well said, there needs to be more people like you here.
OP feedback is valid.
I think some of the more agitated D&D savants keep forgetting that this game is not only for a small elite group of D&D practitioners. There is nothing wrong with a person who is not living and breathing D&D picking this game and balking at the inherent built-in systematic wild RNG of D&D, which IMO does not translate well into turn-based video games for all.
All in all, I definitely can say that for normal mode we're playing and the mode most people are expected to hit - some of the missing is a tad excessive even with AC adjusted as is. I think it would be completely fine if they make another pass at it and even maybe add some sort of mechanic where if your team is obviously winning encounter, then the enemy just gets AC slashed with some sort of morale penalty, just so you won't burn another pointless 5 minutes mopping them up, like in OP's example.
And I also don't think it's such an evil to ask for basically what Pathfinder: Kingmaker did with Custom difficulty, where you can flip some switches to affect quite a lot of parameters too.
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For people who want more difficulty and more D&D goodness - they can absolutely introduce that in higher difficulty modes or again mentioned above flexible difficulty as in Pathfinder.
This way everyone is happy really.
well said, there needs to be more people like you here.
