On D&D adaptations. Which lv range do you prefer?

[Drew]

People saying later editions of D&D have high lethality at low levels must never have even looked at the rules for 2e.

They're comparing lethality inside the later editions, not the same range between editions.

 

[Cryomancer]

how dangerous?

Pick summon monster for eg. Is not like on Kingmaker where you can summon a Thanadaemon and he is under your control no matter what. Is a 5 step process to summon a creature. And you need a domination check and if your concentration is broken, another one. In case of failing the domination by a large margin to the creature summoned, here is 3 of 6 things that can happens. In case 3, it is possible to destroy a small city due the loss of control over this creatures.

Source : LotFP Player Core Book - Page 139.

Imagine a magic user in times of despair using that spell, 8 powerful demoniac creatures starts to destroy a city and the players roll another characters to try to fix the mess of their previous characters. That sounds very cool. IMO summoning anything but mindless undead should be dangerous. Sadly, the last D&D edition to have rules for losing control over summoned creatures was 2e. And in video games, you can save scum, so summoning a 24 HD elemental and losing control over it is not a big deal as is on P&P. In P&P it can mean a party wipe.

s. It's mostly just epic-level monster bashing. You do the same things you've done before but on epic level. So you fight some uber-gnolls, uber-trolls and dozens of Red Wizards at once.

Your post had the best anti epic level campaign arguments so far.

But I just wanna to point out that MoTB excels when you are outsider of the material world. Dealing with Myrkul, with the wall of faithless, in the demiplane of shadow(...). I agree that material plane adventuring on MoTB is "high level mobs" that makes no sense to be in that place.

There we go, that did it for a search query. DMG, pg. 36, Tiers of Play:

Again talking about 5e. As I've said, 5e and 2e are completely different in regards to the levels of the play.. Yes, a lv 1 guy is "graduated" on 5e world. But a 5th level magic user is a "mere caster of mediocre skill" and a lv 16 caster is a "acomplished" caster. Those aren't my words, those are Domains of Dread words to refer to Strahd.

but then you see its wrong to say 5E cant be lethal .

Can if you put very hand encounter after very hard encounter, but still is less lethal than 2e or even 3e. 5e is just more lethal than 4e.

 

[Bara]

Thought it was die at 0 in editions prior to 1e and then 1e had die at -10 and it carried forward.

Or did 2e drop die at -10.

 

[RPK]

if I remember right, -10 was an optional rule in 2e, but it's been like 20 years.

 

[Reinhardt]

Imagine a magic user in times of despair using that spell, 8 powerful demoniac creatures starts to destroy a city and the players roll another characters to try to fix the mess of their previous characters. That sounds very cool.

How many times this happened to your characters or characters in your party?

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

But I just wanna to point out that MoTB excels when you are outsider of the material world. Dealing with Myrkul, with the wall of faithless, in the demiplane of shadow(...). I agree that material plane adventuring on MoTB is "high level mobs" that makes no sense to be in that place. And that PFKM has you becoming a noble and solving your barony problems(you can hate the execution, but the idea is amazing) and PF:WoTR will have you leading a crusade against the forces of abyss at higher levels.

I'd argue that even these things are pretty lackluster. The scenes themselves weren't bad but what lead to them was pretty lackluster. The epic assault on the city of the dead is experienced by going around bashing some heads.

The Kingmaker had similar problems. Even though you were leading a barony didn't feel like leading a Barony. This is something Reinhardt was getting at. The war with Pitax is ridiculous. The war practically ends with you getting invited to the capitol and just murdering everyone inside. What others were saying is that someone who has resources of an entire country at his disposal should be able to handle a 6 people getting into his backyard no matter whom they are and what are they capable of. The Pitax is supposed to be full of competent people including some high level characters and they should get better idea of saving their country than just a brawl. Including just sending waves of men until the PCs die from lack of spell slots and exhaustion. I know that the party gets invited in the city and can't just storm the gates, but once you have your enemies in your capital there are more things you can do than send a bunch of guards at them. Although as you've mentioned the execution is flawed I do agree that idea that along with character's progress his political power also increases is pretty great.

Imagine if you were reading that from a different perspective, as a novel. If there was a new Forgotten Reams supplement where Cormyr has fallen because a bunch of evil dudes waltzed into the capitol killing anyone who tried to stop them, murdered the king and his entire court and then carried on. This sounds like something from some anime for teenagers or a bad superhero comics.

Logically both scenarios (assault on the city of the dead and killing the king of Pitax) should be finales of a pretty lengthy HoMM missions. I hope WoTR somehow fixes it.

The other problem is that these sort of exploits make everyone else in the setting look completely ridiculous. There are multiple evil beings running their evil/kingdoms and organizations in order to achieve the ultimate power. This is a given in a fantasy setting. The problem is that by power it means controlling a huge sways of land and large groups of people. Only in a setting where lvl.40 adventurers go around bashing demigods and kings there is no power in it. The reason countries exist in real world is that there is a limit on what a small group of people can achieve.

What I'm saying is that different gameplay types favor different power-levels. HoMM is absurd when they try to do down-to-earth campaign with Dracon a plucky dragon-slaying wizard. Though he would appear more heroic if he didn't lead an entire army to exterminate these creatures. Similarly a kingdom being saved by the king going around killing stuff that causes troubles is a bit too much.

 

[Cryomancer]

How many times this happened to your characters or characters in your party?

Never played LotFP only read about it. But this situation is not common. My point mentioning LotFP is to mention that magic can be different than flashy explosions.

The war with Pitax is ridiculous.

I agree. But the otherworldly parts of the Kingmaker like dealing with the first world invasion and invading the first world never fell ridiculous. As I've said, stronghold management works way better on P&P since P&P allows more creative usage of resources(magic included) and on CRPG adaptations, high level adventures needs to be otherwordly to work.

Lets see if the "HoMM 3" leading tropps mechanics and a crusade in Wrath of the Righteous will implement high level mechanics better.

I an not sure, but I believe that someone talked about the TT version of Kingmaker module and when you defeat Pitax there not by being murderhobo killing everything, but by persuading the nobles and important families to work for you, infiltrating and doing things like that. The assault on castle is made with a lot of support It is just too hard to put in a CRPG.

 

[Reinhardt]

Never played LotFP only read about it. But this situation is not common. My point mentioning LotFP is to mention that magic can be different than flashy explosions.

I never played a campaign with heavy focus on "civilization building".

So you never actually played campaigns where magic is not "explosions" but still saying

you chose to ignore to talk about a module which you clearly have no clue about.

to me...

 

[Cryomancer]

So you never actually played campaigns where magic is not "explosions" but still saying

There are a long time since I played P&P(was a mix of 3.5e and pathfinder long years ago), but I listened to a LotFP campaign onBill Allan's channels while I was doing aerobic exercises. I really wish that this retroclones which tries to bring new cool stuff to the old formula becomes more popular and someone starts to make CRPG adaptations of this retroclones.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Thought it was die at 0 in editions prior to 1e and then 1e had die at -10 and it carried forward.

Or did 2e drop die at -10.

if I remember right, -10 was an optional rule in 2e, but it's been like 20 years.

2nd Edition AD&D included an optional "hovering on death's door" rule in which characters would fall unconscious at (or below) zero hit points and thereafter, without medical attention, bleed out to -10 hit points at which point they would die. Without this optional rule, everyone simply dies at zero hit points or below.

1st Edition AD&D was internally inconsistent, since the Players Handbook released in 1978 specified that death occurs when any creature reaches zero or negative hit points, but the Dungeon Masters Guide released the next year included a mandatory rule in which creatures fall unconscious at zero hit points at then lose one hit point per round until death occurs at -10 hit points, in the same manner as the optional rule in 2nd Edition AD&D, except that Gygax probably intended unconsciousness to occur only at exactly zero hit points or "optionally as low as -3 hit points if from the same blow which brought the total to 0".

 

[Delterius]

The Kingmaker had similar problems. Even though you were leading a barony didn't feel like leading a Barony. This is something Reinhardt was getting at. The war with Pitax is ridiculous. The war practically ends with you getting invited to the capitol and just murdering everyone inside. What others were saying is that someone who has resources of an entire country at his disposal should be able to handle a 6 people getting into his backyard no matter whom they are and what are they capable of.

I think you're missing something. Irovetti doesn't raise an army against you. Pitax is never officially at war with your Kingdom and part of the reason why is that's just not how Irovetti does things. But another big part of it is that Pitax is nearly gone. Irovetti spent the better part of his reign hollowing the city from the inside. He doesn't just levy taxes, he turned the city's raiders against his own lands. He doesn't share power which means that the trade houses responsible for Pitax's prosperity are almost gone. Even the city guard has been curtailed, in favor of state sanctioned drug traffickers and Irovetti's praetorian corps. Its like the deal with the Academy, as far as Irovetti is concerned it has no social value beyond aggrandizing him and so only the most mediocre most bootlicking of bards make it to the top, devaluing the place.

Likewise, you can't raise an army yourself. That's how Irovetti's gambit works. Imagine raising an army to invade Pitax during the Season of Bloom. Except things are even worse now. As far as your subjects are concerned there's monsters on the roads, the local nobleman/administrator/headsman has just been assassinated and the King is asking you to march across the Narlmarshes to attack Pitax... who just sent your village some aid food and goods last tuesday. It's not happening. So instead what you do is hit Irovetti's operations and then convince the elites of Pitax to turn on him. After that its a matter of purging the city of Irovetti's guards.

I agree that Kingmaker doesn't do a good enough job making you feel like you're the ruler of a country. But the War of River Kings is great even if it is too short imo.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

It depends entirely on the game and campaign, which itself depends on whoever made it making it interesting and engaging at the specified level range. If someone designs a 3.x campaign, specifies it's for levels 8-15 and it ends up being a snooze because a character that starts at level 8 can steamroll it pretty much effortlessly it's probably either poorly suited for the class the player is using, or just poorly designed in general.

As far as extant games/campaigns go I enjoyed Icewind Dale from start to finish and unless I went absolutely crazy with charop it was usually challenging enough to keep my interest. Mages were limited just enough by the availability of scrolls (though perhaps not as much as they could/should have been) and the only classes that felt like absolute wastes of party slots were Thieves and Bards barring certain trap-heavy areas for Thieves and a few specific subquests for both. The Bard-exclusive items were not particularly interesting despite there being a lot of them.

 

[Cryomancer]

bleed out to -10 hit points at which point they would die. Without this optional rule, everyone simply dies at zero hit points or below.

Nice point, But with or without that rule, 5e is far less lethal than 2e. And I don't get the point of low lethality. Nothing is worse than 4e in this aspect.

If 5e has the problem of CR 2 creatures soaking siege weaponry, 4e is even worse. If a weapon, spell, psionic, superpower, whatever is called disintegrate, IT SHOULD DISINTEGRATE!!! But no, on 4e, Disintegrate is a "daily" spell which deals almost no damage. Even if you "maximize" the damage, is 40 + INT MOD + 10 + 5 damage or at best 65 if the monster fails 2 saves. You actually needs a squad of 3 wizards casting disintegrate(which is a tier 6 magic on previous editions) and wasting a daily spell to kill a mere level 7 creature in 2 rounds who needs to fail 6 saves. And without maximizing the damage, and wanting to kill in a single round the creature has a lot of chances to soak 8 disintegrate easily.

How anyone survive being disintegrated??? Why include a disintegrate spell/weapon/power/wathever if it will not disintegrate? "flesh and bone disappear into a puff of gray dust". Why the text and game mechanics are so different? And if you are transforming one thing into another, why is evocation? And not alteration? Is not even only against spells, If a Fortress with 6 cannons in one side, fire all at the same time in the Orc and all cannons hit, he can just walk as if nothing happened. I can get a high level mythic creature soaking siege weapons, but not low level ones.

The unique merit of 5e is not being as low lethality as 4e.

I agree that Kingmaker doesn't do a good enough job making you feel like you're the ruler of a country. But the War of River Kings is great even if it is too short imo.

To be fair, the earlier stages of "city building", where you are just a Baron of a poor barony is well made IMO.

Mages were limited just enough by the availability of scrolls

I Disagree. The scrolls available to mages on original IWD are the worst of the worst. The game is IMO better with the Enhanced Edition which removes the sawyerism in spell scroll selection. BTW, any Sawyer game needs to be modded to remove Sawyerism. I got frustrated as a caster on NWN2. Installed Spell Fixes and started to love the game.

But you are right; the level range depends of the game proposal. Even in the same location, for eg, escaping Vecna and killing Vecna are two different adventures. One is doable at mid level and another isn't.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

I Disagree. The scrolls available to mages on original IWD are the worst of the worst. The game is IMO better with the Enhanced Edition which removes the sawyerism in spell scroll selection. BTW, any Sawyer game needs to be modded to remove Sawyerism. I got frustrated as a caster on NWN2. Installed Spell Fixes and started to love the game.

Weird. Orrick's scroll selection basically never went higher than third circle in my game (don't know if or when his stock changes but I think I checked it multiple times before going to the Hand) and either I missed some loot or got unlucky with RNG because I didn't have too many awesome spells on my Mage.

 

[Reinhardt]

I Disagree. The scrolls available to mages on original IWD are the worst of the worst. The game is IMO better with the Enhanced Edition which removes the sawyerism in spell scroll selection. BTW, any Sawyer game needs to be modded to remove Sawyerism. I got frustrated as a caster on NWN2. Installed Spell Fixes and started to love the game.

Of course you disagree. Every fishing village in god forsaken tundra must have nice selection of level 9 scrolls for sale. That's what fishing villages exist for.

 

[Cryomancer]

Of course you disagree. Every fishing village in god forsaken tundra must have nice selection of level 9 scrolls for sale. That's what fishing villages exist for.

Wrong by so many ways. Most of high level spells are obtained on places like Malavon's Lair and on high level characters like Edion Caradoc or Kieran Nye which only exists on the expansion. Is not uncommon to find one copy of the scroll and good lucky if you are playing on core rules without save scumming, you can fail learning a spell and never have another chance on learning it. Your mage will be a dead weight soaking experience for other party members till you reach Kuldahar, with or without EE. The starting village sells Halberds and all types of powerful weaponry armor but only 3 lv 1 scrolls.

What makes no sense is that a 18+ INT wizard, capable of casting tier 9 magic would waste his time inscribing spells like power word kill and monster summoning VI, spells which are weaker than mid tier magic. Finger of Death and summon Efreet are extremely better than ths two unique 9th tier IWD spell. Hell, I would pick Summon Water Elemental over this 9th tier summoning spell any day. The high level spells on IWD are so awful that I wish that I could "memorize/attune" lower tier spells on their place. Mages also can research magic and develop spells on P&P if they don't find the scroll, but is DM dependent and take days.

You once again talk about magic with ZERO clue about magic and use the worst strawman possible.

Weird. Orrick's scroll selection basically never went higher than third circle in my game (don't know if or when his stock changes but I think I checked it multiple times before going to the Hand) and either I missed some loot or got unlucky with RNG because I didn't have too many awesome spells on my Mage.

I recommend playing as a sorc then. No need to worry about scrolls. Sadly the UI of IE games are very lackluster for spontaneous casters. Or play as a divine caster or multiclass. But if you insist on magic user, check this. the location of scrolls on wikia

I never soloed original Icewind dale as a mage, only as a Fighter/Magician dual class. But with sorc on EE, is not hard.


I honestly on Baldur's Gate 1/2, prefer to play as a mage, on icewind dale:EE, as a sorcerer exactly due scroll availability. On BG2:SoA, you can get really powerful scrolls once you reach underdark. But this is on any Sawyer game. NWN2 with spell fixes is extremely better and on Pillars, I see no reason to play as a Wizard over a Cipher.

 

[Bastardchops]

Low to Mid.

 

[Reinhardt]

Is not uncommon to find one copy of the scroll and good lucky if you are playing on core rules without save scumming, you can fail learning a spell and never have another chance on learning it. Your mage will be a dead weight soaking experience for other party members till you reach Kuldahar, with or without EE. The starting village sells Halberds and all types of powerful weaponry armor but only 3 lv 1 scrolls.

See - you again "ME!ME!ME!" Why should enemy mages bring more copies of scrolls in case YOU fail to scribe it in YOUR spellbook after killing them?

 

[Darkzone]

People saying later editions of D&D have high lethality at low levels must never have even looked at the rules for 2e.

They're comparing lethality inside the later editions, not the same range between editions.

Low level (1-3) 5E characters compared to mid level are much more susceptible to death, because in the standard encounter (CR normalised) a party of mid level characters will be harder to kill. While between the editions the low level characters and monsters are comperable in leathality and death susceptibility, the mid level 4-8 the 5E characters are stronger compared to the monsters as in previous DnD editions. The thing is, it is getting even worse with each additional material release for the 5E, especially with the Tasha's Cauldron. Dungeon Craft has tried to look into the numbers between the editions and while he confused some and came to a wrong outcome, tthe commentators corrected him and this gives a better insight into this topic:


But overall i agree on this topic with Dungon Craft (concerining the reasons and outcome):

 

[Cryomancer]

No mage would waste time making backup of his most valuable scrolls in case of losing his spellbooks. In fact, they will only write their high level spells that are weaker than mid level ones by no good reason

Your problem is not that you hate magic. There are a lot of mage hatters here. Your problem is that you hate a thing that you clearly has no clue about how it works. The guy who criticized high level on kingmaker, I agree with all of his critiques? No. But at least he played the game before trashing the game and made some critiques which makes sense.

If magic in a old school good RPG is a "awesome button" for you, you have no idea about what magic is and what "awesome buttons" are. Awesome button was a modern bioware BS. And magic on modern bioware games are trash, exactly cuz they are nothing more but awesome buttons. Flashy, repetitive, cinematic, over the top and """awesome""". This is completely the opposite of magic on D&D and 2e adaptations. Where a spell can be amazing in a situation A, worthless on B, sub optimal on C and so on.

-----------------------------------------

Here is a interesting video about high level play in a amazing retroclone and high level in that game.

Low level (1-3) 5E characters compared to mid level are much more susceptible to death, because in the standard encounter (CR normalised) a party of mid level characters will be harder to kill. While between the editions the low level characters and monsters are comperable in leathality and death susceptibility, the mid level 4-8 the 5E characters are stronger compared to the monsters as in previous DnD editions. The thing is, it is getting even worse with each additional material release for the 5E, especially with the Tasha's Cauldron. Dungeon Craft has tried to look into the numbers between the editions and while he confused some and came to a wrong outcome, tthe commentators corrected him and this gives a better insight into this topic:

Interesting. But note how Hobgoblins on 5e has more than twice the 1e HP. They have enough HP to soak an "maximized" longbow shot... Nobody disagrees that in "dungeons & kobolds levels", 5e is lethal to the player(not to mobs). The problem of 5e is that high level is unplayable. For eg, a evoker wizard from lv 5 to 11, his best evokation spell will gonna 'evolve' from fireball to freezing sphere. And the damage growth is from tier 3 magic caster to tier 6 magic caster is mere +2d6(8d6 fireball and 10d6 freezing sphere), while his HP increased more than double. He got +6d6 + 6*CON MOD hit points and just +2d6 damage. Meanwhile, the same caster on previous editions would get +d6 on most evokation spell damage per level and +d4 hit points. And after lv 9, just +1 hp per level. This comparing the class which is supposed to have the most offensive capability. They gain more than 3x hp for each damage point that they gain. On more defensive classes, I can imagine that the hp gain in relation to the damage gain will gonna be like 6x more hp per damage.

----------------

One game which I definitively don't want to see high level is 5e and 5e CRPG adaptations. Solasta and BG3 with 10 or earlier teens level cap is OK. 5e on high levels is monotonous like Oblivion on higher levels. And I prefer smaller numbers. I hate this ultra inflated numbers borrowed from mmos. Mainly in a TT game where you need to roll and do a lot of math.

 

[His Dudeness]

I used to play mostly AD&D, then switched to AD&D 2e, then skipped all others and tried a bit of 5e.

Directed the whole Against the Giants module and played a friend's campaign with a dual-class Mage 12/ Cleric 16, so I have some experience with high level play in a tabletop setting.

I enjoy playing them but DMing is a chore, mostly because of all the magic items the player end up having, which at the end of the day is the true measure of power in older editions.What I remember the most from against the giant is players going down like flies when faced with a firing line of ice giants hurling rocks at them.

After playing the TSR games, 5e feels like everyone is fighting with foam swords. The death save mechanic is terrible and adds no tension whatsoever, and everything in general feels less dangerous.

 

[Fedora Master]

Id just like to say that I find it fascinating how Victor keeps posting so much yet his grammar hasn't improved one bit. Not an insult, just an observation.

 

[Cryomancer]

Id just like to say that I find it fascinating how Victor keeps posting so much yet his grammar hasn't improved one bit. Not an insult, just an observation.

I know. My grammar sucks even in my native language. I an posting so much thanks to the lockdowns. Which mistakes I an committing the most?

After playing the TSR games, 5e feels like everyone is fighting with foam swords. The death save mechanic is terrible and adds no tension whatsoever, and everything in general feels less dangerous.

Nice point. I agree that DM a high level session is harder hence most professional DM's generally asks for more money to DM it and when I had a 3.5e/Pathfinder hybrid group, nobody wanted to DM. So we had a "rotation" of DM's, each session one guy was the DM. On video games, the PC is the DM, so this great problem doesn't exist. All multiclassed classes with no balancefag to kill our fun. Was amazing.

 

[Darkzone]

Low level (1-3) 5E characters compared to mid level are much more susceptible to death, because in the standard encounter (CR normalised) a party of mid level characters will be harder to kill. While between the editions the low level characters and monsters are comperable in leathality and death susceptibility, the mid level 4-8 the 5E characters are stronger compared to the monsters as in previous DnD editions. The thing is, it is getting even worse with each additional material release for the 5E, especially with the Tasha's Cauldron. Dungeon Craft has tried to look into the numbers between the editions and while he confused some and came to a wrong outcome, tthe commentators corrected him and this gives a better insight into this topic:

Interesting. But note how Hobgoblins on 5e has more than twice the 1e HP. They have enough HP to soak an "maximized" longbow shot... Nobody disagrees that in "dungeons & kobolds levels", 5e is lethal to the player(not to mobs). The problem of 5e is that high level is unplayable. For eg, a evoker wizard from lv 5 to 11, his best evokation spell will gonna 'evolve' from fireball to freezing sphere. And the damage growth is from tier 3 magic caster to tier 6 magic caster is mere +2d6(8d6 fireball and 10d6 freezing sphere), while his HP increased more than double. He got +6d6 + 6*CON MOD hit points and just +2d6 damage. Meanwhile, the same caster on previous editions would get +d6 on most evokation spell damage per level and +d4 hit points. And after lv 9, just +1 hp per level. This comparing the class which is supposed to have the most offensive capability. They gain more than 3x hp for each damage point that they gain. On more defensive classes, I can imagine that the hp gain in relation to the damage gain will gonna be like 6x more hp per damage.

Yes. I agree on every point that you have written here and the HP bloat of the 5E is commonly known. There could be reasons to do this ( i only assume so) like: diminish the necessity for a cleric, have magic melee magic archetypes like the Bladesinger instead of introducing of a new Bladesinger class,
higher the survival chance for caster classes to free up the warriors for combat ( not only the Tank - Barrier role), etc. Either way i understand and concur with the OSR "Movement" as an opposite movement to the all inclusive and "we are so cool" modern approach, but there is an other way. And this is to make 5E on higher levels more deadly due to better combat design (timers, splitting parties and etc), making magic dangerous to use and more costly (HP or temporary level lose and failure - rolling d20 for magic check) and to limit the HP amount. HP is a counter ( a count down) and the HP bloat is to drag out the combat in rounds and this makes the combat longer and less interesting and the Survival aspect is naturally taken out of a high level game due to things like this.
Take a look into 5E Hardcore Mode, especially how it changes the game in higher levels.

Id just like to say that I find it fascinating how Victor keeps posting so much yet his grammar hasn't improved one bit. Not an insult, just an observation.

I know. My grammar sucks even in my native language. I an posting so much thanks to the lockdowns. Which mistakes I an committing the most?

To get better at grammatics learn latin, but think about this in this way: The one who wants to understand you will understands you despite you grammatik abilities. The one who doesn't want, will not understand you, no matter how good your grammatics are.

 

[Cryomancer]

and the HP bloat is to drag out the combat in rounds and this makes the combat longer and less interesting and the Survival aspect is naturally taken out of a high level game due to things like this.
Take a look into 5E Hardcore Mode, especially how it changes the game in higher levels.

Honestly, I would prefer a "hardcore" mode for 2e if I plan to make survivalism that hard.

I never played P&P 2e however, watched a Dark Sun stream and only being alive in the desert is pretty hard due the survival aspects. Mainly if the DM bans create food and water and similar spells.

My point is simple. Classes who focus on destruction like a evoker, should gain more destructive power than "defensive power". Classes which focus on defense, should get more defensive power than offensive power. This "oblivion effect", where you gain far more hp than damage, no matter what is just awful. Other huge problem that I have on 5e is the lack of nasty abilities on the monsters.

Succubi could summon demons that she corrupted and there was a chance of summoning demonic princes(small but possible), basilisks with instant petrification, dragons with aura of fear, beholders, with anti magic eye, disintegration beans which actually disintegrate, not just deal damage, Balors with aura of flames and powerful SLA like gate, mid level undead could cause level drain which could be permanent, resurrection had a chance of failure. A clay golem, was immune to most spells, except earthquake which was druid only spell, also had immunity to non blunt and non magical weapons, mindflayers that can take control over your party members and devour brain, OHKilling then.

Fighting high and mid level monsters on old school D&D was very hard. On 5e is just a chore...