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Slippery42 posted:What narrative situations would prevent players from taking a short rest after every single encounter instead of every 2 or 3? As a player, I'd certainly push to lick my wounds and get back to full HP immediately after a fight before venturing into the unknown, so I'm trying to get some ideas on how the story/DM could push back. This goes even for the RAW 1 hour short rests. It's hard to call time a concern, as even taking an absurd 5 hours of rest leaves a lot of time for adventuring each day unless travel is involved unless the party is racing someone else to a goal. The 5 minute variant sorta throws out that idea. Being in a dungeon. I think the idea is that if you're going to take an hour long rest, you've gotta roll wandering monster or whatever.
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Feb 8, 2015 20:21
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 01:00 |
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Here's my opinions, feel free to ignore them.Slippery42 posted:-How is distance factored in? How close do the two sides have to be before the stealth vs. passive perception contest even begins? This question isn't super-relevant unless you were planning on not getting particularly close to a guard. You should only have to make one stealth check and a failed stealth check should generally mean you engage the moment you're in LOS of each other. So the precise distances don't matter. quote:-Does moving from behind your cover immediately break stealth? What about sneaking past a guard looking the other way, then? Do they roll active perception or something? Since they technically don't see you because they're facing the wrong way, do they still rely on passive perception? If your spend an action out of cover, you are revealed when that action resolves. So if you attack a dude, you're revealed. If you move out of cover and then discard your action, you're revealed. Whenever your action for the turn is dead is when you're revealed. quote:-The PHB says that being in a heavily obscured area blinds you. So how do you know who you're sneaking from? I'd assume something like poking just your head out from cover to see, but would that provoke any response from the perceiver? I'm not sure why you'd need to see him at all? Like I guess if you're trying to choose which way to go then it'd help but Stealth in D&D has always been presented as a very internal thing. You are hidden/silent or you're not, it's not been presented as something where you need to gauge your mark and make decisions and going all MGS with stealth requirements is directly impacting a rogue's ability to be relevant. If a rogue throws down a smoke bomb and tries to hide, don't be a dick about it, that's awesome. quote:-In combat, how "shared" is information? Say a rogue keeps ducking behind a corner to break LoS then hides (via cunning action) in order to gain advantage for the next turn. One enemy is on to these shenanigans and moves toward the rogue's position and gains line of sight, but the rest of the enemy team is still out of it. Does the rogue still have advantage against everyone besides the one enemy who can see him/her? The surprise rules seems to indicate that this is the case by default- that some individuals standing next to each other can be surprised and others not, but obviously there's a ton of stuff the guy with LOS can do to change that. If the guy doesn't have time to yell for whatever reason, then yes. I'd base whether or not the dude has time to yell before next round on whether he has move or an action left after getting LOS since that seems like the fairest way to determine it.
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Feb 17, 2015 21:11
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MonsterEnvy posted:Show me an unbalanced one that does not involve an intellect devourer. Lets assume party of 4 and that they are level 5. No, let's assume that they're level 2- level 5 would take forever to generate out and level 1 is way too easy because it's super rocket-taggy so let's do level 2. Level 2 fighter, rogue, wizard, and cleric encounter a single centaur at 100ft range on a steppe. This is a medium encounter and should not be scary, so the party has already had an encounter in which half their short-rest resources and one quarter of their long-rest resources (rounded up) have been expended. They all used the standard array. They all took the non-roll option for HP when they hit level 2. They're all humans because I'm throwing together 4 characters to satisfy your delusion. Fighter: 16 Str, 16 Con, 14 Dex, 13 Wis, 11 Int, 9 Cha 16/22 HP Defense Specialization Action Surge has been expended Second Wind is available Chainmail, shield, and longsword Durable Feat Init +2 AC 19 +5 1d8+3 Cleric: 16 Wis, 15 Str, 14 Con, 13 Cha, 11 Dex, 9 Int 12/17 HP Prepared Spells: bless, cure wounds, 2 Spell slots remaining Cantrips: Light, Resistance, Sacred Flame Spell save DC: 13 Spell attack modifier: +5 Channel Divinity expended Disciple of Life Martial Adept feat (distracting Strike/Riposte) - superiority die is available Mace, chainmail, light crossbow with 20 bolts, priest's pack, shield, holy symbol Init +0 AC 18 +4 1d6+2 +2 1d8 Rogue: 16 Dex, 16 Cha, 14 Con, 13 Wis, 11 Int, 9 Str 12/17HP rapier, shortbow with 20 arrows, leather armor, two daggers, thieves' tools and burglar's pack Actor feat Init +3 AC 14 +5 1d8+3 (+1d6 sneak) +5 1d6+3 (+1d6 sneak) Wizard: 16 Int, 15 Dex, 14 Con, 13 Wis, 11 Cha, 9 Str 9/12 HP Cantrips: mage hand, light, ray of frost Prepared Spells: burning hands, sleep, magic missile 2 spell slots remaining Spell save DC: 13 Spell attack modifier: +5 quarterstaff, component pouch, scholar's pack, spellbook War Caster feat Init +2 AC 12 +1 1d4-1 Centaur: 18 Str, 14 Dex, 14 Con, 9 Int, 13 Wis, 11 Cha 45/45 HP Multi-attack Longbow +4 1d8+2 Hooves +6 2d6+4 Pike +6 1d10+4 (+3d6 charge) AC 12 Init +2 So let's get some average numbers out of the way, taking into account AC, attack bonus, and crit rate for player damage: Centaur Longbow: To Fighter- 2 damage To Cleric- 2.3 damage To Rogue- 3.6 damage To Wizard- 4.2 damage Centaur Hooves: To Fighter- 4.4 damage To Cleric- 5 damage To Rogue- 7.15 damage To Wizard- 8.3 damage Centaur Pike: To Fighter- 3.8 damage To Cleric- 4.3 damage To Rogue- 6.2 damage To Wizard- 7.1 damage Centaur Pike with Charge: To Fighter- 8 damage To Cleric- 9 damage To Rogue- 13 damage To Wizard- 15 damage Cleric Crossbow: 2.7 damage Rogue Shortbow: 4.7 damage Rogue Shortbow with Sneak Attack: 7.2 damage Magic Missile: 10.5 damage Ray of Frost: 3.4 damage So let's get something out of the way really quick here. First of all, if the centaur gets a charge off on the wizard, he will probably die. Not incapacitated or disabled. The average situation on a charge including AC and everything else if the centaur charges the wizard is the wizard is dealt 23.3 damage and dies instantly. Even at full health, a Centaur can instagib the wizard some 30-40% of the time. If the centaur charges the rogue, the rogue will definitely drop and might die. Same with the cleric. If the centaur uses his double longbow attack on the wizard, the wizard will often drop. If the uses his double longbow attack on the rogue, there is a chance he could drop and doing it twice will certainly cause him to drop. So let's start out by first pointing out that for a "medium" encounter in a system that works just fine with no difficulties, this encounter sure does require total precision to avoid instant death or enemy snowballing! Second, lets' point out the centaur's speed and range. 50 yard speed, 150 yard range. I stopped listing player damage values when I ran out of options for players to actually attack a centaur that doesn't choose to engage. So initiative is rolled at 100ft. You dash to get within 40 feet of him, he pincussions someone and runs 50 feet. You dash to within 30, he does his charge combo. You could have the rogue use bonus actions to catch up on turn one, but then the rogue's out of the fight because he gets charged. So the rogue moves, sneak attacks, dashes on turn 1. The wizard magic missiles. The centaur pincussions the rogue and runs because how ya gonna stop him? On turn two, the wizard is right at the edge of range and uses a second magic missile, then closes to within 90. Everyone else dashes again except rogue moves, shoots, dashes, centaur charges cleric and cleric goes down. Here are the HP values at the end of turn 2: Wizard: 9/12 Rogue: 3.8/17 Fighter: 16/22 Cleric: OUT Centaur: 11.1/44 Fighter with longsword: 5.5 damage At this point, the wizard can close to within 60 and use ray of frost to slow the centaur, which does not all that much. The rogue can't come within 10 feet of the centaur without getting pasted, nor can the wizard. Assuming that we let the rogue move behind a thing, hide with bonus action, move back out, crossbow attack, the centaur does go down this turn on average. Barely, though, by about 2 points. If things go slightly against the party meaning the centaur's still up at the end of this turn, then he can charge either the rogue or the wizard and have a 30% chance of clearing the fighter's AOO and killing either one of them (since the rogue is already low). This all has a sort of "dick DM" vibe to it, so feel free to ignore, but the point here is that even the AVERAGE situation with the party members making NO positioning mistakes is that the cleric is wiped, the Rogue is almost dead, and the Wizard is out of spells. If the party makes positioning mistakes, someone can die. If the dice go against them, they all can die! This is a "medium" encounter! Really! For real!
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Feb 18, 2015 06:22
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Like I know we're not supposed to poo poo up the thread with anti-5E stuff but at what point does Monster Envy's math-averse bullshit cross the line from totally acceptable 5E cheerleading into totally unacceptable 5E bad advice? If you're DMing 5E you need to know that there are landmines. It's nothing you're not used to if you've run 3.5 or PF or something, and if someone wants to say it's better than those games in this respect I'll believe it, but you need to know.
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Feb 18, 2015 06:24
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I mean even if you're not TRYING to kill the players. Even if you're a good DM focusing the fighter. If the players don't know what's coming, they might not do the perfectly smart thing. The wizard might not throw out his magic missiles at the first sign of trouble. Players might try to fight the centaur at range (which is a MISTAKE), you drop two arrows into the fighter bringing him down to an average of 12HP- maybe he doesn't pop his Second Wind right away because he doesn't realize that the next turn you're going to charge him and knock him rear end over teakettle. If you hit with both the charge and hooves, HE COULD DIE. He has 34HP to dead and the average of the charge if both attacks hit is THIRTY ONE HIT POINTS. That's the AVERAGE. He could die, turn 2. He could die turn 1 if you charge right away and get a few 6's! The guy whose job it is to take hits dying from a "medium" encounter on turn one because of a bad roll! This is a "medium" encounter for a party of 4 level 2 PCs and the fighter could die with a quirk of the dice just because he didn't pop his Second Wind the moment he took 5 damage.
30.5 Days fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Feb 18, 2015 |
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Feb 18, 2015 06:32
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Victorkm posted:Yeah but why are a group of player characters fighting a centaur or the centaur fighting the PCs? Unless the PCs are all evil in which case they deserve to get pasted by a neutral good hunter/gatherer. Actually going over the dragons, good creatures do seem to be just better than their evil counterparts with the same CR.
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Feb 18, 2015 07:04
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Also I'll have you know that centaurs are Chaotic Good. As a Lawful Neutral paladin, I EDIT: Wait, no, they're neutral. Huh.
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Feb 18, 2015 07:18
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Kitchner posted:Great advice guys, I'm glad to see you're keeping a positive and open attitude towards providing constructive advice. Except unironically. EDIT: quote:People had already said why the system has its failings, but all systems have their failings. There's need for people to go on about it trying to change his mind. He didn't help by then trying to prove his point in a dumb way by asking someone to show how it's imbalanced because you can do that even with good systems of you try hard enough, but it's all very hostile. I'm sorry that my numbers were too hostile for you. However, Monster Envy was doing what you are now accusing me of and have accused me of in the past. Somebody asked for advice and he argued with them about the basis for their request. Now normally I"m all for that but he was also wrong. Alpha Dog tried to point out, at length, that he was injecting his opinions about the system's quality here in this thread, where it does not belong. It didn't really make an impression. Then he requested to be proven wrong with numbers, which I did. I agree that arguing about the quality of the system in this thread is not something that should be done. But Monster Envy was the one who engaged the argument and he leveraged that argument into really, really bad advice for new DMs. There was literally no way to correct that advice without fighting because Monster Envy had picked a fight. I get that you don't like me- I don't like you very much either. But it seems pretty open and shut what occurred here, so I'm not sure why you're arguing with me. I agree with you that the argument about the system's plusses and minuses don't belong here. But the problem is that Monster Envy is way super delusional and also likes to pick fights. So here we are. 30.5 Days fucked around with this message at 13:02 on Feb 18, 2015 |
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Feb 18, 2015 12:57
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Kitchner posted:His statement is his opinion. OK he thinks the encounter system "isn't broken" and "does what it says it will". So what? You seem to be saying that this thread is not an advice thread, but a 5E hugbox. It's not.
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Feb 18, 2015 13:03
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Kitchner posted:Yeah dude there's a difference between a "hugbox" and "well no one is allowed to disagree with me if they think the game is good". Except that that's not what happened, someone asked for advice and Monster Envy told them they didn't need it.
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Feb 18, 2015 13:19
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AlphaDog posted:Partly because of the Centaur thing... Well, I think monsters that excel at range are going to prefer wide open spaces and monsters that don't, won't. The deal is that usually players have better damage at range than their enemies. The centaur is definitely an outlier in that he not only has the damage at range to go toe-to-toe with the players, he's also very hard to close with and punishes you for trying. The only good place to encounter him is in a hallway where he can't get distance and can't get 30 feet of movement down to use his charge. I don't think there are very many enemies that excel at range because of the whole "dungeons" part of D&D, I doubt it comes up much in monster design.
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Feb 18, 2015 13:23
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Kitchner posted:Cool, and about 5 people answered the original request for advice. The original requester got several pieces of advice, one of which was that he doesn't need to worry because the system works. I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at, but it seems like the rules of this thread need to be further clarified if Monster Envy's in the right and I'm in the wrong.
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Feb 18, 2015 14:45
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Like obviously Monster Envy giving out advice not to adjust CRs because the CR system works perfectly is okay. Obviously me giving out advice that CRs need to be adjusted because the CR system is broken is not okay. So show me where the line is and I will abide by it.
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Feb 18, 2015 14:46
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Trast posted:Right. This is for new players (like myself) to ask questions and get advice without worrying about comparisons to different editions or end game theory craft. Okay, I will try to do that. On the subject of avoiding weird CR landmines, here's the basic gist: - Watch the immunities. If you're level 2 and your wizard took cone of cold and nobody has magic weapons yet, don't use the Spined Devil, who has immunities to non-magical weapons and cold. - Watch the specials. Monster Envy brought up the Intellect Devourer because it is sort of the bugbear (heh) of encounter creation- a monster that has a semi-permanent stun (requires a high-level spell to unstun) and an ability that basically amounts to an invitation to coup de grace PCs at CR 2. Be very vigilant about any ability that circumvents the ordinary flow of combat or abilities that require a high-level spell to undo. Essentially, the ID could potentially have a place in your campaign- as a low-level hazard in a higher-level fight. If players are aware of what the ID does and how it works, it could be an interesting wildcard in a CR 10 or 12 mindflayer fight, where the worst thing that happens is players have to spring into action to stop the disabled fighter's brain from being eaten and then spend a high-level spell slot to restore him after the fight. - To expand on the above, any ability that effects players' action economy for more than one player or for more than one round, or applies an effect that persists beyond battle (including, you know, death) should probably not be used against the players without some sort of means to reverse the effect being on hand. That might mean just waiting until players are high enough level to have the right spell slots available, or it might mean doing the whole quest-for-magic-item thing. There are a few exceptions to the above- for instance, Silver Dragon Wyrmlings have a 15 foot cone paralyze on a DC13 Con check. This has a few mitigating factors: Dragons are supposed to be epic fights so people will be ready and willing to spend resources on the fight, Con is a really common check, 15 feet is not a very big cone. I'd say that as long as everyone is aware of what they're getting into (the dragon on the hill has a paralyzing breath!), then that should be okay. - The important thing is to THINK HARD about using monsters with abilities that reduce player effectiveness in ways that don't allow a straightforward counterplay. - Watch the movement and distance. In the Centaur example, the monster started 100 ft out from the players on an open plane and Centaurs have 50 speed and 120 range. This made it difficult for players to close. If the monsters move in a way that is difficult for the players to match speed, have a plan for how the players are going to close. This issue doesn't just exist for Centaurs- there are many monsters like the Aarakocra- very fast fliers with a ranged attack and CR 1/4. The spined devil is also a flier who doesn't produce attacks of opportunity while in flight, so can dart in and out of range performing melee attacks. - And for the love of god, watch the DPR. The DMG includes a table for determining the average damage per round for a monster of a given CR. Do not throw any monsters that have a DPR higher than the CR value for the players' current level at them. Do not use monsters that burst up to more than double that in a single round. You can increase these limits by 50% if the fight is billed as a big boss fight. This means that the Centaur should not be encountered until level 5, realistically. - The DMG system for building monsters says that you can determine the CR of a monster by averaging the "defensive" and "offensive" CRs. Yeah, maybe, but even if your glass cannon monster and tanky tank monster are CR 3, if the higher of their two CRs is 5, level 5 should be your party minimum for using that monster. EDIT: Wait, with regard to the "Centaurs at level 5" stuff I was looking at gredenko's monster data. I do think it is more correct, generally, since monster DPR is based on player survivability, and I'd recommend it when screening monster DPR. The one thing I'd say is to compare his DPR to the sort of baseline "I'm not using special abilities this turn" value or half the single-round burst value, whichever is larger. 30.5 Days fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Feb 18, 2015 |
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Feb 18, 2015 16:44
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Yeah he only has advantage for saving throws, there are a ton of magic abilities that use standard attack rolls so if you're sitting on spells that don't use saving throws and aren't of a type he has resistances to, it's no better or worse than a magic crossbow except that it's probably better and also your martials might not have a magic crossbow.
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Feb 20, 2015 14:17
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Speaking of which, here's some advice: please get magic weapons into the hands of your martials ASAP.
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Feb 20, 2015 14:18
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 01:00 |
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I think it's safe to say that anything which cannot be proned cannot be pinned.
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Feb 28, 2015 08:30
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