D&D 5E When Fiends Attack: Are Balors, Pit Fiends and Ultraloths too weak?

Hemlock said:

Hmmm. Let's spot check this with a 16th level pure Rogue, no subclass. I'll give him Con 14 and Dex 20 (after all he's had five ASIs at that point) which means 115 HP and AC 17ish with +10 to hit for 9d6+5, mostly from Sneak Attack. After Cunning Action that means he's effectively AC 21 with +14 to hit for 9d6+5, which comes to CR 8.

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I'm not following you here. How does Cunning Action raise AC and to-hit by four points? If you're assuming weird circumstances, like invisibility from an outside source or something, then that factors into the over-all difficulty of the encounter but it doesn't change the evaluation of the individual itself.

It's also probably best, for the sake of fair evaluation of the system itself, if you don't include the untested material from UA. If that stuff throws off the math, then that just reflects on the UA stuff rather than on the system itself.

Saelorn said:

I'm not following you here. How does Cunning Action raise AC and to-hit by four points?

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That's what the DMG says to do for Nimble Escape when computing CR. Cunning Action is Nimble Escape + a Dash option.

It's also probably best, for the sake of fair evaluation of the system itself, if you don't include the untested material from UA. If that stuff throws off the math, then that just reflects on the UA stuff rather than on the system itself.

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What's this in reference to? I didn't reference any UA material. (I don't really like UA in the first place.)

Hemlock said:

That's what the DMG says to do for Nimble Escape when computing CR. Cunning Action is Nimble Escape + a Dash option.

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That's unexpected. I wonder why nobody uses this as a reference point in order to argue that hiding every round in order to get advantage is an intended use of that class feature. This seems like pretty solid evidence.

In any case, it would go more to show the inadequacy of the formula than anything else. I think we both know that using a bonus action to make a second attack is more effective than hiding in order to get advantage on one attack, right? But it looks like the formula only treats that as increasing the average damage per round by +1d6, and Nimble Escape only increases your CR by the listed amount if you assume they use it to hide every round. So you have to choose between being more effective and having a higher CR.

Hemlock said:

What's this in reference to? I didn't reference any UA material. (I don't really like UA in the first place.)

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Isn't Swashbuckler from UA? I could have sworn that I saw it in there, and subsequently ignored it because it was obviously broken.

Saelorn said:

That's unexpected. I wonder why nobody uses this as a reference point in order to argue that hiding every round in order to get advantage is an intended use of that class feature. This seems like pretty solid evidence.

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I've seen it mentioned at least once in such discussions.

In any case, it would go more to show the inadequacy of the formula than anything else. I think we both know that using a bonus action to make a second attack is more effective than hiding in order to get advantage on one attack, right?

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You've got it backwards. Treating it like only +4 to AC and to-hit dramatically understates the value of being hidden after every attack, because being hidden makes you very hard to damage. For someone with Stealth Expertise, it's more like +12 to AC.

I think we both realize that taking 80% less damage every round is the practical equivalent of quintupling your damage output, when it comes to resource management.

But it looks like the formula only treats that as increasing the average damage per round by +1d6, and Nimble Escape only increases your CR by the listed amount if you assume they use it to hide every round. So you have to choose between being more effective and having a higher CR.

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I don't know to what you're referring to here, especially the part in bold. The DMG just says to treat Nimble Escape as +4 to-hit and AC. What formula are you talking about?

Isn't Swashbuckler from UA? I could have sworn that I saw it in there, and subsequently ignored it because it was obviously broken.

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Swashbuckler is from the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. There was a UA feature before that called the Swashbuckler which bears some resemblance, but that isn't what I was referring to. As mentioned, I tend to ignore UA's existence so I didn't think to explicitly say "not the UA Swashbuckler."

Hemlock said:

I think we both realize that taking 80% less damage every round is the practical equivalent of quintupling your damage output, when it comes to resource management.

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Are you imagining a scenario where the whole party is fighting one lone rogue? Or a fight against only rogues, who all have sufficient room to hide every round? (And can somehow maintain cover, while attacking, however that's supposed to work?) Because that's the only scenario I can imagine where hiding would significantly reduce the damage taken by the rogue's side, and even that would require the party to not take the obvious countermeasures.

In a practical fight, while there are non-hidden targets available, very few attacks will be heading toward a hidden rogue anyway, so hiding doesn't really conserve any resources. And when the rogue is the only one left, everyone just readies their action for when it re-appears, and the fight is pretty much over at that point (probably because the rogue runs away while hidden).

Hemlock said:

I don't know to what you're referring to here, especially the part in bold. The DMG just says to treat Nimble Escape as +4 to-hit and AC. What formula are you talking about?

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The damage calculation, for determining offensive CR - it asks you to add up all damage dealt in a round, which is then modified by your effective attack bonus, but it doesn't differentiate between one chance to apply sneak attack or two chances; it just treats it as a total increase in damage equal to the damage of the off-hand weapon, which might not even shift the offensive CR calculation into the next bracket.

If you hide every round, then you treat Nimble Escape as a +4 bonus to hit when calculating offensive CR (which is significant). If you instead use two-weapon fighting, or a feat that mimics its effect, then you calculate CR as +average weapon damage (which is not significant).

If your goal is to maximize the effective CR of the creature, then hiding every round has a greater impact on calculating both offensive CR and defensive CR than anything else you can do with your bonus action. If your goal is to maximize damage output, because hiding doesn't actually conserve much in the way of resources anyway, then making two attacks is usually preferable to making one attack with advantage.

Saelorn said:

Are you imagining a scenario where the whole party is fighting one lone rogue? Or a fight against only rogues, who all have sufficient room to hide every round?

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The latter scenario is theoretically possible, but the former is more common.

In a practical fight, while there are non-hidden targets available, very few attacks will be heading toward a hidden rogue anyway, so hiding doesn't really conserve any resources. And when the rogue is the only one left, everyone just readies their action for when it re-appears, and the fight is pretty much over at that point (probably because the rogue runs away while hidden).

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Then (at least by RAW) you lose legendary actions and Extra Attacks and the potential for movement and any other reaction potential (like Marilith Parrying), and the Rogue gets to choose the terms of every engagement. At least one monster will still get an attack via its readied action, which is why they lose 80% of their damage potential and not 100%, but it is still a very strong ability if you have strong Stealth.

Finding somewhere to hide every round isn't a huge issue BTW. Any cover will suffice. If the Rogue (or Shadow Monk) has planned ahead and taken the Skulker feat, any old darkness will suffice against Darkvision-reliant creatures. In any case, DMG math assumes that hiding places will be readily-available.

The damage calculation, for determining offensive CR - it asks you to add up all damage dealt in a round, which is then modified by your effective attack bonus, but it doesn't differentiate between one chance to apply sneak attack or two chances; it just treats it as a total increase in damage equal to the damage of the off-hand weapon, which might not even shift the offensive CR calculation into the next bracket.

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Ah. Well, for that matter, it doesn't even really factor in to-hit at all, nor many sources of advantage. It's a formula for "computing CR," for whatever that's worth, but CR is an extremely crude metric. I have mentioned before that PCs are even more dangerous than their computed CR makes them worth, because they tend to have abilities like Expertise, Mobile, Lucky, Bardic Inspiration, and spells that aren't properly accounted for in CR. (Just look at the DMG table and see how few abilities even affect CR at all.)

If you hide every round, then you treat Nimble Escape as a +4 bonus to hit when calculating offensive CR (which is significant). If you instead use two-weapon fighting, or a feat that mimics its effect, then you calculate CR as +average weapon damage (which is not significant).

If your goal is to maximize the effective CR of the creature, then hiding every round has a greater impact on calculating both offensive CR and defensive CR than anything else you can do with your bonus action. If your goal is to maximize damage output, because hiding doesn't actually conserve much in the way of resources anyway, then making two attacks is usually preferable to making one attack with advantage.

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Except that attacking and then hiding is like +Enormous to AC, which is indisputably a valuable thing to have. The extra +weapon to damage really does not make up for the increased vulnerability. "Maximizing damage output" is a poor thing to optimize.

DaveDash said:

Those Fire Cult Priests are nasty with their fireballs.

At the burning wicker area, my group at level 7 charged up the hill to where the fire cultists were. They were warned off at first, but decided to try and barge their way in, so the cultists attacked them.

End result 1 dead PC, near TPK, some heroics and luck saved them from a wipe. They tumbled down the back side of the hill with their tails between their legs, and the cultists burned the body of the dead PC to ash on the wicker.




Sent from my iPhone using EN World mobile app

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My guys are hitting the fire cult at 11th level (the sorcerer is 12th). They don't know where the Scarlet Moon tower is, but they know how to find the Fire Temple and the Fire node in the Fane of the Eye, so they're going that route. I was reading the druid encampment part last night, but it looks like that will be 100% skipped. Besides, Vanifer wouldn't leave ragtag cultists up top when she damn well knows the party has already killed 3 prophets and wiped out three cults. She's bringing every priest and fighter up top down to the temple. I'm leaving the wicker man and skeleton crew up there, but it mostly for show.

Hemlock said:

On the one hand, some people like theme parks. You get a guided tour of all the attractions, but there's never any doubt that everyone is going to finish the tour and see the whole thing. On the other hand, some people like Jurassic Park, where all the monsters are off their leashes and some people (the lawyers and computer nerds) aren't likely to make it home at all.

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Suum cuique.

On the gripping hand, 5E makes even death pretty easy and consequence-free, so as long as someone survives, there's a limited downside for even the guys who have things go very, very wrong. In the course of killing the dragon, maybe the wizard does take 150 HP of fire damage all in one round and gets insta-killed; but he can still be Revivified or Raised, and he doesn't even have to make a Resurrection Survival Roll or lose a point of Constitution like he would have in AD&D.

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Yes, and because of such, my preference is to DM/play without those kinds of spells. In the end, table consensus is achieved, and some games go with them and some without.

Anyhow, even without these spells, sometimes the players just let their allies be punished until felled and then cure them some HPs so they jump back to action. This yo-yo effect is really annoying to me, and I make sure the monsters notice when this happens, adapting their behavior accordingly (i.e. by making sure the felled enemies go effectively dead afterwards). So far, I have got no complaints, as the players themselves realize this is the obvious option the monster is left with, and instead they become less careless.

Hemlock said:

My experience suggests that it should be approximately a fair fight, as in "it's hard to predict who will live or die".

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Mine too. I even played a little with some simple duel scenarios, using melee fighters and paladins one-on-one against some brute monsters, and the results were really balanced. I deliberately chose melee as the preferred tactic on both opponents so to make the experience more straightforward, and to try not to favor any sides.

Furthermore, if you compute the CR of a PC, a level X PC is often CR (X-1) or (X-2), and that of course neglects PC abilities which don't show up on the CR scale, like Expertise and various spells.

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And IIRC the DMG already suggests a hero has the CR equal to their level, without any of the normal CR calculations, right?

Conclusion: if you want a monster or monsters to act as a "gate" for content, which players cannot bypass until they level up, there should probably be as many monsters as PCs and they should be approximately as high level/CR as the PCs are. If you want a bank vault that four 11th level PCs will probably not be able to rob, try six to eight CR 10 Algoriths as bank guards. And even then it could still happen.

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By the same lines, wouldn't it be wise to conclude that, by design, a fight between a group of four heroes and one monster of the same CR as the average level of the heroes will always be heavily one-sided in favor of the heroes? I claim here by design to mean "in order not to contradict the 'level = CR' part of the DMG".

As a follow-up, when there are observations that solo fights don't work because they unavoidably result in heroes dominating, wouldn't it be more of a poor selection of the challenge level of the solo monster?

My previous observation that solos should be selected from monsters with legendary and lair actions and legendary abilities (or that such abilities might be added to another monster so to make it a suitable solo) was not aimed at correcting the challenge level of the creature, but to make it produce an interesting experience. A monster without such actions fighting alone against numbers of heroes must have, besides the already expected huge pool of HP to give it enough turns to act, a very overwhelming offence, as it will have so few opportunities to use it, resulting in very swingy battles. On the other hand, if the creature is given out-of-turn actions, each individual action doesn't need to be so overwhelming anymore. Now the solo may pose a threat by gradually launching its offence, while giving the heroes some room between their own actions to address the challenge and react to it.

Barolo said:

And IIRC the DMG already suggests a hero has the CR equal to their level, without any of the normal CR calculations, right?

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I don't know anywhere where it says that, but maybe I'm overlooking something.

Polymorph certainly seems to feel that level and CR are interchangeable though.

By the same lines, wouldn't it be wise to conclude that, by design, a fight between a group of four heroes and one monster of the same CR as the average level of the heroes will always be heavily one-sided in favor of the heroes?

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Sure, absolutely. "Medium" fights are a slaughter, like beating up on a kindergartner. The monsters are typically outnumbered and outgunned. The only justification for so-called "Medium" fights to occur is if the monsters think they're dealing with a bunch of standard humans, not actually realizing that it's a whole band of high-level humans. Even there, the realistic reaction is for the monsters to bail out of the fight as soon as they realize what they're dealing with, e.g. after a Fireball gets thrown and another human fells two orcs with two swipes of his axe.

One of the biggest reasons I hate "Medium" fights is that after low levels, it's really hard to make them make sense from an in-world perspective. On the other hand, it's pretty easy to explain why fourteen Umber Hulks and their Neogi masters (including an 8th level wizard) don't knuckle under to a mere four humans--that makes it a good encounter from a story perspective, but it's also quadruple-Deadly or higher. Ditto for a squad of eight giants, or a drow war-party. So I just embrace quadruple-Deadly+.

As a follow-up, when there are observations that solo fights don't work because they unavoidably result in heroes dominating, wouldn't it be more of a poor selection of the challenge level of the solo monster?

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Possibly. Or possibly the solo monster was run poorly. I like spellcasting dragons, but even the base dragon can be a lot more scary if you use it to its full potential as a hunter. (See: discussion on Strahd, earlier in this thread.)

That makes the dragon take a lot longer than three rounds though, and it assumes some narrative importance; some people don't seem to like that. They want a straightforward fight with a big brute; these people are the ones who tend to be most disappointed with solo creatures, especially if their players have a high nova potential from paladin smiting or similar. (Sometimes these DMs get disappointed in how quickly their demons/dragons died to a PC nova, without contemplating the cost of that nova to the PCs.)