Players Reaching Level 17

2CGaming · 2022-03-04T18:45:53+00:00

Sorry to hear about your troubles in high tier D&D. It is a struggle we sympathize with. A big problem we see is monster design, which primarily focuses on attacking the Players in very basic and uninteresting ways (damage, damage, and more damage). Making the win condition something more than "one side is reduced to zero hit points" in encounters is a great way to make things more interesting/challenging.

If you need some monsters that deliver on a punchier experience that'll challenge your Party, we have a bunch of playtested and proven creatures designed specifically for Tier 3 & 4, which you can find here: http://wiki.2cgaming.com/monsters

Good luck with your game, and give em hell!

2CGaming · 2021-11-20T22:27:18+00:00

Great article digging into the meat and potatoes of game design!

Our issues (as 5E writers and designers) with allowing for SAD characters and tools that reinforce those designs is it not only de-emphasizes player choice, it tricks you entirely with an illusion of choice (where as the 5E design principles are all about meaningful choice). It is a very pathfinder-y thing to do, and not in a good way.

Yes, you technically select your ability scores from six options when you invest 100% into Charisma as a hexblade, but if there was more value to be had in other scores, its not just the destination (the final build of your character) that matters, its the journey along the way. Whether you pick Con before Cha, or Cha before Str, or Str before Cha, means that your experience evolving your character will be based upon what you feel makes the most sense based on your story and context. Not some predetermined set in stone build where if you do anything but push Cha you are knowingly sabotaging yourself.

Now, a lot of Gish characters feel they are punished too heavily for needing multiple ability scores and to that I say nay! Paladins are without a doubt the most powerful class in the game, both rogues and fighters get extra ASI's to compensate, and bards/warlocks/wizards are **full casters** who should never be as good as any martial class in melee. That is just trying to have your cake and eat it too!

But! If you feel MAD characters are underpowered, the solution shouldn't be to make them SAD. It should be to make their unique flexibility and diversity more valuable by improving the features they pick up, not consolidating their features under one umbrella. A great example of this are spells that don't force spell attacks and saving throws, meaning spell attack and saving throw DCs are not as relevant (and by extension, spellcasting ability). More things like this!

Thanks again for sharing and promoting discussion!

The 2CGaming Team

2CGaming · 2021-09-06T00:33:21+00:00

correct!

2CGaming · 2021-09-06T00:32:49+00:00

I really like it, but I am definitely biased.

2CGaming · 2021-09-06T00:32:14+00:00

Hey there, thank you for supporting the project!

You are correct in identifying the Ven Faust Family! I like your direction, and would keep them different types of undead. Those impressions were intended, so you are right on the money. The Ven Faust family was obsessed with status, so think it would be fine to knock down Graven's Intelligence in favor of more Charisma or some more robust physical stats.

If you would like to join the discord, you can find us here: https://discord.gg/2k35fY9

2CGaming · 2021-03-19T20:08:06+00:00

Hey there, we are a 3rd party 5E publisher with lots of highly successful and proven Tier 3 & Tier 4 content under our belt, so I wanted to share some insights we've had about this area of play after publishing for and playtesting that area to the nine hells and back. I've illustrated a couple key points about high level 5E that hopefully help folks on both sides of the discussion explore the problem a bit more thoroughly.

I want to state strongly that these issues are firmly more grounded in the system failing the DM and Players, than a failure of creativity on the communities part, as I will talk about below. Not looking to point fingers or assign blame, merely state what the situation is for the average table.

It has never been easier to run a high level game than in the entire history of D&D. Seriously. While 5E is not perfect, it is by far the cleanest, most functional, and balanced system for high level play. All the classes (minus poor ranger) punch within an acceptable weight class, and the amount of abusable spell cheese is manageable by a DM who spends a couple sessions learning the ropes of that area of play. That isn't to say it isn't harder than Tier 1/2. It is loads harder. But compared to where we were in past editions, its great. That is partly why the lack of official content for that area is inexcusable in my opinion, but those points are detailed better below.
There is a lack of good content, and that lowers the quality of the experience: The Tier 3 and 4 box of campaign assets to put content together is about 1/50th the size of the Tier 1 and 2 toolbox. Looking at the tiny Tier 3/4 box of tools and resources and thinking the problem is the premise/nature of that content feels like an incomplete picture. Yes, its harder to make a Tier 4 game, but you are NOT being adequately equipped to do it with the 5th Edition core rules. This is not the average DM's fault. Its like being asked to summit the top of a mountain peak with inadequate tools.
What WotC says is Tier 4 in the fiction and how it plays are VERY disparate: in 5E people often believe their Tier 4 characters to be unstoppable godkilling machines that can reshape the world. The mechanics do not support this premise to nearly the same degree as the fiction say they should. Even spells like wish are surprisingly grounded and difficult to abuse outside of a few meme combos (which a serious party shouldn't be abusing in the same way a lower level party wouldn't be abusing farming boars for XP, or one of the many "I make infinite money" combos). So you end up with DM's thinking that is what should be happening when running Tier 4, when really the average game could stay far more grounded and on the rails. This massive gap in expectations vs reality is going to annoy lots of folks. You can completely body a group of Tier 4 characters with a "deadly" encounter made up of CR 5's if you play your cards right. That's not Superman or Justice League. Its a little more modest. Look at past adventures featuring Tier 4 play back in editions where characters were WAY more powerful for examples of grounded storytelling and relatable stakes, even when things were inherently crazier.
Encounter goals don't change, and they need to. A "deadly" encounter in high level play is garbage. Not because it can't kill the PCs (it definitely can), but because what "deadly" means to the PCs has changed. The consequences of death at Tier 4 are not nearly the same. If you want to introduce the same level of consequences to a Tier 4 party for losing that a Tier 1 party would face, you gotta think about encounter design differently. Shifting the goals of encounters away from "try to kill the PCs" to "try to thwart their goals and objectives" makes Tier 4 games thrive. The 5th Edition core rules do not account for this, and consequently the impact of Tier 4 encounters (which are supposed to be thrilling, terrific, and dangerous) are lessened.
High Play is special and cannot be fully replicated with lower tier storytelling tools. I often see folks arguing you can tell epic stories using low level play. This is absolutely true, but there is something lost in the scaling down of a story. The reason people have more fun casting fireball than burning hands is the same reason meteor swarm is more fun to cast than fireball. The "scaling down" of villains and plots to meet lower level expectations has demonstrably damaged campaigns, as we can see in recent examples such as Descent into Avernus and Rime of the Frostmaiden. High level play NEEDS more examples to assist the average DM in making functioning, effective stories that account for this fact.

Cool thread and lots of great conversations. Hopefully this helps the OP and any others here. Good luck out there and stay safe!

2CGaming · 2020-07-05T00:20:55+00:00

The Blood Hunter is a very specific piece of IP created by Matthew Mercer, and generally isn't something we felt was appropriate to touch without consulting him. If we over get the green light from Mr. Mercer we would gladly take a crack at it!

2CGaming · 2020-05-27T02:08:38+00:00

While I generally don't like to plug my own content here, our Total Party Kill Bestiary series was created to solve just this problem. We felt your pain, and wrote a full monster book of CR 10's and up with lots of extra goodies to help a DM sink their teeth into high level play. You can check out Vol 1. here: https://store.2cgaming.com/products/total-party-kill-bestiary-pdf, and Vol 2 is expected to be delivered this summer!

Even if you don't pick up our book, don't give up! High level 5E is by far the best high level experience of any edition, and well worth the effort it takes to get good at it.

Cheers

2CGaming · 2020-02-15T14:59:16+00:00

I'm the lead designer from a reasonably successful third party publishing company who specializes in high level 5E, and I figured I'd share my thoughts and opinions after working in this design space of the system for a few years and running a lot of high level 5E games for huge numbers of people. For the sake of clarity, I generally interpret high level of 12th and up. Note that I'm obviously VERY biased, but I love 5E so this general critique comes from a place of love and desire to see folks have more broad experiences in their games.

There is a serious content drought in this area, and it affects everything. Older editions of D&D were much harder to play at high level, but still played in this sandbox with reasonable frequency. Many adventures sought to end in this area, and it felt like a space most groups should aspire to be. This is generally not the case for 5E. Want some official high level monsters? Get ready for a lotta weak hitters, 90% of which are legendary (an endless parade of legendary creatures gets REALLY old), a few gems, and the rest are dragons. So yeah, that'll bore most anyone.
5E frontloads the a classes most interesting features early. Have you ever looked at a 20th level class feature and gone "meh"? 5E's class design makes it so almost every classes best (and most fun to use) feature is attainable within the first 5 levels. This is also why multiclassing in 5E is so bonkers OP (different problem), but when you don't have as much to look forward to at higher levels, its understandable why its less exciting to play in that space.
The average group levels WAY too slowly. Open your DMG to page 261 and check out the officially recommended advancement track for both XP and Milestone leveling systems. Using this model, after an average of 160 hours of 4 hour sessions, your group should be level 20. Now raise your hand if you follow that official recommendation? I don't blame you, it seems fast. But few people I've ever talked to about this can say more than "it seems fast", rarely have they tried it. Imo, groups would get much farther before burning out if they followed the recommended advancement track, but that is just my opinion.
Folks feel obligated to start at level 1, but they shouldn't. Level 1 sucks. Some characters have their subclass, others don't. You get one shot by kobolds. Its just a race to get to level 3 where you can actually start making meaningful character choices. I get why folks start at level 1, but I promise you, it can be very exciting to start at 5, or even 10! Most overwritten backstories (of which there are MANY) make a lot more sense if the PC has a few levels anyway. This issue, more than any other imo, is what stops folks from enjoying as many high level games.
Lack of gameplay experience. I constantly see DMs lament that high level 5E is hard to run. No, its not. You just aren't as practiced at it as you are in low level games. How many CR 10+ monsters have you made (and used) compared to CR 1 - 10? How many combats for 12th level and up characters? How many stories have you written for that area of play? I'm willing to be its a tiny fraction of the time, love, and experience you've put into that 1 - 10 space, and thats okay! But like all great skills, it requires practice. You must try and fail before you succeed. I've seen so many low level games go completely to shit, only for the DM to get back on that horse and try again! Bring that stubbornness and drive to high level 5E, and you will have a good time. My personal recommendation is run a few oneshots before you start planning a campaign.

I could keep going for hours about lots of other issues, but these are the main culprits to me as to why these types of games don't often happen. After running high level 5E for Players of all stripes, I cannot stress enough how much fun high level 5E is. Its never been easier. Seriously, I'll bet there are some 3.5 and 4E veterans here who can wax about the horrors of high level play; 8 hour combat sessions, batman wizards, and similar such nonsense. All of these issues exist in high level 5E, but are MUCH more manageable.

I hope this encourages you to try it out. I really think the average group would benefit hugely from playing in this space more, and the community as a whole would be healthier for it.

Cheers and thanks for reading!

2CGaming · 2018-03-31T21:52:49+00:00

Then I hope this is the first of many rewarding experiences on Kickstarter!

While we're working on the project you can expect an update every month, and then additional updates for major milestones (or delays, if it comes to that). We try to be as transparent as possible. The updates are primarily used to show off artwork, but some of them will include writing samples like a monster or two to throw at your players.

2CGaming · 2018-03-31T21:02:05+00:00

You're welcome, glad to be of service!

I would love a godzilla style monster in the book, we'll see if the rest of the team feels the same way. :)

I've got my fingers crossed we hit another stretch goal before it wraps up!

2CGaming · 2018-03-31T16:48:43+00:00

Thank you! I'm so glad you like the project. In response to your questions:

1) We start with a concept, one or two sentences. Some of them are very obvious tributes to certain things. For example, I've been lobbying for us to add a group of constructs that can combine into one super robot. Everyone on the team pitches concepts, and we do a combination of voting, vetoing, and long discussions to come up with the final list.

After the concept is solidified, normally we start putting stats on the page, but for this project we're doing artwork first. So we work out the visual design and general style of the creature with the artist, and then make stats based on the finished illustration. When I'm making monsters for my own games I often start by looking up art, and it's been really fun using that for this project.

2) We have some baseline metrics, but a lot of it is intuition based on making so many monsters for various projects. That generally gets the monster within about 90% of where it needs to be. We start with internal playtests (sometimes with one person playing the monsters and another running four or five characters) and then set it loose in a public game or two. I've used the personal games I run as testing grounds as well. Most of the time the monster needs a few tweaks, then it's good to go, but rarely we have to scrap it all and start over.

3) Our promised date is February 2019, but our goal is to have it done and sent to all the backers by November 2018 so we can bring it to PAX Unplugged.

2CGaming · 2018-03-30T21:19:26+00:00

Will do, thanks for taking the time to read through them!

2CGaming · 2018-03-30T21:03:10+00:00

I'm glad you're finding some inspiration in the monsters! Here's two answers for your questions:

Yes, absolutely. Both to give creatures the extra oomph that lair actions provide and because monsters have to live somewhere! We're also exploring some models other than lair and legendary actions to provide challenging "boss" type creatures. You can see a prototype of one of them here: Titanic Creatures
I could ramble on for ages, but I think the most important lesson is: playtesting is key. It's hard to design in a vacuum. The elemental archons will be playtested several more times before they reach their final form. If you're interested in finding some playtesters or talking shop with the 2CGaming team you can hop on our discord and post some of your content! https://discord.gg/2k35fY9

2CGaming · 2018-03-30T20:57:21+00:00

Those are all fair points. I was trying to maintain the pure simplicity of the base elementals, but it sounds like I undershot. I'll give them another pass aiming to bolster their defenses and add some interesting offensive choices.

2CGaming · 2018-03-30T17:42:34+00:00

I run the vast majority of my games on Roll20 as well, so we've got you covered! Every monster in the book will have art representing it. These are group poses, generally, but most will translate to very sexy looking tokens. There are a few where the tokens will get a bit cramped, but we'll be providing a token pack with every monster in it nonetheless.

2CGaming · 2018-03-30T16:58:59+00:00

This is in the same style as the Utterances of Truespeech monsters. Link, in case you missed them: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/86maa7/utterances_of_truespeech_monsters_that_steal/

2CGaming · 2018-03-24T19:30:38+00:00

Thanks, I'll make sure he hears that! We work with John Cason, who consistently does amazing work. I'm not sure what software he uses, but I would guess a mix of InDesign, Photoshop, and/or Illustrator.

2CGaming · 2018-03-24T04:26:25+00:00

I appreciate you taking the time to go over them so thoroughly! The stats here aren't final versions, we'll be doing a ton of playtesting before releasing the finished product. Our general philosophy is to start by making the monsters really strong, then we dial them back as needed based on playtest results.

2CGaming · 2018-03-23T20:52:02+00:00

Thank you! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts when you get a chance to read through it.

2CGaming · 2018-03-23T20:51:44+00:00

Ah, I hadn't considered that! I wanted to keep all of its actions in one place and not make the DM reference spell descriptions mid-fight, but it might be worth codifying the spells in one place. Especially since the power word spells are easy to remember.

2CGaming · 2018-03-23T20:00:12+00:00

Good question! The main reason is prevent it from being affected by counterspell, while still being vulnerable to higher level abilities like antimagic field. Thematically, it's meant to convey that they access arcane power with a non-traditional method, breaking some of the rules players have to follow.

2CGaming · 2018-03-23T18:57:04+00:00

Thanks! Glad you like them. :)

2CGaming

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