As I am currently DM:ing my first bought adventure in over 30 years of D&D, Descent into Avernus, it strikes me that the many of the encounter and characters in the book feel like they were taken from a splat book of yore or made by absolute D&D rookies who don't know what's normal and not. This might be a harsh words but bear with me. Let's look at a few example:
Example1: Revenge Squad (for 5th-level characters). A black gauntlet of Bane comes after the characters with two reapers of Bhaal and a master of souls, who commands an undead force of six skeletons or four zombies. Which equates to an unajusted XP of 4800 (which would be a deadly encounter for 4 lvl 5 characters) aand an adjusted XP of 14,400 according to kobold fight club and DM's guide's encounter multipliers, which would equate to a difficulty setting somewhere north of obliterating or pure disintegration.
Sure we can as DMs fudge the encounter by saying that a few of them have weak bladders or that they all are really really hung over and just have an int of 2 today, or let the adventurers build a massive trebuchet trap and sneak attack all of them from 300 feet away. But the the problem is there!
This is by far the only encounter where the difficulty is just off the charts for the player level they are intended for. Like - when they pitch lvl 2s against a mage with fireball - or when the all the custom low level mages just do unmotivated 3d8 extra damage in melee just for the hell of it and transforms all spell damage to necrotic - or when some assassins just have str:20, dex:20 and con:20 can go invisible at will and give vulnerability to everyone within 5 feet... and have 3 attacks - or when all bane hangarounds have advantage to all saves, always - or that the bane leader give disadvantage on attack AND saves to all within 5 feet, NO saves just for the fun of it.
Combining this you get an encounter that is by pure number and CR is meant for mid tier but with custom splatbook like abilities that gives the heroes disadvantage on all attacks and saves, gives the opponents advantage on said things and gives heroes vulnerability to everything.
This is just the start of the adventure, well at avernus they will be left with but a small chance to not end up facing CR 25+ while at lvl 16.
You are asking the wrong people. Only the people at WotC know why they stacked the odds where and how they did. Maybe there is some interview somewhere that has the answer.
As I am currently DM:ing my first bought adventure in over 30 years of D&D, Descent into Avernus, it strikes me that the many of the encounter and characters in the book feel like they were taken from a splat book of yore or made by absolute D&D rookies who don't know what's normal and not.
BG:DiA has some issues, but my three groups had no problem with the encounters you mentioned. Indeed, we are now finding the next chapter to be a bit unchallenging. Note though: I have groups of 5-6 experienced players, and we're ok with unbalanced encounters (since we're just coming off Call of Cthulhu campaigns). Groups of 4 players will probably have problems.
fwiw: I found Tomb of Annihilation to be a particularly well-made adventure. Also: Adventure League adventure's (available on DM's Guild) are probably more thoroughly balanced.
Baldur's Gate is imho so far the best published adventure. Sure, you absolutely must tweak the combat encounters beforehand, but that is true for every published module in 5e.
But you also get:
a) a fleshed out setting with background stories, motivated NPCs and a lot of readily available lore (Tome of Foes, Volos Guide)
b) an actual story path, that kinda pulls the events in the book together. This is something no other published 5e adventure has so far, most are a bit uninspired sandboxes.
c) a fair share of memorable characters (Mad Maggie, Arkham the Cruel, the Vrock with identity crisis, the brain-injured and therefore good aligned devil with an Abyssal Chicken pet, Mordenkain, the night hag who wants a bath as payment and of course Bal, Tiamat and Zariel herself)
d) lots of ideas that involve moral decisions (do we burn those poor souls to fuel our Devil's Ride or do we risk being too slow to save Elturel? Do we sacrifice an innocent to get a vial of Tiamats blood? Do we make a deal with Bal / Mephistopheles to reach Zariel's sword?)
Those are all things I would expect from an adventure. I really don't care for combat balance, that is fairly easy to adjust to a party. And since our groups regularly defeat "Deadly" combat encounters without even breaking a sweat just by using tactics and cover... well, Baldur's Gate might finally put us to the test. :D
I can see our group from Waterdeep Mad Mage handling these encounters on a group of 4 or even 3 (evoker/cleric + sorc/cleric + fighter + barb), but for less battle optimized teams (bard, rogue, monk, cleric) or newer players I just see utter mayhem. And all these special rules they place on their custom enemies like unmotivated extra attacks, unmotivated resistances, unmotivated effects without saves kind of goes against the balance idea of 5e. It just feels like the creators of at least this adventure don't really feel like aligning with the general rules. Everything is custom and therefor not balanced like the rest of the mobs. Things that bother me is how classes generally adhere to things like:
- 1 attack for non melees, 2 attacks for "fighters" types, 3 attacks for fighter only - 0-2 good saves for mobs, 2 good saves for heroes (except monks and pallys), 3-4 good saves for legendays like dragons - advantage on all saves is not a thing so legendays get 3/day success - vulnerabilities are rare and only for your absolute polar opposite (i.e. fire/cold), only exception i know is 1 cleric who can give vulnerability to 1 attack with an action - stats should reflect stengths and weaknesses not just be a motivator for high attack rolls. - Extra added damage on attacks are kept low with 2d6 fire on flametongue beeing an exceptional case, and otherwise added to highlevel mobs or creatures with direct ties to an element or plane. Exception exist but in the types like priests and paladins who get a maximum of 2d8 and 1d8 respectivly at lvl 14 and 11 - 30' land movement is standard, higher values needs to be motivated with more legs (horses), magical essence (quickling) but here all the assasins run at 50' just because.
So even though I like the aventure setup and the back story in Baldurs gate, it still bothers me that I cannot just take the encounters and say add or remove a monster depending on player setup but I basically have to analyze how super overpowered this specific encounter is (or not) and then do ad hoc changes that can swing the outcome wildly.
Another fight that was unbalanced was the deaths head of baal where players are supposed to be level 2! (figher lvl 2 like 20hp and 16ac and 1 attack). Here the enemy can stun 1 hero and make 2 attacks that average 14 damage per attack each round as well as ignore the damage from 3 attacks. So if this person is smart, that would mean a quick death for any mage or cleric on the first round, stunning the fighter and ignoring the rogue, then rince repeat for 2 more rounds. Leaving 1 fighter left at the end who will most likely die stunned. And also naturally he is resistant to magic, moved at 50' and have STR 20 (+5) DEX 20 (+5) CON 20 (+5) INT 14 (+2) WIS 13 (+1) CHA 16 (+3).
....
But from your responses I guess it is just me being old. ;)
Yeah we are 3-4 and going to 6 players makes a huge difference. Also we are not combat optimized. No aoe wizard, no frontline tank etc. But I imagine alot of new players will be less optimized still?
- 1 attack for non melees, 2 attacks for "fighters" types, 3 attacks for fighter only
Non-Melee tend to have spells or abilities that generally hit harder than a melee attack and thus can only do it once a round.
- 0-2 good saves for mobs, 2 good saves for heroes (except monks and pallys), 3-4 good saves for legendays like dragons
I dont get this issue. Are you suggesting that PC's need more good saves? Or that everyone needs more good saves? This needs to be limited or people are going to be more overpowered as it is. If you dont have any weaknesses its harder to kill you. Also note that Paladins can spread their bonus to saves to people around them.
- advantage on all saves is not a thing so legendays get 3/day success
Again, I dont get this one. There are magic items that give advantage on saves of certain types, but as soon as you start granting advantage to everything, you go into overpowered territory. You do this and suddenly things become impossible to kill vs just really hard. One is no fun at all and the other is just a problem to work around.
- vulnerabilities are rare and only for your absolute polar opposite (i.e. fire/cold), only exception i know is 1 cleric who can give vulnerability to 1 attack with an action
They're rare because more often than not it doesnt make sense to have someone be vulnerable to things mechanically speaking. Also, there are plenty of creatures that are vulnerable to different things. Id suggest looking more at all monsters and not just the ones in the adventure.
- stats should reflect stengths and weaknesses not just be a motivator for high attack rolls.
If your players are focusing on stats for high attack rolls then they're not understanding how stats work. If you use standard array you're going to get a much wider array of +'s and -'s which will determine a players strengths and weaknesses. Once you start getting to higher levels there is an argument to be made that you'd rather have at least a +1 to wis, con or cha to help you with saves against spells or abilities that target those instead of another +1 to your hit or damage. At the lower levels it makes sense that you'd want a higher attack, but that quickly falls off when you start passing lvl 5 or so.
- Extra added damage on attacks are kept low with 2d6 fire on flametongue beeing an exceptional case, and otherwise added to highlevel mobs or creatures with direct ties to an element or plane. Exception exist but in the types like priests and paladins who get a maximum of 2d8 and 1d8 respectivly at lvl 14 and 11
They're kept low in order to keep damage from players relitively consistent rather than being bursty or overpowered. That and players have many ways to up their damage either via spells or abilities (like paladins and clerics that you mentioned). My monk at lvl 10 can do in 4 hits 2d10+2d6+10 for the first 2 hits and 2d6+2d4+10 for the 2nd 2 assuming all 4 hit with his magic items and weapons. Also you have to consider that there are feats that can modify how much damage a player does as well, like Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter.
- 30' land movement is standard, higher values needs to be motivated with more legs (horses), magical essence (quickling) but here all the assasins run at 50' just because.
Assassins run at 50 to make up for the fact that they typically have low damage attacks and do the bursty sneak attack only once per round assuming they meet the requirements. Hell, my monk at 10 with mobile as a wood elf has 65 feet of movement. Also, smaller races move at 25' rather than the standard 30'. What would be the argument to give different races more or less than the standard without any significant changes to how movement works. You need some sort of baseline to apply to players. Also you cant really just pick and choose one monster to compare against the standard without looking at the dozens of other creatures that either move the same speed or slower than PC's.
Aside from that I would say that you can judge the adventure all you want as that is your right (heh), but I would take the specific complaints you have about the points you made above and look at them in the context of the bigger game rather than specifically with the adventure. If memory serves, there are only a few things made for the adventure and not found anywhere else. Everything else follows many of the guidelines set for 5e as a whole.
Also, in regards to adventures, the designers had to make specific assumptions for encounters based upon a typical party composition. Otherwise you'd have a book that is at least half again as big with all the different adjustments that 'could' be made to it based upon different party numbers or comps. As a DM it is up to you to look at the party and see if the encounter is scaled correctly for that group or if it needs to be adjusted somewhat. There is no way for the designers to make an encounter for the many hundreds of combinations that groups could consist of, so they pick the average and build for that and leave everything else up to the DM. Its part of the job. Dont just blindly run the adventure as is unless your party comp matches their expectations.
@Belx I think the OP was listing general design attributes of 5e encounter/monster balance that are not being followed by Descent, not asking for changes to the player powerlevel.
That said I have a friend who is running the starter set and keeps TPKing his party(mix of new and experienced players) so there seems to be an assumption that DMs will adjust encounters in written adventures. That said I just run Homebrew so I haven't experienced it.
I guess I didnt get that part when they said "Things that bother me is how classes generally adhere to things like:" then listed those items. Thats mostly what I was responding to. Seems like for at least the bullet point section, they were complaining about the general design attitudes of 5e.
But at least for the 2nd part of my comment, I can agree with that. I have not run Descent, so I cant comment too much further on those points. But I will say that I feel like each pregenerated encounter guide/book tends to follow its own guidelines rather than following a set formula. However, I tend to run and play in homebrew games, so Im nowhere near the authority on them.
Like @Noksa said. I have no issues with how DnD 5e is designed. Just that it feels like they just didn't give a damn when they designed the custom monsters and encounters of Descent. And that its so glaring at times that you wonder how noone noticed. The rest was examples of how Descent does not follow what 80% of the rules seem to say.
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Hello fellow adventurers,
As I am currently DM:ing my first bought adventure in over 30 years of D&D, Descent into Avernus, it strikes me that the many of the encounter and characters in the book feel like they were taken from a splat book of yore or made by absolute D&D rookies who don't know what's normal and not. This might be a harsh words but bear with me. Let's look at a few example:
Example1: Revenge Squad (for 5th-level characters).
A black gauntlet of Bane comes after the characters with two reapers of Bhaal and a master of souls, who commands an undead force of six skeletons or four zombies.
Which equates to an unajusted XP of 4800 (which would be a deadly encounter for 4 lvl 5 characters) aand an adjusted XP of 14,400 according to kobold fight club and DM's guide's encounter multipliers, which would equate to a difficulty setting somewhere north of obliterating or pure disintegration.
Sure we can as DMs fudge the encounter by saying that a few of them have weak bladders or that they all are really really hung over and just have an int of 2 today, or let the adventurers build a massive trebuchet trap and sneak attack all of them from 300 feet away. But the the problem is there!
This is by far the only encounter where the difficulty is just off the charts for the player level they are intended for. Like
- when they pitch lvl 2s against a mage with fireball
- or when the all the custom low level mages just do unmotivated 3d8 extra damage in melee just for the hell of it and transforms all spell damage to necrotic
- or when some assassins just have str:20, dex:20 and con:20 can go invisible at will and give vulnerability to everyone within 5 feet... and have 3 attacks
- or when all bane hangarounds have advantage to all saves, always
- or that the bane leader give disadvantage on attack AND saves to all within 5 feet, NO saves just for the fun of it.
Combining this you get an encounter that is by pure number and CR is meant for mid tier but with custom splatbook like abilities that gives the heroes disadvantage on all attacks and saves, gives the opponents advantage on said things and gives heroes vulnerability to everything.
This is just the start of the adventure, well at avernus they will be left with but a small chance to not end up facing CR 25+ while at lvl 16.
Why all this ?!
You are asking the wrong people. Only the people at WotC know why they stacked the odds where and how they did. Maybe there is some interview somewhere that has the answer.
BG:DiA has some issues, but my three groups had no problem with the encounters you mentioned. Indeed, we are now finding the next chapter to be a bit unchallenging. Note though: I have groups of 5-6 experienced players, and we're ok with unbalanced encounters (since we're just coming off Call of Cthulhu campaigns). Groups of 4 players will probably have problems.
fwiw: I found Tomb of Annihilation to be a particularly well-made adventure. Also: Adventure League adventure's (available on DM's Guild) are probably more thoroughly balanced.
Baldur's Gate is imho so far the best published adventure. Sure, you absolutely must tweak the combat encounters beforehand, but that is true for every published module in 5e.
But you also get:
a) a fleshed out setting with background stories, motivated NPCs and a lot of readily available lore (Tome of Foes, Volos Guide)
b) an actual story path, that kinda pulls the events in the book together. This is something no other published 5e adventure has so far, most are a bit uninspired sandboxes.
c) a fair share of memorable characters (Mad Maggie, Arkham the Cruel, the Vrock with identity crisis, the brain-injured and therefore good aligned devil with an Abyssal Chicken pet, Mordenkain, the night hag who wants a bath as payment and of course Bal, Tiamat and Zariel herself)
d) lots of ideas that involve moral decisions (do we burn those poor souls to fuel our Devil's Ride or do we risk being too slow to save Elturel? Do we sacrifice an innocent to get a vial of Tiamats blood? Do we make a deal with Bal / Mephistopheles to reach Zariel's sword?)
Those are all things I would expect from an adventure. I really don't care for combat balance, that is fairly easy to adjust to a party. And since our groups regularly defeat "Deadly" combat encounters without even breaking a sweat just by using tactics and cover... well, Baldur's Gate might finally put us to the test. :D
Thanks for the replys. :)
I can see our group from Waterdeep Mad Mage handling these encounters on a group of 4 or even 3 (evoker/cleric + sorc/cleric + fighter + barb), but for less battle optimized teams (bard, rogue, monk, cleric) or newer players I just see utter mayhem. And all these special rules they place on their custom enemies like unmotivated extra attacks, unmotivated resistances, unmotivated effects without saves kind of goes against the balance idea of 5e. It just feels like the creators of at least this adventure don't really feel like aligning with the general rules. Everything is custom and therefor not balanced like the rest of the mobs. Things that bother me is how classes generally adhere to things like:
- 1 attack for non melees, 2 attacks for "fighters" types, 3 attacks for fighter only
- 0-2 good saves for mobs, 2 good saves for heroes (except monks and pallys), 3-4 good saves for legendays like dragons
- advantage on all saves is not a thing so legendays get 3/day success
- vulnerabilities are rare and only for your absolute polar opposite (i.e. fire/cold), only exception i know is 1 cleric who can give vulnerability to 1 attack with an action
- stats should reflect stengths and weaknesses not just be a motivator for high attack rolls.
- Extra added damage on attacks are kept low with 2d6 fire on flametongue beeing an exceptional case, and otherwise added to highlevel mobs or creatures with direct ties to an element or plane. Exception exist but in the types like priests and paladins who get a maximum of 2d8 and 1d8 respectivly at lvl 14 and 11
- 30' land movement is standard, higher values needs to be motivated with more legs (horses), magical essence (quickling) but here all the assasins run at 50' just because.
So even though I like the aventure setup and the back story in Baldurs gate, it still bothers me that I cannot just take the encounters and say add or remove a monster depending on player setup but I basically have to analyze how super overpowered this specific encounter is (or not) and then do ad hoc changes that can swing the outcome wildly.
Another fight that was unbalanced was the deaths head of baal where players are supposed to be level 2! (figher lvl 2 like 20hp and 16ac and 1 attack).
Here the enemy can stun 1 hero and make 2 attacks that average 14 damage per attack each round as well as ignore the damage from 3 attacks. So if this person is smart, that would mean a quick death for any mage or cleric on the first round, stunning the fighter and ignoring the rogue, then rince repeat for 2 more rounds. Leaving 1 fighter left at the end who will most likely die stunned. And also naturally he is resistant to magic, moved at 50' and have STR 20 (+5) DEX 20 (+5) CON 20 (+5) INT 14 (+2) WIS 13 (+1) CHA 16 (+3).
....
But from your responses I guess it is just me being old. ;)
Yeah we are 3-4 and going to 6 players makes a huge difference. Also we are not combat optimized. No aoe wizard, no frontline tank etc. But I imagine alot of new players will be less optimized still?
- 1 attack for non melees, 2 attacks for "fighters" types, 3 attacks for fighter only
Non-Melee tend to have spells or abilities that generally hit harder than a melee attack and thus can only do it once a round.
- 0-2 good saves for mobs, 2 good saves for heroes (except monks and pallys), 3-4 good saves for legendays like dragons
I dont get this issue. Are you suggesting that PC's need more good saves? Or that everyone needs more good saves? This needs to be limited or people are going to be more overpowered as it is. If you dont have any weaknesses its harder to kill you. Also note that Paladins can spread their bonus to saves to people around them.
- advantage on all saves is not a thing so legendays get 3/day success
Again, I dont get this one. There are magic items that give advantage on saves of certain types, but as soon as you start granting advantage to everything, you go into overpowered territory. You do this and suddenly things become impossible to kill vs just really hard. One is no fun at all and the other is just a problem to work around.
- vulnerabilities are rare and only for your absolute polar opposite (i.e. fire/cold), only exception i know is 1 cleric who can give vulnerability to 1 attack with an action
They're rare because more often than not it doesnt make sense to have someone be vulnerable to things mechanically speaking. Also, there are plenty of creatures that are vulnerable to different things. Id suggest looking more at all monsters and not just the ones in the adventure.
- stats should reflect stengths and weaknesses not just be a motivator for high attack rolls.
If your players are focusing on stats for high attack rolls then they're not understanding how stats work. If you use standard array you're going to get a much wider array of +'s and -'s which will determine a players strengths and weaknesses. Once you start getting to higher levels there is an argument to be made that you'd rather have at least a +1 to wis, con or cha to help you with saves against spells or abilities that target those instead of another +1 to your hit or damage. At the lower levels it makes sense that you'd want a higher attack, but that quickly falls off when you start passing lvl 5 or so.
- Extra added damage on attacks are kept low with 2d6 fire on flametongue beeing an exceptional case, and otherwise added to highlevel mobs or creatures with direct ties to an element or plane. Exception exist but in the types like priests and paladins who get a maximum of 2d8 and 1d8 respectivly at lvl 14 and 11
They're kept low in order to keep damage from players relitively consistent rather than being bursty or overpowered. That and players have many ways to up their damage either via spells or abilities (like paladins and clerics that you mentioned). My monk at lvl 10 can do in 4 hits 2d10+2d6+10 for the first 2 hits and 2d6+2d4+10 for the 2nd 2 assuming all 4 hit with his magic items and weapons. Also you have to consider that there are feats that can modify how much damage a player does as well, like Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter.
- 30' land movement is standard, higher values needs to be motivated with more legs (horses), magical essence (quickling) but here all the assasins run at 50' just because.
Assassins run at 50 to make up for the fact that they typically have low damage attacks and do the bursty sneak attack only once per round assuming they meet the requirements. Hell, my monk at 10 with mobile as a wood elf has 65 feet of movement. Also, smaller races move at 25' rather than the standard 30'. What would be the argument to give different races more or less than the standard without any significant changes to how movement works. You need some sort of baseline to apply to players. Also you cant really just pick and choose one monster to compare against the standard without looking at the dozens of other creatures that either move the same speed or slower than PC's.
Aside from that I would say that you can judge the adventure all you want as that is your right (heh), but I would take the specific complaints you have about the points you made above and look at them in the context of the bigger game rather than specifically with the adventure. If memory serves, there are only a few things made for the adventure and not found anywhere else. Everything else follows many of the guidelines set for 5e as a whole.
Also, in regards to adventures, the designers had to make specific assumptions for encounters based upon a typical party composition. Otherwise you'd have a book that is at least half again as big with all the different adjustments that 'could' be made to it based upon different party numbers or comps. As a DM it is up to you to look at the party and see if the encounter is scaled correctly for that group or if it needs to be adjusted somewhat. There is no way for the designers to make an encounter for the many hundreds of combinations that groups could consist of, so they pick the average and build for that and leave everything else up to the DM. Its part of the job. Dont just blindly run the adventure as is unless your party comp matches their expectations.
@Belx I think the OP was listing general design attributes of 5e encounter/monster balance that are not being followed by Descent, not asking for changes to the player powerlevel.
That said I have a friend who is running the starter set and keeps TPKing his party(mix of new and experienced players) so there seems to be an assumption that DMs will adjust encounters in written adventures. That said I just run Homebrew so I haven't experienced it.
I guess I didnt get that part when they said "Things that bother me is how classes generally adhere to things like:" then listed those items. Thats mostly what I was responding to. Seems like for at least the bullet point section, they were complaining about the general design attitudes of 5e.
But at least for the 2nd part of my comment, I can agree with that. I have not run Descent, so I cant comment too much further on those points. But I will say that I feel like each pregenerated encounter guide/book tends to follow its own guidelines rather than following a set formula. However, I tend to run and play in homebrew games, so Im nowhere near the authority on them.
Like @Noksa said. I have no issues with how DnD 5e is designed. Just that it feels like they just didn't give a damn when they designed the custom monsters and encounters of Descent. And that its so glaring at times that you wonder how noone noticed. The rest was examples of how Descent does not follow what 80% of the rules seem to say.