[D&D] What's left for 6th edition?

[Wartex1]

You said that commoners could kill a dragon and then used soldiers as an example. Bravo for misrepresenting yourself.

The dragon could easily be attacking an army marching out of a constrained space, like a valley, cave or other feature.

Nothing's stopping the dragon from using improvised weapons.

Try getting 2700 soldiers to sneak up to a dragon and manage to surround it. It takes time to surround the dragon, so it would never be dealing with even a large fraction of that at a time.

Also, bounded accuracy isn't a flaw when it only becomes a problem (if you can call it that) in impossible situations. If anything, it makes more sense than 3.x's accuracy mechanic.

[Vitruviansquid]

I fail to understand how it's a bad thing that a group of five heroes can *only* do the job a group of "a few dozen horse archers" or "30 skeletons" or "200 acolytes" or "500 commoners" can do. That's pretty impressive.

The problem is, if huge armies answer most threats, why have adventurers?

... I feel like this question is some kind of parody, because I doubt you can ask this question and then somehow not immediately understand the answer.

[Wartex1]

30 skeletons get killed instantly by an Ancient Red Dragon.

30 skeletons is perfectly fair.

[Cluedrew]

I'll admit my eyes glazed over in this last part. But it gave me one more thing that is left 6th edition.

Being hated because it is not edition Y.

On a more serious note something ... someone I can't find the post ... said is probably the right idea. We don't know what 6th edition will have to bring until 5th has run its course, seen its splat books, been optimized, broken and house ruled by thousands of unwitting play testers or all different sorts.

Sure there is a lot of places D&D could go, high level play, creating a background system, different resource systems, more flavourful ways of representing races, more flexible classes, a working hybrid-class system, a revamped skill system, a balanced swarm/minion system. I think you get the point by now. And these are just the ones I could make off the top of my head.

There are a lot of direction this could go and honestly I think it is too early to say which one will be chosen.

[Brova]

30 skeletons get killed instantly by an Ancient Red Dragon.

30 skeletons is perfectly fair.

In fairness, you jumped from my claim "minionmancers are powerful" directly to "minionmancers must be able to kill everything with 30 level one minions".

And, as it turns out, I'm still right. The number of commoners you need, while larger than the number of soldiers, is still laughably small compared to the resources available to a kingdom. And you have yet to present any monster other than "ancient red dragon".

I don't have the 5e MM. I can't grab the stats for a level 10 monster or a level 7 monster or a level 15 monster. I can only use the stats people have provided me. And it is still provably true that the resources needed to kill the most powerful dragon in the game don't even represent 1% of what a kingdom in D&D has going on.

Seriously, post HP, AC, and notable offenses of monsters from CR 5/10/15/20. Let's see how a pile of horse archers stack up to them. Let's see if the claim that bounded accuracy is only a problem in the "impossible situation" of a dragon attacking an army holds up. I am wholly unconvinced by an argument that claims a possible victory with skirmish tactics for the strongest monster in the game (I think - max age dragons were in 3e, dunno about 5e) against actual peasants as a defense of bounded accuracy.

Oh, and I think the horse archers are actually pretty good against the dragon depending on relative speeds. The breath weapon and fear have a shorter range than a bow, so my claim might actually just be straight up true, as apposed to minor hyperbole.

EDIT: Not knowing the encounter guidelines, I don't know if this still holds, but in 3e a monster of CR - 8 or lower was not a sufficiently meaningful threat to award XP for. Assuming that's true, you need to be matching that ancient red up against the old blue in arbitrary numbers. I don't imagine that goes quite so well.

EDIT 2: Some math for damage calcs. The damage to a dragon hit only on a 20 by X peasants averaging 7 damage per hit, can be modeled as the sum of the series .35((1 - .7^n)X - 30n) from n = 1 to n = number of rounds of combat. This assumes that peasants with disadvantage do not hit and that the dragon averages 30 kills every round.

[oxybe]

when talking about edition changes, we need to remember the number 1 motivation: D&D has to survive on it's own two feet in the Hasbro world, not the gaming one. No matter how much money you bring in when compared to Shadowrun, Paranoia, White Wolf, Pathfinder, etc... doesn't matter. D&D is a product own by hasbro, who has to approve where it's money is going to be funneled into.

I'll grab a big quote from that link and bold the important lines:

"...Chuck left after two years and Loren Greenwood, who had been the long time VP of Sales, replaced him in 2004. He was also a visible proponent of the idea that Wizards, and not Boys Toys, should set Hasbro's CCG strategy. Thus when Brian was named COO of the whole company in 2006 and CEO in 2008, Loren had a big problem on his hands. Loren guided the company through the post 3.5e crash of the TRPG market, the loss of the Pokemon franchise, and the unwinding of the Wizards retail strategy. All of this was pretty bitter fruit for hm since he'd been instrumental in building up much of what had to then be torn down. The combination of all these things led to Loren's exit and his replacement by Greg Leeds, who is the current CEO of Wizards.

Sometime around 2005ish, Hasbro made an internal decision to divide its businesses into two categories. Core brands, which had more than $50 million in annual sales, and had a growth path towards $100 million annual sales, and Non-Core brands, which didn't.

Under Goldner, the Core Brands would be the tentpoles of the company. They would be exploited across a range of media with an eye towards major motion pictures, following the path Transformers had blazed. Goldner saw what happened to Marvel when they re-oriented their company from a publisher of comic books to a brand building factory (their market capitalization increased by something like 2 billion dollars). He wanted to replicate that at Hasbro.

Core Brands would get the financing they requested for development of their businesses (within reason). Non-Core brands would not. They would be allowed to rise & fall with the overall toy market on their own merits without a lot of marketing or development support. In fact, many Non-Core brands would simply be mothballed - allowed to go dormant for some number of years until the company was ready to take them down off the shelf and try to revive them for a new generation of kids.

At the point of the original Hasbro/Wizards merger a fateful decision was made that laid the groundwork for what happened once Greg took over. Instead of focusing Hasbro on the idea that Wizards of the Coast was a single brand, each of the lines of business in Wizards got broken out and reported to Hasbro as a separate entity. This was driven in large part by the fact that the acquisition agreement specified a substantial post-acquisition purchase price adjustment for Wizards' shareholders on the basis of the sales of non-Magic CCGs (i.e. Pokemon).

This came back to haunt Wizards when Hasbro's new Core/Non-Core strategy came into focus. Instead of being able to say "We're a $100+ million brand, keep funding us as we desire", each of the business units inside Wizards had to make that case separately. So the first thing that happened was the contraction you saw when Wizards dropped new game development and became the "D&D and Magic" company. Magic has no problem hitting the "Core" brand bar, but D&D does. It's really a $25-30 million business, especially since Wizards isn't given credit for the licensing revenue of the D&D computer games..."

The main reason it came back to bite D&D is that when Hasbro bought Wizards, they didn't buy "Wizards the brand that oversaw D&D and Magic" they bought "D&D" and "Magic" and left Wizards to oversee both. D&D couldn't rely on the MtG money for it's survival like it did before.

And that's the important thing: 3rd ed, no matter how successful it was, was not successful enough for post-2005 hasbro. 3rd ed and it's numbers were good for the TTRPG industry, but not Hasbro good. In the eyes of Hasbro: 3rd ed failed. So these developpers who had mouths to feed had to reorganize and revitalize their game and 4th ed was announced. Which again failed to be the $100+ million brand Hasbro was wanting.

And I highly doubt 5th ed to the one to break that streak post the initial year. What I'm going to guess is 3-4 years after it's release 5th ed's sales and product releases will have eased down and the IP is going to be mothballed and re-released a-la My Little Pony: let it rest for a generation to cleanse people's palette for a bit and eventually do a big hubbub and hope it sells.

[Brova]

@oxybe

Interesting.

Seems like the path forward for D&D would be to get people into the miniatures wargame as a primary source of revenue. Probably a business model focused on that (a la Warhammer) with the RPG stuff as a sideline. Honestly, I kinda hope Hasbro sells the line off to someone who will take "massively successful RPG" even if it's not $50 million a year.

[Tvtyrant]

The problem is, if huge armies answer most threats, why have adventurers? There are plenty of solutions to the problem you're talking about that don't involve letting a couple thousand nobodies kill everything in the game. For example, maybe high level people just don't care about low level kingdoms. The reason Ethergaunts don't wipe out the kingdom of Thune isn't because they can't, it's because there's nothing there they want.

This is actually a great place to use tiers. Something like this maybe:

Heroic Tier: Gold economy. Heroes in the kingdom. Conan/LoTR type power level.
Paragon Tier: Gold economy/Wish economy. Heroes of the world. Superheroes type power level.
Epic Tier: Wish economy. Heroes of the multiverse. Crazy power level.

It's simple enough to set things up so that the Ethergaunts (an Epic Tier threat) don't kill off the Free City of Greyhawk even though they can. An Ethergaunt can wish for any material wealth, and has slaves who are personally harder core than the entire kingdom. He's got no reason whatsoever to go screw with Heroic Tier people and if he does, he'll do it through intermediaries (who are, fortunately enough, level appropriate for heroic tier).

But armies don't solve most problems, just the one of why humans exist at all.

Take an adult dragon. If an entire army of archers met one in the open field, the army would win. Only a dragon holding an idiot ball would do that though. The dragon would attack their now defenseless homes, then destroy the army in a series of night attacks. It would pay the local trolls to ambush the army, it would gather up the local kobold tribes into an alliance and fight the army in hit and run tactics which it orchestrates while it depopulates the country side. By the time the army gets to the cave it is a shattered remnant of its former self, led by broken men who can smell their children burn in the distance. Maybe they manage to kill the dragon, but they lost everything doing so.

Or they can hire a band of professionals to quietly assassinate the dragon in its layer, offering them bribes to augment the dragon's horde. Which choice would you make?

But in all other editions it works like this: The Dragon of Chaosmoon appears over the fully armed and defended capital of Deepcalimportshire, which has somehow stood for 100,000 years. It has 8 mirror images of itself, an AC to high for anyone to hit, and it can stop time. It instantly defeats a major civilization, killing millions. A rogue band of super humans who are strong enough to defeat it but not to even touch its slightly stronger mother appear and kill it within 6 seconds. They have equipment which are equivalent to buying enough land to make an empire, and are capable of each independently destroying any civilization not guarded by a similar band. Calimdeepshireport gives them all of their money in return, which the band uses to buy two new forcefield bands for their casters and a single sword for their fighter. They are called to defend the nearby realm against an invasion of trolls which they effortlessly defeat but which is too strong for the entire kingdom of Notenglandorfrance combined to defeat.

[Vitruviansquid]

Lots of stuff

This in mind, it strikes me that what DnD needs as a series is a better method of monetization much more than a better edition.

[NoldorForce]

This in mind, it strikes me that what DnD needs as a series is a better method of monetization much more than a better edition.

Perhaps. I recall it being said that the best way to make a little money in RPGs is to start with a lot of money, and given the nature of the beast (RPG books ain't cheap to make) something's got to give on the business side.

[Psyren]

Is the game run by the program?

If it's not, then it's not a digital medium, and only a part of the game is handled digitally.

So at what point do you consider the game to be "run by the program?" All skype does is provide you a way to throw your voice much further than the room you're in. roll20 can do that, and also throw the game grid, and a number of other things that are totally optional. When in your eyes does roll20 D&D stop being "tabletop?" When you automate dice rolls? When you automate initiative? When you automate line of sight? When you automate buff and debuff tracking?

It's an arbitrary and pointless distinction, doubly so if you don't mean it to be derogatory, because then it begs the question of why anyone should care whether you consider one to be "tabletop" or not.

This in mind, it strikes me that what DnD needs as a series is a better method of monetization much more than a better edition.

What they need are better handlers, i.e. the kind of folks who don't consider a $30 million brand a failure. This is a niche hobby, and expecting it to reach Magic's revenue levels - a game with a global competitive scene, speculative collector value and very standardized methods of playing it - is just ridiculous.

[Wartex1]

Tabletop and Video games are arbitrary distinctions? Not really.

A Video game is handled mostly by a digital system.

A Tabletop game is handled mostly by people in a physical system.

That line may be different for some people, but it should be largely the same.

[Hawkstar]

The problem is, if huge armies answer most threats, why have adventurers?

Because the adventurers are there anyway, and it's better to have them go try killing dragons instead of burning down all the taverns in your city (And killing all your guards).

A mid-level adventurer in D&D can absolutely annihilate a town guard with hardly a scratch if it knows what it's doing, based on empirical evidence and actual gameplay. Stop thinking "Superman" and start thinking "Goldeneye"

[goto124]

In Skype, roll20, etc, it's still a living, breathing human-minded GM who decides what actions the NPCs take, how the world reacts to the PCs, etc.

If a computer does the 'thinking' instead, that's a computer game.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Tabletop and Video games are arbitrary distinctions? Not really.

A Video game is handled mostly by a digital system.

A Tabletop game is handled mostly by people in a physical system.

That line may be different for some people, but it should be largely the same.

Then why are Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, Agricola, and such categorized as board games? The answer is because your definitions aren't what's used by most people to categorize those games.

[Wartex1]

Then why are Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, Agricola, and such categorized as board games? The answer is because your definitions aren't what's used by most people to categorize those games.

Board games are a kind of tabletop game.

Why does that need clarification? That's like asking if an MMO is a video game.

[goto124]

I thought it was 'Tabletop games are a kind of board game.'

[Brova]

But armies don't solve most problems, just the one of why humans exist at all.

Take an adult dragon. If an entire army of archers met one in the open field, the army would win. Only a dragon holding an idiot ball would do that though. The dragon would attack their now defenseless homes, then destroy the army in a series of night attacks. It would pay the local trolls to ambush the army, it would gather up the local kobold tribes into an alliance and fight the army in hit and run tactics which it orchestrates while it depopulates the country side. By the time the army gets to the cave it is a shattered remnant of its former self, led by broken men who can smell their children burn in the distance. Maybe they manage to kill the dragon, but they lost everything doing so.

So the solution of "minions are too good" is "get the dragon minions"?

Or they can hire a band of professionals to quietly assassinate the dragon in its layer, offering them bribes to augment the dragon's horde. Which choice would you make?

Well, not if the dragon hires a bunch of kobolds to take potshots at the adventurers.

But in all other editions it works like this: The Dragon of Chaosmoon appears over the fully armed and defended capital of Deepcalimportshire, which has somehow stood for 100,000 years. It has 8 mirror images of itself, an AC to high for anyone to hit, and it can stop time. It instantly defeats a major civilization, killing millions.

Why? That dragon can cast 9th level spells. What does it want from a city of completely normal people? It can wish for anything they could possibly give it. In 3e, powerful people don't meddle in the affairs of mortals not because they are afraid, but because there is nothing they want from them. It's the same reason the PotUS doesn't demand that the military crush Boston - he stands to gain nothing from it.

Because the adventurers are there anyway, and it's better to have them go try killing dragons instead of burning down all the taverns in your city (And killing all your guards).

But why does the city tolerate adventurers? It's not like it needs them, and they are capable of killing large numbers of people. Why do they not get stabbed in their sleep?

[Hawkstar]

But why does the city tolerate adventurers? It's not like it needs them, and they are capable of killing large numbers of people. Why do they not get stabbed in their sleep?

Because it's easier for the city to tolerate adventurers and get discount exterminator services from them than lose half or more of their peacekeeping force and several acres of property in the resulting flames when they try to apprehend adventurers. Moving against an adventurer is very much a "You Lose" proposition. It's better for them to stay in the good graces of an adventuring party, as the Underdark dwellers of Menzoberranzan catastrophically learned when they tried to screw over a group of level 2 adventurers who were just trying to help some Deep Gnomes out.

As for stabbing them in their sleep? Because Adventurers always travel in tight-knit groups of 3-12, with about 1/3rd of their number standing guard at night - even in allegedly 'safe' areas.

[Brova]

Because it's easier for the city to tolerate adventurers and get discount exterminator services from them than lose half or more of their peacekeeping force and several acres of property in the resulting flames when they try to apprehend adventurers. Moving against an adventurer is very much a "You Lose" proposition. It's better for them to stay in the good graces of an adventuring party, as the Underdark dwellers of Menzoberranzan catastrophically learned when they tried to screw over a group of level 2 adventurers who were just trying to help some Deep Gnomes out.

As for stabbing them in their sleep? Because Adventurers always travel in tight-knit groups of 3-12, with about 1/3rd of their number standing guard at night - even in allegedly 'safe' areas.

You are drastically overestimating individual combat effectiveness. If you run my model, it takes something like 800 guys with bows to kill the red dragon with some 200ish casualties. That's a very favorable trade for that unit and a very small unit size. And it's against someone super hard core. The odds are just not in favor of the adventurers.

[Hawkstar]

You are drastically overestimating individual combat effectiveness. If you run my model, it takes something like 800 guys with bows to kill the red dragon with some 200ish casualties. That's a very favorable trade for that unit and a very small unit size. And it's against someone super hard core. The odds are just not in favor of the adventurers.

That is 199-198 casualties too many. Absolutely unacceptable losses, not a favorable trade at all.

If you run an actual game instead of a baseless model, you find that the model's actually completely damn useless.

Furthermore - NO edition of D&D handles mass combat on the scale you're trying to force it into. With a large enough group, you end up with efficiency-detractors. (And if Frightful Presence goes off, everyone dies - Those who fail the save are picked off at the dragon's leisure. Those who make it are trampled to death by those who didn't).

You should play more Goldeneye.

[Brova]

That is 199-198 casualties too many. Absolutely unacceptable losses, not a favorable trade at all.

You do understand that 200 casualties is seriously an order of magnitude lower than many medieval battles, right?

If you run an actual game instead of a baseless model, you find that the model's actually completely damn useless.

Yes, when you run actual games, people don't do things that break the game. Duh. People play a game because they want to have a good time, not because they want to poke at the system until it falls apart. But that doesn't mean the system won't fall apart. 3.5's wish is always broken, even if it's not used to become The Wish. 5e's bounded accuracy is always broken, even if its not used to kill an ancient dragon with commoners.

Furthermore - NO edition of D&D handles mass combat on the scale you're trying to force it into. With a large enough group, you end up with efficiency-detractors. (And if Frightful Presence goes off, everyone dies - Those who fail the save are picked off at the dragon's leisure. Those who make it are trampled to death by those who didn't).

Actually, 3e deals with this surprisingly well. For one thing, the dragon has AC "nope" even against people with actual training. For another thing, the dragon has DR "nope"/magic. For a final thing, the dragon has frightful presence that triggers automatically and actually incapacitates people. Compare that to a 5e dragon with barely enough AC to no sell peasants, no DR whatsoever, and frightful presence that takes an action, offers repeated saves, and doesn't actually incapacitate (just disadvantage, apparently).

[mephnick]

Why would you send 200 subjects to their deaths when you could pay a few mercenaries to kill the dragon?

[squiggit]

Personally I find 5e's progression curve to be a little uninspiring. I get bounded accuracy is there to make the math easier, but it still makes things feel a lot less epic as you progress

Also feel like 5e backslides a bit on caster martial issues.

And customization issues, which is also slightly a facet of caster/martial because spellcasters can customize reasonably well. Generally feel like there aren't a lot of moving parts when making a new character though, especially if feats are off the table.

5e also oddly enough doubles down on 4e's issues with stats. In 5e most classes have a primary stat and then want a decent con score. gishes, half casters and monks/battlemasters have a secondary stat. And that's it.

Also a question of longevity for a system so ... unmeaty. But who knows.

[Sith_Happens]

And your comment about warlocks shows you much you know... So no, you are wrong, period.

Err - this shows how much you know... So no, you are wrong, period.

Sounds to me like the D&D edition most like WoW is 3.X, in that both are full of people arguing with each other endlessly over whose personal experience is "right" and who's a big fat moron.

worst of all, 4e can't give you that authentic barrens chat experience of pure stupidity that makes you want to whack out your own brain with a lemon wrapped around a large gold brick.

It can with the wrong right group.

What on earth does "the line from a tabletop game to video game" entail?

Given that they're called video games, I'm pretty sure the line lies at "Does it have a graphics engine."

Again, did I say that video games were bad? Roll20 is using a tabletop system as a video game, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Then what are you arguing about? If being more like a video game isn't in and of itself a bad thing then who cares where the line between "video game" and "tabletop game" is?

The fact that the mechanics don't support that. Because if he closes to use his breath weapon, he dies. Horribly.

How is your army being everywhere at once? If 4000 soldiers gather in an open field hoping to fight the dragon, the dragon is just going to fly right over them and torch the nearest city, farm, or other strategic resource. By the time the army gets there there will be nothing left but ashes and the dragon will have already moved on to the next target.

If a dragon wants to ravage or conquer a kingdom, it ravages or conquers the kingdom itself. The kingdom's military will eventually either scatter, submit to the dragon's rule, or fall into anarchy.

[Snip]

Someone get this man a team of programmers.

Why don't the soldiers kill the dragon in its sleep? Why doesn't the king send his army to wipe out the dragons?

How are more than a dozen or so soldiers at a time fighting the dragon inside its lair? Any dragon savvy enough to survive to the age we're talking about in the first place is going to live somewhere with at least one choke point that any invaders have to make it through, and that choke point won't be the kind that an arbitrary number of people can shoot at it through at once.

The problem is, if huge armies answer most threats, why have adventurers?

Plenty of reasons:

1. The threat is hanging out somewhere that an army won't fit.

2. No one who cares about the threat has an army.

3. The number of casualties expected to result from sending an army after the threat makes that solution unpalatable to whoever's in charge of the army.

4. The nature of the threat is such that whoever's in charge of the army expects retaliation should they be linked to the initial response (adventurers are deniable).

5. The army's discipline is shaky enough that sending them after the threat would cause too many headaches, or worst case scenario they straight-up say "Hell no, get some adventurers to do it."

In Skype, roll20, etc, it's still a living, breathing human-minded GM who decides what actions the NPCs take, how the world reacts to the PCs, etc.

If a computer does the 'thinking' instead, that's a computer game.

I like this definition.

Why? That dragon can cast 9th level spells. What does it want from a city of completely normal people? It can wish for anything they could possibly give it.

Even fear and worship?

...Okay, yes, but it has to get really creative and even then it's just not the same as subjugating an honest-to-goodness, naturally-grown city.

[SpectralDerp]

Sounds to me like the D&D edition most like WoW is 3.X, in that both are full of people arguing with each other endlessly over whose personal experience is "right" and who's a big fat moron.

Sounds to me like gitp is most like a typical internet forum where people prefer to make nonsensical accusations rather than address arguments that deal with facts.

[Tvtyrant]

Actually, 3e deals with this surprisingly well. For one thing, the dragon has AC "nope" even against people with actual training. For another thing, the dragon has DR "nope"/magic. For a final thing, the dragon has frightful presence that triggers automatically and actually incapacitates people. Compare that to a 5e dragon with barely enough AC to no sell peasants, no DR whatsoever, and frightful presence that takes an action, offers repeated saves, and doesn't actually incapacitate (just disadvantage, apparently).

See I beg to differ. You still haven't explained why there are any humans left at all in 3.X.

Say we have some nice, low level trolls. How does any society deal with them? Happen upon a party of super soldiers with nothing better to do, with no thought for their own safety, and who don't feel like simply ruling society every single time? As opposed to "It sucks to lose a dozen people fighting a troll, so we get some outsiders to try for us."

Also 10% casualties is historically considered atrocious, and by 30% you are guaranteed a rout. Any monster that is going to deal 30% casualties before it dies is going to win, because the army is going to break. And that is if it stupid enough to fight an army instead of destroy its supply train or attack the place it just left undefended. Armies can't remain in the field indefinitely either, gathering troops to fight a dragon just means it waits until nightfall and torches their homes.

[Brova]

Why would you send 200 subjects to their deaths when you could pay a few mercenaries to kill the dragon?

How much do you think that a medieval monarch thinks their subjects lives are worth? 1 GP? 10 GP? 100 GP? Life in the era D&D emulates was cheap, and there's not any particular reason to think that the reward for ~20th level adventurers would be low enough to justify spending it to save those lives.

See I beg to differ. You still haven't explained why there are any humans left at all in 3.X.

Say we have some nice, low level trolls. How does any society deal with them? Happen upon a party of super soldiers with nothing better to do, with no thought for their own safety, and who don't feel like simply ruling society every single time? As opposed to "It sucks to lose a dozen people fighting a troll, so we get some outsiders to try for us."

3e's CR math works out to having people stop being threatened by the local militia right at the point where they can go out into the planes to beat up efreet for wishes. It's surprisingly (and I assume unintentionally) elegant. Trolls are also the origin of the term "closet troll" - something threatening in a dungeon but not if you have room to maneuver and use ranged attacks.

But yes, 3e does have critters that low level mooks can't deal with. Even without the ability to go all shadow over the sun, you can't kill a shadow with any number of level 1 warriors. And that's a good thing. It gives a reason for adventurers to exist and for people to not just use the local army for everything.

Also 10% casualties is historically considered atrocious, and by 30% you are guaranteed a rout. Any monster that is going to deal 30% casualties before it dies is going to win, because the army is going to break.

Those numbers are from solving backwards for killing the dragon in 5 rounds. If you were to put in an input of 2000 or 3000 soldiers, you could kill the dragon in a round or two with minimal losses. And the numbers aren't going to be nearly that bad for anything less threatening than "the most powerful dragon in the world".

And that is if it stupid enough to fight an army instead of destroy its supply train or attack the place it just left undefended. Armies can't remain in the field indefinitely either, gathering troops to fight a dragon just means it waits until nightfall and torches their homes.

And what stops the dragon from doing the same thing against adventurers? Also, it is an important part of the genera D&D emulates for dragons to destroy armies by bathing them in fire. Scenes like Smaug's devastation of Laketown or the Kingdom Under the Mountain can't happen if he can be killed by a couple hundred dudes with bows. Failing to allow that is like writing a game that tries to simulate action movies, but gives the optimal tactic in Die Hard as "just send in the police".

1. The threat is hanging out somewhere that an army won't fit.

So camp the entrance? Or are there rules that allow monsters to do something (i.e. chain binding) from the comfort of their lairs that upgrades their threat level.

2. No one who cares about the threat has an army.

Why are the adventurers going after it then? Also, "army" is seriously the wrong word. It's like 1000 guys to kill an ancient dragon. What do you think the numbers are for a dragon that is just adult, or for a pack of ogres?

3. The number of casualties expected to result from sending an army after the threat makes that solution unpalatable to whoever's in charge of the army.

4. The nature of the threat is such that whoever's in charge of the army expects retaliation should they be linked to the initial response (adventurers are deniable).

5. The army's discipline is shaky enough that sending them after the threat would cause too many headaches, or worst case scenario they straight-up say "Hell no, get some adventurers to do it."

Again, the math doesn't support any of that. Casualties are always low in absolute terms, low in relative terms when army sizes approach a tenth of army sizes from that period, and happen largely because dragons have an AoE attack. Retaliation is impossible, because nothing threatens armies of low level minions. Discipline is not likely to be a concern here. You're looking at incredibly low casualties and some very decent loot for less than a minute's work. Who the hell is breaking under those conditions?

[Psyren]

In Skype, roll20, etc, it's still a living, breathing human-minded GM who decides what actions the NPCs take, how the world reacts to the PCs, etc.

If a computer does the 'thinking' instead, that's a computer game.

This is an actually sensible place to draw the line, because it depends on whether a human or computer is doing the actual decision-making, rather than something useless and arbitrary like whether the GM's voice is reaching the player's eardrums purely through the gases filling the room or whether it has to go through a phone line first.

In particular, it allows for the computer to assist the GM with tracking the numbers, without it ceasing to be a tabletop game.

Given that they're called video games, I'm pretty sure the line lies at "Does it have a graphics engine."

Skype has a graphics engine, used to render the video chats. Is Skype a video game?

As long as a human is making the decisions for the world/NPCs in real time, it is a tabletop game, regardless of the medium you use (and yes, the presence/absence of a table as well.)

[Hawkstar]

How much do you think that a medieval monarch thinks their subjects lives are worth? 1 GP? 10 GP? 100 GP? Life in the era D&D emulates was cheap, and there's not any particular reason to think that the reward for ~20th level adventurers would be low enough to justify spending it to save those lives.

Adventurers pay for themselves. You don't need a massive reward - merely entitle them to salvage/looting rights for their kills. Even then - I'd say an average monarch would rate a peasant's life at ~1,000 GP, varying by career, age, and job, given the large investment in time and food, and materials to raise them. And, 20th-level adventurers in 5e don't require the same stupidly exorbitant prices they did in 3e.

3e's CR math works out to having people stop being threatened by the local militia right at the point where they can go out into the planes to beat up efreet for wishes. It's surprisingly (and I assume unintentionally) elegant. Trolls are also the origin of the term "closet troll" - something threatening in a dungeon but not if you have room to maneuver and use ranged attacks.

Except trolls are fast, and regenerate, so massed low-level ranged weapons are lolnope against them.

But yes, 3e does have critters that low level mooks can't deal with. Even without the ability to go all shadow over the sun, you can't kill a shadow with any number of level 1 warriors. And that's a good thing. It gives a reason for adventurers to exist and for people to not just use the local army for everything.

No, it's a terrible thing because it doesn't give a reason for humans/society to exist. In a world where low-level mooks cannot do anything, low-level mooks don't exist. In 3.5, in order for the world to work, the average soldier has to be Level 8. Increasing the strength of monsters doesn't make ARmies go away - it just makes the price-per-soldier increase.

Those numbers are from solving backwards for killing the dragon in 5 rounds. If you were to put in an input of 2000 or 3000 soldiers, you could kill the dragon in a round or two with minimal losses. And the numbers aren't going to be nearly that bad for anything less threatening than "the most powerful dragon in the world".

How are the 2,000-3,000 soldiers dealing with the 5,000 kobolds the dragon has serving and willing to die for it? Adventurers deal with it through strategic insertion.

And what stops the dragon from doing the same thing against adventurers? Also, it is an important part of the genera D&D emulates for dragons to destroy armies by bathing them in fire. Scenes like Smaug's devastation of Laketown or the Kingdom Under the Mountain can't happen if he can be killed by a couple hundred dudes with bows. Failing to allow that is like writing a game that tries to simulate action movies, but gives the optimal tactic in Die Hard as "just send in the police".

In case you didn't notice, only a few soldiers were ever engaging Smaug at a time - the rest were panicking. D&D has the 'problem' of not handling how people react in large groups. Its combat system breaks down horribly once more than ~30 soldiers appear on either side, and people start slacking.

So camp the entrance? Or are there rules that allow monsters to do something (i.e. chain binding) from the comfort of their lairs that upgrades their threat level.

FWOOSH out the entrance.

Why are the adventurers going after it then? Also, "army" is seriously the wrong word. It's like 1000 guys to kill an ancient dragon. What do you think the numbers are for a dragon that is just adult, or for a pack of ogres?

Because it's fun (To the psychopaths that are adventurers), and pays more than soldiering or digging dirt.

Again, the math doesn't support any of that. Casualties are always low in absolute terms, low in relative terms when army sizes approach a tenth of army sizes from that period, and happen largely because dragons have an AoE attack. Retaliation is impossible, because nothing threatens armies of low level minions. Discipline is not likely to be a concern here. You're looking at incredibly low casualties and some very decent loot for less than a minute's work. Who the hell is breaking under those conditions?

Sure there's a threat to armies of low-level minions - Armies of low-level minions. Which dragons have. Also - your calculations fail to account for the fact that each low-level mook is a person, not just a number.

In fact, there's a good chance that, when you march your army out to face the dragon, several squads aim their bows at their 'buddy' archers, kill them when they try to shoot the dragon, then give each other the Open Hand Salute (HAIL TIAMAT!)