Hello. I could use a bit of advice from the Collective. I ran a 5e campaign for about a year, and I was astonished by how powerful the PCs became (and how quickly!) By 8th level, they were like freaking demi-gods: they could heal, they could hit multiple times, they could shape their spells, they could avoid damage...it was crazy. I have been a DM for 40 years, and this was my first time using 5e. I got pretty frustrated and ended the campaign. So here are my questions:

1. Is 5e unbalanced re: PC growth and powers?

or...

2. Was I doing something wrong as the GM? 

I would love any constructive feedback you could offer. Thank you very much! 

That is very helpful, thank you. I reached some of those same conclusions myself. I am thinking that the Gritty Realism variant might be an interesting tweak as well.

Hi and Welcome,

Regarding #1 there are a few combos that may feel OP but they are in a small minority. 5E is generally considered well balanced to let your players have the chance to feel like badasses.  That balance, at a design level, assumes no magic items. So if they are tearing through things it may be part of what is happening for you. 

#2 - Unlikely you were doing things “wrong.”  Was anyone else expressing frustration as well? What were your frustrations?  I am guessing you didn’t feel like you were able to challenge them like you envisioned. 

if you care to expand on what you wanted versus what you felt you got, then I think you will get a lot more helpful feedback then broad advice. 

There's nothing wrong with simply wrapping up the campaign around level 8-10 and starting a new one. Content-wise, the first 10 levels get a lot more attention than the second 10 anyway.

Starting with the second question: you probably didn't. In fact, as long as everybody's having fun it's extremely unlikely. There's a lot fewer wrong ways of DMing than right ways. That doesn't mean you might not be able to improve a thing or two, but that's just finetuning.

On to the first: 5E is on the whole fairly forgiving towards the players. Some campaigns are harder to get through without casualties than others, but I'm fairly sure that the same campaign using older editions' mechanics is almost certainly more difficult than using 5E. Level eight-ish also tends to be a somewhat peculiar point in the PC power arc: it's for most  single-class PCs the point where they pick up their 2nd ASI, often either hitting the ability cap for their main stat or picking up the most useful/powerful feat for their build, and for the multiclass PCs the point where they've really come into their main class as well as have everything they want from their sideclass. A lot of really good equipment has become available (and affordable). Full casters are getting ready to pick up 5th level spells. It's the point where it feels like they made it, they've all settled into their roles in the party and it's going to be smooth sailing from here on.

In practice that isn't really true, or at least it doesn't have to be. Power progress in many cases slows down: they've hit the limits of bonded accuracy, high level abilities for many classes don't make as much difference as the lower level ones do, and the additional health from an extra hit die tips towards 10% or less of what they already had. Looking at their progress up until now you may think they'll keep on getting stronger at the same rate, but that's incorrect.

For me the biggest challenge of higher level campaigns as a DM isn't coming up with encounters that posea reasonable amount of risk to the PCs. CRs aren't perfect, but they're good enough to help you figure that out. The biggest challenge is taking into account all the things up and coming movers and shakers in the world can have access to and get creative with. Their straight damage output and what they can soak and heal is nothing to worry about, trust me. Their real power is the influence they might have in the world, what a favour from them is worth, the money they can throw at problems in their way, and the clever things they can do with spells and magic items that are now in their reach. However, there's an opposite side to that coin. Their tasks and quests should have similarly far-reaching consequences. Their opponents won't just threaten them with steel and fire, they'll have the ear of the king or have wide-spread organizations backing them up. They can be forces of nature or high-ranking denizens of hell. Look past the numbers on their character sheets. Look at what might be a peril to them as actual persons in the setting, not as a bunch of stats. You'll make it work.

As a player who has played predominantly in 5e campaigns, I have only ever played ONE official WotC module and it was NOT to completion. In fact, I bailed within the first 5 sessions due to the absolute power curve that was against the players.

Run the module Descent into Avernus, as written, with a party of 5, from level 1. It is stacked against the players from the start.

Sometimes, players can power game and just be incredibly built by an early level range, my Paladins in serious campaigns were always tanky by level 5 to the point the DMs struggled to do enough damage to even make me panic. Fighters melting enemies every turn. Wizards dropping enemies from afar. But we had player kills. We had NPCs not make it. Lots of things happen when the dice are in control.

Never be discouraged when running a game! Remember, you are there to have fun too! Talk with your players next time and see what could be changing in the setting from either a lore standpoint or game dynamic.

The thing I'll add is that, unless you're getting in your 6-8 encounters per adventuring day, then you'll wanna balance encounters more on the "deadly" side.

5e was balanced around the notion that, per adventuring day the players would face 6 to 8 encounters (not necessarily combat encounters) that would cause players to spend resources over time and makes them a little less godlike.

If you're only doing a few encounters of middling difficulty, then the players are free to use all their high level spell slots, sorcery points, action surges, and whatnot to go nova in one or two fights without having to worry about saving any power for later. 

The solution to this problem is to be a bit more stringent about when it is or isn't safe to rest without triggering a random encounter and having adventuring days that take up multiple sessions so you're not having to cram 6 to 8 encounters into one season. That, or you can use tougher monsters to compensate for the power level, so that 2-4 encounters might hit like 6-8.

The GM didn't really do anything wrong. And I don't think that the problem is just the # of encounters per day. That is part of it -- more encounters means fewer ability uses or spell slots per encounter.

But the other problem, and frankly I am already starting to run into this at level 6, never mind level 8+, is that it becomes increasingly hard to come up with non-combat challenges that the characters can't just magic or special-ability their way out of. Again, unless there is a series of non-combat challenges per day (often harder to justify narratively than multiple combat encounters in a dungeon), there are many cases in which even low-mid level abilities can break a story if you try to tell it the standard way.

For example, by 5th level the PCs have access to "speak with dead," which is going to break any bog-standard murder mystery unless the DM is absolutely ready for it and had the murder happen in a way that talking with the murder victim wouldn't either insta-solve the crime, or provide way too much information and eliminate the need for the PCs to do real investigation. Also at that level they get access to Sending, which again can cause all kinds of fits for plots like people going missing. Sure there might be reasons the person would not respond to Sending (a runaway might not want to respond, for instance), but again, the DM needs to be prepared for such things or many typical story elements or plot devices simply break. Inexperienced GMs may not expect these things the first time through. And even experienced ones who do, end up seeing a whole plethora of interesting potential scenarios foreclosed or severely curtailed by higher level character abilities. (And these two are not high level -- just simple examples from the 5-7 level game.)

Start getting into the upper levels and the party gets access to all kinds of abilities that if the DM isn't ready for them and doesn't have some plan for what to do when they are invoked (like Communing with the deity), can wreak havoc on entire campaigns. And it's not exactly fair for the DM to just counter everything, so now you have to figure out a way to, most of the time, let these spells and abilities be successful, but still not have them break the adventure in ways that destroy everyone's fun. I mean sure it is probably fun for the player in the moment to cast Legend Lore and completely solve the plot of an entire adventure with it, but 5 minutes later when the DM is sitting there trying to figure out what to do next and at a complete loss, it's not so much fun anymore.

And it is easy to say, "The DM should come up with adventures that these spells can't break." Inexperienced DMs won't even be expecting these things. And even experienced ones can have a hard time. 

There is a reason why a large number, I think the majority (though I have not counted) of official adventures that go past level 10-11, into the teens, are largely dungeon crawls.

I think that's the reason a lot of second to third tier play is focused more around weird planar stuff and gods and devils. Mundane problems become largely and easily solvable, so at a certain point you either need to change the game or hike the stakes. 

This is all great, everyone. Thank you. As I have reflected on my experience DMing 5E (and it's 5E specifically: I have been a GM for many, many decades and know what I am doing!), I think my error was in having a 2E mindset in a 5E game. They are both called Dungeons&Dragons, but they are wildly different games. Because the vast majority of my experience was 2E as a DM and 3E as a player, I took assumptions into 5E that were not correct. 

Someone in a different thread pointed out the concept of tiers (pgs. 36-37 in the DM's Guide), and that's helpful construct. I mentally didn't make the shift from Tier one (local heroes) to Tier two (heroes of the realms). In 2nd ed. the difference between a 3rd level thief and a 5th level thief isn't huge (for one example). In 5E, it is. Bad on me for missing that. 

Live and learn, friends. Even an old grognard like me can learn new tricks! Now, if only D&D Beyond would come out with a VTT...:)

I'll be honest, I'm still struggling with the older AD&D mindset vs. the current 5E mindset myself. I created the idea for a long campaign but I am not sure what I have planned in the upper levels will be able to challenge them anymore. I guess we'll have to see how it goes.

Correct me if I'm wrong (and I can't check this because I don't have my 2E stuff handy) but when a wizard reaches 5th level in 5E, does he have access to more powerful spells than in previous editions? It seems like fireball and lighting bolt showed up way earlier in 5E. And with thieves, was uncanny dodge a thing in 2E? Barbarian's with Rage Fist? I don't remember those powers in the editions I DMd (again: 2E...long ago!) I'd have to sit down and do a side by side analysis. 

Again, without having the books in front of me, it seems (?) like level progression unleashes a lot more powerful stuff in 5E earlier than 2E. I believe my error was going into 5E still thinking in 2E terms. "Sure, the mechanics are different, but it's still D&D!" That sort of thing. 

So maybe a real-life example might help.

I created an encounter. It was physically challenging: half the party was on one side of a river, the other half was on barges in the middle.

There were 6 4th level characters (cleric, bard, wizard, ranger, thief, barbarian). 

I had two ogres and six hobgoblins. The ogres attacked the party on the shore, the hobgoblins came out of the water. 

I had an invisible mage fling a few spells to soften the party up.

According to the encounter builder on D&D Beyond, this is a Deadly encounter for the party. I am also looking on pg. 82 of the DMs Guide at XP Thresholds by Character Level. 

They walked through it. 

Where did I go wrong?

Quote from MichaelCreminIV >>

Correct me if I'm wrong (and I can't check this because I don't have my 2E stuff handy) but when a wizard reaches 5th level in 5E, does he have access to more powerful spells than in previous editions? It seems like fireball and lighting bolt showed up way earlier in 5E. And with thieves, was uncanny dodge a thing in 2E? Barbarian's with Rage Fist? I don't remember those powers in the editions I DMd (again: 2E...long ago!) I'd have to sit down and do a side by side analysis. 

Again, without having the books in front of me, it seems (?) like level progression unleashes a lot more powerful stuff in 5E earlier than 2E. I believe my error was going into 5E still thinking in 2E terms. "Sure, the mechanics are different, but it's still D&D!" That sort of thing. 

 Level wise, the spell progression is the same, fireball and lightning bolt are 3rd level spells in both and are available at 5th level.  However, from what I remember, characters spent longer at levels 1-5 in 2e than they do in 5e, so in play time they get abilities faster.

Fireball shows up at lvl 5 in 2nd ed as well.

CRs and encounter difficulties are not an exact science, and dice are dice. That said, I think it'd probably be better to calculate the difficulty separately for both halves of the party, since it feels like two separate fights more than a single one  - 2 ogres is a hard encounter for 3 4th level PCs, and 6 hobgoblins is medium (not taking the invisible wizard into account).

I didn't play 2e, but in AD&D, which was similar, it is more a matter of how many things a party can do than what they can do. For example there was no such thing as cantrips in AD&D (and I think in 2e)... meaning that if you wanted to cast spells in battle, you had to use what are now called slots. Additionally you had to prepare specific instances of spells rather than a pool of them. For example, in 5e if you get "4 slots" of 1st level spells, you prepare 4 spells but you can use them in any combination... you can use magic missile 4x, or burning hands 2x and MM 2x, etc. In AD&D, you had to say "I memorize 2 BH and 2 MM" and once you cast both MM you had nothing left but BH. This gave many fewer options to the party.

But additionally the other non-mage characters didn't have so many 'special abilities' they could use like second wind to self-heal and such, so for example, a cleric had to make sure to take multiple memorizations of Cure Light Wounds or Cure Serious Wounds -- vs. now, when you can count on the other PCs to be able to do some of that for you. And Cure Wounds only takes one 1st-level prep slot and is good for however many times and slots and however much upcasting you want... So an 8th level cleric in AD&D probably memorized 3x CLW and 2x CSW and then had 6 other spells available, whereas an 8th level cleric in 5e can prep it once, and cast it from 0 to 12 times before the next rest at a variety of casting levels, allowing him/her to prepare 11 other spells rather than 6. And that cleric now also has cantrips so 15 total different spells other than CW, some of which can be cast indefinitely, vs. 6 total for AD&D with a max of 3 CLW and 2 CSW memorized.

Now multiply this by mages (one MM can be cast or upcast multiple times, just like CLW), druids, and the like and you can easily end up with a party that has say 21 total different spells at 8th level (with many being multiple-memorized) for A&D vs. a party that has on the order of 50 different spells at their disposal, all of which can be cast from 0 to several times, and some of which can be cast infinitely. Add in the many spell like abilities that non-casters now have vs. AD&D, and the party is looking at something like 80 "powers" they can use (spells or abilities) at 8th level in between long rests, vs. maybe 25 that a similar A&D party could do at the same level. And note, this does not count ritual spells, which allow you to cast them without preparation if you have 10 minutes.

This simple example with clerics and Cure Wounds alone explains why, not so much at low levels, but as you start approaching 10th and especially after 10th level, 5e characters seem way more powerful. The individual spells often do more, though sometimes the same or less, but the PCs as a party have way more types of arrows in their collective quiver. It also means that although AD&D had many of the same spells, like Commune, that 5e has, and many had similar effects, an AD&D party would be much less likely to waste a spell prep on that spell "just in case they needed it" (you had to make sure you had CLW, CSW, Remove Curse, etc., memorized), vs. a 5e party in which the cleric could prep it each day "just in case" and never use it, and still expend every single spell slot every single day. Nobody would memorize spells like Sending or Commune "just in case" in AD&D.... because of how both resting and spell slots worked (and the lack of cantrips, non-spell special abilities, and the like).

So although PCs *could* (and did) memorize spells that might break the game, in practice, especially with the heavy focus on dungeon delving back in the day, this did not happen with anywhere near the frequency it does in 5e.  The DM also knew exactly which spells were memorized each day and how many, and no one could say "I am going to ritual cast this spell that no one in his right mind would bother to memorize".

Quote from MichaelCreminIV >>

Correct me if I'm wrong (and I can't check this because I don't have my 2E stuff handy) but when a wizard reaches 5th level in 5E, does he have access to more powerful spells than in previous editions? It seems like fireball and lighting bolt showed up way earlier in 5E. And with thieves, was uncanny dodge a thing in 2E? Barbarian's with Rage Fist? I don't remember those powers in the editions I DMd (again: 2E...long ago!) I'd have to sit down and do a side by side analysis. 

 Both editions had Fireball and Lightning Bolt at level 5. The primary difference being that every Fireball and Lightning Bolt in 5e is 8d6 (barring upcasting) and other older editions were based on Magic User level. So a lvl 5 2e would be throwing 5d6 Fireball and a 5e Wizard, a 8d6 Fireball. Of course, a lvl 20 2e MU would be throwing 20d6 and lvl 20 5e 8d6 (14d6 at best but using a lvl 9 slot).

It is highly variable whether spells are more or less powerful on an individual spell-by-spell basis in older AD&D or 2e vs. 5e. Some spells are way more powerful in 5e. Some (especially those involving the save-or-die mechanic) were way more powerful in 1 or 2e.

5E Monster CR - why it's FUBAR. It's not a be-all, end-all solution but provides a few bits to consider. I think it addresses some of your concerns about your 'deadly' encounter gettin' walked over.

Quote from BioWizard >>

 Some spells are way more powerful in 5e. 

 Every single cantrip in the game =)