, and the game is so simplified that nobody needs to use half the options they get anyways. Every base class has all its critical features in place by ninth. Frankly most classes have all their critical bits in place by fifth.
Nah. People assume high-level characters are impossible to challenge because the game language tells them so - "characters above twelfth level are Infamous heroes of the Realm and have saved the whole world multiple times" - and because a first-level barbarian can have fifteen hit points while the same barbarian, at twentieth level, can easily have over four hundred. That's beyond ridiculous and it warps the game.
Bounded accuracy was the right move, but Wizards didn't take it far enough. Bounded HP comes next, and if that means characters have to be more careful instead of just tanking three different ancient dragon breath weapons with their nekkid barbaric nipples and not caring in the slightest? I'd consider that to be Good For Game. There are some things that ancient, powerful creatures beyond mortal limits can do that should worry even a powerful and highly skilled mortal hero. As opposed to "this thousand year old dragon can unload his worst breath attacks on me for the next three solid days and I might feel a faint tickle of worry by the end of the third day", a'la current D&D.
Please do not contact or message me.
How dare you besmirch the astronomical fortitude of my barbaric nip-nips?!? For shame.
PS- By my math, a Hill Dwarf Barbarian with the Tough feat, 20 Con, and perfect rolls on every Hit Die would max-out at 400 HP by 20th level. How are you “easily” getting “over” that number?
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9th level is already pretty problematic, and the complexity problem is mostly on the side of the DM -- the players can throw so much weird stuff at you and you need to somehow handle all of it. It's easy to deal with extra hit points, that 400 hp barbarian can be flattened by a midsized kobold swarm (I mean, maybe high level monsters should have more damage and/or accuracy, but that's just numbers).
Bounded accuracy was the wrong move unless you also remove high level spells. 20th level fighters should be able to sunder castle walls with a strike, and ancient dragons should be able to go Godzilla on said castle.
(I would use the term "Bounded Hit Dice")
I think that would make for a better game, but it has a couple issues with the D&D brand:
Well, you can simplify that down to 'Bounded Levels'. If you want to bound everything, just run e6.
Sure. But when you can gain an over two thousand percent increase in your ability to take damage between levels 1 and 20? That's going to warp things and limit what DMs can do to challenge players. Not every adventure can start with "five hundred kobolds invade your bedroom..." or "an ancient dragon swoops out of the sky again to ruin your Tuesday..." If ordinary mortal threats were still a problem for high-level characters, high-level play would be much easier.
Like, if an assassin knifes you in the back at fifth level? You're on the ground making death saves, and that's if he doesn't roll well enough to just gib you in one go. If the exact same assassin knifes you in the back at fifteenth level? You turn around with the knife still in your back, look at the guy, then calmly and casually say, "Son? You've made poor decisions in your life. But that one? That one's the poorest."
And DMs say PCs having more things they can do is what's hard to balance around? Nah. Bloating attack and damage numbers to the absolutely ludicrous levels required to make a PC so much as notice a single hit much past eighth level is what gets annoying in a hurry.
Please do not contact or message me.
If ordinary mortal threats were still a problem for high level characters, they wouldn't be high level characters.
I have run literal superhero games (not using D&D) with characters that were far more durable than that 20th level barbarian, and it's no problem -- you just need equally over the top threats. The problem with 5e is that they nerfed the threats by more than they nerfed the PCs. A Tarrasque should a threat that can level a city, not a moderately overgrown lizard.
This. A ton of HP is not a challenge. If they don't go down fast enough, throw more and/or harder hitting attacks their way. Alternatively, bypass HP altogether - coerce the PCs, charm them, frighten them. I know players often dislike having their agency taken away, but they can suck it up in moderation. All part of the game. High level spells on the other hand, or some archmage owing the party a favour, or being able to throw a literal king's ransom at a problem - that requires some foresight and creativity. And those things you might actually see coming; there's been plenty of unpredictable shenanigans thrown at me, and it's bad DMing to always push back against things you're unprepared for.
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Isn’t that kinda the point though?
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Why would it be the exact same assassin though? Why isn't he packing some hotter heat if he's able to go after a 15th level party? Are CR 15 nemeses too cheap to look anywhere but the bargain bin for their inhumation needs?
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Or why hasn’t their Sneak Attack increased to be commensurate with a CR 15 threat level?
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Let's give a concrete example: consider the Baldur's Gate 3 opening cinematic:
The Nautiloid is literally hundreds of feet long.
There is a watch tower (at around 2:32) which from the scale of the guardsman inside is about 100' tall. At 2:53 the Nautiloid grabs it (using a tentacle that appears to be around 10' thick) and demolishes it with a single squeeze. Later on more tentacles (much thinner, either inconsistent cinematics or different tentacles) are moving through the city street disintegrating people at a touch.
Now, at 3:22 three red dragons come through a gate. The gate appears to be hundreds of feet across, and based on the scale of the githyanki (human-sized) riders, the dragons are in the vicinity of a hundred feet.
None of that stuff is actually unreasonable for epic play. However, I don't believe the Nautiloid has actually been statted up in 5e at all, and according to Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, the red dragons who work with the Githyanki are generally Young (they leave when they reach adulthood), which is... not a hundred foot dragon. And, well, PCs who can reasonably fight against the stuff in that cinematic are not on a scale to care about 'ordinary mortal threats'.
I remember when the <class> handbooks came out, so you could have different types of fighters - beastriders, savages, barbarians, bladesingers, different types of clerics, wizards, etc. I had a swashbuckler with a rapier (of course) who was so much fun to play, because he spent half his time worrying about his appearance and half worrying about poking things....
Although I can understand why that went away - too many sourcebooks, not enough profit, etc, that was a really fun D&D time for me. I enjoy the heck out of 5E but it does seem a little generic in some ways. What saves it for me is I am big into the RPing, so my character stats are not as meaningful as how my character acts,
Binding hit dice doesn’t necessarily mean all that. Back in 1e, you stopped getting hit dice around level 10, depending on class. IIRC, you still got a couple hp per level, but it dramatically reduced hp of high level characters.
Of course 1e is a completely different game from 5e, but a system like that can work.
Oh no! You're starting to sound like Dungeon Craft.
I think bounded accuracy was a good thing. I DM'd one AD&D homebrew module that was high level and they faced Githyanki Knights with their silver swords (they were vorpal) but the only way they could hit one of the characters was to roll a natural 20 (which would be decapitation) because their AC was so high (Well, low actually. Think it was an AC -7). So I think WotC did a good job with handling bounded accuracy, AC's, DC's etc...
AD&D had characters only roll dice for HP up to a certain level (Fighters gained 3 HP after 9th level, Thieves got 2 HP after 10th, Magic-Users got 1 HP after 11th, and they only had d4 hit dice) so if that kind of option came into play in 5e (or 5.5e) then some high level spells might need adjusting. But maybe not as many as you'd think.
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Yeah. When you get to higher level you should be up against more dangerous threats that can still challenge the party. Even other humanoids thrown at the party should be sufficiently tough to challenge the party, unless the DM is having some fun throwing a softball encounter to job for the party to show how far they've come.
A 5th level assassin not being a particularly dangerous threat for the kind of person who wrestles dragons and fights demigods seems working as intended to me.
As Yurei themselves said:
Only in this case, the 19th level fighter is the powerful creature and the assassin is the one who should be worried.
Part of the problem is the scaling of monsters is weaker than the scaling of PCs. Consider a CR 2 White Dragon Wyrmling vs a CR 20 Ancient White Dragon:
Overall, the fighter has much sharper scaling of AC and damage, similar scaling on attack and hit points, and is thus considerably stronger (relative to an equal CR foe) at level 20 than they were at level 2. That's just Wizards being bad at math, though, nothing about hit points per se.
Yeah, I would much rather have the monsters scaled up than to see the characters scaled down.
Edit: I also think scaling up the monsters would be easier than readjusting all the characters classes and associated abilities.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Yeah, like, at least a better assassin 😉:
Additional Proficiencies. Disguise Kit, Poisoner's Kit, Thieves' Tools.
Alert. The better assassin has an additional +5 Bonus to initiative rolls, cannot be surprised unless Unconscious, and other creatures don’t gain advantage on attack rolls against it as a result of being unseen.
Assassinate. During its first turn, the assassin has advantage on attack rolls against any creature that hasn't taken a turn. Any hit the assassin scores against a surprised creature is a critical hit.
Evasion. If the assassin is subjected to an effect that allows it to make a Dexterity saving throw to take only half damage, the assassin instead takes no damage if it succeeds on the saving throw, and only half damage if it fails.
Sneak Attack. Once per turn, the better assassin deals an extra 28 (8d6)damage when it hits a target with a weapon attack and has advantage on the attack roll, or when the target is within 5 feet of an ally of the assassin that isn't incapacitated and the assassin doesn't have disadvantage on the attack roll.
Multiattack. The better assassin makes two melee attacks, or two ranged attacks.
+1 Shortsword. Melee Weapon Attack: +11 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (1d6 + 6) piercing damage, and the target must make a DC 17 Constitution saving throw, taking 31 (7d8) poison damage and is Poisoned until the end of the assassin’s next turn on a failed save, or half as much damage and is not Poisoned on a successful one.
Longbow. Ranged Weapon Attack: +10 to hit, range 150/600 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (1d8 + 5) piercing damage, and the target must make a DC 17 Constitution saving throw, taking 31 (7d8) poison damage and is Poisoned until the end of the assassin’s next turn on a failed save, or half as much damage and is not Poisoned on a successful one.
Cunning Action. On each of its turns, the better assassin can use a bonus action to take the Dash, Disengage or Hide action.
Uncanny Dodge. When a creature the better assassin can see hits it with an attack, the better assassin can use its reaction to halve the attack’s damage against it.
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