Counter to Spike Growth?

[jgsugden]

D&D is an RPG. A role playing game. Characters play a role in the story. So do their enemies. Make sure you're telling a good story.

If you believe the above is important, you as a DM should *not* be finding strategies to counter the strategies the PCs rely upon unless you are doing so in the shoes of a monster or NPC that is in position to do so. If an enemy does not know of the PCs, it will not be crafting a strategy to stop their tactics. If there is someone that has been hunting the PCs and watching them, they might craft their approach to the situation.

When crafting NPCs and monsters, ask yourself what they know, what concerns them, and set their abilities to line up with what they'd have developed.

Obviously, a DM can metagame this approach to set up situations that would result in the enemy just happening to have great coutermeasures. "The Orcs have been attacked by nearby elven spellcasters so they have a bunch of counterspels and dispel magics prepared by their Shamans." As a DM, you can try to avoid this, steer into it, or do whatever you want - but the best, immersve, full worlds I've experienced were ones in which the DM created a world agnostic to the party's abilities and hen let them walk in it.

 

[Nailen]

I hear you, and in general that is what I try to do.
However, I don't think it's unreasonable for the cults in PotA to become aware of the tactics of the party. Especially as they react in other ways - once the fist prophet is defeated, the rest move out of their own temples. They have to know this somehow - by similar measures, they could get a feeling for how the party fights.
I don't want to kill off any characters, but I don't want the players to get too comfy thinking that they've hit on strategies that will always work.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

Also, while we're on the subject of Spike Growth, do you consider the piercing damage that the spikes do to be magical damage? Such that resistance on non-magical piercing damage has no effect?
I'm guessing so, but there's a part of me thinking that as the spell description just says 'piercing damage' then it could be resisted..

The damage does not come from a non-magical weapon. It doesn't even come from a weapon. So resistance doesn't apply.

I think there was errata that damage from spells and damage from magic items is both damage from a magical attack.

 

[Shiroiken]

As I discovered when I used it with my last character, nothing prevents jumping to avoid most of the damage. Assuming a character moves 10 ft, they can jump their strength score, so the most an enemy is likely to take from the spell is 4d4 (assuming they were at the center of the effect). Enemies not in the center should take 2d4 tops. That's still not bad for a 2nd level slot, considering that there's no attack or saving throw.

 

[5ekyu]

General rule - your charcters are not the first ones in the world to use the spells on your spell list.

 

[Nailen]

So, we had a combat last night with a group of lizardmen. One went down quickly in a volley of arrows. The rest got caught in the Spike Growth.
Following a tip from this thread, I had a couple use the body of their dead comrade as a launchpad to jump out. The other two were close to the edge so jumped out in different directions.

Thanks for all the tips.