D&D 5: Adventure Prep Time

The prep-time for D&D self-made adventures has went up. The one thing I loved about D&D 4 was that you could throw together encounters pretty quickly, in general, X level Y creatures would match a party pretty evenly. Get +/- 4 levels away, and you started running into trouble. You could swap one creature out for 3-5 minions of the same level and be fine, and if you wanted to up difficulty, make some of those minions ranged attackers.

I tried winging a D&D 5 adventure, and it of course failed spectacularly. Either my encounters were too easy, or too hard. My roleplaying sections felt flat and didn't have much of interest to the players in them. I realized more prep-time would have solved this, and then I had this uncomfortable feeling that yes, I needed to commit more to prep-time to make D&D 5 work.

Granted, for games like Pathfinder this is similar, although I know Pathfinder's CR system to be able to put an encounter together in my head and have it be a the challenge level I desire. D&D 5's challenge rating system is skewed when it comes to lower-level creatures, so things aren't as easy to judge.

I am finding myself missing the advances D&D 4 brought to the table with prep-time and making the DM's life easier. I am also finding myself missing the tactical focus of D&D 4, and to some extent Pathfinder's. I miss that motivation of the board being the place where everything is decided, and that players could specialize in things the do on the table to succeed. It's that fiddly Warhammer 40K feel where the choices you make with your character matter on the board that I miss, the tight tactical game and interesting situations that develop on the tabletop.

I heard D&D 5 was going to get a tactical play book, and I am slowly feeling my group would enjoy something like this very much. Now, I am stuck waiting for it, of course....