Keep On the Borderlands: 40 Years and Still Kicking

[the_gneech]

The quickie teach-newbies-D&D game I was planning to start this weekend got bumped to next weekend, which actually helps because there’s a bit more work in converting The Keep on the Borderlands to (what I consider) a playable 5E adventure than you might think. Just going through and giving the NPCs names rather than THE CASTELLAN and THE CURATE is

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[the_gneech]

Bounded accuracy factors in the "upgrade" thing for 5E. In a system based on math from 1-6, +3 is pretty huge... but there are so many advantages to the 1-6 range (not just in simplified math, but also creature sustainability- I recently read a session report where CR 4 banshees were a holy terror against an 11th level party) that the tradeoff makes sense.

Less obvious in 5E design is that the real stretching point in the system is damage per round vs. hit points. The real bumps in CR and threat hide in things like multiattack or ancillary effects, which is why piling on lots of low-level monsters is often just as dangerous if not moreso than making a single monster bigger. Four orcs at 1/2 CR each are just as dangerous as a single CR 2 creature, if they can hit you four times for 5 hp each instead of twice for 10 (and if they spread out it's harder to shut them down with a single spell/trip/disarm, even if they are way more killable on a 1-to-1 basis).

This is why the infamous "axe of max damage to plants" item exists. It sounds weaksauce, but in its situational spot it's effectively twice as good as a regular axe (8 dpr instead of 4). Granted, fighting plants isn't something that comes up every day, but the axe was also placed such that the characters might have it in that village with the green dragon- a village packed to the brim with twig blights. If things had gone differently in our game, that silly axe could have turned a potential TPK into a walk in the park. It's all about the context.

(For the record, I didn't bother with the twig blights because I liked the whole "overgrown village as creepy ambiance" better than "here's some more CR 1/2 monsters to randomly fight" so I didn't have them be aggressive. Having the Axe of Plant Hate wouldn't have made a difference in our game, but in the module-as-written it does have a place, filling that "very minor magic item" slot.)

Another factor is the unwritten "campaigns REALLY start at 3rd level" thing 5E has going on. Lost Mines of Phandelver starts at 1st level because it's specifically intended to teach newbies (both in front of and behind the screen) how 5E plays; but the designers at WotC don't actually intend for the "typical" campaign to do that, they just put in levels 1 & 2 basically for the OSR types who want a grinder/funnel setup. In a campaign that starts at level 3+ and goes up from there (as most of the 5E published campaign books do), you're more likely to get to the beefier items, and sooner.

Anyhow, my point is, at low levels particularly, the "safe" realm for item improvement is in damage dealt rather than to-hit bonuses (and conversely, damage resistance rather than AC bonuses) and the like. To that end, I do think there could be a more robust selection of things to choose from. A flaming sword that does +1d6 fire damage sans attunement seems like a perfectly reasonable thing for a 1st level character to find, for instance, without being any real danger to the math. But 5E doesn't have that right off the shelf- it jumps straight to the +2d6 flame tongue (requiring attunement) that might show up at low level if lightning strikes, but isn't really likely to appear until level 5+ (by which time +2d6 is less likely to amaze). Again, part of the "fewer, but more impactful" philosophy, but hampered by the competing need to avoid the infamous Christmas Tree.

I think D&D generally suffers from an over-reliance on randomization to make balance "come out in the wash" (and always has). Having stuff doled out by random number generator is less static than the dead-feeling "treasure parcels" of 4E, but also leads to the frustration of neat stuff locked behind the gate of being unlikely to show up so it doesn't flood the game world. (OTOH, D&D as played today, with a story-based campaign and regular groups, is very different from the "take your character to the current DM's house and go down into the megadungeon" model it was created to serve in 1978. In that environment, randomization was the great equalizer.)

But that's what the DM is for, to find the balance between extremes! (Insert rambling and ultimately irrelevant rant about D&D not being a video game here. ;)

-TG