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

[mephnick]

Also, historically, barons or monarchs who threw civilian lives away for no reason tended to end up without heads or intestines. The king with an iron fist that is never questioned has no bearing in reality. Monarchs constantly had to heed public opinion in times of war, or raising of taxes. Yes, sometimes civilians demanded war as much as the monarchs did, (Rulers who desired peace during the 100 Years War were often labeled as "soft", even by those who would be conscripted into the war.) but generally sending your subjects into a vanity war against a rival (or dragon) ended up badly. Usurpers raised by an unhappy populace are all over the historical record. In a world that actually has adventurers on call, you'd be stupid not to pay them.

[Hawkstar]

In a world that actually has adventurers on call, you'd be stupid not to pay them.

Especially if they get bored and decide to take the throne by force, and All The King's Soldiers, when called to defend their king from the adventurers, instead say "Nope. I'm not dying against him. HAIL TO THE NEW KING! _{same as the old one}"

[Cluedrew]

NO edition of D&D handles mass combat on the scale you're trying to force it into.

Hey something else left for 6th edition. Although it is a good example of design focus. By that I mean the designers could create large army scale warfare rules, but D&D has never been about that. D&D is about a group of 4-8 or so extremely gifted individual wandering around and saving the world. Mass combat is only part of that as a backdrop and so (usually) doesn't need any special resolution rules, plot just gives the result.

Which is also why the result of the "200 commoners vs. an ancient dragon" battle doesn't turn out the way it narratively should. I actually read a D&D novelization where a situation like this happened. There where not quite as many commoners but they had better tactics and resources and the dragon would have probably only been adult.

It did not go well for the commoners.

Later in the story, one "adventure" solos the dragon with his sword and two magic items. That is the type of story D&D is designed to tell. And although this story was not one of my favourites, it was a lot more interesting than the army roving the country side looking for the dragon. Which by the way there were reasons for in the story. The dragon had a hand in some of those actually.

In 3.5, in order for the world to work, the average soldier has to be Level 8.

Alight, you got me. Please elaborate, why does everything break if the average soldier has real low level (or is even level less)?

[Frozen_Feet]

Alight, you got me. Please elaborate, why does everything break if the average soldier has real low level (or is even level less)?

Natural defenses of mid-level monsters mean they can take on an arbitrary number of level 1 NPCs. This means no amount of low-level characters is a sufficient defence against them. Which raises the question of how can human(oid) civilization even exist, because the monsters should be able to kill it in the cradle.

Good examples: anything that can turn incorporeal. Shadows are a classic example.

[Cluedrew]

Thanks Frozen_Feet.

When you start game-afing the story world things brake. Here the issue is that the number of monsters that must exist for the adventures to find and fight them all is ludicrous compared to the number that appear in most stories. Even ones set in D&D settings have way less (of the ones I've read, not including stories that parody the game itself).

Of course, if you do want to explain how civilization has not died out the answer is probably a constant steam of adventurers.

[Brova]

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.

Do you even opportunity costs bro? Whether it's a reward for killing the dragon, or loot from the dragon's horde the monarch is still down whatever appropriate treasure. Also, I don't actually know what "appropriate treasure" looks like in 5e for an ancient red dragon.

Also, a note on losses. The only reason the dragon kills more than 12 people is a breath weapon and frightful presence. If we imagine a monster that traded those for bigger numbers (or the same numbers but being lower level), you could kill it without losing more than 5 people.

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

Trolls move as fast as a human and slower than a horse. You can kill one by kiting it until it falls over, then lighting it on fire.

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.

What? Low level mooks do all sorts of things in 3e. For one thing, they hold territory and enforce laws. While it is certainly true that a band of 9th level adventurers can topple essentially any mortal authority in 3e, they can't actually enforce their own laws without support. And low level minions can also deal with a big percentage of threats, including essentially everything you'd actually find in the wild.

As far as things like shadows go, I don't really see the problem. It's a threat that actually requires adventurers to solve - implying that there would be actual adventurers.

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.

Again, you've solved the problem of low level minions being too good by adding minions to both sides. That's not a solution in any real sense. And remember that adventurers are vulnerable to this problem as well. A couple dozen (I don't know exact numbers, I haven't crunched PC side math) kobolds in the throne room of the dragon add a massive boost to the threat level for PCs.

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.

You're totally right, D&D doesn't model people panicking when they encounter a dragon. Wait, no that's just 5e. 3e has frightful presence proc "whenever the dragon attacks, charges, or flies overhead." And it sends people running in terror. So your complaint about D&D failing applies only to the edition you're defending. Own Goal!

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

You know what else is fun? Being wealthy. You know what people will pay you to do? Actual magic. That means like half of classes just don't adventure at all. Now, 3e has a genuine motivation to adventure - real ultimate power. But in 5e you never get harder core than a mob of peasants, so why would you risk your hide?

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

So wait...why is the ability of an entire army to kill off a Dragon or Adventuring Party a problem again? It's an army. They're historically hard to organize, expensive to maintain...but also very effective at killing things smaller than themselves that are made of things that can be cut with weapons or crushed with siege weaponry.

Dragons seem to fall into that category, unless they have some VERY high levels of magical protection.

I fail to see a problem here. If you manage to mobilize and arm that much of a population (given that 5e seems to have more medieval-esque populations than 3.5e, to my knowledge) and then keep them organized, focused, and in formation against a single major enemy, I don't see the issue. That feat alone is almost as impressive as just fighting the Dragon yourself, and I'd totally be okay if my players decided to go that route.

[Anlashok]

So wait...why is the ability of an entire army to kill off a Dragon or Adventuring Party a problem again? It's an army. They're historically hard to organize, expensive to maintain...but also very effective at killing things smaller than themselves that are made of things that can be cut with weapons or crushed with siege weaponry.

No one mentioned siege weaponry. It's just a pile of nameless cannon fodder throwing themselves at a dragon until it dies. Remember, a small army against a dragon might sound fine, but this is also the most extreme example possible, taking the strongest monsters in the book and pitting them against the weakest and least effective opposition possible. When you start giving those mooks tactics and support and put them against anything else in the monster manual suddenly you're left wondering why there's even anything for an adventurer to do in the first place.

[Brova]

So wait...why is the ability of an entire army to kill off a Dragon or Adventuring Party a problem again? It's an army. They're historically hard to organize, expensive to maintain...but also very effective at killing things smaller than themselves that are made of things that can be cut with weapons or crushed with siege weaponry.

It's not an army. The scale is seriously "fairly large high school" and the casualties against anything without an AoE are on the order of one class of high schoolers. In 5e a dragon is seriously about as much of a threat as a crazy guy on a rampage is today. And while the deaths from crazy people on rampages are tragically high, they are not enough to get us to radically rethink society. I see no reason for that to be particularly different in the world of 5e.

There's also the problem that a dragon not being able to attack an army with out fear is out of genre. Both for fantasy in general and for D&D in particular. Dragons are killed by lone knights, not by massed armies. A game where the reverse is true is just as out of genre for fantasy as a game emulating Mad Max where the chase rules encourage you to ride a lama.

No one mentioned siege weaponry. It's just a pile of nameless cannon fodder throwing themselves at a dragon until it dies. Remember, a small army against a dragon might sound fine, but this is also the most extreme example possible, taking the strongest monsters in the book and pitting them against the weakest and least effective opposition possible. When you start giving those mooks tactics and support and put them against anything else in the monster manual suddenly you're left wondering why there's even anything for an adventurer to do in the first place.

Also worth noting that a dragon is the monster best equipped to solve the problem of "army of mooks." It flies, has an AoE disable, and has a breath weapon. 90%+ of the casualties from killing a dragon come from it breathing fire on people. Monsters like the Grey Render or Dire Bears don't do that, and fare even worse against an army of minions.

[Hiro Protagonest]

...Because monsters are just going to sit out in an open field or attack the town directly, where siege weapons can be effectively employed?

Troll raiders preying on a well-traveled but long road through a forest. A blue dragon that lives in a dormant volcano near a coast and raids ships. Tucker's Kobolds.

Commoners and warriors can optimize (gamey) and employ tactics (not so gamey). But when push comes to shove, monsters can too.

[Brova]

Troll raiders preying on a well-traveled but long road through a forest. A blue dragon that lives in a dormant volcano near a coast and raids ships. Tucker's Kobolds.

I haven't seen the math on trolls, I wouldn't know. The dragon's success depends on a number of factors, mostly its ability to prevent people from hitting it in its lair. Tucker's Kobolds are threatening because you have to come to them, if they actually come out of the lair to threaten the kingdom they lose any marginal advantage over regular kobolds.

[YossarianLives]

I just came up with an idea that I think I'm going to incorporate into my D&D setting.

If most soldiers are a pack of first or second level scrubs that can't even properly defend their city from fairly low level threats like shadows why are they trusted to defend their city from the many dangers of a high-magic world?
What if, instead of a city having 100 low-level warriors to serve as it's protectors it had 5 mid-level adventurers.

[Cluedrew]

The problem is there are two very valid concerns that are playing against each other.

• Common folk have to defend themselves from the monsters of the world so it makes sense why civilization hasn't been wiped out.
• Common folk can't be able to defend themselves so there is a reason adventures exist.

There probably isn't a perfect equilibrium between these two although, bringing us around to the main topic again, 6th is welcome to try.

[Milo v3]

Hey something else left for 6th edition. Although it is a good example of design focus. By that I mean the designers could create large army scale warfare rules, but D&D has never been about that. D&D is about a group of 4-8 or so extremely gifted individual wandering around and saving the world. Mass combat is only part of that as a backdrop and so (usually) doesn't need any special resolution rules, plot just gives the result.

Actually, now that I think about this... Both 3rd and 5th edition have mass combat rules. So even that has been covered.

[Talakeal]

Are skeletons in 5e really affected by frightful presence? That seems very odd for a mindless undead minion. I thought 5e was pulling away from blanket effects like that?

[Brova]

The problem is there are two very valid concerns that are playing against each other.

• Common folk have to defend themselves from the monsters of the world so it makes sense why civilization hasn't been wiped out.
• Common folk can't be able to defend themselves so there is a reason adventures exist.

There probably isn't a perfect equilibrium between these two although, bringing us around to the main topic again, 6th is welcome to try.

There are some things you can nudge to make that work. First, if adventuring actually made you super hardcore people would have a reasonable risk/reward dynamic for going into the Crypts of Blood or the Screaming Woods or the Burning Mountains. Second, if there were hardcore critters you could make at home, people would have a motivation to go bust down the towers of dark wizards. Third, if monsters that commoners can't deal with (like shadows) largely stay stationary, you can justify using adventurers to clear them out while still having civilization.

My preferred solution is a "points of darkness" approach. Basically, most of the world is basically okay. You've got some dire bears and giant lions out there, but nothing civilization destroying. However, certain sites periodically generate monsters that you send heroes to deal with. On top of that, mid to high level people's incentives line up to have them spending time in the City of Brass (where the average citizen is CR 8).

Really, something like 4e's tiers, but executed well, would have solved a lot of the weirdness about D&D. That forces people out of concepts like "sword guy", gives a clear place for kingdom management to come online, sets up magic items well, and delineates various groups into appropriate areas (obviously, you have to be careful to avoid WOW style "level zones").

[Hawkstar]

There are some things you can nudge to make that work. First, if adventuring actually made you super hardcore people would have a reasonable risk/reward dynamic for going into the Crypts of Blood or the Screaming Woods or the Burning Mountains. Second, if there were hardcore critters you could make at home, people would have a motivation to go bust down the towers of dark wizards. Third, if monsters that commoners can't deal with (like shadows) largely stay stationary, you can justify using adventurers to clear them out while still having civilization.

I'm not sure how being worth 20 skilled and hardy men in a fight isn't "Super Hardcore".

[Brova]

I'm not sure how being worth 20 skilled and hardy men in a fight isn't "Super Hardcore".

How many dudes with bows guns is the Hulk worth? Thor? Iron Man? Gaius Sextus? Martian Manhunter?

[Hawkstar]

How many dudes with bows guns is the Hulk worth? Thor? Iron Man? Gaius Sextus? Martian Manhunter?

Quite a few, but not infinite.

[Sindeloke]

How many dudes with bows guns is the Hulk worth? Thor? Iron Man? Gaius Sextus? Martian Manhunter?

Idk who Sextus is, but those other guys are all CR 30+, and that's in 3e terms. Odinson even has divine rank and J'onn might as well, if you let him use his telepathy and incorporeality to its full potential. If you want to model 5e power levels with superheroes, you're looking at Cap, Jessica Drew, Spidey or Black Canary (with Cry). Badarses every one, sure, but none would replace a well-trained militia.

Basically you can send a platoon or you can send SpecForce. Either way the problem gets dealt with. It's just a matter of how fast and quiet you want it done, what secondary objectives are involved, and what you're willing to accept in terms of casualties. Seems pretty reasonable to me.

[Frozen_Feet]

It's not an army. The scale is seriously "fairly large high school" and the casualties against anything without an AoE are on the order of one class of high schoolers. In 5e a dragon is seriously about as much of a threat as a crazy guy on a rampage is today.

Uh huh.

You should've realized when you made that comparison that the "crazy guys on a rampage" who get caught or killed are amateurs. When you look at actual military personnel or worst animal serial killers in history, you'd find they've destroyed whole villages without dying, and they were ground-bound.

Attacking a gathering of few hundred people armed with slings on an open plain is tactically sub-optimal to a dragon. It can fly higher than people can shoot. If it spots such a gathering, it has no reason to go there.

Instead, it can (dependings on subtype) ambush caravans from a bog, swim to ships from below and sink them or fly so close to the waterline it can't be killed before it can set the ship on fire, attack villages in forested areas where it can use trees as cover, or employ any other of movement strategies where there won't be line of sight to it from myriad archers.

This way, it can destroy amounts of people comparable to a "high school class" again and again with little to no risk to itself. And when people start to get a hint, it can fly off to the next area. It is faster than people on foot or horseback. It can get to the next victim ahead of the news.

Nevermind the destruction it can cause to unguarded targets or livestock. Which there will be a lot of in a rural environment whenever people flock together for safety. A dragon can trivially keep swathes of countryside in check if all it has to face are commoners or low-level soldiers. And because cities depend on resources flowing in from the countryside, it can destroy one without ever flying within visual range of it.

In real life, a hundred people with slings can stone the largest man-eating crocodile to death. An infantry platoon can drop a combat heli with their assault rifles. Yet these happen pretty damn rarely, as even the crocodile is smart enough to not go where masses of people can fling rocks at it. A dragon isn't a "crazy guy on a rampage". It's an intelligent flying predator. It is closer in threat level to a fighter plane with a skilled pilot.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

It is closer in threat level to a fighter plane with a skilled pilot.

Who can still be brought down by five hundred guys with rifles.

Brova: You're using numbers in the hundreds to talk about amassing the common folk. Which is a little odd, given the medieval-esque setting of D&D. 13-14th century England had a population density of about 40 per square mile. A major city might have had 110,000 people in it, while your average village (even a decently sized one) would have been likely under 400 people. You'd gut the livelihood of a large swath of land every time you attempted such a thing.

Bear in mind that a fair number of these people would have been children or infirm. We'll assume that the medieval world of D&D considers women the equal of men in terms of warfare, so our numbers look better than those of 14th century Europe.

We're still looking at a large amount of effort to mobilize enough people to fight a dragon...and a larger amount to arm said people and keep them together. Again, this isn't something your average village could organize for itself -- this sort of coordination requires an actual leader, which is precisely the role that the PCs SHOULD fall into.

[Brova]

Okay, can we talk about anything other than the literal best possible case for bounded accuracy? Yes, if the monster has flight, an AoE attack, and the largest level gap in the game, it can do kind of okay. Even good if it uses harassment tactics (which I should note, are used against a superior force - not exactly how you'd describe a dragon and a bunch of commoners). But seriously, that is the best possible case. What if we look at the red dragon versus some younger dragons? What if we look at commoners versus a pack of giants?

You should've realized when you made that comparison that the "crazy guys on a rampage" who get caught or killed are amateurs. When you look at actual military personnel or worst animal serial killers in history, you'd find they've destroyed whole villages without dying, and they were ground-bound.

And did that at any point convince governments that an appropriate solution was "surrender sovereignty to armed maniacs"?

Attacking a gathering of few hundred people armed with slings on an open plain is tactically sub-optimal to a dragon. It can fly higher than people can shoot. If it spots such a gathering, it has no reason to go there.

Except it's not. It's not in the source material (Smaug doesn't worry about the defenders of the Kingdom Under the Mountain), it's not in earlier editions of D&D. You can certainly construct a world where that statement is true, but that world is not D&D.

The source material for fantasy does include people who get killed by armies (Boromir), but it also includes people who can kill hundreds of elite warriors in a heartbeat (Gaius Sextus), and dragons that slaughter armies (Game of Thrones, LoTR). A vital part of the genre involves people who are worth hundreds, thousands, or even millions of warriors. Not capping out at "can maybe beat 2,000 peasants if it fights dirty".

Brova: You're using numbers in the hundreds to talk about amassing the common folk. Which is a little odd, given the medieval-esque setting of D&D. 13-14th century England had a population density of about 40 per square mile. A major city might have had 110,000 people in it, while your average village (even a decently sized one) would have been likely under 400 people. You'd gut the livelihood of a large swath of land every time you attempted such a thing.

You'd also gut a dragon. 400 people is going to do a big number on the dragon. I don't know how long term healing works in 5e, but the dragon is looking at resting for a couple of days to recover from torching a village of peasants.

Bear in mind that a fair number of these people would have been children or infirm. We'll assume that the medieval world of D&D considers women the equal of men in terms of warfare, so our numbers look better than those of 14th century Europe.

Perhaps the game should model that then. Maybe by allowing those people to fall off of the RNG. Except it can't, because bounded accuracy.

[Vitruviansquid]

Seeing whether a game allows heroes and monsters to be epic by seeing whether it is impossible for many unimpressive little dudes it takes to kill an impressive big dude is foolhardily judging 5th by the standards of 3.5. It's as ridiculous as judging whether 3.5 allows good class variation by seeing whether each class in the game has a unique powers list like in 4e.

Of course the 3.5 standards don't apply, 5th is a different edition. What matters is whether or not those new standards make sense, and I think when your criticism of 5th's standard is something as frivolous as "The problem is, if huge armies answer most threats, why have adventurers?" then there's no reason to believe 5th edition's standard makes no sense.

[Seerow]

Idk who Sextus is, but those other guys are all CR 30+, and that's in 3e terms. Odinson even has divine rank and J'onn might as well, if you let him use his telepathy and incorporeality to its full potential. If you want to model 5e power levels with superheroes, you're looking at Cap, Jessica Drew, Spidey or Black Canary (with Cry). Badarses every one, sure, but none would replace a well-trained militia.

Hulk, Iron Man, and Thor as 30+ in 3e? You're off your rocker. Each of them can easily be modeled with capabilities available to characters around levels 10-15. There is nothing that any of them do that makes them actually epic.

Seriously, Iron Man's power is super science (not really defined in any way in game), which grants him flight, above average durability, and energy blasts, all things you can get from a mid-high level Warlock. Not epic level.

Hulk gets angry and gets way stronger, some mix of Barb, Berserker, and Warhulk with a splash of super jump and the ability to technobabble like Tony when he's not raging. Probably a higher level character than Iron Man just because of raw power, but still nothing that exceeds 20th level.

Thor is pretty much a Warblade/Bloodstorm Blade with an artifact hammer and DvR0. You can't really make an argument for DvR1 because he doesn't have any of the godlike omniscience that comes with actual divine ranks, but I will give DvR0... luckily that's about on par with the +2LA Saint Template. Meanwhile he's got his Hammer that can control lightning and let him fly, but that has nothing to do with personal power. Another example of a mid-high character (in the same general power tier as Hulk), but not someone who is epic levels.




Now if you were going to model them in 5e... you really just couldn't. There aren't enough options out there, and it would all boil down to 100% fiat. Like I couldn't even guess what their expected levels would be in 5e, because the result is DNE.

Brova: You're using numbers in the hundreds to talk about amassing the common folk. Which is a little odd, given the medieval-esque setting of D&D. 13-14th century England had a population density of about 40 per square mile. A major city might have had 110,000 people in it, while your average village (even a decently sized one) would have been likely under 400 people. You'd gut the livelihood of a large swath of land every time you attempted such a thing.

40 people per square mile and cities with 100,000 people is actually a lot of population. It's not like Dragons are an every day occurrence, and even in the world today population density is only around 120 per square mile (average worldwide). I mean just for reference, England is 50,000 square miles, which using your numbers lends itself to an average population of around 2million. Now that population won't be evenly distributed, the 110,000 people in a city that's a single square mile is being counted into that average across the rest of the country. But the interesting thing is: The dragon has no real incentive to be attacking lone farmsteads unless he's starving and desperate.

If we're talking about a Dragon terrorizing a kingdom, he's going after a major population center. And once he hits a city with >100,000 people in it, he's going to get destroyed, because even with a militia consisting of just 5% of the population and no standing army, that's 5,000 people coming together to kill it. And 5,000 people with bows are totally going to win against the dragon, and casualties in the range of a couple hundred won't be noticed.

I honestly don't understand where you are getting the idea that a couple hundred deaths is catastrophic to a medieval population given the numbers you yourself provided. I'm not sure if you don't realize just how large an average country is in square miles, or if you're expecting the dragon to be avoiding a town of any size and instead spend his days raiding independent villages like some minor despot instead of a godlike being desiring the worship and fear of the populace.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

I honestly don't understand where you are getting the idea that a couple hundred deaths is catastrophic to a medieval population given the numbers you yourself provided. I'm not sure if you don't realize just how large an average country is in square miles, or if you're expecting the dragon to be avoiding a town of any size and instead spend his days raiding independent villages like some minor despot instead of a godlike being desiring the worship and fear of the populace.

I had assumed the Dragon would be intelligent enough to not attack a major city directly, actually. The intelligent thing to do WOULD be to hit the outlying farm areas, and, by doing so, starve out the city before launching an offensive. In the surrounding areas removing several hundred working-age citizens WOULD be seriously detrimental, as would forcing them to spend their time and resources arming themselves.

In effect, the Dragon is a one-man army. Actual armies of the time preferred to avoid direct confrontations with well-protected areas whenever possible: a siege was preferable to direct confrontation (fewer men and resources lost), and destroying outlying resource-providing countryside is a fantastic way to lay siege to a population center.

This is ESPECIALLY true because, in 5e, a suitably large group of people CAN pose a threat to a Dragon. The average Dragon is a highly intelligent and strategic creature in D&D -- it'll know this, and the above strategy is one of the best for completely throwing a country into disarray.

[Seerow]

I had assumed the Dragon would be intelligent enough to not attack a major city directly, actually. The intelligent thing to do WOULD be to hit the outlying farm areas, and, by doing so, starve out the city before launching an offensive. In the surrounding areas removing several hundred working-age citizens WOULD be seriously detrimental, as would forcing them to spend their time and resources arming themselves.

In effect, the Dragon is a one-man army. Actual armies of the time preferred to avoid direct confrontations with well-protected areas whenever possible: a siege was preferable to direct confrontation (fewer men and resources lost), and destroying outlying resource-providing countryside is a fantastic way to lay siege to a population center.

This is ESPECIALLY true because, in 5e, a suitably large group of people CAN pose a threat to a Dragon. The average Dragon is a highly intelligent and strategic creature in D&D -- it'll know this, and the above strategy is one of the best for completely throwing a country into disarray.

So the complaint is the Dragon is afraid of large groups of little men.

The response is that no he's not, because population numbers are low enough that any attempt by little men to fight him will result in catastrophic losses.

And the reason the fight results in catastrophic losses is because the Dragon is not attacking a population center... because he is scared of large groups of little men.


Do you not see how that's a little circular and fails to address the point at all?

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

So the complaint is the Dragon is afraid of large groups of little men.

The response is that no he's not, because population numbers are low enough that any attempt by little men to fight him will result in catastrophic losses.

And the reason the fight results in catastrophic losses is because the Dragon is not attacking a population center... because he is scared of large groups of little men.

Actually, I was never arguing that the Dragon being afraid of large groups of little men was a bad thing, or that he shouldn't be afraid of a large group of little men if actually confronted by one. He should be. I don't see an army-sized group of people taking out a Dragon as a bad thing.

I was pointing out that amassing such a large and coordinated group of little men would be very difficult outside of a large population center, and that most non-major population centers couldn't A: manage to efficiently assemble a force, and B: couldn't afford the loss that doing so would entail. Thus the Dragon is fairly free to rampage around the countryside and, by doing so, will eventually strike terror into the starved city populations.

There's no circular reasoning there.

[Seerow]

Actually, I was never arguing that the Dragon being afraid of large groups of little men was a bad thing

No, but the person you are arguing against is. If your solution to the given problem of "Dragons are afraid of little men" is "Dragons avoiding little men" you haven't actually presented an argument that will change anybody's mind. You have presented your reasoning for how things work in 5e as it stands, and that is fine. But if someone is not satisfied with the idea of an epic tier (seriously the dragon in question is CR24 or something) Dragon dying to a bunch of ordinary dudes with bows, telling them about how the Dragon can avoid little dudes with bows isn't going to make them feel any better about it, or change anybody's minds.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

No, but the person you are arguing against is. If your solution to the given problem of "Dragons are afraid of little men" is "Dragons avoiding little men" you haven't actually presented an argument that will change anybody's mind. You have presented your reasoning for how things work in 5e as it stands, and that is fine. But if someone is not satisfied with the idea of an epic tier (seriously the dragon in question is CR24 or something) Dragon dying to a bunch of ordinary dudes with bows, telling them about how the Dragon can avoid little dudes with bows isn't going to make them feel any better about it, or change anybody's minds.

Correct. As per my first point in this thread:

I fail to see a problem here. If you manage to mobilize and arm that much of a population (given that 5e seems to have more medieval-esque populations than 3.5e, to my knowledge) and then keep them organized, focused, and in formation against a single major enemy, I don't see the issue. That feat alone is almost as impressive as just fighting the Dragon yourself, and I'd totally be okay if my players decided to go that route.

The Dragon is an encounter. You can fight it yourself, or you can organize an army to do it for you. Both are practical solutions, if you can manage the logistics of managing to force the Dragon to confront your horde of commoners. Encounters in D&D don't have to be killed personally (or even killed at all) to be overcome.

My point is that it doesn't have to be an issue. If you don't like your Dragons vulnerable, than yes, 5e may a problem for you. But there are numerous ways to avoid ever having to confront the issue of a Dragon's mortality to three hundred commoners though, so the issue doesn't need to arise. They're mostly non-RAW rulings (based on human psychology, population structure, Dragon tactics, resource starvation -- all things the rulebooks don't cover), but covering non-specific story/rules issues is the DM's JOB.

You may agree or disagree as you wish.