Will we ever be getting playtest material for the Dungeon Masters Guide 2024 revision? All we've seen so far is Player's Handbook material. What changes would you like to see?
I think the thing I'd most like to see would be whatever changes they are planning for Encounter Building and Challenge Rating calculations. They've said that creatures' CRs will not be changed (for compatibility), so any adjustments will have to be to how things are calculated.
I think they've said that new magic items won't be playtested. So not that.
I'd really like to see more about travel, navigation, foraging, camping, etc. Easier rules for carry capacity and resource management (food, arrows, etc) so that it can be part of the game without it becoming tedious bookkeeping.
And a lot of what goes in the DMG is not really playtest-able. They’re not looking for outside advice on their advice on world building, for example.
And while they’ve said creature’s CRs won’t change, they also said the creatures themselves will change. They plan to adjust the creature stats to better match its existing CR. Though that’s more of a monster manual kind of thing.
I would be curious to see if they throw the optional rules, like spell points, injuries, gritty healing, etc. out for playtest. Or oathbreaker and death cleric.
I'd really like to see more about travel, navigation, foraging, camping, etc. Easier rules for carry capacity and resource management (food, arrows, etc) so that it can be part of the game without it becoming tedious bookkeeping.
What exactly are you looking for in terms of travel, navigation, etc?
Regarding carrying capacity and resource management, I'm not sure they can make things much simpler. Ammo is already at "reduce by one per attack, you can take a few minutes to recover 3/4 after a fight". Food is "1 ration per day", and I'm not exactly sure how they can incorporate foraging while making things easier there. They're both already about as bare-bones simple as you can make them while still being worth tracking at all.
And while they’ve said creature’s CRs won’t change, they also said the creatures themselves will change. They plan to adjust the creature stats to better match its existing CR. Though that’s more of a monster manual kind of thing.
That's something they should change if they want to make the game better. The CR is broken from the base, and should be rethought from 0. Just changing the monsters solves absolutely nothing.
And that would be something easy to playtest. Create an encounter according to the proposed rules, and see if it fits the intent.
Anyway, as you say, they are not going to touch the CR system. So it's just talk for the sake of talk.
And while they’ve said creature’s CRs won’t change, they also said the creatures themselves will change. They plan to adjust the creature stats to better match its existing CR. Though that’s more of a monster manual kind of thing.
That's something they should change if they want to make the game better. The CR is broken from the base, and should be rethought from 0. Just changing the monsters solves absolutely nothing.
And that would be something easy to playtest. Create an encounter according to the proposed rules, and see if it fits the intent.
I don’t know how easy it would be to playtest. The problem there is, which encounter will count as the encounter to measure CR? The one where the party is fully rested and has all their resources, or the one after they’ve had 3 fights? Or the one after they’ve had 5 fights? Is it a party with no magic items (as the game math assumes), or a party fully kitted out with magic? And what happens when the CR 8 devil rolls a 2 on its save against banishment (the old banishment), so it’s effectively 1-shot? Does that mean it’s CR isn’t correct? Or that same devil is in a low-magic campaign, and none of the martials have magic weapons so they can barely scratch the thing, and, bad luck, the wizard only has fire spells prepared?
I mean CR isn’t perfect, but it can’t be. A single number can’t cover a nearly infinite range of situations. Maybe that’s it, maybe it should be a range? Like this creature will be between a 4 and a 6, but it’s impossible to know just where without knowing about your party. Not just your party, but your party on this particular day at this point in the day.
Though, as I’m writing this, maybe they could just say what the assumptions are for a CR. Just a general disclaimer like: Monster’s CRs assume a fully rested party with no magic items. Adjust the expected difficulty based on conditions at the time. Something like that. And if it already says that somewhere, allow me to be embarrassed in advance.
The assumption of CR in 5e was that a party of 3-5 whose aggregate level came out to the same number could consistently make it through a full adventuring day of medium encounters without magic items when an adventuring day is comprised of 6-8 encounters, I believe. You can see a breakdown of their suggested calculations in the Creating Encounters section of the DMG, but it’s too much for me to parse and summarize.
Somewhat more useful item crafting rules (I mentioned this in another thread). More concrete and detailed than 5e, but not as minutia focused as 3e was. They should probably dovetail on the Artificer infusion rules (like a version of those rules that create permanently enchanted items that don't count against an Artificers infusion limit).
Related to that, 5e includes rules for certain superior materials (Adamantine, Mythral, etc.), but not for inferior/archaic materials (bronze daggers, for example). I'd like to see that (3e's rules for it were pretty simple and straight forward so it shouldn't require much to put them into the OneD&D DMG).
Are we talking about customizing mundane items or crafting magical ones? Because I think weapon masteries at least need a more thorough shakedown before we try adding another layer of modifiers to the former, and for the latter, the point of crafting magic items is not to be able to produce advanced tools while on the road or in the middle of a dungeon, it’s to provide an alternate roleplay/narrative to the concept of magic items as rewards, which is the core dynamic of magic items in 5e; there’s a reason they’re listed under the “Treasure” section of the DMG.
And while they’ve said creature’s CRs won’t change, they also said the creatures themselves will change. They plan to adjust the creature stats to better match its existing CR. Though that’s more of a monster manual kind of thing.
That's something they should change if they want to make the game better. The CR is broken from the base, and should be rethought from 0. Just changing the monsters solves absolutely nothing.
And that would be something easy to playtest. Create an encounter according to the proposed rules, and see if it fits the intent.
I don’t know how easy it would be to playtest. The problem there is, which encounter will count as the encounter to measure CR? The one where the party is fully rested and has all their resources, or the one after they’ve had 3 fights? Or the one after they’ve had 5 fights? Is it a party with no magic items (as the game math assumes), or a party fully kitted out with magic? And what happens when the CR 8 devil rolls a 2 on its save against banishment (the old banishment), so it’s effectively 1-shot? Does that mean it’s CR isn’t correct? Or that same devil is in a low-magic campaign, and none of the martials have magic weapons so they can barely scratch the thing, and, bad luck, the wizard only has fire spells prepared?
Well, sure. But that's exactly what I mean. Those things, or at least some of them, could (I think they should) be taken into account in the CR. For example, in PF2 magic items have a level and it is counted along with the party's level to calculate CR. Obviously it is practically impossible to create a perfect encounter system. But the 5e one can be improved by a long margin.
I don’t know how easy it would be to playtest. The problem there is, which encounter will count as the encounter to measure CR? The one where the party is fully rested and has all their resources, or the one after they’ve had 3 fights? Or the one after they’ve had 5 fights? Is it a party with no magic items (as the game math assumes), or a party fully kitted out with magic? And what happens when the CR 8 devil rolls a 2 on its save against banishment (the old banishment), so it’s effectively 1-shot? Does that mean it’s CR isn’t correct? Or that same devil is in a low-magic campaign, and none of the martials have magic weapons so they can barely scratch the thing, and, bad luck, the wizard only has fire spells prepared?
Well, sure. But that's exactly what I mean. Those things, or at least some of them, could (I think they should) be taken into account in the CR. For example, in PF2 magic items have a level and it is counted along with the party's level to calculate CR. Obviously it is practically impossible to create a perfect encounter system. But the 5e one can be improved by a long margin.
Yeah, I agree they should try to do something and it can be improved. I didn't mean to sound as pessimistic as I did. it just seems like if they fix it in one direction, it could end up making it worse in another direction. To me, there's two big things that CR doesn't quite digest. Magic items, which the game assumes we won't have, and which (almost) everyone does have. The other thing is the 6-8 encounter day that they planned for us to all have and that (almost) nobody does have. You can probably fix both problems by just making monsters tougher. But, again, that's probably more of a monster manual problem.
For the DMG, I'd really just like to see more information about the assumptions that go into CR and the adventuring day, and some changes to reflect the way people actually do play instead of the way they thought we were going to play. They've got lots of dndbeyond data, so they should have a pretty good handle on how many people are using what kinds of magic items at what levels of play. Even then, they can never make everybody happy, just kind of shoot for a most of the people most of the time kind of thing. Though that also doesn't seem like the kind of stuff you playtest.
The assumption of CR in 5e was that a party of 3-5 whose aggregate level came out to the same number could consistently make it through a full adventuring day of medium encounters without magic items when an adventuring day is comprised of 6-8 encounters, I believe. You can see a breakdown of their suggested calculations in the Creating Encounters section of the DMG, but it’s too much for me to parse and summarize.
You are correct. However, that's an ignorant assumption (but not by you). First 6-8 encounters per day is a LOT. My players might make it through 4 in a session, which is more reasonable. And they want to level up every few sessions. I personally prefer having 1 session encompass a day (but that's just me, and doesn't necessarily always work out story wise). Secondly, there's the unaccounted for magic items and supernatural gifts, which every party will inevitably get, and that make every encounter easier. This brings the challenge of every encounter down in unpredictable ways, and means they can complete even more encounters per day, leaving DMs to compensate both during encounter building and on the fly, since there is no system to account for it. So, what we need is a system to accurately calculate the party's actual CR so it can be compared to the encounter's CR. As is, encounter building is utterly broken and the tools provided are useless.
If anyone out there has mastered encounter building RAW in 5e, please chime in.
The assumption of CR in 5e was that a party of 3-5 whose aggregate level came out to the same number could consistently make it through a full adventuring day of medium encounters without magic items when an adventuring day is comprised of 6-8 encounters, I believe. You can see a breakdown of their suggested calculations in the Creating Encounters section of the DMG, but it’s too much for me to parse and summarize.
not is exactly. CR and aggregate level of monsters vs players doesnt really equal each other.
also 6-8 encounters doesnt represent a balance factor or recommendation, it was just an approximation of how many fights players would go before requiring rest. Basically most people run out of gas after 6-8 medium encounters, not people should run 6-8 encounters or fight design expects it.
CR is mostly supposed to mean things of Higher CR are generally dangerous. Essentially if the CR is a lot higher, people may die. Its more about what a sign of danger, rather than aim for this CR when building encounters.
The assumption of CR in 5e was that a party of 3-5 whose aggregate level came out to the same number could consistently make it through a full adventuring day of medium encounters without magic items when an adventuring day is comprised of 6-8 encounters, I believe. You can see a breakdown of their suggested calculations in the Creating Encounters section of the DMG, but it’s too much for me to parse and summarize.
You are correct. However, that's an ignorant assumption (but not by you). First 6-8 encounters per day is a LOT. My players might make it through 4 in a session, which is more reasonable. And they want to level up every few sessions. I personally prefer having 1 session encompass a day (but that's just me, and doesn't necessarily always work out story wise). Secondly, there's the unaccounted for magic items and supernatural gifts, which every party will inevitably get, and that make every encounter easier. This brings the challenge of every encounter down in unpredictable ways, and means they can complete even more encounters per day, leaving DMs to compensate both during encounter building and on the fly, since there is no system to account for it. So, what we need is a system to accurately calculate the party's actual CR so it can be compared to the encounter's CR. As is, encounter building is utterly broken and the tools provided are useless.
If anyone out there has mastered encounter building RAW in 5e, please chime in.
its actually a common misunderstanding, Crawford says he has no reccomendation, or expectation that your adventuring day lasts 6-8 encounters. Rather 6-8 is how often the average group with the average encounters can go before reaching zero (rest replenished) resources. It isnt required or expected that players go to zero resources. (Not saying they can't or shouldn't, just they aren't designed with that expectation.
encounters are supposed to be adequately interesting even if you only have a few encounters. People have commonly used attrition to try to balance difficulty, which is one method, but far from the only method. Its also a method that encourages a specific playstyle/tension.
CR is more supposed to represent the dangerousness of enemies in general, meaning fighting monsters of noticeably higher CR may be unbalanced. If your level 5 group fights CR 8 enemies, the enemy might oneshot someone, or the fight may drag on, due to higher defenses than you are expected to deal with.
As far as balancing encounters completely for all groups, thats not really possible without a very different underlying math. 5e isnt designed to be hard math limited when it comes to lvl, encounters, and player power level. It always going to have a lot to do with the group. Somewhat on luck. Magic items can make things easier, but that depends a lot on which magic items, and who has them. Also, each group has a different natural expectation for the right level of danger.
Pathfinder 2 achieves a more consistent encounter building, but the fights are designed to all be fairly challenging (requiring decent use of game mechanics) and the features and items are way more constrained/given based on level. And the monsters and players have a very strong mathematical scaling, such that being far outside the lvl range makes things super easy, or near impossible. Its a design with pros and cons.
with a 5e chassis, encounter building will always be a bit of an art. However they can describe the system better, and maybe have some better tools/classifications
encounter building's always going to be a bit hit or miss because some combinations can be much harder to account for than others. What is a walk in the park for one group might be a tough fight for another. Then you factor in the difference between an optimized character and a non-optimized character, I don't think there will ever be a one size fits all solution. A Dm's just gotta know what his party can handle really.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
encounter building's always going to be a bit hit or miss because some combinations can be much harder to account for than others. What is a walk in the park for one group might be a tough fight for another. Then you factor in the difference between an optimized character and a non-optimized character, I don't think there will ever be a one size fits all solution. A Dm's just gotta know what his party can handle really.
Don't forget magic weapons; you put any of those weapons that adds damage die in the hands of a martial and particularly a 11th+ level Fighter, and they're gonna take basic enemies down a lot faster.
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Will we ever be getting playtest material for the Dungeon Masters Guide 2024 revision? All we've seen so far is Player's Handbook material. What changes would you like to see?
I think the thing I'd most like to see would be whatever changes they are planning for Encounter Building and Challenge Rating calculations. They've said that creatures' CRs will not be changed (for compatibility), so any adjustments will have to be to how things are calculated.
I think they've said that new magic items won't be playtested. So not that.
I'd really like to see more about travel, navigation, foraging, camping, etc. Easier rules for carry capacity and resource management (food, arrows, etc) so that it can be part of the game without it becoming tedious bookkeeping.
Bastions are from the DMG.
And a lot of what goes in the DMG is not really playtest-able. They’re not looking for outside advice on their advice on world building, for example.
And while they’ve said creature’s CRs won’t change, they also said the creatures themselves will change. They plan to adjust the creature stats to better match its existing CR. Though that’s more of a monster manual kind of thing.
I would be curious to see if they throw the optional rules, like spell points, injuries, gritty healing, etc. out for playtest. Or oathbreaker and death cleric.
What exactly are you looking for in terms of travel, navigation, etc?
Regarding carrying capacity and resource management, I'm not sure they can make things much simpler. Ammo is already at "reduce by one per attack, you can take a few minutes to recover 3/4 after a fight". Food is "1 ration per day", and I'm not exactly sure how they can incorporate foraging while making things easier there. They're both already about as bare-bones simple as you can make them while still being worth tracking at all.
That's something they should change if they want to make the game better. The CR is broken from the base, and should be rethought from 0. Just changing the monsters solves absolutely nothing.
And that would be something easy to playtest. Create an encounter according to the proposed rules, and see if it fits the intent.
Anyway, as you say, they are not going to touch the CR system. So it's just talk for the sake of talk.
I don’t know how easy it would be to playtest. The problem there is, which encounter will count as the encounter to measure CR? The one where the party is fully rested and has all their resources, or the one after they’ve had 3 fights? Or the one after they’ve had 5 fights? Is it a party with no magic items (as the game math assumes), or a party fully kitted out with magic? And what happens when the CR 8 devil rolls a 2 on its save against banishment (the old banishment), so it’s effectively 1-shot? Does that mean it’s CR isn’t correct? Or that same devil is in a low-magic campaign, and none of the martials have magic weapons so they can barely scratch the thing, and, bad luck, the wizard only has fire spells prepared?
I mean CR isn’t perfect, but it can’t be. A single number can’t cover a nearly infinite range of situations. Maybe that’s it, maybe it should be a range? Like this creature will be between a 4 and a 6, but it’s impossible to know just where without knowing about your party. Not just your party, but your party on this particular day at this point in the day.
Though, as I’m writing this, maybe they could just say what the assumptions are for a CR. Just a general disclaimer like: Monster’s CRs assume a fully rested party with no magic items. Adjust the expected difficulty based on conditions at the time. Something like that. And if it already says that somewhere, allow me to be embarrassed in advance.
The assumption of CR in 5e was that a party of 3-5 whose aggregate level came out to the same number could consistently make it through a full adventuring day of medium encounters without magic items when an adventuring day is comprised of 6-8 encounters, I believe. You can see a breakdown of their suggested calculations in the Creating Encounters section of the DMG, but it’s too much for me to parse and summarize.
Somewhat more useful item crafting rules (I mentioned this in another thread). More concrete and detailed than 5e, but not as minutia focused as 3e was. They should probably dovetail on the Artificer infusion rules (like a version of those rules that create permanently enchanted items that don't count against an Artificers infusion limit).
Related to that, 5e includes rules for certain superior materials (Adamantine, Mythral, etc.), but not for inferior/archaic materials (bronze daggers, for example). I'd like to see that (3e's rules for it were pretty simple and straight forward so it shouldn't require much to put them into the OneD&D DMG).
Are we talking about customizing mundane items or crafting magical ones? Because I think weapon masteries at least need a more thorough shakedown before we try adding another layer of modifiers to the former, and for the latter, the point of crafting magic items is not to be able to produce advanced tools while on the road or in the middle of a dungeon, it’s to provide an alternate roleplay/narrative to the concept of magic items as rewards, which is the core dynamic of magic items in 5e; there’s a reason they’re listed under the “Treasure” section of the DMG.
Well, sure. But that's exactly what I mean. Those things, or at least some of them, could (I think they should) be taken into account in the CR. For example, in PF2 magic items have a level and it is counted along with the party's level to calculate CR. Obviously it is practically impossible to create a perfect encounter system. But the 5e one can be improved by a long margin.
Yeah, I agree they should try to do something and it can be improved. I didn't mean to sound as pessimistic as I did. it just seems like if they fix it in one direction, it could end up making it worse in another direction. To me, there's two big things that CR doesn't quite digest. Magic items, which the game assumes we won't have, and which (almost) everyone does have. The other thing is the 6-8 encounter day that they planned for us to all have and that (almost) nobody does have. You can probably fix both problems by just making monsters tougher. But, again, that's probably more of a monster manual problem.
For the DMG, I'd really just like to see more information about the assumptions that go into CR and the adventuring day, and some changes to reflect the way people actually do play instead of the way they thought we were going to play. They've got lots of dndbeyond data, so they should have a pretty good handle on how many people are using what kinds of magic items at what levels of play. Even then, they can never make everybody happy, just kind of shoot for a most of the people most of the time kind of thing. Though that also doesn't seem like the kind of stuff you playtest.
You are correct. However, that's an ignorant assumption (but not by you). First 6-8 encounters per day is a LOT. My players might make it through 4 in a session, which is more reasonable. And they want to level up every few sessions. I personally prefer having 1 session encompass a day (but that's just me, and doesn't necessarily always work out story wise). Secondly, there's the unaccounted for magic items and supernatural gifts, which every party will inevitably get, and that make every encounter easier. This brings the challenge of every encounter down in unpredictable ways, and means they can complete even more encounters per day, leaving DMs to compensate both during encounter building and on the fly, since there is no system to account for it. So, what we need is a system to accurately calculate the party's actual CR so it can be compared to the encounter's CR. As is, encounter building is utterly broken and the tools provided are useless.
If anyone out there has mastered encounter building RAW in 5e, please chime in.
not is exactly. CR and aggregate level of monsters vs players doesnt really equal each other.
also 6-8 encounters doesnt represent a balance factor or recommendation, it was just an approximation of how many fights players would go before requiring rest. Basically most people run out of gas after 6-8 medium encounters, not people should run 6-8 encounters or fight design expects it.
CR is mostly supposed to mean things of Higher CR are generally dangerous. Essentially if the CR is a lot higher, people may die. Its more about what a sign of danger, rather than aim for this CR when building encounters.
its actually a common misunderstanding, Crawford says he has no reccomendation, or expectation that your adventuring day lasts 6-8 encounters. Rather 6-8 is how often the average group with the average encounters can go before reaching zero (rest replenished) resources. It isnt required or expected that players go to zero resources. (Not saying they can't or shouldn't, just they aren't designed with that expectation.
encounters are supposed to be adequately interesting even if you only have a few encounters. People have commonly used attrition to try to balance difficulty, which is one method, but far from the only method. Its also a method that encourages a specific playstyle/tension.
CR is more supposed to represent the dangerousness of enemies in general, meaning fighting monsters of noticeably higher CR may be unbalanced. If your level 5 group fights CR 8 enemies, the enemy might oneshot someone, or the fight may drag on, due to higher defenses than you are expected to deal with.
As far as balancing encounters completely for all groups, thats not really possible without a very different underlying math. 5e isnt designed to be hard math limited when it comes to lvl, encounters, and player power level. It always going to have a lot to do with the group. Somewhat on luck. Magic items can make things easier, but that depends a lot on which magic items, and who has them. Also, each group has a different natural expectation for the right level of danger.
Pathfinder 2 achieves a more consistent encounter building, but the fights are designed to all be fairly challenging (requiring decent use of game mechanics) and the features and items are way more constrained/given based on level. And the monsters and players have a very strong mathematical scaling, such that being far outside the lvl range makes things super easy, or near impossible. Its a design with pros and cons.
with a 5e chassis, encounter building will always be a bit of an art. However they can describe the system better, and maybe have some better tools/classifications
encounter building's always going to be a bit hit or miss because some combinations can be much harder to account for than others. What is a walk in the park for one group might be a tough fight for another. Then you factor in the difference between an optimized character and a non-optimized character, I don't think there will ever be a one size fits all solution. A Dm's just gotta know what his party can handle really.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Don't forget magic weapons; you put any of those weapons that adds damage die in the hands of a martial and particularly a 11th+ level Fighter, and they're gonna take basic enemies down a lot faster.