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Fireball averages 28 damage per target, or 14 if they make their save. I don't have a good feel for how much damage a well-tuned L5 melee character can put out in a round, but my feeling is that it's around half that when accounting for misses/crits? So if you can hit four targets, that's ~8 turns' worth of contribution from one PC front-loaded onto the start of the fight (albeit spread out across multiple enemies). There's pretty clear value there. It's harder to measure the value of Hypnotic Pattern in PC-turn-equivalents, since it depends so much on what the charmed enemies would be doing with their turns. It seems clear though that it prevents the party from taking damage, which is a lot more effective than trying to heal damage after it's been dealt. The other intangible of course is, you can cast Fireball while maintaining concentration on something else. It synergizes poorly with Hypnotic Pattern because any damage will break the incapacitation effect, but there are plenty of other useful spells that require concentration that you might want to use.
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Nov 22, 2019 22:31
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PaybackJack posted:I am guessing that imbuing a wand and being able to cast with the wand counts for this but I just want to double check that casting a spell with a wand is "an attack". No, it only counts for using the attack action, specifically. The weapon you are using has to be 'magic,' such as a +1 weapon or a moonlight sword. Luckily artificers get a lvl 1 spell that makes their weapon magic for the spell's duration. quote:Arcane Weapon Give a heavy crossbow the repeater infusion and you can attack twice with it. Take a hand crossbow with repeater and you can attack twice while holding a shield.
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Nov 22, 2019 22:33
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PaybackJack posted:Been running the game more than playing this last year or so and I got a game coming up where I'm coming in as a wizard support character. It's the end of the campaign and I'll be rolling in as an 20th level Artificer. As already mentioned, do Artificers just ignore Concentration? You're talking about maintaining three Concentration spells at the same time. As well, Attack means the Attack action, not casting a spell. You have to attack with a magical ranged or melee using the Attack action. I don't know what the hell they mean by propelling magic. I guess maybe it has to be a magic item you made/embued?
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Nov 22, 2019 22:34
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Glagha posted:I mean it's at the top of its class damage wise at 3rd but you just immediately start getting better raw damage spells at higher levels with like, Cone of Cold and Chain Lightning. For sure, higher level spells should be better than lower level ones so it's not an entirely fair comparison but it gets this reputation for being incredible when it's just... the best damage of its level then you get another spell that's even better later. I just don't get what the big deal is. Fireball was an absolute worldbreaker of a spell from original D&D through to 2nd edition where the wizard was basically artillery and the damage was obscenely meaningful. Those editions had you facing large hordes of lower-level enemies as very common encounters, HP was much lower, and saves were much better in general. 3rd edition changed the balance of arcane spellcasting more towards debuffing, and fireball has been kind of coasting on its reputation ever since. e: like the old-school thread's title "assume 183 bandits are encountered" is not infeasible, although still silly. Fireball was THE spell for surviving that kind of mess.
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Nov 22, 2019 22:34
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Joke Miriam posted:Should an Arcane Trickster bother with starting at an odd-numbered CON to later get resilience (CON) for the saving throw, or should I just it to an acceptable amount and focus on pumping Dex and Int for my ASIs? A good Arcane Trickster, much like a good Eldritch Knight, should forego Intelligence altogether. If you find a Headband of Intellect that's nice but it's pretty safe to just slap an 8 in it at chargen and leave it alone for the rest of your character progression. Admiral Joeslop posted:For straight up damage blaster, is Wizard or Sorcerer better? Using PHB stuff only. Sorlock, otherwise Wizard. Conspiratiorist fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Nov 22, 2019 |
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Nov 22, 2019 22:38
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Kung Food posted:No, it only counts for using the attack action, specifically. The weapon you are using has to be 'magic,' such as a +1 weapon or a moonlight sword. Luckily artificers get a lvl 1 spell that makes their weapon magic for the spell's duration. That spell didn't make it out of UA, the infusions make the item magical though.
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Nov 22, 2019 22:39
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Artificers do not ignore Concentration. At 11th level or so they can put a 1st or 2nd level spell into an object, which can be used 2xInt mod times per day. If the spell has concentration whoever activates the object must maintain concentration. So I am thinking of switching my Variant Human Scout Rogue, who was possibly going to get Lore Bard and Knowledge Cleric to be a skill monkey, to a Warforged Artificer. I am not sure if I want Battle Smith for Int based fighting and a pet that only requires spell slots to revive if it dies, rather than hour long duration. Or if I want to go Artillerist Artificer for the blam blam but the cannon requires a spell slot to create after the first one. No guns sadly, unless there are any in Avernus.
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Nov 22, 2019 22:41
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Infinity Gaia posted:I think the guide was fine, but a bit too subjective. Yeah that's basically my read, too. I generally liked it, and I 100% understand why when trying to write an agnostically applicable guide you'd reasonably avoid a lot of stuff that a lovely DM can shut down by just pretending that the enchantment, illusion and divination schools do not exist which would then pare your options down to doing damage, summoning things, and CC and thats it. I would not like the game very much if that's all it was (and that AL is basically exactly that, with the added bonus of combats invariably taking place in a theater-of-the-mind white room with no terrain or cover, is why I stopped playing AL in favor of more narrative/social groups) but that's just a different kind of subjectivity, so what's actually the problem y'know? What blew my mind is the Mearls tweet about being able to swaddle skeletons in full plate and shields or whatever. Jesus aitch that is silly in general and kind of a hell of a thing to just throw on twitter. Pardon if I'm speaking out of turn but this Mike Mearls character? I do not think I much care for his ideas or approach to IP and community management. No, friends, not one bit....
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Nov 22, 2019 22:43
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The frustrating thing about the Evoker is that they clearly had another, better plan that they ran with in their modules, but their stance of "Welp, we can't ever just use errata to fix our obvious balance mistakes" means they never backported it: Also, since I found out that apparently I don't play D&D anymore, I called my Monday night DM and let him know. He was just as shocked as I wad.
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Nov 22, 2019 22:54
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Dexo posted:That spell didn't make it out of UA, the infusions make the item magical though. drat, that's too bad, it felt like a signature spell I'm surprised it got axed. Willie Tomg posted:What blew my mind is the Mearls tweet about being able to swaddle skeletons in full plate and shields or whatever. Jesus aitch that is silly in general and kind of a hell of a thing to just throw on twitter. Pardon if I'm speaking out of turn but this Mike Mearls character? I do not think I much care for his ideas or approach to IP and community management. No, friends, not one bit....
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Nov 22, 2019 23:35
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Kung Food posted:drat, that's too bad, it felt like a signature spell I'm surprised it got axed. The same logic applies to weapons, but they can operate crossbows just fine, not to mention swing swords perfectly well.
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Nov 22, 2019 23:37
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Kung Food posted:This is the dumbest thing and not RAW. The whole deal of armor proficiency is you have to know how to equip and move in around in armor to be effective. How does a mindless corpse have that? I could maybe see it working if they had proficiencies they had in life, but learning them through death doesn't make sense. On top of that you need a min str of 15 to wear plate and skelies have 10. This is the kind of thing that has been going on since at least 3rd edition. The designers are constantly loving up rules - look up Skip Smokes Crack - or inventing new interpretations like the continual custserv arguments back in the day. My understanding is that Mearls and Crawford tweets come with the standard "your DM can ignore this" so who the hell knows.
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Nov 22, 2019 23:44
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My general opinion is that NPCs don't nessecarily need to have the same restrictions and rules that PCs have. Look this skeleton is big boned and dense as plate, his AC is 20 or whatever. Monster stat blocks are malleable to me Dexo fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Nov 22, 2019 |
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Nov 22, 2019 23:46
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I feel like the "make it your own" and rules-light interpretative nature that Mearls lifted from the OSR make 5e kind of antithetical to chasing down a Word of God about any particular thing. The game obviously isn't designed for that. That said, that's never stopped anyone, Gary Gygax used to answer tons of mail about how to play Basic, and came up with Advanced as a response to all those requests for more complete rules.
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Nov 22, 2019 23:47
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I think it's somewhat valuable sometimes to get the actual ruling the designer intended. So yeah I'll consult the WoG when thinking about a ruling but if I don't like it I'll change it in my game without much of a hesitation
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Nov 22, 2019 23:52
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Dexo posted:My general opinion is that NPCs don't nessecarily need to have the same restrictions and rules that PCs have.  If I want an encounter to have something specific but the CR is off I'll just tweak it. I don't really like the "add more bad dudes" approach
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Nov 22, 2019 23:53
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Glagha posted:I mean it's at the top of its class damage wise at 3rd but you just immediately start getting better raw damage spells at higher levels with like, Cone of Cold and Chain Lightning. For sure, higher level spells should be better than lower level ones so it's not an entirely fair comparison but it gets this reputation for being incredible when it's just... the best damage of its level then you get another spell that's even better later. I just don't get what the big deal is. Cone of Cold is 5th and deals 8d8, CON save for half and is, well, a cone. Fireball cast at 5th is 10d6, DEX save for half. Cone of Cold has an average damage of 36, but CON is usually a bit better than DEX on most things statblocks. The fact that it's a cone also requires the wizard to position themselves dangerously. The Fireball's average is... 35. So for one less point of damage on average you get a longer ranged spell that affects a slightly less commonly resisted save and doesn't require you to even see what you're targeting. Plus it's a lot easier to target a 30ft radius for maximum efficiency than a 60ft cone. Chain Lightning is 6th level and deals 10d8 on up to 4 targets, each target taking an average of 45 damage. Fireball upcast to 6th does 11d6, or around 38.5 damage on average... But it can hit a whole lot more than four targets. At that point it's up to volume. If you're fighting even 5 monsters, Fireball immediately shoots ahead in overall damage, let alone whole hordes. Upside of Chain Lightning is it's really easy to target, though it still requires sightlines. Fireball is just really fuckin good.
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Nov 23, 2019 00:03
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Infinity Gaia posted:Fireball is just really fuckin good. Alternatively, high-level direct damage spells are bad.
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Nov 23, 2019 00:06
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:This is the kind of thing that has been going on since at least 3rd edition. The designers are constantly loving up rules - look up Skip Smokes Crack - or inventing new interpretations like the continual custserv arguments back in the day. All I'm getting are videos of Rob Ford.
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Nov 23, 2019 00:06
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So my wife and I had our first couple of D&D sessions with some friends who have been doing it for some time, and I have to ask - what do perception checks add to the experience? Like, I don't know if this was just the sessions we were in, but every time we walk into a new room, we're kind of obligated to do a perception check to like, look around and see what the room contains, and inevitably, if someone fails their roll and doesn't get useful info, we just all take turns rolling until someone gets the info we need to actually continue onwards. It seems like perception is just a needless mechanic? Surely, unless a character is outright blind, we have the innate ability to look at our surroundings to see if there's anything obvious in the area? Why waste time rolling for something like that?
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Nov 23, 2019 00:16
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Admiral Joeslop posted:All I'm getting are videos of Rob Ford. Skip Williams was a 3e designer who was infamous for making up rulings, getting contradicted by forums posters with rulebook quotes proving him wrong, and then massive flamewars erupted.
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Nov 23, 2019 00:17
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Alternatively, high-level direct damage spells are bad. It really depends. There are some that are great on an efficiency standpoint, but judging anything based on efficiency relies on the DM/party not being able to long rest as soon as the Wizard exhausts their spells and the length of fights as a whole. Stuff like Storm Sphere, Sunbeam and Crown of Stars are incredibly spell slot efficient blaster spells, for instance. Wizards also do get Dawn, which is a ludicrously huge continuous AoE spell, great if your DM wants to do a war scene and you want to be a huge killjoy and murder the entire battlefield with a single spell. Synaptic Static is basically a weaker fireball with a pretty hefty debuff attached to it, which targets possibly the least commonly resisted save in the game (Intelligence). Bert of the Forest posted:So my wife and I had our first couple of D&D sessions with some friends who have been doing it for some time, and I have to ask - what do perception checks add to the experience? Like, I don't know if this was just the sessions we were in, but every time we walk into a new room, we're kind of obligated to do a perception check to like, look around and see what the room contains, and inevitably, if someone fails their roll and doesn't get useful info, we just all take turns rolling until someone gets the info we need to actually continue onwards. It seems like perception is just a needless mechanic? Surely, unless a character is outright blind, we have the innate ability to look at our surroundings to see if there's anything obvious in the area? Why waste time rolling for something like that? In theory, simple 'look at thing' is supposed to be covered by passive perception scores, but a lot of DMs fail to take advantage of it for some reason. Infinity Gaia fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Nov 23, 2019 |
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Nov 23, 2019 00:20
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Bert of the Forest posted:So my wife and I had our first couple of D&D sessions with some friends who have been doing it for some time, and I have to ask - what do perception checks add to the experience? Like, I don't know if this was just the sessions we were in, but every time we walk into a new room, we're kind of obligated to do a perception check to like, look around and see what the room contains, and inevitably, if someone fails their roll and doesn't get useful info, we just all take turns rolling until someone gets the info we need to actually continue onwards. It seems like perception is just a needless mechanic? Surely, unless a character is outright blind, we have the innate ability to look at our surroundings to see if there's anything obvious in the area? Why waste time rolling for something like that? If there's no time constraint, unless something is absurdly well hidden (like a hidden switch to open a bookcase door), you shouldn't even be rolling imo. That goes for double if the plot just stops if you don't make the roll. The GM needs to be more creative about giving out information if that info is absolutely crucial to any sort of plot progression. In the bookcase example, in a situation where the players know (or even if they don't know) there's a hidden lair but just can't find the entrance, if I could tell the players just weren't picking up on it, I'd probably just have the bookcase open and oh look there's some sentries coming to make a sweep. If you're on a timer, Perception checks are fine but again cannot be the crux of progression and there needs to be alternatives that don't just jam up the story. There are also more general uses like Perception being used to check against Stealth (and vice versa), or even seeing if you're eagle-eyed enough to tell what kind of gear those bandits over the knoll are outfitted in, or exactly how many there are so you're better prepared and have more complete information to work with. And yeah, Passive perception is a thing for a reason.
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Nov 23, 2019 00:23
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Bert of the Forest posted:So my wife and I had our first couple of D&D sessions with some friends who have been doing it for some time, and I have to ask - what do perception checks add to the experience? Like, I don't know if this was just the sessions we were in, but every time we walk into a new room, we're kind of obligated to do a perception check to like, look around and see what the room contains, and inevitably, if someone fails their roll and doesn't get useful info, we just all take turns rolling until someone gets the info we need to actually continue onwards. It seems like perception is just a needless mechanic? Surely, unless a character is outright blind, we have the innate ability to look at our surroundings to see if there's anything obvious in the area? Why waste time rolling for something like that? Perception isn't useless but using it in this manner is. All that does is train the PCs to constantly ask if they can roll Perception. Skill checks should only be used if there are consequences to failure (PCs don't notice the monster sneaking up, or don't notice the easier path to avoid the traps) instead of as a crutch. Characters generally have eyes and don't need to roll a check just to look around a room and in fact, Passive Perception is a thing that can replace that. I was guilty of overusing skill checks for a while too but I've started weaning myself away, as well as not letting other players roll if the first person just fails. It's either a group check or only one person rolls, no add ons. TheGreatEvilKing posted:Skip Williams was a 3e designer who was infamous for making up rulings, getting contradicted by forums posters with rulebook quotes proving him wrong, and then massive flamewars erupted. Oh. I thought maybe there was an article or something. Admiral Joeslop fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Nov 23, 2019 |
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Nov 23, 2019 00:25
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Admiral Joeslop posted:I was guilty of overusing skill checks for a while too but I've started weaning myself away. Our table has been slowly moving towards just saying what you want to do and the GM asking for a check in response (should one be needed) and it's been wonderful. We had a big problem where people would get into a situation and filter it through their skill list instead of doing what they think their character would or should do.
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Nov 23, 2019 00:29
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Infinity Gaia posted:Cone of Cold is 5th and deals 8d8, CON save for half and is, well, a cone. Fireball cast at 5th is 10d6, DEX save for half. Cone of Cold has an average damage of 36, but CON is usually a bit better than DEX on most things statblocks. The fact that it's a cone also requires the wizard to position themselves dangerously. The Fireball's average is... 35. So for one less point of damage on average you get a longer ranged spell that affects a slightly less commonly resisted save and doesn't require you to even see what you're targeting. Plus it's a lot easier to target a 30ft radius for maximum efficiency than a 60ft cone. Chain Lightning is 6th level and deals 10d8 on up to 4 targets, each target taking an average of 45 damage. Fireball upcast to 6th does 11d6, or around 38.5 damage on average... But it can hit a whole lot more than four targets. At that point it's up to volume. If you're fighting even 5 monsters, Fireball immediately shoots ahead in overall damage, let alone whole hordes. Upside of Chain Lightning is it's really easy to target, though it still requires sightlines. Cone of Cold is a 60 foot cone so you really don't have to be that close, and is slightly easier to use without nuking your unfortunate melee friends and chain lightning hits up to 4 targets which is probably enough in most situations and, assuming there are situations where you're going to have to hit more than 4 things then sure, but they're probably all little chumps that probably aren't that worth blowing a spell slot on, but maybe so in which case fireball would be the better choice in that situation. The point is though that there are plenty of spells that do equivalent or more damage in different situations, or hit in ways that don't involve shooting your fighter in the rear end, so again... what's the big deal? Fireball doesn't sound "really fuckin good" it sounds "fine", especially considering it's been covered before how even in the best case of being one of the top damage spells, that's still not that amazing of a category to be in. Crumbletron posted:Our table has been slowly moving towards just saying what you want to do and the GM asking for a check in response (should one be needed) and it's been wonderful. We had a big problem where people would get into a situation and filter it through their skill list instead of doing what they think their character would or should do. This reminds me of my last D&D group where we had someone in the group who insisted on rolling dice unprompted constantly and it was extremely annoying. Like, constant DM: You see a statue. Player: *dice clatter* I rolled a 19 perception what do I see. I guess I was the only one bothered by it though because the DM never asked them to stop. Glagha fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Nov 23, 2019 |
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Nov 23, 2019 00:33
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We just came across a forest full of magical flora in my side game, and being an assassin, I want to try to make some cool poison from them, specifically midnight tears. What should I use it for though? Besides covert killings, of course.
change my name fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Nov 23, 2019 |
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Nov 23, 2019 00:35
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Glagha posted:Cone of Cold is a 60 foot cone so you really don't have to be that close, and is slightly easier to use without nuking your unfortunate melee friends Cones are harder to target yo.
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Nov 23, 2019 00:38
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Conspiratiorist posted:Cones are harder to target yo. Not if you're standing nearer to people you don't want to hit yo.
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Nov 23, 2019 00:40
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Glagha posted:Not if you're standing nearer to people you don't want to hit yo. Why would you ever be standing close to your melee buddies? They should be in the thick of things and unless you're a Bladesinger or something you should be approximately as close to exactly 60 feet away from the fight as possible. Infinity Gaia fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Nov 23, 2019 |
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Nov 23, 2019 00:53
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Skip Williams was a 3e designer who was infamous for making up rulings, getting contradicted by forums posters with rulebook quotes proving him wrong, and then massive flamewars erupted.
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Nov 23, 2019 01:00
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I don't know that I'd want to be that far from my buddies; if I get ambushed and they're more than a full turn away then that could go poorly for my squishy self. But yeah, the typical arrangement is going to be enemies | frontliners | wizard Any spell that hits everything along its path is going to be tricky to use in that kind of circumstance, while artillery spells that can arc over your buddies are much easier.
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Nov 23, 2019 01:03
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Updated the guide with thread comments and bladesinger. Specifically, bladesinger probably deserves a guide that is not for CC wizard spamming.
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Nov 23, 2019 01:53
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The Bladesinger defensive benefits (big AC buff, Concentration check bonus, damage block at 10th) are pretty big for any type of Wizard, and much like War Wizard makes it a good pick while playing control/utility. The Extra Attack thing was a trap option, trying to trick you into being melee despite being comically bad at it due to being a Wizard, until XGE came along. Now we have Shadow Blade, and a Bladesinger Elf with Elven Accuracy and Shadow Blade up will totally wreck face.
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Nov 23, 2019 02:34
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Conspiratiorist posted:The Bladesinger defensive benefits (big AC buff, Concentration check bonus, damage block at 10th) are pretty big for any type of Wizard, and much like War Wizard makes it a good pick while playing control/utility. The melee wizard thing wants its own guide I think.
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Nov 23, 2019 02:39
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I hunger for a Bladesinger/Battle Smith guide. I, as an admitted non-systems master, see so much synergy there it makes my brain burn. I mean it's probably as simple as Battle Smith 3/Bladesinger 17, but even so. So much synergy and if you somehow made it to lvl 20, you'd still be a lvl 19 spellcaster.
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Nov 23, 2019 02:57
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hi nerdfriends, i've got a ghosts of saltmarsh session in a couple of hours, and I want two hard, verging on brutal fights with sahuagin, and pirates. Party is 5x 5th level. What sort of approach should I take to building the encounter? I've heard the encounter math is a little screwy.
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Nov 23, 2019 03:08
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sebmojo posted:hi nerdfriends, i've got a ghosts of saltmarsh session in a couple of hours, and I want two hard, verging on brutal fights with sahuagin, and pirates. Party is 5x 5th level. What sort of approach should I take to building the encounter? I've heard the encounter math is a little screwy. Could you give a bit more context. Maybe have a fairly normally pirate encounter only for the Sahuagin to attack in the middle of it. Led by a few of the variants in the book.
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Nov 23, 2019 03:33
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MonsterEnvy posted:Could you give a bit more context. Maybe have a fairly normally pirate encounter only for the Sahuagin to attack in the middle of it. Led by a few of the variants in the book. sorry - i mean there are two combat encounters I want to prep for the game, each themed around one of those. I'm thinking for the pirate one a Bandit lord (1100), eight bandits (200), 2 first mates (400) a deck wizard (200) and a riptide priest (450) Is that wildly out of whack?
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Nov 23, 2019 03:54
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sebmojo posted:hi nerdfriends, i've got a ghosts of saltmarsh session in a couple of hours, and I want two hard, verging on brutal fights with sahuagin, and pirates. Party is 5x 5th level. What sort of approach should I take to building the encounter? I've heard the encounter math is a little screwy. I mean, I custom roll all my monsters, and it seems to be working out very well - my players have very positive responses to it. Figure out your party's average to-hits, damage (per action, my players do X damage per action on average, per character, Bob does Y damage per round on average, and per round, my entire party shits out Z damage per round), and hit points. "Breadbox" your enemies by saying something like, "I want four minions who can hit the party 65% of the time for 20% of their HP and are hittable by the party 80% of the time and take six decent attacks to go down, and one boss who hits the PCs 75% of the time for 30% of their HP and is hittable by the party 70% of the time and requires the entire party to wail on him for two rounds to die" etc etc. You can then translate that into the individual enemy's AC, HP, attack bonus, and damage. Pop open the DMG to page 274, read Step 4 and the table next to it to figure out that enemy's challenge rating for XP award purposes (or do milestone levelling and you don't even have to open the DMG at all). Don't worry about factoring special abilities into anything but damage, the MM monsters don't factor in any of that poo poo. For damage, you're allowed to give them whatever abilities you want, so I try to make sure that whatever abilities my baddies have are positionally interesting. Doesn't matter if you're doing theatre of the mind though. I had a pack of magically adept dragon-worshipping kobolds who each had a thematically appropriate "breath" weapon instead of a sword or whatever - the fire guy hit everybody in a line, the psychic guy didn't need to see you to hit you, cold guy had a cone, that kind of thing. I ran with some vampire clans in a city recently, each one of them had a weird gimmick - one clan was always Reckless and hit a million times a turn for individually piddly damage, one clan had charm effects so the paladin and greatsword samurai couldn't just smash them, so they had to figure out positioning so they could hit a vampire who didn't have them currently charmed, one clan duplicated any healing an adjacent PC received - the point is to make encounters tactically interesting through positioning, terrain, and action economy. Same goes for special abilities - like, high-damage attacks that only go off once so many rounds, but the party can position themselves to avoid the worst of it. I had a pack of air elementals recently that could flow around people without provoking attacks of opportunity, so the PCs couldn't form the kind of hard battle-line they like - I can't do that every encounter, because they like it and it's an effective tactic and I want to reward both of those things, but dusting it off every couple of dungeons is memorable. Fewer special abilities that do cool stuff is preferable for you as a DM over a plethora of options - more options means more time you spend figuring out an "optimal" move, and forgetting about rules interactions. Fewer cool things over many situational things. You have to run all the enemies, your players are only running one character and maybe an NPC or something. It's not really time consuming once you figure it out - I statted around 30 encounters and loosely mapped four dungeons in <2 hours. Sahuagin - maybe have the encounter start slow, then every round have so many additional sahuagin over the sides of the ship, in places that are problematic for the party. Individuals go down easy, but the whole deal is like being nibbled to death. In addition, they're not focused on just the PCs, they're hungry and they're going after the crew! If your players don't beat down the enemies that just appeared in different corners of the battle space, somebody important might get dragged over the side! The idea here is to turn the heat up over time - starts easy, then quickly becomes borderline unmanageable. Additionally, since you're the DM - if they're struggling, just add fewer sahuagin. They don't know how many you planned on. I skipped an entire encounter once because the players had such terrible luck that they nearly wiped on the preceding boss battle, so the skeleton army the baddies were going to deploy as a final gently caress-you before they died never came out. Pirates - it's the dead of night and the pirate vessel comes alongside, boarding ramps slamming down into the players' ship with no warning. The lookouts were sleeping on the job. Now, pirates are coming across two boarding ramps and the PCs are the only ones awake to defend the ship, because gently caress you that's why. A frontload of pirates, maybe two per PC, charging straight across two well-marked choke points, trying to push through one of them and flank the party on the other ramp - and there's crossbowmen on the enemy ship weighing in, to boot. Once they're dealt with, the PCs will have the chance to return the favor - run across the swaying, shaking ramps, or swing across on ropes, and take the fight to the pirate captain just as the weather takes a turn for the worse. The party is dealing with the captain on one side, and the crew on the other - once the captain goes down, the crew will surrender, and at least the crossbowmen haven't made it up from below decks, but the damp, rolling deck keeps throwing them around the ship, so the PCs can't keep formation - a problem the pirates don't have. Keep the crew numbers in the boss fight static - always X number, when one goes down, send in a fresh one next round - or don't, if they're struggling. Wow, that's a lot more than I meant to write, but - I hope some of it's helpful. If you, inexplicably, want me to write additional words, just ask.
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Nov 23, 2019 03:54
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