Zero Buzz on 5E...Is It Dead Out The Gate?

infected slut princess · Tue Sep 09, 2014 11:07 pm

I like demons and devils in D&D. They are cool and fun. I like how they are hardcore and have crazy powers.

Someone sent me a link to picture the 5e PIT FIEND.

http://i.imgur.com/qmSZduz.jpg

OMG... this pit fiend is SO FUCKING LAME!!!

It's level 20. You'd think that means it would be pretty interesting.

Well, forget about it. For magic it can shoot fireballs, detect magic, hold monster, and wall of fire (the last two are 3/day only).

There is no hardcore awesome shit. So NO at-will teleportation. No devil summoning. No wish. No blasphemy or invisibility or anything cool.

This is just a big dumb monster with nothing interesting about it. If you described a battle involving one of these, you would probably think it was maybe a level 5 monster.

And it's Strength is just 26 so hide behind a locked door and you win.

infected slut princess · Tue Sep 09, 2014 11:08 pm

Mike Mearls has raped my childhood by turning pit fiends into whiny little bitches.

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Wed Sep 10, 2014 7:33 am

who knew they could make magic even more boring than 4e.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Sep 10, 2014 10:02 am

So, TGDians, with what we know about the game would you rather play fresh-out-of-the-box 2008 4E D&D or 5E D&D?

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Wed Sep 10, 2014 10:18 am

5E. It has a stupid charm so far, 4E is pretty boring overall, the best thing about it is being able to play a kobold that does not suck. That's something, I guess. 5E on the other hand... is a new, shiney piece of crap. Wait... not sure how that works in its favor.

Eikre · Post by **Eikre** » Wed Sep 10, 2014 12:04 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:So, TGDians, with what we know about the game would you rather play fresh-out-of-the-box 2008 4E D&D or 5E D&D?

I DID play fresh-outta-the-box 4E. So what I'm saying is, 5E all the way.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed Sep 10, 2014 8:49 pm

Is that Pit Fiend giving a rousing, inspirational quote about the need of heroes to save the kingdom?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed Sep 10, 2014 9:46 pm

Clearly he's trying to tempt the PC's into making an ill-advised deal with the devil for the wish effect he can no longer grant.

That is a boring fucking creature. Clearly, 5e is going with the "reskin bullshit for 20 levels" approach to monster design.

TarkisFlux · Post by **TarkisFlux** » Wed Sep 10, 2014 9:57 pm

Pit Fiend Excerpt wrote:Pit Fiend
Large fiend (devil), lawful evil
Armor Class 19...

Nope. Noping the fuck out.

icyshadowlord · Post by **icyshadowlord** » Wed Sep 10, 2014 10:55 pm

Are you serious? Is that real?

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Sep 10, 2014 11:06 pm

It's a typo. It was supposed to be the Spit Fiend, a lesser fiend responsible for roasting unworthy evil souls over fires.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Wed Sep 10, 2014 11:47 pm

Eikre wrote:
Lago PARANOIA wrote:So, TGDians, with what we know about the game would you rather play fresh-out-of-the-box 2008 4E D&D or 5E D&D?
I DID play fresh-outta-the-box 4E. So what I'm saying is, 5E all the way.

That's a tough question. There are some things about 4E that I think are mild improvements over previous editions, but actual gameplay is boring ("In which order should I shoot my very similar pew-pew-laser attacks?"). From hearing about 5E, it sounds like nothing is an improvement over previous editions, but at least it sounds like there's a bit more variety in the powers available to spellcasters.

GnomeWorks · Post by **GnomeWorks** » Thu Sep 11, 2014 3:36 am

I don't even know how to respond to that. AC 19 for a CR 20 creature?

Doesn't that mean that that necromancer build that has like a dozen skeleton archers at like fifth level could kill this thing, pretty much without breaking a sweat? (Forgive me if my exact numbers are off, haven't been paying a whole lot of attention)

Orca · Post by **Orca** » Thu Sep 11, 2014 5:01 am

With at-will fireball and 3/day wall of fire it can probably fry the archers before its 300 hp run out even if they're dispersed. If the skele archers are clustered up they die quickly. Against melee I have no idea how those attacks stack up in 5e.

Total lack of out of combat stuff to back up the quote though.

NineInchNall · Post by **NineInchNall** » Thu Sep 11, 2014 5:39 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:So, TGDians, with what we know about the game would you rather play fresh-out-of-the-box 2008 4E D&D or 5E D&D?

Depends on whether I want to play a spellcaster or not. For all its faults, 4E's martial characters at least had something to do. 5E gives them nothing. Well, nothing but MTP, which is apparently touted as a virtue of the system:

an idjit wrote:But think about it this way - in 3e, you had a power or ability or special something that covered everything you can think of. But this meant if you did not have that power or ability or special something, you could NOT do that thing. Those powers and abilities and special somethings (often spells and magic items and such) served to limit those who did not have them, rather than expanding options for those who did.

In 5e, most of that is removed. Anyone can try it now. You don't need a power or ability or special something to try that thing your 3e character carefully pieced together with feats and skills and spells and magic items and such - you just try it in 5e. It's in this way much LESS limiting, much less confining and forced. But this is stuff that happens at the table, not by theorycrafting your character at home in a build. So give it a try before you dismiss it. The thing you're looking for really is there, it's just not in the character creation rules.

Now to some extent this describes a real problem with some of the later feats, specifically those that gave you the ability to do something already covered by other rules.

Mostly, though, it's just dumb.

Foxwarrior · Post by **Foxwarrior** » Thu Sep 11, 2014 6:01 am

I've heard half that observation made about Pathfinder on its own. It went something like: "every time they come out with a new feat for fighters, fighters get weaker, because before the feat existed you could attempt to do something like it and have the DM ad hoc consequences for you, but now any ad hoc consequences are guaranteed to be worse than having the feat because the DM won't want to make taking the feat irrelevant."

Sometimes it is better to write a mundane thing as a thing anyone can try, instead of locking it in the fighters can't have enough nice things cabinet.

Which isn't quite the same as not writing it at all. Whatever.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Thu Sep 11, 2014 6:50 am

GnomeWorks wrote:Doesn't that mean that that necromancer build that has like a dozen skeleton archers at like fifth level could kill this thing, pretty much without breaking a sweat? (Forgive me if my exact numbers are off, haven't been paying a whole lot of attention)

Probably not. It's such a big sack of hp that it would definitely manage to kill the Necro before it was at any real risk of death. It's single target DPS is actually fairly high so I will say it is out of the range of a single 6th level character to handle. However its abilities are so meager and pathetic that I'm extremely confident that a party of 10th level characters could beat the shit out of it. It's only real trick of any import is having a fuck off huge pile of hp and while that lets him beat my CR 6 Necro I doubt it would stand up against an actual party designed by non-chimps.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Thu Sep 11, 2014 6:56 am

4e is more of a dungeon crawler while 5e is more of a roleplaying game.
I can see reason why people would try and play 4e.
But I can't see any reason to pick 5e over 3e except that it is new.

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Thu Sep 11, 2014 6:59 am

4e is more of a dungeon crawler while 5e is more of a roleplaying game.

Go fuck yourself. Srsly.

GnomeWorks · Post by **GnomeWorks** » Thu Sep 11, 2014 7:42 am

Dean wrote:Probably not. It's such a big sack of hp that it would definitely manage to kill the Necro before it was at any real risk of death. It's single target DPS is actually fairly high so I will say it is out of the range of a single 6th level character to handle. However its abilities are so meager and pathetic that I'm extremely confident that a party of 10th level characters could beat the shit out of it. It's only real trick of any import is having a fuck off huge pile of hp and while that lets him beat my CR 6 Necro I doubt it would stand up against an actual party designed by non-chimps.

Fair enough. As I said, I hadn't followed that build close enough to know the specific numbers.

I would, however, be curious to see if it is possible to build something that could solo this thing at a stupidly low level, comparatively. Maybe the level 6 necro can't deal with it, but perhaps it could at 12th? Or maybe some other absurd build can do it.

Basically just looking for something relatively simple that I can point my group at and say, "See? This shit is why 5e is bad, and we're not going to convert to it." Pointing them at a CR 6 necromancer who can solo a CR 20 pit fiend would've done nicely, but I'll take something else in a similar vein if that's not actually feasible.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Sep 11, 2014 2:26 pm

The pit fiend hits itself on a 5+, but even bullshit monsters hit it on a 15+. The pit fiend's damage output is a bit over 70 if everything hits, so it drops itself in 5 rounds on average. Bullshit monsters meanwhile do like 10 damage on a hit, which means they need about 100 attacks to drop the pit fiend.

If you divide your troops enough that the pit fiend can't clear them out faster than one per round, you can get more than a hundred attacks if you start with 16 or more soldiers (15 if you somehow get the drop on the pit fiend, which you will not).

The pit fiend's fireball is only five dice with a save for half, so it means dick. The big deal is that he gets four attacks with a large attack bonus that each do fireball damage or more. It has a 10 foot reach so you have to spread out a bit to keep it from bashing multiple mooks down in a turn. But it can be done, I don't think there are even overrun options for it and skirmish ranks should work fine.

And you need silver arrows of course. What level do you need to have 16 skeleton archers?

-Username17

Stinktopus · Post by **Stinktopus** » Thu Sep 11, 2014 3:22 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: And you need silver arrows of course. What level do you need to have 16 skeleton archers?

-Username17

Can your skelly archers shoot through the Wall of Fire?

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Thu Sep 11, 2014 3:59 pm

Fireball is also 8d6, but it should change Frank's calculations, because they assume each bullshit monster dies with one Fireball anyway.

The actual problem becomes finding terrains where you can fit 16+ archers in a pattern where a Fireball hits just one of them.

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu Sep 11, 2014 4:16 pm

Any force multipliers like buffs you can give to weapons or skeletons?

Harshax · Post by **Harshax** » Thu Sep 11, 2014 4:52 pm

The Pit Fiend is smart. It should use his walls of fire to screen the archers, then use its mobility to maximize the number of opponents in it's fear aura & reach, while using at-will fireballs for environmental damage or cluster-bombing grouped opponents. Granted, your example is using skeletons goons, so maybe rule out using the fear-aura. So just fly toward the obvious not-skeleton, smash it to pieces, then fly away.

The Pit Fiends is a boring, terrible example of the MM to come and it has certainly chilled what little enthusiasm I had for Next. It looks like they've used a full page to write up a brute with a couple magic powers and that quote from the pit fiend is just awful. Is he really going to give the PCs a pep speech about saving the kingdom just before bashing their brains in?

I also feel that calculating how quickly (and at what level) one could be taken down in a vacuum/perfect battle scenario for the PCs is just dumb. That sauce tastes like straw. If PCs could actually outsmart the pit fiend and kill it by level 6 with a fuck ton of archers, then you're a terrible DM and they deserve every bit of that 25K XP. That has nothing to do with the quality of the game.

While it's important to see if the math of the game works, arguing that you can kill a CR20 Pit Fiend in this specific scenario and that's why were not switching to 5E, is kind of also admitting that you're not a good DM.

The fluff sucks, the monster is bland, and there is too much whitespace on that page to make me feel confident that the MM will be a high quality product.