D&D 5E [Question] Medusa and Sight Based Spells (Magic Missile, Blight, etc.)

[Luce]

Do not look up!

 

[Azurewraith]

I think its a funny area as yes technically looking at a foot you could target it buuut in combat is anyone even going to stand still and let you target them like that, with a torso your fine if there jumping about your aiming center mass easier to keep up. 5ft is a big space to move around in also as stated earlier Medusa ain't daft she will move to look at you just because we see combat as static turns with seperate actions everything is in reality happening all at once. I don't think targeting a foot is in the spirit of 5e either.


Edit: English is hard..

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

I think its a funny area as yes technically looking at a foot you could target it buuut in combat is anyone even going to stand still and let you target them like that, with a torso your fine if there jumping about your aiming center mass easier to keep up.

..and heck, the MM Medusa has the dexterity and snake-motif to pull off an agile torso twist, ducking down and up into the line of sight of the poor chump staring at its body bits.

A bit like a monstrous photo-bomb.

 

[Tony Vargas]

(1) Yes, Challenge Ratings are badly designed.

Yeah, but at least the concept has gotten more useful as the editions have rolled on - though a more useful version of a not very useful thing does end up being still not very useful.

Not steadily so, though I guess it depends on what you mean by 'useful.' The standard meaning of 'same level monster' shifted from 'challenge for the whole party' in 3e, to 'challenge for an equal number of PCs,' and back again. What's meant by challenge has also shifted from 'just might kill someone before you kill it if it gets lucky' to 'presents an interesting challenge as the battle unfolds' to 'fight will be over quickly.'

(2) I checked my DMG and Petrifying Gaze is not listed in the modifiers table of things that affect CR.

Probably because it's comparatively rare rather than because it doesn't matter.


As far as the medusa, I see(npi) no problem with the 'avert your eyes' rule. It's simple, and not seeing an enemy carries a reasonable application of advantage/disadvantage and could arguably prevent targeting some attacks, entirely. It might be more interesting to allow the medusa to make deception or other checks to goad a victim into looking at her or insert herself unexpectedly into his line of sight - that way closing your eyes (blind is worse than merely being unable to see one target) or even blindfolding yourself might be the safest course. If there are other monsters in the fight as well...
;>

Oh, or, more abstractly:

Avert your eyes: DEX save or restrained and CON save or petrified next round.

Close your eyes: WILL save or restrained and CON save or petrified next round.

Blindfold: No save required, but an action to remove the blindfold.

Just fight it normally: CON save or petrified each round.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The mage player argued that he didn't have to look at the Medusa's eyes to cast the spell, that he can instead look at a foot and cast the spell.

This is what we might call "pixel bitching."

Ultimately, you have one of two conditions when fighting a medusa: you can see the creature and thus have a chance of meeting their gaze (this reflects the chaos of combat - as you dodge, weave, make sure she's not sneaking up behind you, duck and roll, etc., etc., you might accidentally lock eyes for a brief moment), or you can't see her and thus don't have a chance of meeting her gaze.

As a player, you gotta pick one. If "looking at her feet" means you can see her for spellcasting purposes, it means that you might accidentally catch her gaze as she does a flip or something maybe.

The player seems to maybe be lacking an awareness that these two states represent an abstraction - a medusa isn't standing static in one place just because her mini doesn't move from it's 5' square.

 

[MrHotter]

Your player is obviously wrong. The next time you see him, introduce him to the 'look at my crotch' game. Every time you get him to look at your crotch you get to punch him in the arm. It's surprisingly easy to do.

 

[Shiroiken]

Averting your eyes is more than merely not looking at the Medusa's eyes. You avoid looking at her and the area directly around her, because otherwise, she might move into your field of vision and (start to) turn you to stone. If a player insists that they can look at part of her, then on her turn, she moves slightly, causing him to automatically be affected (as per the ability in MM).

I ran an ugly encounter with a medusa who had boots of striding and springing. Her lair was a maze of passageways filled with covered pit traps. He tactic was to fire her bow, then move/jump over the pits to the next intersection. The jump was such that no one could see her avoid the pit, causing quite a bit of havoc and separating the party. Additionally, whenever anyone went around the corner (before they fell into the pit), they would see the medusa and have to make the save, or else they saw nothing around the corner. This was kind of brutal, but it turned a lower CR creature into a fun solo encounter.

 

[TacoSupreme]

(1) Yes, Challenge Ratings are badly designed. The very idea of CRs is flawed, and the execution is even worse--it's basically just HP * DPR, with no real weight given to tactical considerations like mobility or ranged attacks or stealth, as if the monster is expected to just mindlessly attack until it's dead. They're good for novice DMs who are just starting out, but after that they are best ignored except for calculating kill XP--and you should simply give up on expecting any correlation between kill XP and challenge level. Treat CR as simply a measure of the amount of life force (or "quickening", as @Tony Vargas called it once) that the PCs are able to harvest from the monster, nothing more than that.

(2) I checked my DMG and Petrifying Gaze is not listed in the modifiers table of things that affect CR.

While petrifying gaze is not listed in the DMG, a medusa comes out evenly to a CR 4 defensively and offensively. Since the MM lists it at a CR 6 they clearly have bumped it up for the gaze.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Not steadily so, though I guess it depends on what you mean by 'useful.'

That is very true. What I mean by "useful" is whether it can be relied upon by a DM to successfully do the thing it claims to be attempting to do for the DM.

So while the goal of "this monster will be a challenging fight for your party" or "this monster, in equal number to the party members, will be a challenging fight for your party" are very useful goals, the fact that dice, character building, and tactics can combine to make a challenge seem like it wasn't a challenge at all made it unlikely that the designers picking the CR or Level of the monster in question got the number right for any given group.

But the goal of CR in 5th edition being "this monster probably won't kill anyone in the party if it is faced alone by a rested and well equipped party" is a goal that is much easier for the designers to actually get correct, making it reliable at doing what it says it does for the DM - though I admit that what 5th edition CR aims to do isn't something most are going to consider useful, since the majority of encounters happen outside the narrow band of conditions in which CR claims to be accurate, unless the party only ever faces a single encounter between each of their long rests and is never not well equipped when doing so.

 

[Tony Vargas]

That is very true. What I mean by "useful" is whether it can be relied upon by a DM to successfully do the thing it claims to be attempting to do for the DM.

Sounds almost like 'DM Agency'
If I put a medusa in the scene, you expect it turn someone to stone. If not, is it really a medusa. But the context was CR...

So while the goal of "this monster will be a challenging fight for your party" or "this monster, in equal number to the party members, will be a challenging fight for your party" are very useful goals, the fact that dice, character building, and tactics can combine to make a challenge seem like it wasn't a challenge at all made it unlikely that the designers picking the CR or Level of the monster in question got the number right for any given group.

'For your specific party' does raise the bar a little, because you bring in the variability in effectiveness of the party - that can be a huge difference in 3.x/PF, for instance, because of its notorious 'rewards for system mastery' and the gulf between Tier 1 and Tier 5 (no one really plays Tier 6) classes. But, for a party of a given level in general, and more balanced classes, those were doable goals, and, indeed, have been achieved fairly consistently in the past.

But the goal of CR in 5th edition being "this monster probably won't kill anyone in the party if it is faced alone by a rested and well equipped party" is a goal that is much easier for the designers to actually get correct

The variability of party ability is the same as with the two prior goals, so if you hold it to the standard of /for your specific party/ it's as problematic as any other. But, sure, I can see how it could be met, in general, by 'aiming low' - and 5e monsters and encounters are often criticized as 'too easy.' So that's a plausible rationale.